A History of Three-Act Structure

Posted by jennine lanouette on Monday, December 24th, 2012

[This article was originally written in December, 1999.]

Incredible as it may seem, back in the early 1980s when I studied
screenwriting in Columbias Graduate Film Program, my classmates and I
had no textbooks. Our teacher Frank Daniel, a Czechoslovak refugee
from communism who had studied with Pudovkin and Eisenstein in
Moscow, would give us titles of playwriting manuals to read. But most of
those books were out of print and hard to find.[1] So we faithfully
attended class, took lots of notes and hung on his every word.
Clearly, all that has changed. Rather than a dearth, we now have too
many screenwriting manuals fiercely competing to make a definitive
statement as they present a confounding variety of techniques and
terminology. Remarkably, though, among all this disagreement, there
does exist a consistency on one pointthe acceptance of the division into
three acts as the fundamental structural model for the creation of
screen drama. While the terms used can differ greatly, the basic shape of
setup (Act I), development (Act II) and climax and resolution (Act III)
remains the same.
However, despite this resounding consensus, there is a notable lack of
interest in the historical precedents for this dramatic form, with the
exception of an occasional reference to Aristotles theories, which are
invariably misrepresented. This neglect of the past creates some
misleading impressions, specifically that, first, the division into three acts
is solely a screenwriting phenomenon and, second, that it was developed
only recently by screenwriters themselves. Unfortunately, both of these
perceptions are counterproductive to the further development of
screenwriting as an art form.
That three-act structure might be peculiar to screenwriting alone
suggests a static, self-contained form, allowing the unimaginative writer
to follow its parameters in a limited and literal way. One who can see
that three-act structure has evolved throughout drama history can also
see that what is practiced now is, still, only a contemporary
understanding. Likely, three-act structure will continue to evolve. The
more contemporary screenwriters are aware that they are working at a
point in time on a larger historical continuum, the freer they will be to

push that point forward.

Similarly, the notion that three-act structure has only a recent history
gives it an arbitrary and transitory appearance, prompting those with an
iconoclastic bent to feel compelled to challenge it simply for its primacy.
While the desire to question a dominant system is always a healthy
impulse, and necessary for forward movement, the power of the
challenge is greatest when done from a solid knowledge of the process
of historical evolution, rather than out of a knee-jerk reactivity.
Contributing to this gap in a historical understanding of screenwriting is
the lack of recognition it is given as an academic discipline. Scholars in
cinema studies tend to focus on film as a visual medium, putting barely
any emphasis on its dramatic nature. As a consequence, their sense of
history reaches back only about as far as 1900. While it is certainly true
that, when it comes to understanding visual communication, film has
singlehandedly provided a tremendous leap forward, almost every
dramatic element that we take for granted as essential for good
filmmaking has its origins in the work of a playwright or theorist
innovating in the theater.
So where did three-act structure come from? (Some people actually
believe it was invented by Syd Field in 1978!) To answer this question, I
decided to do an evolutionary study of the three-act model. I went back
to the playwriting manuals Frank had urged us to readWillam Archers
Playmaking (1912)[2], Kenneth Rowes Write That Play (1939)[3]which I
managed to locate at university libraries, and then supplemented them
with further research of my own. My goal was to find evidence of threeact structures evolution from the entirety of drama history.
Of course, as is often pointed out in the currently popular screenwriting
manuals, it all begins with Aristotles Poetics,[4] the first playwriting
manual on record. The Poetics is often taken as a definitive theoretical
text, but for Aristotle it was simply a set of observations on the key
elements of the most successful tragedies produced in Greece up until
that point. Furthermore, its vague, disorganized and fragmentary nature
has prompted scholars to speculate it was most likely written as a set of
lecture notes.
Aristotle is often credited by screenwriting how-to authors with having
originated three-act structure because of his observation that a tragedy

