Among the great number of technical terms that photoplaydom has acquired is one identified with literary work-shop slang as well—the “Punch.” It is more expressive than elegant, however. The Punch is the Climax and something more. It must first be an effective Climax; secondly, it is the effect of that Climax. The Punch is the momentous event that is the excuse for the play. It is the tremendous moment of revealment, when the dramatic struggle that has waged uncertainly from side to side suddenly pitches forward with the victor for good and all—just as the audience had been schooled either to hope or be afraid that it would. The issue of the Climax-Punch must be sufficient to make the audience literally hold its breath, or emotionally rise to the occasion. It is the thing that hits you square between the eyes with an effect that stuns and lasts. If a play has no Punch, it is not a perfect play.
(EXAMPLE 79.) In “The Coming of the Real Prince,” the Climax of the first part was the coming of the bogus prince; the Punch came at the end of play when the real prince came. The first was a city “tin horn Sport”; the second was the plain grocer’s boy, who had been Annie’s neighbor all her life, and a real prince too—that was the Punch!
The Punch, then, is the motive-idea of the play summed up in a cumulative stroke. It bears the same relation to the story that the climax does to the plot. It is not the big culminating action so much as it is the effect that dawns on the audience. It is the emotional truth of the author’s vision come home to dwell in the heart of each one who sees the vision. The Punch is the recognition by the audience of a visible symbol of spiritual struggle.
A successful play must be able to claim an honorable place among the most important emotional experiences of the spectators—Unity and Harmony must have induced exquisite Reality.
CHAPTER V
Unity Plus Harmony Equals Effect
QUESTIONS IN THE MIND OF THE AUDIENCE; REASON; TRUTH; STRUGGLE; SOLUTION; THE TITLE; HARMONY VALUES.
UNITY resolves itself into a rule of reasonable cause; Harmony becomes solely a matter of consistent effect. Unity has to do with selection, and is a part of the plot; Harmony with arrangement, and is essential to dramatic expression. One is the perfect relation of the parts; the other the perfect expression of the whole.
First of all, there are unities of language that must be observed to insure perspicuity, precision and perfect presentation of the idea. This demands a command of words, a knowledge of grammar and an exercise of rhetoric. The illiterate writer is beyond imagining and might be compared with a blind painter or a mute singer. The next step toward eventual harmony is the choice of an appropriate idea and a subsequent coherent development. The units of development should not merely stick together; they must cling to each other. Thus we fulfill the unities of impression, which is the simpler part of our task.
Perfect unity in expression is harmony. There is a measure, a key, a pitch, a tone—or a color scheme, if you will—that cannot be violated. The main theme is the refrain, or motif, to which we continually hark back, until we build up a volume of melody that releases itself in a grand finale of harmony. We describe a crescendo—tho it is not a perfect arc, in that its highest point is near the end instead of the center, when it descends rapidly to the plane of its beginning. That is the mark of the perfect artistic production: Balance, the last bar pitched in the same keynote as the first! This suggests the entire play in a single effective impression.