comedy and tragedy is sometimes settled by a very easy scheme. Tragedy is a play in which someone is killed, and comedy, one in which no one is killed. According to this, the Merchant of Venice would be considered a comedy.

Compare this play with Cymbeline. Merely because Cloten is killed, Cymbeline is regarded by most people as a tragedy. The fact is overlooked that everyone is glad that Cloten is killed. He richly deserved his end. Certainly his death would not make Cymbeline a tragedy. If it is a tragedy, it must be on account of the seriousness of the character of Imogen.

In the highest Shakespearean tragedy we both laugh and weep with men. The same is often true of his comedies. The difference must be decided by the predominance of smiles or tears. Both may be dignified.

A smile may be almost as supreme as a tear. A smile may shine through tears and yet not degrade them. Both may express sympathy, and they are closely conjoined in human life. The distinction between comedy and tragedy may, after all, be somewhat academic. Shakespeare certainly has not left their distinction clearly marked.

Melodrama, though extremely popular, is a low form of dramatic art. Why? Because it lacks a smile. The audience is kept under a strain by a most serious situation. It may cause tears, until at the last everything is so completely changed that the relief hardly brings a smile. The transformation is often so sudden and so foreign to real truth that we are unable to smile. Sometimes we may actually laugh at the artificiality of the situation. Thus, melodrama may become a kind of

tragical farce. It is the situation and not the character that is mainly at stake.

The drama reflects in its deepest and truest aspect two sides of human endeavor: one, victory through man's effort or through fortuitous circumstances; the other the seeming failure but real victory which may come through death. Human victory may be gained in either way.

Melodrama is really a juggling with tragedy, the reducing of tragedy to mere situation and circumstance; it is human art monkeying with human destiny.

Colley Cibber once rewrote the tragedy of King Lear. He killed the villain, Edmund. Cordelia lived. The king of France he got rid of. Edgar and Cordelia were wedded and become respectively King and Queen of England. This procedure pleased the superficiality of a superficial age. But how untrue to life and to Shakespeare himself.

Melodrama is not a serious form of art. There can be no great art without truth or true interpretation, manifestation or reflection of truth.

Primarily there are only two forms of the drama, comedy and tragedy. Both of these reflect human history. Comedy reflects the joyous outcome of heroic endeavor, the transformation wrought by time and circumstances. Tragedy also reveals victory, but the victory which comes through death.

It is easy to find the highest dignity of man or his lowest degradation in the character of his smile. The vulgar story which seems to be the chief source of amusement to many minds, degrades both the relator and the listener. It is a good principle to remember that all true art lies

above man's actual experience in the direction of his ideals. Whatever lies below the ordinary plane of his feeling, whatever seems to please him below his habitual level of thought and emotion tends to ruin his character.

The coarse smile is the worst of all perversions. Every form of art has its place. There is such a thing as artistic burlesque. As I have said, burlesque is the lowest form of dramatic art. It is a kind of criticism; it may help people to discover weaknesses in some art which ought to be of a higher type but which is on a low plane.

We may have farce of a high order. The theme of farce is not character but situation, and in it there are ridiculous situations. They pass beyond the bounds of comedy into that of farce, and artistic farce makes us conscious of this. In farce we laugh at a man; in comedy we laugh with him. Comedy, therefore, is not a low form of art because it is true and awakens a noble smile. It illustrates more of the deep things of our nature. In tragedy, if there is a smile, it is like the fool in King Lear; beneath his smile we hear the sob and feel treasured tears.

Another test of the dignity or lack of dignity in all the arts, but especially those which cause the smile, is simplicity. The burlesque is extravagant, so is farce, so is melodrama. Hence, they are of a lower order, while comedy and tragedy are simple, true and genuine. Hence, they belong to a higher rank. It is a question of truth to life; it is a question of truthfully mirroring human experience. Those who interpret human character must interpret correctly. Truth alone has power to elevate and ennoble.

Public readers, so-called impersonators, as

well as actors, would do well to consider carefully the dignity of their art.

Impersonators and reciters of all sorts, extravagant and untruthful interpreters, have almost ruined the noble art. Charlotte Cushman and others gave, forty years ago, high ideals for the platform. Sydney Lanier and others expressed enthusiasm over the possibilities of the new dramatic art; but there came along a lot of self-styled impersonators who tried to imitate all the methods of the stage, who failed to recognize the difference between the dramatic stage and dramatic platform art, and did not follow Charlotte Cushman, who was artist enough to appreciate the greatness of the difference.

All sorts of unnatural extravagance and false interpretations have followed, working great harm. Many readers have either cut down the popular plays or used popular stories or low-class literature and are in danger of degrading the whole work of vocal interpretation. The artistic and simple interpretation of literature, the rendering of Browning's monologues, the recognition that these forms of dramatic platform art have wonderful possibilities is one of the artistic advancements of our time. Readers, however, must be careful to rise to the dignified study of the art, so that they may truthfully interpret the best in literature. The old and more solid dramas must not be replaced by superficial things, in an endeavor to be popular. We must not cease to hold to the fact that each art tells something which no other art can say, and must respect its own independence.

A great artistic age is always shown in the effect of art upon the simplest things. The Greeks could make a common jug more beautiful than

moderns do their public monuments. The fragments of their every-day utensils often fill the modern mind with wonder.

If we are to be an artistic people, the time usually worse than wasted in every household, should be devoted by all to endeavoring to make something beautiful, or in some way to realize the ideal. Every child should be awakened to create something ideal.

What greater joy is to be found than in seeing something beautiful unfolding before our eyes, under our own hands?

William Morris said, “Art is joy put into our work." That is to say, in the vocabulary of this book, art is working with a smile. Work that may be drudgery to some men, when joy is put into the heart of it, becomes a fine art.

Here is a carpenter making a chair. He carves the head of a dog on the end of its square arm, and lo, you have a thing of beauty,-something that has higher value because you have the delight of the man in his work.

Some people think that art is something very exceptional, very rare, unusual, something only for the wealthy. On the contrary, art belongs to every-day life. It is working in obedience to the imagination under the stimulus of an ideal. It is putting love, affection and delight into the things we do. It is giving expression to our better selves, to our higher feelings, not doing things perfunctorily just because we have to. Art is work with a smile of joy.

Dishwashing may seem to be the furthest removed from art, but one that loves beauty does not look at the dirt, but at the dish that is being separated from what does not belong to it.