from 1879 to 1888, produced Mr A. W. Pinero's first play of any consequence, The Money-Spinner (1881), and afterwards The Squire (1882) and The Hobby Horse (1887). Mr and Mrs Bancroft, who, after entirely rebuilding the Haymarket Theatre, managed it from 1880 till their retirement in 1885, produced in 1883 Mr Pinero's Lords and Commons; and Messrs Clayton and Cecil produced at the Court Theatre between 1885 and 1887 his three brilliant farces The Magistrate, The Schoolmistress, and Dandy Dick, which, with the sentimental comedy, Sweet Lavender, produced at Terry's Theatre in 1888, assured his position as an original and fertile dramatic humorist of no small literary power. It is to be noted, however, that Mr Pinero was almost the only original playwright represented under the Bancroft, Hare - Kendal, and Clayton - Cecil managements, which relied for the rest upon adaptations and revivals. Adaptations of French vaudevilles were the staple productions of Mr Charles Wyndham's management at the Criterion from its beginning in 1876 until 1893, when he first produced an original play of any importance. When Mr Beerbohm Tree went into management at the Haymarket in 1887, he still relied largely on plays of foreign origin. Mr George Alexander's first managerial ventures (Avenue Theatre, 1890) were two adaptations from the French. Until well on in the 'eighties, indeed, adaptation from the French was held the normal occupation of the British playwright, and original composition a mere episode. Robertson, Byron, Albery, Gilbert, Tom Taylor, Charles Reade, Herman Merivale, G. W. Godfrey, all produced numerous adaptations; Mr Sydney Grundy was for twenty years occupied almost exclusively in this class of work; Mr Pinero himself has adapted more than one French play. To this day the managers have not quite unlearnt the habit of regarding Paris as the natural fountainhead of English drama. The 'eighties, then, may on the whole be regarded as showing a very gradual decline in the predominance of France on the English stage, and an equally slow revival of originality, so far as comedy and drama were concerned, manifesting itself mainly in the plays of Mr Pinero.

The reaction against French influence, however, was no less apparent in the domain of melodrama and operetta than in that of comedy and drama. Until well on in the 'seventies, D'Ennery and his disciples, adapted and imitated by Boucicault and others, ruled the melodramatic stage. The reaction asserted itself in two quarters-in the East End at the Grecian Theatre, and in the West End at the Princess's. In The World, produced at Drury Lane in 1880, Paul Meritt (d. 1895) and Henry Pettitt (d. 1893) brought to the West End the "Grecian" type of popular drama; and at Drury Lane it has survived in the elaborately spectacular form imparted to it by Sir Augustus Harris, who managed that theatre from 1879 till his death in 1896. The production of Mr G. R. Sims's Lights o' London at the Princess's in 1881, under Mr Wilson Barrett's management, also marked a new departure; and the two streams of melodrama flowed together in a long series of popular plays at the Adelphi Theatre, from about 1882 to almost the end of the century. The "Adelphi " as opposed to the "Drury Lane" type of drama has recently died out in the West End, apparently because a host of suburban theatres drew away its audiences. all these English melodramas, only one, The Silver King, by Mr H. A. Jones (Princess's, 1882) could for a moment compare in invention or technical skill with the French dramas they supplanted. The fact remains, however, that even on this lowest level of dramatic art the current of the time set decisively towards home-made pictures of English life, however crude and puerile.

