698 THE DKAMA 



trast between the two sexes, and of woman's economic moral and in- 

 tellectual emancipation, come to the forefront, and indeed could 

 scarcely be expected to be absent in any author who is inspired by 

 the newer lights. 



So, too, with regard to the other great question, which in its 

 general tendency is called socialism. The various classes of society, 

 their differences of station, their life struggle, the contrast between 

 rich and poor, the great gulf fixed between social influence and social 

 impotence, these will not leave themselves without evidence in the 

 works of a modern thinker. Add to these a characteristic mark of 

 the latter part of the 19th century the solution of all questions on 

 scientific grounds and by means of scientific formulae and we have 

 the main ingredients of that environment in the midst of which a 

 contemporary dramatist has to work. Materialism a practical ma- 

 terialism which makes wealth one of the objects of men's lives, and 

 a theoretical materialism which makes the doctor the great hero of 

 modern life, because all diseases, spiritual or mental, are in the last 

 resort declared to be physical; a social order in which woman is ac- 

 claimed as the arbiter of her own destiny these are the general 

 aspects, the contemporary features which art has to work with, and, 

 if possible, mould to her own purpose. 



There is, however, another point which, for our immediate object, 

 is more important still. We are not dealing with a young civilization 

 such as was to be found in Greece in the sixth century B.C., and in 

 Italy in the early Eenaissance. We are dealing with a society which 

 has lost, to a large extent, its faith in ideals, which has become 

 skeptical of its own efforts, more than a little weary of the higher 

 aims, more and more content to relapse on the lower levels of life and 

 thought. To an age of this kind, to a civilization which can be de- 

 scribed in these terms, how will the general idea of tragedy be 

 altered ? It depended, you will remember, on a certain equipoise be- 

 tween an external compelling fate and an internal power of initiative 

 and resistance. The one was the element of necessity, the imper- 

 sonal order of the universe; the other was the element of freedom, 

 the personal fount and source of action. 



Now, when Shakespeare was attracted by this problem the sphere 

 allowed to human volition in the midst of a great overpowering en- 

 vironment he slowly worked towards a conclusion which was con- 

 sistent with his own energy of temperament and with the general 

 characteristics of his age, that what we mean by Destiny and Fate is 

 nothing more nor less than a man's character. Man has not to look 

 outside for the impulses which govern him, but the tyrants which rule 

 his birth are found within the four walls of his own personality. Such 

 a doctrine might suit the strong youthful times of art and of a na- 

 tion's vigor, because, under such conditions, the value of human 



