nor frightened and shocked by the barbarity of the action.-CHESTERFIELD, PHILIP STANHOPE LORD, 1752, Letters to his Son.

The invention of dramatic art, and that of a theatre, seem to lie very near one another. Man has a great disposition to mimicry; when he enters vividly into the situation, sentiments, and passions of others, he even involuntarily puts on a resemblance to them in his gestures. Children are perpetually going out of themselves; it is one of their chief amusements to represent those grown people whom they have had an opportunity of observing, or whatever comes in their way; and with the happy flexibility of their imagination, they can exhibit all the characteristics of assumed dignity in a father, a schoolmaster, or a king. The sole step which is requisite for the invention of a drama, namely, the separating and extracting the mimetic elements and fragments from social life, and representing them collected together into one mass, has not however been taken in many nations.-SCHLEGEL, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM, 1809, Dramatic Art and Literature, tr. Black, p. 14.

A drama (we adopt Dr. Johnson's definition, with some little extension) is a poem or fictitious composition in dialogue, in which the action is not related, but represented. A disposition to this fascinating amusement, considered in its rudest state, seems to be inherent in human nature. It is the earliest sport of children, to take upon themselves some fictitious character, and sustain it to the best of their skill, by such appropriate gestures and language, as their youthful fancies suggest, and such dress and decoration as circumstances place within their reach. The infancy of nations is as prone to this pastime as that of individuals. When the horde emerges out of a nearly brutal state, so far as to have holidays, public sports, and general rejoicings, the pageant of their imaginary deities, or of their fabulous ancestors, is usually introduced as the most pleasing and interesting

part of the show. But however general the predisposition to the assumption of fictitious character may be, there is an immeasurable distance betwixt the rude games in which it first displays itself and that polished amusement which is numbered among the fine arts, which poetry, music, and painting have vied to adorn, to whose service genius has devoted her most sublime efforts, while philosophy has stooped from her loftier task, to regulate the progress of the action, and give probability to the representation and personification of the scene.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1814-23, The Drama.

Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.-HARE, A. W. AND J. C., 1827-48, Guesses at Truth.

The excellence of these works is in a great measure the result of two peculiarities which the critics of the French school consider as defects,-from the mixture of

tragedy and comedy, and from the length

and extent of the action. The former is necessary to render the drama a just representation of a world in which the laughers and the weepers are perpetually jostling each other, in which every event has its serious and ludicrous side. The latter enables us to form an intimate acquaintance with the characters with which we could not possibly become familiar during the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. In this respect the works of Shakespeare, in particular, are miracles of art. In a piece which may be read aloud in three hours we see a character unfold all its recesses to us. We see it change with the change of circumstances. The petulant youth rises into the politic and warlike sovereign. The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours into a hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered, by the chastening of affliction, into a pensive moralist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, sagacity, and self-command,

sinks under a conflict between love strong as death and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes, step by step, to the extremities of human depravity. We trace his progress from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent remorse. Yet in these pieces there are no unnatural transitions. Nothing is omitted; nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which they are exhibited, they shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see every evening and every morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the Dervise in the Spectator, who condensed all the events of seven years into the single moment during which the king held his head under the water.-MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1828, John Dryden.

It is a most difficult and laborious art; they know it that have tried. Men who decry it either console their own weakness with a contempt for the mechanical, as they call it, or blindly insist on its being superfluous. Let any man endeavour to construct a story of action which shall develop a passion-let him select characters to illustrate his passion, and let him put them into positive and appropriate action, such as does in truth develop the passion, and he will find the enormous difficulty of avoiding the temptation to let them talk this; to let them reason on their feelings rather than feel; to let them determine to act or describe their actions rather than positively act; and the difficulty of making them only do such things as are consistent with their characters and the problem of the piece; of preserving the spiritual force and integrity of his characters through all "circumstances," not allowing himself to be seduced by the temptation of letting circumstances in the play form and guide his characters, but to keep up their individualities through all these circumstances, whatever they may be, and to bring all deeds about naturally but not tediously;

and of letting every act(actus) contain some deed, and every scene some positive advancement of the plot. These are the demands of this "mechanical part," and let those who think them easy, try!-LEWES, GEORGE HENRY, 1842, Authors and Managers, Westminster Review, vol. 37, p. 81.