Of

For twenty-five years, from 1865 to 1890, the English

stage was overrun with French operettas of the school of Offenbach. Hastily adapted by slovenly hacks, their librettos (often witty in the original) became incredible farragos of metreless doggrel and punning ineptitude. The great majority of them are now so utterly forgotten that one scarcely realizes, until one looks into the records, how in their heyday they swarmed on every hand. The reaction began in 1875 with the performance at the Royalty Theatre of Trial by Jury, by Mr W. S. Gilbert and Mr (afterwards Sir) Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). This was the prelude to that brilliant series of witty and melodious extravaganzas which began with The Sorcerer at the Opera Comique Theatre in 1877, but has been mainly associated with the Savoy Theatre, opened by Mr D'Oyly Carte (d. 1901) in 1881. Little by little the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (of which the most famous, perhaps, were H.M.S. Pinafore, 1878, Patience, 1881, and The Mikado, 1885) undermined the popularity of the French opera-bouffes, and at the same time that of the indigenous "burlesques" which, graceful enough in the hands of their inventor J. R. Planché (1796-1880), had become mere incoherent jumbles of buffoonery, devoid alike of dramatic ingenuity and of literary form. early in the 'nineties, the collaboration between Mr Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan became intermittent, and the vogue of the Savoy somewhat declined, a new class of extravaganza arose, under the designation of musical comedy" or "musical farce." It first took form in a piece called In Town, by Messrs "Adrian Ross" and Osmond Carr (Prince of Wales's Theatre, 1892), and rapidly became very popular. In these plays the scene and costumes are almost always modern, though sometimes exotic, and the prose dialogue, setting forth an attenuated and entirely negligible plot, is frequently interrupted by musical numbers. The lyrics are often very clever pieces of rhyming, totally different from the inane doggrel of the old opera-bouffes and burlesques. In other respects there is little to be said for the literary or intellectual quality of "musical farce"; but being an entirely English (or Anglo-American) product, it falls into line with the other indications we have noted of the general decline-one might almost say extinction—of French influence on the English stage.

When,

To what causes are we to trace this gradual disuse of adaptation? In the domain of modern comedy and drama, to two causes acting simultaneously: the decline in France of the method of Scribe, which produced "well-made," exportable plays, more or less suited to any climate and environment; and the rise in England of a generation of playwrights more original, thoughtful, and able than their predecessors. It is not at all to be taken for granted that the falling off in the supply of exportable plays meant a decline in the absolute merit of French drama. That point is discussed in the section French Drama below. The historian of the future may very possibly regard the movement in France, no less than the movement in England, as a step in advance, and may even see in the two movements co-ordinate manifestations of one tendency. Be this as it may, the fact is certain that as the playwrights of the Second Empire gradually died off and were succeeded by the authors of the "new comedy," plays which would bear transplantation became ever fewer and farther between. and farther between. It is worthy of note that (a few mere buffooneries apart) most of the adaptations produced since 1890 have been from comedies and novels of a very much older date-works of Labiche and of Dumas père and fils. Attempts to acclimatize the poetical drama of the present generation-Pour la Couronne, Le Chemineau, Cyrano de Bergerac—have all been more or less unsuccessful.

Mr

Having noted the decline of adaptation, we may now trace a stage farther the development of the English drama. The first stage, already surveyed, ends with the production of Sweet Lavender in 1888. Up to this point its author, Mr Pinero (b. 1855), stood practically alone, and had won his chief successes as a humorist. Henry Arthur Jones (b. 1851) was known as little more than an able melodramatist, though in one play, Saints and Sinners (1884), he had made some attempt at a serious study of provincial life. Mr R. C. Carton (b. 1856) had written, in collaboration, one or two plays of slight account. Mr Sydney Grundy (b. 1848) had produced scarcely any original work. None of the other dramatists of to-day had as yet appeared on the horizon. The second stage may be taken as extending from 1889 to 1893. On 24th April 1889 Mr John Hare opened the new Garrick Theatre with The Profligate, by Mr Pineroan unripe and superficial piece of work in many ways, but still a great advance, both in ambition and achievement, upon any original work the stage had seen for many a year. With all its faults, this play notably enlarged at one stroke the domain open to the English dramatist. And it did not stand alone. The same year saw the production of two plays by Mr Jones, Wealth and The Middleman, in which a distinct effort towards a serious criticism of life was observable, and of two plays by Mr Grundy, A Fool's Paradise and A White Lie, which, though very French in method, were at least original in substance. Mr Jones during the next two years made a steady advance with Judah (1890), his first really mature production, and The Dancing Girl and The Crusaders (1891), in the latter of which he made his first attempt to work the vein of social satire. Mr Pinero in these years was putting forth less than his whole strength in The Cabinet Minister (1890), Lady Bountiful and The Times (1891), and The Amazons (March 1893). But meanwhile new talents were coming forward. The management of Mr George Alexander, which opened at the Avenue Theatre in 1890, but was transferred in the following year to the St James's, brought prominently to the front Mr Carton, Mr Haddon Chambers, and Mr Oscar Wilde. Mr Carton's two sentimental comedies, Sunlight and Shadow (1890) and Liberty Hall (1892), showed excellent literary workmanship, but did not yet reveal his true originality as a humorist. Mr Haddon Chambers's work (notably The Idler, 1891) was as yet sufficiently commonplace; but in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) Mr Oscar Wilde showed himself at his first attempt a brilliant and accomplished dramatist. Mr Wilde's subsequent plays, A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of being Earnest (1895), though marred by mannerism and insincerity, did much to promote the movement we are here tracing, and his painful downfall gave it a distinct, though temporary, check.