must have a beginning, a middle and an end. While he was not explicit
about how this should be achieved, a three-act form can be found in his
identification of Greek dramas component parts prologue, parados,
episode, stasimon, and exodos. Prologue and parados were where the
story was introduced. Episode and stasimon referred to a dramatic
scene (episode) followed by a choral song (stasimon) that could be
alternated as many times as necessary to fulfill the story. And exodos
was where the story was finally resolved. Thus, we have a beginning, a
middle and an end. Not exactly todays three-act structure but certainly
heading in that direction.
However, then came the Roman theorist Horace (65-8 B.C.) who, in his
text Ars Poetica (or The Art of Poetry), took the development of drama
on a major detour by creating a set of hard-and-fast rules that had an
oppressive influence on playwriting for nearly 2,000 years. Aristotle had
simply catalogued the prevailing practice of prologue, parados, episode,
stasimon, and exodos, but Horace declared five-act structure to be the
only legitimate form of drama, a belief which dominated western
theatrical practice all the way through the neo-classical period of the 16 th
to 18th centuries.
Indeed, in the neo-classical period, the creative evolution of drama
nearly ground to a halt under the weight of restrictions requiring that a
drama must all take place in one location and transpire only in the
course of a single day. First promoted by the Italians in the 16 th century
and legislated into mandatory practice by the French in the early 17 th
century, these practices were misinterpretations of Aristotles work
looked at through the filter of Horaces dictates. The Poetics makes no
mention at all of location and only one mention that tragedy endeavors,
as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or
but slightly to exceed this limit.[5] (Through a fluke of history,
Shakespeare remained largely uninfluenced by the neo-classical rules;
although, having had more exposure to Horace than to Aristotle,
Shakespeare did faithfully write his plays in five acts.)
Clearly, these neo-classical dictates limiting time and place are
antithetical to the aesthetic strengths of film. If theater had remained
bound by them into the 20th century, the early screenwriters would have
had a lot more inventing of the wheel to do before arriving at a form of

drama that can fully utilize the benefits of action, visuals and montage.
The earliest elements that later contributed to the development of
screen drama can be found in the theaters late 18 th and early 19th
century process of breaking free of neo-classicism. While the Romantics,
such as Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805), were challenging
the constraints of neo-classicism on a literary and philosophical level,
popular playwrights such as Rene Pixerecourt (1773-1844), August von
Kotzebue (1761-1819) and Eugene Scribe (1791-1861) were casting off
official dictates of form in favor of a set of practices, arrived at through
trial and error, which best pleased the general audience. Pixerecourt and
Kotzebue are credited with the development of melodrama, which early
silent film utilized to spectacular effect, but it was Scribe who first wowed
audiences with the intensified use of action.
Dubbed the well-made play, Scribes technique actually invents nothing
but instead applies all the earlier conventions of comedy and drama with
greater focus and to greater effect. Typically, his plays involve
complicated, fast-paced plots, full of intrigue and suspense, built on
cause and effect and escalating to a high-pitched climax before resolving
happily for the main character.
The scholar Stephen S. Stanton, in the introduction to his collection,
Camille and Other Plays, outlines seven structural features to the wellmade play. Among them are:
(1) a plot based on a secret known to the audience but withheld from
certain characters . . . until its revelation in the climactic scene serves to
unmask the fraudulent character and restore to good fortune the
suffering hero, with whom the audience has been made to sympathize;
(2) a pattern of increasingly intense action and suspense, prepared by
exposition . . . ; (3) a series of ups and downs in the heros fortunes,
caused by his conflict with an adversary; (4) the counterpunch of
peripeteia [reversal of fortune] and scene a faire [the obligatory scene
in which the secret is revealed], marking, respectively, the lowest and the
highest point in the heros adventures . . . ; (6) a logical and credible
denouement . . . .[6]
Here we start to see a rough outline of screenwritings three-act
structurethe presentation in the first act of the sympathetic character,
background exposition and setting up of the situation (in this case, a

dangerous secret); in the second act, increasingly intense action and a

series of ups and downs in conflict with an adversary; the low point at
the end of the second act which comes from a reversal of fortune;
followed by a third act climax (when the truth comes out and all is made
right); which is in turn followed by a denouement in which the story is
credibly resolved.
It should be noted at this point that, while the well-made plays of the
19th century were wildly successful in their time, they are by no means
considered works of art. They are significant simply for their innovations
in form, which later playwrights, such as Ibsen, Wilde and Shaw, were
able to apply to their own works with considerable artistic effect. Early in
his career, Ibsen directed some 21 plays by Scribe for the Norwegian
stage. Form this intimate knowledge of Scribes work, Ibsen later made
ample use of well-made play techniques in his own writing. Note, for
example, the secret which plays a dominant role in A Dolls House.
Shaws biting satire on military glory and heroism, Arms and the Man, is
a direct reworking of Scribes Bataille de Dames. And Wilde is said to
have modeled Lady Windemeres Fan on Scribes well-made plays of
adultery.[7] While the artistic and thematic genius in each of these works
is singular, they all benefitted considerably from the innovations in
dramatic structure passed down to them by Scribe.
Despite the evident tripartite structural progression to the well-made
play, Scribe still wrote his plays in the Horatian five-act divisions,[8]
which brings up the question of how the word act is defined. The
official definition of an act is a unit of dramatic action consisting of
several scenes,[9] a rather vague description that makes no reference to
dramatic function. By this rendering, an act is simply a segment of story
delineated by the rise and the fall of the curtain. For the purposes of
clarity, I will call this a segment act. When done well, a segment act will
have at least some kind of dramatic dynamic to it, beginning in relative
calm and building to a high point of interaction or suspense. But in terms
of the overall structure of the play, the placing of a segment act break
can have as much to do with the need for a change in the scenery or
costuming as it does the plots progression.
The medium of film is not burdened by the raising and lowering of
curtains to facilitate scene changes or signal intermissions.

