Play-Making
A Manual of Craftsmanship
By WILLIAM ARCHER
"I make bold to say," says Brander Matthews, Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University, "that Mr. Archer's is the best book that has yet been written in our language, or in any other, on the art and science of play-making. A score of serried tomes on this scheme stand side by side on my shelves, French and German, American and British; and in no one of them do I discern the clearness, the comprehensiveness, the insight, and the understanding that I find in Mr. Archer's illuminating pages.
"He tells the ardent aspirant how to choose his themes; how to master the difficult art of exposition—that is, how to make his first act clear; how to arouse curiosity for what is to follow; how to hang up the interrogation mark of expectancy; how to combine, as he goes on, tension and suspension; how to preserve probability and to achieve logic for construction; how to attain climax and to avoid anti-climax; and how to bring his play to a close."