As the production of The Profligate marked the opening of the second period in the revival of English drama, so the production of the same author's The Second Mrs Tanqueray is very clearly the starting-point of the third period of the phase of development still in progress. Before attempting to trace its course, however, we may do well to glance at certain conditions which probably influenced it.

In the first place, economic conditions. The BancroftRobertson movement at the old Prince of Wales's, between 1865 and 1870, was of even more importance from an economic than from a literary point of view. By making their little theatre a luxurious place of resort, and faithfully imitating in their productions the accent, costume, and furniture of upper and upper - middle class life, the Bancrofts had initiated a reconciliation

between Society and the Stage. Throughout the middle decades of the century it was the constant complaint of the managers that the world of wealth and fashion was by no means to be tempted to the theatre. The Bancroft management changed all that. It was at the Prince of Wales's that half-guinea stalls were first introduced; and these stalls were always filled. As other theatres adopted the same policy of upholstery, both on and off the stage, fashion extended its complaisance to them as well. In yet another way the reconciliation was promoted by the ever-increasing tendency of young men and women of good birth and education to seek a career upon the stage. For the past fifteen years, then, the theatre has been one of the favourite amusements of fashionable (though not necessarily of intellectual) Society. It is often contended that the influence of the sensual and cynical stall audience is a pernicious one. In some ways, no doubt, it is detrimental; but there is another side to the case. Even the cynicism of Society marks an intellectual advance upon the sheer rusticity which prevailed during the middle years of the 19th century and accepted without a murmur plays (original and adapted) which bore no sort of relation to life. In a celebrated essay published in 1879, Matthew Arnold dwelt on the sufficiently obvious fact that the result of giving English names and costumes to French characters was to make their sayings and doings utterly unreal and "fantastic." During the years of French ascendancy, audiences had quite forgotten that it was possible for the stage to be other than "fantastic" in this sense. They no longer thought of comparing the mimic world with the real world, but were content with what may be called abstract humour and pathos, often of the crudest quality. The cultivation of external realism, coinciding with, and in part occasioning, the return of Society to the playhouse, gradually led to a demand for some approach to plausibility in character and action as well as in costume and decoration. The stage ceased to be entirely "fantastic," and began to essay, however imperfectly, the representation, the criticism of life. It cannot be denied that the influence of Society tends to narrow the outlook of English dramatists and to trivialize their tone of thought. But this is, in all likelihood, a passing phase of development; and cleverly trivial representations of reality are, after all, to be preferred to brainless concoctions of sheer emptiness.

