"The Cenci"" tragedies? Because in them character clashing with itself, with environment, or with other temperaments, moves through tragic episodes to a final catastrophe that is the logical outcome of what we have observed. By "logical" I mean that the ending is seen to grow from the preceding events in accordance with the characters. That is, it conforms with human experience as known to us or as revealed to us by the dramatist in question.

MELODRAMA

Suppose, however, that we have tragic circumstance not justified by the characterization of the figures concerned. For instance, in some play on Cleopatra the special scenes may move us even if they do not put before us a character whose willfulness and exacting love seem great enough to bring about the final catastrophe. Then what have we? Melodrama in the broadest sense of the word. Melodrama in this sense of plays insufficiently motivated in characterization has existed from the beginning of drama. Technically, the word came into England early in the nineteenth century to designate an importation from France of sensational scenes with frequent musical accompaniment. As this particular combination disappeared, the name remained for plays of sensational incident and inadequate characterization.

THE STORY PLAY

Between the two-melodrama and tragedy-both perhaps sensational in episode, but only the second justifying its episodes by perfectly motivated character, lies the story play. In this the light and the serious, the comic and the tragic, mingle, though the ending is cheerful. "The Merchant of Venice," regarded as Shakespeare regarded it as the story of Portia and Bassanio, is clearly not a tragedy but a story play. If, however, we sympathize with Shylock as modern actors, especially by their rearrangement of the scenes, often make us, is it not a tragedy? There lies the important distinction. There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which, by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his au6 H. C., xviii, 281ff.

dience. The trial scene of Shylock perfectly illustrates the idea: to the friends of Bassanio, as to most of the Elizabethan audience, this Jew-baiting was highly delightful; to Shylock it was torture and heartbreak. The dramatist who presents such material so as to emphasize in it what would appeal to the friends of Bassanio, writes comedy. He who presents it to an audience likely to feel as Shylock felt, writes tragedy.

HIGH COMEDY, LOW COMEDY, AND FARCE

Comedy divides into higher and lower. Low comedy concerns itself directly or indirectly with manners. "The Alchemist” of Jonson busies itself directly with manners by means of characters varying from types of a single aspect to well-individualized figures. Comedy of intrigue, centering about a love story, deals in complicated situations arising therefrom, but indirectly paints manners as it characterizes. "The Shoemaker's Holiday" ' may perhaps stand as a specimen of this type, though Fletcher's "The Wild-Goose Chase" is a better example. High comedy, as George Meredith pointed out in his masterly "Essay on Comedy," deals in thoughtful laughter. This laughter comes from the recognition, made instantaneously by the author, of the comic value of a comparison or contrast. For instance, in "Much Ado About Nothing" it is high comedy at which we laugh when from moment to moment we contrast Benedick and Beatrice as they see themselves and as we see them in the revelatory touches of the dramatist.

Farce treats the improbable as probable, the impossible as possible. In the second case it often passes into extravaganza or burlesque. "The Frogs" of Aristophanes illustrates farcical burlesque. In the best farce to-day we start with some absurd premise as to character or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically enough to the ending.

SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF DRAMA

Yet, even if one understands these differences, one may find it difficult at first to appreciate the drama of a past time. Modern drama from 980 A. D. onward passes from the simple Latin trope, already 7 H. C., xlvii, 469ff. 8 H. C., viii, 439ff.

described, by accumulation of incident, developing characterization, and a feeling for expression for its own sake, to similar work in the vernacular, be it English, French, or German. Then slowly it gains enormously in characterization till some of the miracle and morality plays of the late fifteenth century equal or surpass any English drama up to Marlowe. But what lay behind all this drama of miracle play and morality was an undivided church. With the coming of the Reformation and its insistence on the value and finality of individual judgment, the didactic drama gave way to the drama of entertainment-the interludes and the beginnings of the five-act plays. Yet, fine as are some of the plays of the days of Elizabeth and James I, we find in them a brutality of mood, a childish sense of the comic, a love of story for mere story's sake that make them oftentimes a little hard reading. Moreover, their technique-their frequent disregard of our ideas of unity, their methods of exposition by chorus, soliloquy, and aside-frequently appears to us antiquated. Except for the greatest of these plays-mainly by Shakespeare—the Elizabethan drama seems strange to us at a first reading. Only coming to know the conditions from which it sprang can give us its real values.