That the technique of the drama is nothing absolute and unchangeable scarcely need be stated. Since Aristotle established a few of the highest laws of dramatic effect, the culture of the human race has grown more than two thousand years older. Not only have the artistic forms, the stage and method of representation undergone a great change, but what is more important, the spiritual and moral nature of men, the relation of the individual to the race and to the highest forces of earthly life, the idea of freedom, the conception of the being of Divinity, have experienced great revolutions. A wide field of dramatic material has been lost; a new and greater range has been won. With the moral and political principles which control our life, our notion of the beautiful and the artistically effective has developed. Between the highest art effects of the Greek festivals, the autos sacramentales, and the drama of the time of Goethe and Iffland the difference is not less great than between the Hellenic choral theatre, the structure for the mystery play, and the complete inclosed room of the modern stage. It may be considered certain that some of the fundamental laws of dramatic production will remain in force for all time; in general, however, not only the vital requisites of the drama have been found in continuous development, but also the artistic means of producing its effects. Let no one think that the technique of poetry has been advanced through the creations of the greatest poets only; we may say without self-exaltation that we at present have clearer ideas upon the highest art effects in the drama and upon the use of technical equipment, than had Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe.-FREYTAG, GUSTAV, 1863-95,

The drama is the necessary product of the age in which it lives, and of which it is the moral, social, and physical expression. It is divided into two classes. The first may be called the contemporaneous or realistic drama, which is a reflex of the features of the period, where the personages are lifesize, the language partakes of their reality, and the incidents are natural. The object of this drama is to produce in the mind of the spectator sympathy with human suffering by effecting a perfect illusion that he is witnessing a destiny towards which the dramatis persona are progressing. The other is the transcendental or unreal drama, where the personages are larger than lifesize, their ideas and language more exalted than human conversation, and the incidents more important than we meet with in ordinary life. The object of this drama is to lift the spectator into a high atmosphere, and to expand his moral stature by association with dramatis persona of gigantic proportions. In this region the drama cannot produce perfectly the theatrical illusion, because we cannot sympathize with beings more noble than ourselves. The contemporaneous drama possesses an archæological value. It is the only faithful record of its age. In it the features, expression, manners, thoughts, and passions of its period are reflected and retained.-BOUCICAULT, DION, 1877, The Decline of the Drama, North American Review, vol. 125, p. 236.

Why has no actor in your chief cities a stage of his own? Why do theatres belong to managers, business men who have acquired fortunes in this or that trade and now let them out, like bath-houses at great and stultifying rates to poor itinerant players? Have you no rich men—no men who will build and rent at a fair rental? No friends such as English art has in London? What a privilege to create great characters and play great plays for the

week to a stranger? What is this trade in actors and plays, this speculating and gambling, this slave market, this crushing down of one that rises, this merchanting in actors and actresses, and the smiling oc

topus that sucks all things dry, this playing down to people, instead of playing up to art, and dragging the people after?-MANSFIELD, RICHARD, 1892, A Plain Talk upon the Drama, North American Review, vol. 155, p. 310.

The truth is that the immortal part of the stage is its noble part. Ignoble accidents and interludes come and go, but this lasts on forever. It lives like the human soul in the body of humanity, associated with much that is inferior, and hampered by many hindrances,--but it never sinks into nothingness, and never fails to find new and noble work in exactness of permanent and memorable excellence. Heaven forbid that I should seem to cover, even with a counterpane of courtesy, exhibitions of deliberate immorality. Happily this sort of thing is not common, and although it has hardly been practised by anyone who, without a strain of meaning, can be associated with the profession of acting; yet public censure not active enough to repress the evil, is ever ready to pass a sweeping condemnation on the stage which harbors it. Our cause is a good one. We go forth, armed with the luminous panoply which genius has forged for us, to do battle with dulness, with coarseness, with apathy, with every form of vice and evil. In every human heart there gleams a higher reflection of this shining armor. The stage has no lights or shadows that are not lights of life and shadows of the heart. To each human consciousness it appeals in alternating mirth and sadness, and will not be denied. Err it must, for it is human; but, being human, it must endure.-IRVING, HENRY, 1893, The Drama.

When the archbishop of York thus

effectually put an end to the Mysteries in 1579, the old dramas had produced all their fruit. They had kept alive the taste for spectacles; they left behind them troops of comedians throughout the provinces, numerous authors, and a public ready to listen. Already there was growing up in a little town upon the banks of the Avon a youth who should reach the highest summits of the art of the drama. At the time when those old representations were stopped, William Shakespeare was fifteen years old. -JUSSERAND, J. J., 1894, The Drama of the Middle Ages, The Chautauquan, vol. 14, p. 69.

It is generally held that the province of the drama is to amuse. I claim that it has a higher purpose-that its mission is to interest and to instruct. It should not preach objectively, but it should teach subjectively; and so I stand for truth in the drama, because it is elemental, it gets to the bottom of a question. It strikes at unequal standards and unjust systems. It is as unyielding as it is honest. It is as tender as it is inflexible. It has supreme faith in man. It believes that that which was good in the beginning cannot be bad at the end. It sets forth clearly that the concern of one is the concern of all. It stands for the higher development and thus the individual liberty of the human race.-HERNE, JAMES

crusted scholarly style, into which some great ones fall at times. It keeps minor writers to a definite plan, and English. Many of them now swelling a plethoric market, in the composition of novels, in pun-manufactories and in journalism; attached to the machinery forcing perishable matter on a public that swallows voraciously and groans; might, with encouragement, be attending to the study of art in literature.-MEREDITH, GEORGE, 1897, An Essay on Comedy and the Use of the Comic Spirit, p. 98.