Quite as important, from the economic point of view, as the reconciliation of Society to the stage, was the reorganization of the mechanism of theatrical life in the provinces which took place between 1865 and 1875. From the Restoration to the middle of the 19th century the system of "stock companies" had been universal. Every great town in the three kingdoms had its established theatre with a resident company, playing the "legitimate" repertory, and competing, often by illegitimate means, for the possession of new London successes. The smaller towns, and even villages, were grouped into local "circuits," each served by one manager with his troupe of strollers. The "circuits" supplied actors to the resident stock companies, and the stock companies served as nurseries to the patent theatres in London. Metropolitan "stars" travelled from one country theatre to another, generally alone, sometimes with one or two subordinates in their train, and were "supported," as the phrase went, by the stock company of each theatre. Under this system, scenery, costumes, and appointments were often grotesquely inadequate, and performances almost always rough and unfinished. On the other hand, the constant practice in a great number and variety of characters afforded valuable training for actors, and developed many remarkable talents.

As a source of revenue to authors, the provinces were practically negligible. Stageright was unprotected by Stageright was unprotected by law; and even if it had been protected, it is doubtful whether authors could have got any considerable fees out of country managers, whose precarious ventures usually left them a small enough margin of profit.

The spread of railways throughout the country gradually put an end to this system. The "circuits" disappeared early in the 'fifties, the stock companies survived until about the middle of the 'seventies. As soon as it was found easy to transport whole companies, and even great quantities of scenery, from theatre to theatre throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain, it became apparent that the rough makeshifts of the stock company system were doomed. Here again we can trace to the old Prince of Wales's Theatre the first distinct impulse towards the new order of things. Robertson's comedies not only encouraged but absolutely required a style of art, in mounting, stage-management, and acting, not to be found in the country theatres. To entrust them to the stock companies was well-nigh impossible. On the other hand, to quote Sir Squire Bancroft, "perhaps no play was ever better suited than Caste to a travelling company; the parts being few, the scenery and dresses quite simple, and consequently the expenses very much reduced." In 1867, then, a company was organized and rehearsed in London to carry round the provincial theatres as exact a reproduction as possible of the London performance of Caste and Robertson's other comedies. The smoothness of the representation, the delicacy of the interplay among the characters, were new to provincial audiences, and the success was remarkable. About the same time the whole Haymarket company, under Buckstone's management, began to make frequent rounds of the country theatres; and other "touring combinations" were soon organized. It is manifest that the "combination" system and the stock company system cannot long coexist, for a manager cannot afford to keep a stock company idle while a London combination is occupying his theatre. The stock companies, therefore, soon dwindled away, and were probably quite extinct before the end of the 'seventies. Under the present system, no sooner is a play an established success in London than it is reproduced in one, two, or three exact copies and sent round the provincial theatres (and the numerous suburban theatres which have sprung up since 1895), Company A serving first-class towns, Company B the second-class towns, and so forth. The process is very like that of taking plaster casts of a statue, and the provincial companies often stand to their London originals very much in the relation of plaster to marble. Even the London scenery is faithfully reproduced in material of extra strength, to stand the wear-and-tear of constant removal. The result is that, instead of the square pegs in round holes of the old stock company system, provincial audiences now see pegs carefully adjusted to the particular holes they occupy, and often incapable of fitting any other. Instead of the rough performances of old, they are now accustomed to performances of a mechanical and soulless smoothness. In some ways the gain is undeniable, in other ways the loss is great. The provinces are no longer, The provinces are no longer, in any effective sense, a nursery of fresh talents for the London theatres, for the art acquired in touring combinations is that of mimicry rather than of acting. Moreover, provincial playgoers have lost all personal interest and pride in their local theatres, which have no longer any individuality of their own, but serve as a mere frame for the presentation of a series of ready-made London pictures. Christmas pantomime is the only theatrical product that has any local flavour in it, and even it is very often only a second-hand London production, touched up with a few

topical allusions. Again, the railways which bring London productions to the country take country playgoers by the thousand to London. The wealthier classes, in the Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Midland towns at any rate, do almost all their theatre-going in London, or during the autumn months when the leading London companies go on tour. Thus the better class of comedy and drama has a hard fight to maintain itself in the provinces, and the companies devoted to melodrama and musical farce enjoy an ominous preponderance of popularity.

