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.
