THE CORNERSTONES OF MODERN DRAMA 713 



will not withdraw our censure from these Restoration heroes and 

 heroines on the curious plea that they are fairy rakes and harlots 

 living in a fairy land of cuckoldry. In spite of Charles Lamb we 

 will, if you please, very heartily and wholesomely condemn them, and 

 feel all the better and more self-righteous for having done it. Our 

 Restoration Comedy, then, has vanished from our stage on the score 

 of bad construction and bad morality; more, I fear, because of its 

 bad construction than of its bad morality. But though the Restora- 

 tion Comedy no longer holds our stage, the splendor of its wit, and 

 the vividness of its portraiture of town life insure it a lasting place in 

 English Literature. 



Since the Restoration Comedy, what place has the English Drama 

 held in English Literature ? 



I was dining the other night with a book-collecting friend. He 

 brought out first editions of " The Rivals," " The School for Scan- 

 dal," and " She Stoops to Conquer." " There ! " he exclaimed, " that's 

 all the harvest of your English Drama for the last 200 years." Those 

 three little volumes were all that a wealthy collector thought worthy 

 to preserve of the dramatic art of the Anglo-Saxon race in the past 

 200 years that Anglo-Saxon race which during that same 200 years 

 has held sovereign sway and masterdom in Literature, in Science, and 

 in Arms, which once held the sovereignty of the world in Drama; a 

 race of restless and inexhaustible achievement in almost every field; 

 a race of action, and therefore, essentially a dramatic race; a race 

 whose artistic instincts would irresistibly find their natural and trium- 

 phant outlet on the stage. And in 200 years all that the Anglo-Saxon 

 race has produced of drama worthy to be preserved as literature i3 

 contained in those three tiny volumes. Why have we made such a 

 beggarly mess of our Drama ? 



Now, if we turn from England to France and survey the French 

 Theatre and the French Drama, we shall find that there has been 

 an almost continuous stream of great writers for the stage from 

 Moliere onward to the present time. In the seventeenth century, Mo- 

 liere stands not only at the head of the French Drama, but also at 

 the head of French Literature, holding the same relative place as 

 did Shakespeare in England half a century earlier. If France were 

 asked, "Who of your sons since Moliere dare claim the garland of 

 eternal and universal renown ? Who in your later days is fit to stand 

 in the circle of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and 

 Goethe?" if France were asked that question, I suppose she could 

 only send in the name? of two candidates Voltaire and Victor 

 Hugo. But these, her two most famous men of letters in the 

 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are also her leading playwrights. 



As Moliere in his century headed both literature and drama, so do 

 Voltaire and Victor Hugo in theirs. But what a crowd of illustrious 