On the whole, however—and this is the main point to be observed with regard to the literary development of the drama-the economic movement of the five-and-twenty years between 1865 and 1890 was enormously to the advantage of the dramatic author. A London success meant a long series of full houses at high prices, on which he took a handsome percentage. The provinces, in which a popular playwright would often have three or four plays going the rounds simultaneously, became a steady source of income. And, finally, it was found possible, even before international copyright came into force, to protect stageright in the United States, so that about the beginning of the 'eighties large receipts began to pour in from America. Thus successful dramatists, instead of living from hand to mouth, like their predecessors of the previous generation, found themselves in comfortable and even opulent circumstances. They had leisure for reading, thought, and careful composition, and they could afford to gratify their ambition with an occasional artistic experiment. Failure might mean a momentary loss of prestige, but it would not spell ruin. A distinctly progressive spirit, then, began to animate the leading English dramatists a spirit which found intelligent sympathy in such managers as Mr John Hare, Mr George Alexander, Mr Beerbohm Tree, and finally Mr Charles Wyndham. Nor must it be forgotten that, though the laws of literary property, internal and international, are still far from perfect, it has been found possible during the past ten years to print and publish plays without incurring loss of stageright either at home or in America. The playwrights of the present generation have accordingly a motive for giving literary form and polish to their work which was quite inoperative with their predecessors, whose productions were either kept jealously in manuscript or printed only in miserable and totally unreadable stage editions. It is no small stimulus to ambition to know that even if a play prove to be in advance of the public to which it is originally presented, it will not perish utterly, but will, if it have any inherent vitality, continue to live as literature.

Influence of foreign drama.

Having now summed up the economic conditions which made for progress, let us glance at certain intellectual influences which tended in the same direction. The establishment of the Théâtre Libre in Paris, towards the close of 1887, unquestionably marked the beginning of a period of restless experiment throughout the theatrical world of Europe. M. Antoine and his supporters were in open rebellion against the artificial methods of Scribe and the Second Empire playwrights. Their effort was to transfer to the stage the realism, the so-called "naturalism," which had been dominant in French fiction since 1870 or earlier; and this naturalism was doubtless, in its turn, the outcome of the scientific movement of the century. New methods (or ideals) of observation, and new views as to the history and destiny of the race, could not fail to produce a profound effect upon art; and though the modern theatre is a cumbrous contrivance, slow to adjust its orientation to the winds of the spirit, even it at last began to revolve, like a rusty windmill, so as to fill its sails in the main current of the intellectual atmosphere.

Under the section French Drama (below), the history of the Théâtre Libre is outlined. Within three or four years of its inception M. Antoine's experiment had been imitated in Germany, England, and America. The Freie Bühne of Berlin came into existence in 1889, the Independent Theatre of London in 1891. Similar enterprises were set on foot in Munich and other cities. In America several less formal experiments of a like nature were attempted, chiefly in Boston and New York. Nor must it be forgotten that in Paris itself the Théâtre Libre did not stand alone. Many other théâtres à côté sprang up, under such titles as "Théâtre d'Art," "Théâtre Moderne," "Théâtre de l'Avenir Dramatique." The most important and least ephemeral was the "Théâtre de l'ŒŒuvre," founded in 1893 by M. Lugné-Poë, which represented mainly, though not exclusively, the symbolist reaction against naturalism.