Consequently, in screenwriting how-to manuals act divisions are used to

describe portions of the drama in which a set of specific dramatic tasks
are being accomplished. As previously stated, in the first act background
exposition is given and characters are introduced, in the second act is
the development of complications and obstacles, and the third act
presents the climax and resolution. Thus, this second definition, based
on the dramatic functions being performed, can be differentiated as a
structural act.
Throughout the 19th century, while the concept of the structural act was
slowly evolving, most theater drama continued to be written in the
segmented five-act form. An interesting exception to this was the French
playwright Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), a disciple of Scribe who
mastered and further developed the well-made play for the popular
theater. Commenting on Sardous lavish mise en scene and gift for
manipulating vast historical pageants, Stanton cites Patrie as an
illustrative example. In this play, says Stanton, Sardou indulges
gaudy spectacles and melodramatic thrills, a triangle plot of guilty
passion, the pathos of filial devotion, the nobility of patriotism; the whole
seasoned with comic relief, punctuated with grandiose sound effects
including musical motifs, smothered cries, and a thunder of massed
crowds giving voice to their emotions in unison, and culminating in a
turbulent death scene charged with passions of hate, love, remorse, and
vengeance and involving a suicide. Indeed, Sardou in the legitimate
theatre anticipated by some fifty years the historical panorama as
evolved by Hollywood.[10]
This is certainly an impressive catalogue of shared characteristics with
filmed melodrama. Yet, Stanton neglects to mention the similarity which,
in the evolution of dramatic form, is perhaps of greatest significance.
Sardou not only utilized the tripartite structural progression developed
by Scribe but he actually had his curtain going up and down only three
times, instead of the usual five, dividing his play into three segment acts
that roughly corresponded in function to the present day three-act
model.[11] This marks the first practical application of the three-act
structure dramatic form.
However, there were a couple of strikes against Sardous three-act form
that prevented it from catching on as a structural advancement. One was

the epithet Sardoodledom bestowed upon him by Shaw as a

disparagement of his superficial and sensational subject matter. But of
greater impact was a text titled Technique of the Drama by Gustav
Freytag (1816-1895)[12] which came out in 1863. Freytags text was the
first modern playwriting manual to concern itself almost exclusively with
developing pragmatic guidelines for the construction of effective drama
as opposed to dictating arbitrary rules, promoting abstract theories or
outlining preferred thematic subjects.
Many of the terms and concepts widely used in screenwriting texts these
days, such as controlling idea, cause and effect and rising action, were
first published in this book. Among his structural innovations, Freytag
identified the point at the beginning of the story that sets the drama in
motion, which he called the Erregunde Moment (or exciting force). His
definition of this eventis generally analogous to what today is referred to
as the point of attack, the inciting incident or the catalyst. But his
greatest influence was through what has come to be known as Freytags
pyramid, a graphic representation of rising and falling action in the
shape of an isosceles triangle. On this graph, Freytag charts five parts to
the action, with the climax occurring squarely in the middle of the drama
at the highest peak of the pyramid. He carefully avoids the word act,
with its connotation as an arbitrary segment of scenes, to focus on what
is peculiar in purpose and construction[13] of the component parts,
thereby moving towards a model based on structural functioning.
Nonetheless, his five-part thinking indicates that he has not yet broken
free of the five-act dictates of Horace.
He identifies the five parts as (a) introduction (which includes the
entrance of the exciting force), (b) rise (in which the rising action is
played out), (c) climax (the forces of rising action reach their peak), (d)
return or fall (the main characters downfall), and (e) catastrophe (the
main character meets his demise). Clearly, Freytag is basing his model on
classic tragedy, and indeed he uses examples from Oedipus, Antigone,
King Lear, Othello and Macbeth, among others, to illustrate the five
points.
Interestingly, though, he also presents his structural model as being
based on a progression of three distinct crises. In his description of
them, we again see an early form of the current three-act structure