Nowadays, every second man is a wouldbe dramatist, every other woman a potential actress. The interest in the stage is not confined to that enthusiastic person, the constant playgoer-it extends to those platonic patrons of the drama who never enter the portals of a theatre; it embraces that sympathetic individual, the laudator temporis acti, who is ever prepared to bewail the death of the drama, and to weep the ready tear over its untenanted grave. . . Whatever may be its ailments, the drama is not suffering from want of medical attendance, for disagreeing doctors are constantly warring over its prostrate but pulsating body.-TREE, HERBERT BEERBOHM, 1897, Some Aspects of the Drama of To-Day, North American Review, vol. 164, pp. 66, 67.

It is right and wholesome to have those

I do not know that the fly in amber is of any particular use, but the Comic idea enclosed in a comedy makes it more generally perceptible and portable, and that is an advantage. There is a benefit to men in taking the lessons of Comedy in congregations, for it enlivens the wits; and to writers it is beneficial, for they must have a clear scheme, and even if they have no idea to present, they must prove that they have made the public sit to them before the sitting to see the picture. And writing for the stage would be a corrective of a too-in

I shouldn't wish to see them diminished. But none of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods; they come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moods have their appetites,-healthy and legitimate appetites,

and there ought to be some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York ought to have one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions of population, and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can afford it, she can support it. Amer ica devotes more time, labor, money, and attention to distributing literary and musical

culture among the general public than does any other nation, perhaps; yet here you find her neglecting what is possibly the most effective of all the breeders and nurses and disseminators of high literary taste and lofty emotion-the tragic stage. To leave that powerful agency out is to haul the culture-wagon with a crippled team. Nowadays, when a mood comes which only Shakespeare can set to music, what must we do? Read Shakespeare ourselves! Isn't it pitiful? It is playing an organ solo on a jew'sharp. We can't read. None but the Booths can do it.-CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE (MARK TWAIN), 1898, About Play-Acting, The Forum, vol. 26, p. 150. Solon, who was one of the traditional wise

men of Greece-it is Plutarch who tells us the story-once went to see Thespis act. And after the play was done, he asked him if he were not ashamed of himself to tell so

Ob

many lies before such a number of people. When Thespis replied that it was no harm to say or to do so in play, Solon vehemently struck his staff against the ground. "Ay," said he, "if we honour and commend such play as this, we shall find it some day in our business." Here is one of the earliest recorded instances of the judgment of the intellect on things of the imagination. serve the two points which are found fault with in art. First, judged by a severe standard of experience, it is false; next, it has a deleterious influence on the practical conduct of life. Solon, no doubt, preserved his reputation for traditional wisdom by occasional lapses into folly, as is the habit of other wise men whose obiter dicta are apt to miss the highest aspect of things. But I begin with the story as indicative of a contrast you will find running through the history of Greek art, and also, to a large extent, of modern art-the wide divergence between the most cultured efforts of intelligent criticism, and the spontaneous outpouring of the artistic imagination. When it came to be the task of Plato and Aristotle to give a philosophical account of the work,

which men like Pheidias and Praxiteles, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides had done before them, they failed nearly as completely as Solon did, and for a similar reason. They applied the analytic processes of logic to a phenomenon, an artistic birth, an æsthetic illumination, which has little or nothing to do with mental processes at all. -COURTNEY, WILLIAM LEONARD, 1900, The Idea of Tragedy in Ancient and Modern Drama, p. 1.

There is not a more neglected branch of study than that concerned with the relation of amusement to ethical culture. The ideal of the stage, as an educational and re

ligious force, which was so fully in accordance with the genius of classical Greece and was so naturally and completely worked out in practice by her people, was in less degree a recognized factor in the life of the Middle-Ages-until it was lost in the frozen fog that crept over the land with Puritanism, and doubly disappeared in the succeeding waves of materialism out of which we are just emerging.-POTTER, HELEN, 1900, The Drama of the Twentieth Century, The Arena, vol. 23, p. 157.

One art there is, and only one, which can avail itself at will of almost every device of all the other arts. One art there is which can reach out and borrow the aid of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, compelling them all to help it towards its own perfection. One art there is which, without danger of confusion, without departing from its own object, without loss of force, can, at one and the same time, tell a story, and give an impression of the visible world, and fill our eyes with the beauty of form, and charm our ears with rhythm and with harmony. This one art is the art of the drama, the art which most completely displays the life of man-"the youngest of the sister arts," the British poet called it, "where all their beauty blends."-MATTHEWS, BRANDER, 1903, The Development of the Drama, p. 3.