The impulse which led to the establishment of the Théâtre Libre was, in the first instance, entirely French. If any foreign influence helped to shape its course, it was that of the great Russian novelists. Tolstoi's Puissance des Ténèbres was the only "exotic" play announced in M. Antoine's opening manifesto. But the whole movement, in France and elsewhere, was soon to receive a potent stimulus from a somewhat unlikely quarter. Born in 1828, the Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen was already an old man before his fame became European. His youth and middle life had been devoted to romantic tragedy and satiric drama in verse. Not till 1877 did he finally restrict himself to prose and to the modern world. In the series of plays which then followed he anticipated the process of evolution which was to lead, both in France and Germany, through prosaic realism to an intensely imaginative treatment of everyday life, touched here and there with symbolism. As a matter of fact, the author of Brand and Peer Gynt was above all things a poet. In essaying a literal and photographic transcript of reality, he was merely, as it were, trying a new set of tools. He is least himself in his most prosaic play, Pillars of Society. In its successors the poet gradually but decisively reasserts himself, and shakes off the trammels of the theoretic realist. Still, there was a sufficient element of realism, narrowly so called, in A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, and The Wild Duck to awaken the enthusiasm of the realist party, just as the symbolists afterwards hailed with delight The Lady from the Sea, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf.

Ibsen's early romantic plays had been known in Germany since 1875. In 1878 Pillars of Society, and in 1880 A Doll's House, achieved wide popularity, and held the German stage side by side with A Bankruptcy, by Björnstjerne Björnson (b. 1832). But these plays had little influence on the German drama. Their methods were, indeed, not essentially different from those of the French school of the Second Empire, which were then dominant in Germany as well as everywhere else. It was Ghosts (acted in Augsburg and Meiningen 1886, in Berlin 1887) that gave the impulse which, coalescing with the kindred impulse from the French Théâtre Libre, was destined in the course of a few years to create a new dramatic literature in Germany. During the middle decades of the century Germany had produced some dramatists of solid and even remarkable talent, such as Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1865), Heinrich Laube (1806-1884), Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878), and Gustav Freytag (1816-1895). Even the generation which held the stage after 1870, Paul Heyse (b. 1830), Paul Lindau (b. 1839), and Adolf Wilbrandt (b. 1837), with numerous writers of light comedy and farce, such as Wichert, Blumenthal, Von Moser, L'Arronge, and Schönthan, had produced a good many works of some

merit. But, in the main, French artificiality and frivolity predominated on the German stage. In point of native talent and originality, the Austrian popular playwright Ludwig Anzengruber (1839-1889) was probably well ahead of his North German contemporaries. It was in 1889, with the establishment of the Berlin Freie Bühne, that the reaction definitely set in. In Berlin, as afterwards in London, Ghosts was the first play produced on the outpost stage, but it was followed in Berlin by a very rapid development of native talent. Less than a month after the performance of Ibsen's play, Gerhart Hauptmann (b. 1862) came to the front with Vor Sonnenaufgang, an immature piece of almost unrelieved Zolaism, which he soon followed up, however, with much more important works. In Das Friedensfest (1890) and Einsame Menschen (1891) he had transferred his allegiance from Zola to Tbsen. His true originality first manifested itself in Die Weber (1892); and since that time he has produced nine or ten plays in several different styles, but all bearing the stamp of a potent individuality. His most popular productions have been the dramatic poems Hannele and Die Versunkene Glocke, the low-life comedy Der Biberpelz, and the low-life tragedy Fuhrmann Henschel. Other remarkable playwrights belonging to the Freie Bühne group are Max Halbe (b. 1865), author of Jugend and Mutter Erde, and Otto Erich Hartleben (b. 1864), author of Hanna Jagert and Rosenmontag. These young men, however, so quickly gained the ear of the general public, that the need for a special "free stage was no longer felt, and the Freie Bühne, having done its work, ceased to exist. Unlike the French Théâtre Libre and the English Independent Theatre, it had been supported from the outset by the most influential critics, and had won the day almost without a battle. The productions of the new school soon made their way even into some of the subventioned theatres; but it was the unsubventioned Deutsches Theater of Berlin that most vigorously continued the tradition of the Freie Bühne. One or two playwrights of the new generation, however, did not actually belong to the Freie Bühne group. Hermann Sudermann (b. 1857) produced his first play, Die Ehre, in 1888, the year before the Freie Bühne came into existence, and his most famous work, Heimat, in 1892. In him the influence of Ibsen is very clearly perceptible; while Arthur Schnitzler of Vienna, author of Liebelei, may rather be said to derive his inspiration from the Parisian " new comedy."