Even the great dramas of Eschylus, Sophocles, and to a less extent of Euripides, because he is more modern, are best read when we know something of the Greek life around these dramas and of the stage for which they were written. To these plays a great audience of perhaps 10,000 brought a common knowledge of the myths and stories represented, akin to our universal knowledge a generation ago of Biblical story. The audience brought also memories of successive and even recent treatments of the same myth by other dramatists, taking delight, not as we do in something because it seems new, but in the individual treatment of the old story by the new dramatist. The same attitude held for the Elizabethan public which delighted in successive versions of "Romeo and Juliet," "Julius Cæsar," and "Hamlet." In judging the drama of Greece or Elizabethan England this fact must be kept constantly in mind.

As one turns from Greek and Elizabethan drama, written for the delight and edification of the masses, to the work of Corneille and Racine, one faces plays written primarily for the cultivated, and

worked out, not spontaneously by individual genius, but carefully according to critical theory derived not so much from study of classic drama as from commentators on a commentator on the Greek drama-Aristotle. From him, for instance, came the idea as to the essentiality of the unities of time, action, and place, themselves the result of physical conditions of the Greek stage. By contrast, then, this French tragedy of the seventeenth century is a drama of intellectuals.

Then as the spirit of humanitarianism spread and men shared more and more in Samuel Johnson's desire "with extensive view" to "survey mankind from China to Peru," the drama reflected all this. No longer did the world laugh at the selfish complacency and indulgence of the rake and fop, but it began to sympathize with his wife, fiancée, or friend who suffered from this selfishness and complacency. Illustrating that the difference between tragedy and comedy lies only in emphasis, Restoration comedy turned from thoughtless laughter to sympathetic tears. But such psychology as the sentimental comedy shows is conventional and superficial. It is in the nineteenth century that the drama, ever sensitive to public moods and sentiment, undergoes great changes. In France and Germany it breaks the shackles of the pseudo classicism which had for centuries held the drama to empty speech and a dead level of characterization. Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Dumas père, and Alfred de Vigny reveal a new world of dramatic romance and history. In turn this romance leads to realism with an underlying scientific spirit which takes nothing at its old values.

MODERN PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY IN THE DRAMA

This searching scrutiny of accepted ideas of personality, conduct, right, wrong, and even causation in general, is seen in Ibsen and all his followers. Planting themselves firmly on the new and developing science of psychology, guided by the most intense belief in individualism, demanding its passports from every accepted idea, the dramatists of the last half century have steadily enlarged the scope of their art. From mere story-telling they passed to ethical drama. Convinced by practice that it is difficult for a play in its limited time -two and a half hours at the most-to do more than state a prob

lem or paint a set of social conditions, they have taken to merely drawing pictures or raising questions rather than attempting even to suggest an answer. As we have seen, in the eighteenth century the writer of sentimental comedy painted social conditions, but with a psychology purely intuitional. To-day we have swung to the other extreme. Recognizing the limited space of the dramatist, confused by contrasting psychological theories, puzzled by the baffling intricacies of the human soul, convinced that the great questions raised cannot be settled in a breath, or with any ready-made panacea, many a dramatist to-day merely pictures an evil condition, waiting for others to find its exact significance or, better still, a solution. "Justice" of Mr. Galsworthy, like "La Robe Rouge" of M. Brieux, offers no solution, yet both led to changes in the conditions portrayed —in the former, conditions of prison life; in the latter, evils attending the life of the petty judiciary of France.

THE MENACE OF VAUDEVILLE AND MOVING PICTURES

A veritable passion for the theatre is shown by the younger generation to-day in the United States. It crowds the theatres-if we use the word to include not only places giving performances of legitimate drama but also vaudeville houses and picture shows-as in this country it never has crowded them before. To go to a theatre of the older type one must usually travel some distance and often one must save beforehand. Vaudeville and picture shows cheap enough for almost any purse are provided at our very doors. The difficulty is that what they offer is sometimes as low in art as in price. Yet surely, it may be said, there is good vaudeville, and surely proper legislation ought to dispose of what is poor or dangerous in it or the picture show. Granted, but there are inherent dangers which legislation cannot reach. In the first place, the balcony and galleries of our theatres are far less filled than they used to be before vaudeville and the picture show provided at much less expense and with greater comfort entertainment to many as satisfactory as the theatre itself. This decrease in attendance at the theatres naturally jeopardizes the chances of many a play which can be produced only if the manager feels reasonably sure of large houses or a public more general than usually frequents the orchestra. Vaudeville, too, like