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VALUES AND EMPHASIS' ; ' >l6l' comes, there is no drop in the interest, no matter how momentary. Get all the introductions over within the first third of the action. The butler who ushers the detective in does not have to be intro- duced, but the detective must be known to the audience and ten feet in front of the climax is not the proper place for the intro- duction. It should be found that not more than four or five characters are of real value to the plot. Keep your action to those as much as possible. From the nature of things you must have a hero, a villain and a heroine. The villain does not have to be a man steeped in crime to deserve the name. He may be of as good a moral character as the hero himself, but if he is the man who in- terposes the obstacles in the hero's path, the man who makes pos- sible the element of struggle without which no play is considered complete, then he is the villain. Perhaps he may only be the other suitor to the heroine's hand, the man who keeps the hero from sailing right in and getting the right to buy the engagement ring. That doesn't sound like an act of villainy, but it is, technically, if not in fact. We have, then, these three leading characters. There may be twenty people helping the villain, but they are all of less value than the villain because they merely espouse his cause. The hero may have fifty adherents, but not one of them can equal him in value. They are all important to the story in greater or less de- gree, but they are not as important to the story as these three. Suppose that you ask for a glass of water and a servant brings it to you on a tray. The glass, the tray and the servant all figure in the action, but the thing of value is the water, which you have asked for. The other objects are all less important to you than the water, and yet without the glass you could not have had the water and without the servant you would not have had the glass. The policeman who arrests the villain in the last scene is not important. The arrest is the important matter and he is merely the means to the end. It is not necessary to identify him, but it is necessary to show as quickly as possible the leading characters, their relation to each other and, to some extent, their relation to the play. Having the sense of values will enable the author to plan his scenes intelligently. Each scene should advance the story one point and should be given place and length in proportion to its value. It might seem to the beginner at first glance that there can be but one place for a scene and that must be its proper place. He has been told, moreover, that all happenings should be shown in their chronological order and he cannot understand why there