The promoters of the Théâtre Libre had probably never heard of Ibsen when they established that institution, but three years later his fame had reached France, and Les Revenants was produced by the Théâtre Libre, 29th May 1890. Within the next two or three years almost all his modern plays were acted in Paris, most of them either by the Théâtre Libre or by L'Œuvre. Close upon the heels of the Ibsen influence followed another, less potent, but by no means negligible. The exquisite tragic symbolism of Maurice Maeterlinck (b. 1862) began to find numerous admirers about 1890. In 1891 his one-act play L'Intruse was acted; in 1893, Pelléas et Mélisande. By this time, too, the reverberation of the impulse which the Théâtre Libre had given to the Freie Bühne began to be felt in France. In 1893 Hauptmann's Die Weber was acted in Paris, and, being frequently repeated, made a deep and lasting impression.

The English Théâtre Libre, the Independent Theatre, opened its first season, 13th March 1891, with a performance of Ghosts. This was not, however, the first introduction of Ibsen to the English stage. On 7th June 1889 (six weeks after the production of The Profligate), A Doll's House was acted at the Novelty Theatre, and ran for three

weeks, amid a storm of critical controversy. In the same year Pillars of Society was presented in London. In 1891 and 1892 A Doll's House was frequently acted; Rosmersholm was produced in 1891, and again in 1893; in May and June 1891 Hedda Gabler had a run of several weeks; and early in 1893 The Master Builder enjoyed a similar passing vogue. During these years, then, Ibsen was very much "in the air" in England, as well as in France and Germany. The Independent Theatre, in the meantime, under the management of Mr J. T. Grein, found but scanty material to deal with. It presented translations of Zola's Thérèse Raquin, and of A Visit, by the Danish dramatist Edward Brandes; but it brought to the front only one English author of any note, in the person of Mr George Bernard Shaw (b. 1856), whose "didactic realistic play," Widowers' Houses, it produced in December 1892. In France and Germany the Free Theatres were like artesian wells, tapping rich subterranean reservoirs which only awaited an outlet. In England it must be owned that the most industrious boring (ominous word!) produced only a meagre trickle. It appeared that all the available talent was already at the surface.

None the less is it true that the ferment of fresh energy, which between 1887 and 1893 had created a new dramatic literature both in France and in Germany, was distinctly felt in England as well. England did not take at all kindly to it. Rumours (some of them too well founded) of the excesses of cynical crudity perpetrated in the French théâtres à côté established a very general prejudice against the whole movement. Nor did the productions of Ibsen's plays tend to soothe the alarmed susceptibilities of the critics and the public. They were received with an outcry of horror and reprobation, the echoes of which have not yet died away. A great part of this clamour was due to sheer misunderstanding, but some of it, no doubt, arose from genuine and deep-seated distaste, which even perfect comprehension would have left unaltered. As for the dramatists of recognized standing, they one and all, both from policy and from conviction, adopted a hostile attitude towards Ibsen, expressing at most a theoretical respect overborne by practical dislike. To represent that they imitated him would be to misrepresent them grossly. Consciously and voluntarily they did nothing of the sort. Yet his influence permeated the atmosphere. He had revealed possibilities of technical stagecraft and psychological delineation that, once realized, were not to be banished from the mind of the thoughtful playwright. They haunted him in spite of himself. Still subtler was the influence exerted over the critics and the more intelligent public. Deeply and genuinely as many of them disliked Ibsen's works, they found, when they returned to the old-fashioned play, the adapted frivolity or the home-grown sentimentalism, that this they disliked still more. On every side, then, there was an instinctive

or deliberate reaching forward towards something new; and once again it was Mr Pinero who ventured the decisive step.