model:
Of these three dramatic moments, or crises, one, which indicates the
beginning of the stirring action, stands between the introduction and the
rise [in other words, roughly where we would place the end of the first
act]; the second, the beginning of the counter-action, between the climax
and the return [or partway down the descending slope, not far from
where we would put the end of the second act]; the third, which must
rise once more before the catastrophe, between the return and the
catastrophe [apparently something like what we would call the third-act
climax].[14]
It is important to keep in mind that Freytag, like Aristotle, is basing his
theories on observations he has made of plays he knows. Therefore, the
pyramidal picture he describes may well be the most accurate reflection
of drama, particularly tragic drama, as it had developed up until that
point (remember, he is writing pre-Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw and
Wilde).
In 1879, Henrik Ibsen revolutionized modern drama with A Dolls House.
As Scribe had done, he synthesized almost all previous genres and
techniques into a tightly structured work, but, unlike Scribe, he added
layers of thematic significance, social relevance, character psychology,
and visual poetry not previously seen. The first person to champion
Ibsens work to the English-speaking world was the Scottish theorist
William Archer (1856-1924), who had discovered the playwright while
spending time in Norway. It was in Archers 1912 instructional text Playmaking, that the discussion of act divisions in dramatic structure started
to evolve away from Freytags five-part pyramid and towards a three-act
model.
As in Freytag, Archers book discusses many of the same dramatic terms
and techniques that are utilized todaypoint of attack, preparation,
obstacle, crisis, climax and denouement. But he goes beyond Freytag in
a nascent effort to promote a definition of act divisions based on
structure rather than segmentation.
It is a grave error to suppose that the act is a mere division of
convenience, imposed by the limited power of attention of the human
mind, or by the need of the human body for occasional refreshment. A
play with a well-marked, well-balanced act-structure is a higher artistic

organism than a play with no act-structure, just as a vertebrate animal is

higher than a mollusc. In every crisis of real life (unless it be so short as
to be a mere incident) there is a rhythm of rise, progress, culmination
and solution. We are not always, perhaps not often, conscious of these
stages; but that is only because we do not reflect upon our experiences
while they are passing, or map them out in memory when they are past.
[15]
Interestingly, he uses for his justification the natural progression of a
real life crisis, grounding his emerging model of dramatic structure in the
rhythms of human nature rather than an imposed set of arbitrary rules.
He then goes on to make an initial connection between the rhythms of
the crises and the act structure.
It is the business of the dramatist to analyze the crises with which he
deals, and to present them to us in their rhythm of growth, culmination,
solution. To this end the act-division isnot, perhaps, essential, since the
rhythm may be marked even in a one-act playbut certainly of enormous
and invaluable convenience.[16]
While he makes the bold claim that acts should be determined by the
rhythms of growth, culmination and solution, he is also still laboring
under the definition of act as that which transpires between one rise
and fall of the curtain (as in a one-act play); hence, the odd ambivalence
in his statement that the act division is enormous and invaluable but not
essential. Today we have no such ambivalence since, for us, the rhythm
of growth, culmination, solution, or three-act structure, can apply as
well to a ten-minute short film as it does to a feature. More than likely, it
will also apply to a one-act play.
However, in the next paragraph, Archer tilts solidly in favor of the
structural act.
It was doubtless the necessity for marking this rhythm that Aristotle had
in mind when he said that a dramatic action must have a beginning, a
middle and an end. Taken in its simplicity, this principle would indicate
the three-act division as the ideal scheme for a play [italics mine].[17]
Eureka! The first published mention of the three-act division as more
structurally viable than the five-act form. Archer backs up his claim by
naming 14 plays of his time which, in structural terms, fall into three acts
and concludes by saying many old plays which are nominally in five acts

