In the nineteenth century, there were British and American poets of high distinction who were attracted to the dramatic form, and who sought to express themselves in it, but without considering the conditions of the stage of their own time, which seemed to them a period of decadence. They disregarded the spectator in the theater itself and sought to interest solely the reader in the library. They liked to think of themselves as dramatists and to claim praise for dramatic achievement, but without facing the ordeal by fire before the footlights. Looking upon the drama as an easy form, they took no trouble to spy out its secrets or to master its technic. And perhaps deep down in their hearts, there was a vague contempt for the acted drama, because it had to appeal to the mere mob, to the vulgar throng. We can listen to their sentiments as these

are voiced by the Poet in the Prologue on the Stage of Goethe's "Faust":

"Speak not to me of yonder motley masses,

Whom but to see puts out the fire of Song!
Hide from my view the surging crowd that passes,
And in its whirlpool forces us along!

No, lead me where some heavenly silence glasses
The purer joys that round the Poet throng."

This attitude may not be unbecoming in the lyric poet, who has but to express his own emotions; but it is impossible in a true dramatic poet, who feels that what he has wrought is not complete until he has seen it bodied forth by actors on the stage before the motley masses and before the surging crowd. The true dramatic poet would never hesitate to adopt Molière's statement of his own practice: "I accept easily enough the decisions of the multitude, and I hold it as difficult to assail a work which the public approves as to defend one which it condemns." But however much the lyric poet may detach himself from the surging crowd and despise the motley masses, even he must not forget his readers absolutely; it is only at his peril that he can neglect the duty of being readable. Taine declared that Browning had been guilty of this fault in "The Ring and the Book," wherein the poet "never thinks of the reader, and lets his characters talk as though no one were to read their speeches."

What may be only a minor fault in the lyric poet becomes a gross blunder in the dramatic poet, who can never claim the right of solitary self-expression, which the lyrist may assert. The drama has for its basis an appeal to the whole public, and not to any coterie of dilettants. Since we write poems to be performed,

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our first duty ought to be to please the court and the people and to attract a great throng to their performances"; so said Corneille, declaring frankly the doctrine of every genuine dramatic poet. "We must, if we can, abide by the rules, so as not to displease the learned, and to receive universal applause; but, above all else, let us win the voice of the people." The great dramatists of every period when the drama was flourishing would have echoed this firm declaration of Corneille's. By their own splendid experience, they had learnt how greatly the artist may profit by a resolute struggle with limitations and with obstacles; and they could scarcely refrain from contempt for the timorous poets who have shrunk from this profitable effort. And as the result of a choice of the easier path, these craven bards have failed to reach the goal toward which they fondly believed themselves to be aiming. The closetdramas are all unactable; most of them are unreadable; and many of them are unspeakable. Although important poets have condescended to the composition of plays not intended to be played, their importance is not due to their closet-dramas; and perhaps their fame would be almost as high if they had refrained from these poems in dialogue.

The dramatic poets - Sophocles, Shakspere, Molière have always been willing to take thought of the players by whom their plays were to be presented, and of the playgoers whom they hoped to attract in motley masses. Consciously, to some extent, and unconsciously more often, they shaped the stories they were telling to the circumstances of the actual performance customary on the contemporary stage. Whether they knew it or not, their great tragedies and their

great comedies, as we have them now, are what they are, partly because of the influence of the several actors for whom they devised their chief characters, partly because the theater to which they were accustomed was of a certain size and had certain peculiarities of structure, and partly because the spectators they wished to move had certain prejudices and certain preconceptions natural to their race and to their era. This is why it is useful to consider the influence which the actor, the theater, and the audience can severally exert upon the dramatist, - influences necessarily felt by every dramatic poet, great or small, in every period in the long evolution of the drama.

II

Of these three influences, the most immediate is that of the actors, with whom the playwright has ever to work in cordial sympathy, and without whose assistance his play cannot be represented as he has conceived it. The critic nowadays who looks upon the drama as lying wholly within the circle of literature, and who fails to perceive its vital connection with the actual theater, is often moved to make it a matter of reproach to certain contemporary playwrights that they are wont to write plays to fit a special actor or a special actress. In thus finding fault, the critic reveals not only his misunderstanding of the needful relation between the dramatist and the performers who are to personate his characters, but also an inability to appreciate the way in which the mind of the artist is often set in motion by accidents that may seem casual and trifling.

In every art, there is often a startling disproportion

between the exciting cause and the ultimate result. We might almost liken the artist to the oyster which is moved by a grain of sand to produce a pearl of great price. More than one of the most triumphant artistic feats of the Italian Renascence is what it is because the painter had to make the best of a certain particular wall-space over an altar or because the sculptor had to get his statue out of a given block of marble of unusual shape and size. The painter and the sculptor accepted the limitations of the wall-space and of the marble-block, and found their profit in so doing; they made a stepping-stone out of that which would have been only a stumbling-block to the less ingenious and the less imaginative.

So the artist in playmaking sees his opportunity and finds his profit in the special accomplishments of the actors of his own time. Of course, the dramatist ought not to subject himself to the actors, nor ought he to limit what he conceives to the capacity of the special performers he may have in view. But he must always take account of them and keep them in mind, because the art of the drama is a twofold art, and because the playwright and the players must work in unison, ever aiding each other because they always depend on each other. The dramatist is quite as helpless without the actors as the actors are without the dramatist. Without them, the playwright has only the barren appeal to posterity, which is certain never to reach its ears. Without him, the performers can be seen only in old plays, of which the public is sure to tire, sooner or later.

This ideal harmony of these partners in art has not always been obtained, since both parties to the alliance