The setting of the play is a part of the beginning. Is the setting realistic? Romantic? Fantastic or bizarre? Are the details of stage design, properties, and especially the atmosphere and color scheme in harmony with the tone of the play itself? Is the setting really an organic part of the play or is it something apart from it? Note that the setting is usually written in the third person, present tense, and in italics.
2. The Middle of the One-Act Play.—The middle of a one-act play is concerned primarily with the main crucial moment or climax and the dramatic movement that from the beginning leads up to it. A good play consists of a series of minor crises leading up to a major crisis or crucial moment. It is for this crucial moment that the play exists; it is for this big scene precisely that the play has been written. Indeed, the play succeeds or fails as the crucial moment is strongly dramatic or flabbily weak. This is the part of the play that is strongest in dramatic tension, strongest in emotional functioning.
A study of Sir James M. Barrie's The Twelve-Pound Look shows that the crucial moment comes at the point where "Sir" Harry Sims in his self-centred egotism discovers that his wife's, Lady Sims's, heart-longing could easily be satisfied if she were permitted no other freedom than merely operating a typewriter. In Althea Thurston's The Exchange the crucial moment comes when the several characters, who unwittingly had exchanged one ill for a worse one, find that they can never re-exchange, and that they must endure the torments and displeasure of the newly acquired ill throughout life.
Just where is the crucial moment or climax in the play under consideration? Determine the several minor crises that lead up to the crucial moment. Is the crucial moment delayed too long for good dramatic effect? Or is it reached too soon, so that the play is too short and too sudden in reaching the climax? Does it make one feel that some vital result has been attained in the plot movement? Is it characterized by strong situation and by strong emotional reactions of character on character or of character on situation?
For purposes of impressing a sense the organic structure of a one-act play, it is a good plan to draw a horizontal line across the page at the close of the crucial moment. Keep in mind, however, that the crucial moment is not the end of the play as it appears on the printed page or as it is acted on the stage.
3. The End of the One-Act Play.—The end of the one-act play is an important consideration. Too often it is entirely lost sight of. It is the part that frequently makes or mars a play. When the crucial moment or climax has been reached, the plot action of the play is completed, but the play is not yet completed. The play needs yet to be rounded out into an artistic and dramatic whole. In life the actual crisis in human affairs is not often our chiefest interest, but the reaction of characters immediately after the crisis has occurred. Thus, in a play, the emotional reaction of the characters on the crucial moment and the more or less sudden readjustment between characters after the crucial moment must be presented. For this very purpose the end of the one-act play is constructed. The end is of need very short—usually even shorter than the beginning. Usually the end consists of but a speech or two, or sometimes only of pantomime that more effectively expresses the emotional reactions of the characters on the crucial moment than dialogue.
Thus, in Sir James M. Barrie's The Twelve-Pound Look, the end consists of but pantomime, in which "Sir" Harry expresses his emotional reaction upon his wife's longing for the human liberty that even the operating of a typewriter would provide her. The end of Bosworth Crocker's The Last Straw comes immediately after the pistol-shot is heard in the adjoining room and Mrs. Bauer's voice is heard: "Fritz! Fritz! Speak to me! Look at me, Fritz! You didn't do it, Fritz! I know you didn't do it!" etc.
Is the end of the play under consideration in terms of dialogue? In pantomime? Or both? Is it too long? Too short? Is it dramatic? Is it conclusive and satisfying?
C. Dialogue of the One-Act Play.—Dialogue, like plot and characterization, is another means whereby the theme of the play is got to the reader or audience. Good dramatic dialogue is constructed to this very end. It is not the commonplace, rambling, uncertain, and realistic question and answer of every-day life. Usually good dramatic dialogue is crisp, direct, condensed. It is the substance but not the form of ordinary conversation. Its chiefest characteristic is spontaneity.
The highest type of dramatic dialogue is that which expresses the ideas and emotions of characters at the points of highest emotional functioning. It will readily be seen, then, that not all dialogue in a play is necessarily dramatic. In truth, the best dramatic dialogue occurs in conjunction with the series of minor crises and the crucial moment that go to make up the dramatic movement of the play. Often there is much dialogue in a play that essentially is not dramatic at all.