ABSTRACT
Owen Davis, a playwright at the turn of the nineteenth century, provided a tongue-in-cheek structural breakdown of melodrama that suggests why it has been critically disdained:
ACT I.—Start the trouble. ACT II.—Here things look bad. The lady, having left home, is quite
at the mercy of the Villain. ACT III.—The lady is saved by the help of the Stage Carpenter. (The
big scenic and mechanical effects were always in Act III.) ACT IV.—The lovers are united and the villains are punished.1
