In his essay on Otis Skinner (reprinted in Moses and Brown 1934, 300-305), critic John Mason Brown comments on "the difference between coming on stage and making an entrance." While anyone can move into the playing space, it was the actors of Skinner's generation who employed the old aggressive trick: "to swoop down on a play, and tuck it and its cast into their vest pockets," "a kind of pillage, a hold-up staged in public." Specifically, it was the actor's first opportunity to score a point, that is, "a dramatic moment in itself—studied, built up and sustained—which usually rumbles in the wings long before it bursts into view but which, when once made, defies any eye to leave it."
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.