On 27th May 1893 The Second Mrs Tanqueray was produced at the St James's Theatre. This is not the place for a detailed criticism of the play, or an attempt to forecast its ultimate status in English literature. Whether it will be acted fifty years hence is a question which the future may safely be left to answer. What here concerns us is the historical fact-questioned only by critics who have been denied a sense of proportion-that with The Second Mrs Tanqueray the English acted drama ceased to be a merely insular product, and took rank in the literature of Europe. Here was a play which, whatever its faults, was obviously comparable with the plays of Dumas, of Sudermann, of Björnson, of Echegaray. It might be

better than some of these plays, worse than others; but it stood on the same artistic level. The fact that such a play could not only be produced, but could brilliantly succeed, on the London stage gave a potent stimulus to progress. It encouraged ambition in authors, enterprise in managers. What Hernani was to the romantic move

ment of the 'thirties, and La Dame aux Camélias to the realistic movement of the 'fifties, The Second Mrs Tanqueray has been to the movement of the 'nineties towards the serious stage-portraiture of English social life. All the forces which we have been tracing-Robertsonian realism of externals, the leisure for thought and experiment involved in vastly improved financial conditions, the substitution in France of a simpler, subtler technique for the outworn artifices of the Scribe school, and the electric thrill communicated to the whole theatrical life of Europe by contact with the genius of Ibsen-all these slowly converging forces coalesced to produce, in The Second Mrs Tanqueray, an epoch-marking play.

Even the critics, few but insistent, who deny all merit to The Second Mrs Tanqueray, cannot fail to be struck by what, on their theory, must seem an extraordinary coincidence: the fact that the English plays produced since 1893 have been, on an average, incomparably better than those produced before that date. Mr Pinero himself has given us five plays-The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, The Benefit of the Doubt, The Princess and the Butterfly, Trelawny of the "Wells," and The Gay Lord Quex-any one of which it would be absurd to compare with the very best of his earlier productions. Though more unequal in workmanship than The Second Mrs Tanqueray, they all show a marked advance even upon that play in originality of conception and intellectual force. In January 1893 Mr Charles Wyndham initiated a new policy at the Criterion Theatre, and produced an original play, The Bauble-Shop, by Mr Henry Arthur Jones. Though not quite without merit, it belonged very distinctly to the pre-Tanqueray order of things; whereas in The Case of Rebellious Susan, produced in the following year at the same theatre, Mr Jones showed an almost startlingly sudden access of talent. From this level he has never seriously declined, and in some plays, notably in Michael and his Lost Angel (1896), in that admirable comedy The Liars (1897), and in Mrs Dane's Defence (1900), he has risen well above it. Mr Sydney Grundy has produced since 1893 by far his most important original works, The Greatest of These (1896) and The Debt of Honour (1900). Mr R. C. Carton, breaking away from the somewhat laboured sentimentalism of his earlier manner, has given us since 1898 three light comedies of thoroughly original humour and of excellent literary workmanship-Lord and Lady Algy, Wheels within Wheels, and Lady Huntworth's Experiment. Mr Haddon Chambers, in The Tyranny of Tears (1899) and The Awakening (1901), has produced two plays of a merit scarcely even foreshadowed in his earlier efforts. Moreover, a new generation of playwrights has come to the front which, if it has not as yet produced any quite masterly work, has time before it in which to fulfil its high promise. Its most notable representatives are Mr J. M. Barrie, whose Wedding Guest (1900), amid many crudities, showed real power; Mrs Craigie ("John Oliver Hobbes "), who has produced in The Ambassador (1898) a comedy of fine accomplishment; and Mr H. V. Esmond, who has passed from light comedy in One Summer's Day (1897) to sentimental tragedy in Grierson's Way (1899), and back to social comedy in The Wilderness (1901). The indubitable though too self-sufficient talent of Mr George Bernard Shaw defies classification. Passing, often in one and the same play, from serious drama to the most whimsical extravaganza, it entirely subordinates the S. III. - 66