really fall into a triple rhythm and might better have been divided into
three.
Unfortunately, though, he then backpedals:
Alexandrian precept, handed on by Horace, gave to the five-act division a
purely arbitrary sanction, which induced playwrights to mask the natural
rhythm of their themes beneath this artificial one. But in truth the threeact division ought no more to be elevated into an absolute rule than the
five-act division.[18]
While Archer wisely provides a cautionary note against absolute rules, he
also seems to be saying that if we now recognize that the five-act division
was arbitrary, then for all we know the three-act division is equally
arbitrary, as if he still doesnt fully trust the notion of a structural model
based on dramatic function as opposed to arbitrary segmentation. As he
elaborates, he backpedals further:
The playwright should not let himself be constrained by custom to force
his theme into the arbitrary mould of a stated number of acts. Three acts
is a good number, four acts is a good number, there is no positive
objection to five acts.[19]
Suddenly, whereas on the previous page the three-act division had been
a triple rhythm of growth, culmination, solution fulfilling Aristotles
dictate that a drama must have a beginning, a middle and an end, now it
has been re-reduced to an arbitrary mould (sic) carrying no more
significance than the five-act form. Such waffling only reveals how
entrenched the Horatian five-act model still was in 1912.
In 1936, John Howard Lawson (1895-1977) wrote Theory and Technique
of Playwriting, which he revised in 1949 as Theory and Technique of
Playwriting and Screenwriting[20], making it the first manual to take
screenwriting seriously as a dramatic form. (Previous screenwriting
manuals, with titles such as How to Write a Photoplay, focused more on
film technique than dramatic technique.) Lawson was a playwright who
worked with the Group Theater in the 1920s and then headed for
Hollywood where he was at the center of the struggle to form a writers
union. He was a committed communist (which may explain why his book
did not appear on the recommended reading list of communist refugee
Frank Daniel) who applied his political philosophy to his theories of
drama by advocating the notion of drama as social conflict in which the

conscious will is exerted.

Lawsons book includes a fascinating and comprehensive survey of the
evolution of dramatic theory up until his time. But his own theories of
dramatic structure, which definitely move the form forward a few steps
from Archer, are at the same time permeated with his political
philosophy. Therefore, much wading through his social agenda is
necessary to get to his core ideas on drama, which are nonetheless
significant and worthwhile. Whereas Freytag delineated five parts and
three crises, and Archer spoke of rhythms of growth, culmination and
solution, Lawson uses the metaphor of cycles of action to show the
patterns and functions within dramatic structure. Using as an example
the play Yellow Jack, by Sidney Howard, about attempts by the American
military to stop a Yellow Fever epidemic in turn of the century Cuba,
Lawson says, what happens is really a cycle of activity which may be
expressed as follows: a decision to follow a certain course of action,
tension developed in fulfilling the decision, an unexpected triumph, and
a new complication which requires another decision on a higher
plane.[21] Lawson then describes a three-cycle pattern in Yellow Jack in
which the first cycle comprises the decision to follow a certain course of
action, the second cycle represents the tension developed in fulfilling
the decision and the unexpected triumph, and the third cycle takes in
the new complication which requires another decision on a higher
plane. Yet he, like Archer, resists identifying this three-cycle pattern as
a fundamental dramatic structure.
It must not be supposed that the pattern of Yellow Jack can be imitated
as an arbitrary formula. But the principle which underlies the pattern is
basic, and can be applied in all cases. The material arranges itself in
certain cycles. If we examine each of the cycles, we find that each one is
a small replica of the construction of a play, involving exposition, rising
action, clash, and climax.[22]
Indeed, it is these four components on which Lawson builds his model of
dramatic structure. Later, he outlines four divisions in a plays
structure:
A play may contain any number of lesser cycles of action, but these can
invariably be grouped in four divisions; since the rising action is the
longest of the divisions and includes a larger number of sub-divisions,

the movement of the play is somewhat as follows:

AbcdefGH
A is the exposition; b c d e f are the cycles of the rising action; G is the
obligatory scene; H is the climax. A may contain two or more cycles of
action. G and H are more concentrated, but may also include several
cycles.[23]
Curiously, if this AbcdefGH scheme were to be reduced to its basic
differentiation of upper case and lower case letters, once again we see
being described a three-part structure. However, again like Archer and
his three rhythms, Lawson isnt willing to commit to the three cycles he
clearly outlines in his Yellow Jack analysis, or the three parts he indicates
in his graphic scheme. One also senses that Lawson is trying to get away
from the limitations of the word act as a mere segment of action, and
instead is struggling to find a more structurally based model. But, for
whatever reason, he is more comfortable with words like cycles and
divisions than he is with trying to redefine an act in structural terms.
A commitment to three-act structure can finally be found in Kenneth
Rowes Write That Play, published in 1939. After all of Archers waffling
and Lawsons schematizing, Rowe says simply, In recent years, by no
rule, but in general practice, three [acts] has come more and more to be
the standard.[24] While his elaboration of this point still engages in the
argument against Horatian dictates, he does it much more confidently
than his predecessors:
Three movements are clearly more basic to the fundamental structure of
a dramatic action than Horaces five. There is an attack, a crisis, and a
resolution. . . . There is a natural symmetry and balance with adequate
flexibility inherent in the three-act form, with the first act introductory
and springing the attack, the second act developing the action to the
crisis, and the third act for the resolution.[25]
With this paragraph, Horace and his five acts, once and for all, have been
put to rest. Ironically, it also brings dramatic theory back full circle to the
philosophy expressed by Aristotle when he said a tragedy should have a
beginning, a middle and an end.
Why, then, is it so important to review the intervening history if Aristotle
was right after all? Because Aristotle did not define or delineate the
structural function of beginning, middle and end, and how they work

