his fingers to represent the chinks in the wall through which the lovers converse. A lantern, a bush, and a dog, are employed to produce moonlight. In rude dramatic performances of this kind, the scene, without changing, alternately represented a flower-garden, a rock against which a ship was to strike, or a field of battle, where half a dozen miserable-looking soldiers would personate two armies. There is extant a curious inventory of the property of a company of English players; and in this document we find set down, a dragon, a wheel employed in the siege of London, a large horse with his legs, sundry limbs of Moors, four Turks' heads, and an iron mouth, which was probably employed in giving utterance to the sweetest and sublimest accents of the immortal poet. False skins were also employed for those characters who were flayed alive on the stage, like the prevaricating judge in Cambyses. Such a spectacle now-a-days would attract all Paris.

But, after all, correctness of scenic accessories and costume is far less essential to the illusion than is generally imagined. The genius of Racine gains nothing by the cut and form of a dress. In the masterpieces of Raphael, the back-grounds are neglected, and the costumes incorrect. The rage of Orestes or the prophecy of Joad recited

in a drawing-room by Talma, habited in his own dress, produced not less effect than when delivered by the great actor on the stage, in Grecian or Hebrew drapery. Iphigenia was attired like Madame de Sévigné, when Boileau addressed to his friend the following fine lines:

Jamais Iphigénie, en Aulide immolée

N'a coûté tant de pleurs à la Grèce assemblée,
Que dans l'heureux spectacle à nos yeux étalé
En a fait sous son nom verser la Chanmélé.

Accuracy in the representation of inanimate objects is the spirit of the literature and the arts of our time. It denotes the decay of the higher class of poetry and of the genuine drama. We are content with minor beauties when we cannot attain great aims. Our stage represents to perfection the chair and its velvet coverings, but the actor is not equally successful in portraying the character who is seated in the chair. But, having once descended to these minute representations of material objects, it cannot be dispensed with, for the public taste becomes materialized and demands it.

In Shakspeare's time, the higher class of spectators or the gentlemen took their places on the stage, seating themselves either on the

boards, or on stools which they paid for. The pit was a dark and dusty hole, in which the audience stood crowded together. The spectators in the pit and those on the stage were like two hostile camps drawn up face to face. The pit saluted the gentlemen with hisses, threw mud at them, and addressed to them insulting outcries. The gentlemen returned these compliments by calling their assailants stinkards and brutes. The stinkards ate apples and drank ale; the gentlemen played at cards and smoked tobacco, which was then recently introduced. It was the fashion for the gentlemen to tear up the cards, as if they had lost some great stake, and then throw the fragments angrily on the stage, to laugh, speak loud, and turn their backs on the actors. In this manner were the tragedies of the great master received on their first production. John Bull threw apple-parings at the divinity at whose shrine he now offers adoration. Fortune, in her rigour to Shakspeare and Moliere, made them actors, and thus gave to the lowest of their countrymen the privilege of at once insulting the great men and their writings.

Shakspeare revived the dramatic art, Moliere brought it to perfection. Like two ancient philosophers, they divided between them the empire

of smiles and tears, and perhaps consoled themselves for the injustice of fate, the one by paint

ing the absurdities, and the other the sorrows of mankind.

CHARACTER OF SHAKSPEARE'S GENIUS.

SHAKSPEARE then is still admirable on account of the obstacles which he had to contend with. Never was so rare a genius obliged to avail himself of a language so faulty. Luckily, Shakspeare wanted what is termed learning, and this deficiency enabled him to escape one of the contagions of his age. Popular ballads, extracts from the History of England, collected from "Lord Buckhurst's Mirrour for Magistrates," French novels by Belleforest, and versions of the poets and tale-writers of Italy, composed his whole stock of literary erudition.

Ben Jonson, his rival, his admirer, and his detractor, was on the other hand a scholar. The fifty-two commentators on Shakspeare have industriously sought to discover all the translations of Latin authors which might have ex