the problem guest
A problem guest is the one who takes over the entire party. He is so dominant that no one else has a chance to contribute anything to the fun. There are many such people who thrive on the captive audience in the living room. They often have charm, but they fail to recognize how much, even of a good thing, can be borne by other people. To stop these monopolists it seems to me legitimate to drop subtlety and pointedly open the way for other guests. When Mary Jane, for instance, has sung enough cute songs, or Joe has told enough dialect stories, the host or hostess suggests firmly that Jim can do some wonderful card tricks (having already made sure that Jim is willing to cooperate), or that there are so many talented people in the room it might be good fun to pool talents and play The Game.

firmness isn't rudeness
This does not mean that you should ever break the infallible rule for hosts: never be rude to a guest. Even to the guest who is busily spoiling your party, you cannot be impolite. But to be firm is not necessarily to be rude. People who take over the whole show are relatively insensitive anyway, so that you can treat them with a bluntness which would abash shy people. If your monopolist is put out, butter him up as nicely as you can but without letting him get the bit in his teeth again.

the shy guest
Your shy guest is a less painful problem. It's sad to watch him suffer, but if you've asked him to come to your house, you must know some­thing about him and his interests. You can surely get him talking about one of his interests, which will relax him and make him happy. You can probably find, or perhaps you will purposefully have invited, one other guest who shares his interests. You draw them together and the problem is solved.

matching your guests
Unless you give a party for close friends, you can only guess who will get on with whom. It is, however, not all guesswork. You usually know what people's interests are, and you often know, even if they're ac­quaintances, what their temperaments are. You know that the undemon­strative will avoid the back-slapper and that the back-slapper will con­sider the undemonstrative cold; whereas two of either type will prob­ably have a wonderful time together. But you probably wouldn't want to have a party for people with the same interests, the same intellectual capacities and the same kinds of lives. Contrast is needed. If you have doubts about your capacities as host and hostess, make the contrasts in your guest lists mild. But no matter how carefully you consider your guest list, you will always make some mistakes.