together to form an aesthetic whole. He simply described the isolated

characteristics as he observed them. It was the work of the intervening
dramatists and theorists that has brought us a much greater
understanding of how the component parts of drama connect to push
the story forward to a satisfying resolution. Screenwriters of the 20 th
century owe a great debt to stage dramatists from the past 25 centuries,
not only for their artistic achievements but also for their innovations in
form. Screenwriters of the 21st century now have the opportunity to
build on those structural models, pushing them forward into as-yetunknown forms of potentially far greater complexity.
Notes
[1] The one playwriting manual still in print and in popular use by
screenwriters at the time, Lajos Egris The Art of Dramatic Writing, was
not on Franks list because he objected to the notion, promoted by Egri,
that one must have a premise before one begins writing.
[2] Playmaking: A Manual of Craftsmanship, William Archer (New York:
Dodd, Mead & Co., 1934).
[3] Write That Play, Kenneth Thorpe Rowe (New York, Funk & Wagnalls,
1939).
[4] There are, of course, many translations of The Poetics. The most
widely used is the S.H. Butcher translation from 1932 which was
republished in 1961 with commentary by Francis Fergusson (Aristotles
Poetics, intro. by Francis Fergusson, New York: Hill and Wang, 1961). The
Fergusson text seems to be the most widely referenced in the
screenwriting manuals, although I have also found references to the
Richard Janko, Lane Cooper and Stephen Halliwell translations.
[5] Aristotles Poetics, Francis Fergusson, ed.(New York: Hill and Wang,
1961), 60.
[6] Camille and Other Plays, Stephen S. Stanton, ed. (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1957), xii.
[7] Camille and Other Plays, xxxvi-xxxix.
[8] See A Glass of Water in Camille and Other Plays.
[9] Mirriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, (Springfield, MA:
Mirriam Webster, Inc., 1997).
[10] Camille and Other Plays, xxiii-xxiv.

[11] See A Scrap of Paper in Camille and Other Plays.

[12] Freytags Technique of the Drama, trans. Elias J. MacEwan (New
York: Benjamin Blom, 1968).
[13] Freytags Technique of the Drama, 115.
[14] Freytags Technique of the Drama, 115.
[15] Playmaking, 136-137.
[16] Playmaking, 137.
[17] Playmaking, 137.
[18] Playmaking, 138.
[19] Playmaking, 139.
[20] Theory and Technique of Playwriting and Screenwriting, John
Howard Lawson (New York: G.P.Putnams Sons, 1949).
[21] Theory and Technique of Playwriting and Screenwriting, p. 225.
[22] Theory and Technique of Playwriting and Screenwriting, p. 226.
[23] Theory and Technique of Playwriting and Screenwriting, p. 246.
[24] Write That Play, 163.
[25] Write That Play, 163-164.
Bibliography
Archer, William. Playmaking: A Manual of Craftsmanship. New York:
Dodd, Mead & Co., 1934.
Fergusson, Francis. Aristotles Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961.
MacEwan, Elias J., trans. Freytags Technique of the Drama. New York:
Benjamin Blom, 1968.
Lawson, John Howard. Theory and Technique of Playwriting and
Screenwriting. New York: G.P.Putnams Sons, 1949.
Merriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition. Springfield, MA:
Miriam-Webster, Inc., 1997.
The New York Public Library Performing Arts Desk Reference. New York:
The Stonesong Press, 1994.
Rowe, Kenneth Thorpe. Write That Play. New York, Funk & Wagnalls,
1939.
Stanton, Stephen S., ed. Camille and Other Plays. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1957.