Nearly fifteen years ago I pointed out Castelvetro's priority in stating this theory of the theatre, and I can only repeat the summary that I gave of it then. What, according to him, are the conditions of stage representation? The theatre is a public place, in which a play is presented before a motley crowd-la moltitudine rozzaupon a circumscribed platform or stage, within a limited space of time. To this idea the whole of Castelvetro's dramatic system is conformed. In the first place, since the audience may be great in number, the theatre must be large, and yet the audience must be able to hear the play; hence verse is added, not merely as a delightful accompaniment, but also in order that the actors may raise their voices without inconvenience and without loss of dignity. In the second place, the audience is not a select gathering of choice spirits, but a motley crowd of people, drawn to the theatre for the purpose of pleasure or recreation; accordingly, abstruse themes, and in fact all technical discussions, must be avoided by the playwright, who is limited, as we should say to-day, to the elemental passions and interests of men. In the third place, the actors are required to move about on a raised and narrow platform; and this is the reason why deeds of violence, and many other things which cannot be acted on such a platform with convenience and dignity, should not be represented in the drama. And finally, the physical convenience of the people in the audience, who cannot comfortably remain in the theatre without food and other physical necessities for an indefinite period of time, limits the length of the play to about three or four hours.

Many of Castelvetro's incidental conclusions may seem hopelessly outworn to-day; but the modernity of his system is self-evident, if by modernity we mean agreement with the theories that happen to be most popular in our own time. Certainly, for nearly two centuries, the path which he blazed was not crowded with followers. A French

physician, La Mesnardière, who published a Poétique in 1640; the Abbé d'Aubignac, who wrote a Pratique du Théâtre which was translated into English in 1684 as the Whole Art of the Stage; the Abbé Du Bos, whose Réflexions critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture was one of the most influential works of literary theory in the eighteenth century; and a few, a very few others, echo haltingly and intermittently some of the ideas of Castelvetro about the relations of the drama and the actual theatre. But it was not until the days of Diderot that they found again systematic and intelligent discussion. In his essay, De la Poésie dramatique, and his famous Paradoxe sur le Comédien, but more especially in his Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel, the accents of 'modernity' are even more apparent than in his Italian predecessor, and one or two notes are sounded that are so much of our own time that it seems difficult to believe they can be older than yesterday.

Diderot's central idea in the Entretiens is that the essential part of a play is not created by the poet at all, but by the actor. Gestures, inarticulate cries, facial expressions, movements of the body, a few monosyllables which escape from the lips at intervals are what really move us in the theatre; and to such an extent is this true, that all that really belongs to the poet is the scenario, while words, even ideas and scenes, might be left to the actor to omit, add to, or alter. He himself sketches the scenario of a tragedy in monosyllables, with an exclamation here, the commencement of a phrase there, scarcely ever a consecutive discourse. There is true tragedy,' he cries; but for works of this kind we need authors, actors, a theatre, and perhaps a whole people!'

Yes, obviously actors, even authors, but why a theatre and a whole people for drama like this? Because the mere presence of a large number of people assembled together in a theatre has its own special effect that must be considered

in every discussion of the drama. Here we meet, although not for the first time, what is now known as the theory of the 'psychology of the crowd'. Bacon, in the De Augmentis, had pointed out the wonderful effectiveness of the theatre as an instrument of public morality, in the hands of ancient playwrights, and explained this effectiveness on the ground that it is a 'secret of nature' that men's minds are more open to passions and impressions 'congregate than solitary'. Before him Castelvetro had estimated the influence of the theatrical audience in general on the nature of the drama, finding it especially in the necessity imposed upon the playwright of avoiding all themes and ideas unintelligible to the miscellaneous gathering at a theatrical performance. But Diderot finds a dual effect. Mobs and popular revolts make it clear how contagious is passion or excitement in a great concourse of people; self-restraint and decency have no meaning for thousands gathered together, whatever may be the temperament of each individual in the crowd. The effect of the play is heightened for each spectator because there are many spectators to hear and see it together; but the presence of the crowd has a kindred influence on the playwright and the actor. They, too, share the effect of the 'psychology of the crowd': the actor has the crowd before him in fact, the poet in imagination, and both do their work differently than if they were preparing a solitary entertainment. Like the orator on the public platform or the mountebank on the street corner, the playwright must suit his particular audience or he will fail.

This is the secret of the failure of French tragedy in the eighteenth century. The Greek drama is the product of a vast amphitheatre, the enormous crowds that frequented it, and the solemn occasions that brought them together; these explain its simplicity of plot, its versification, its dignity and emphasis, all proclaiming a discourse chanted in spacious places and in noble surroundings. The French drama, how

ever, according to Diderot, has imitated the emphasis, the versification, the dignity of the Greeks, but without the physical surroundings that made the ancient drama suited to its environment, and without the simplicity of plot and thought that its other methods justify. Simplify the French play and beautify the French stage: this is Diderot's recipe for restoring the glory of Greek drama in the modern world; a larger and more adequate theatre and more beautiful stage decoration are the first prerequisites of reform. It is Voltaire's recipe too: the elimination of petty gallantry from the French drama and the substitution of an adequate edifice for the 'narrow miserable theatre with its poor scenery'.

The world will never cease to seek external cures for inner deficiencies of the human spirit; and yet every age must protest against this form of quackery in its own way. In this case it was left to Lessing to point out Diderot's and Voltaire's more obvious errors. Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie was a product of actual contact with the theatre; it is, at least apparently, a discussion of one play after another as Lessing saw them acted on the stage. But out of this accidental succession of theatrical performances he formulates a more or less consistent programme for the development of a new and more vital dramatic literature in his own country; not, however, by means of an improved theatre or more elaborate stage decorations, but by a new and creative impulse in the plays themselves. In the eightieth number of the Dramaturgie he answers the theatrical arguments of Voltaire and Diderot by an appeal to history. The Shakespearian drama, considered in connexion with the poverty of Elizabethan stage decoration, proves conclusively for him that there is no real relation between elaborate scenery or splendid theatrical edifices and great drama itself. Does every tragedy need pomp and display, or should the poet arrange his play so that it will

produce its effect without these external aids? Lessing's answer to these questions is identical with Aristotle's.

Still there must lurk a doubt in regard to his consistency. 'To what end the hard work of the dramatic form?' he asks; 'Why build a theatre, disguise men and women, torture their memories, invite the whole town to assemble at one place, if I intend to produce nothing more with my work and its representation than some of those emotions that would be produced by any good story that every one could read by his chimney-corner at home?' We may well ask ourselves what Lessing really means by this question. There never was a thing written, lyric, ballad, epic, drama, or what not, that was not strengthened in the impression it makes, by having a noble voice or an exquisite art express it for us. Of course the trained actor gives a new fire and flavour to the drama; of course attendance at a theatre adds pleasures to those derived merely by reading a play in solitude; of course when we have recourse to sound and sight, to music and architecture and painting, in the theatre, we are adding complicated sensations to those that properly spring from the nature of the drama itself. If Lessing means to ask whether these added sensations are worth the cost of building theatres and training actors, who will answer no? But if he means to imply that it would not be worth building theatres and training actors unless the drama were a vie manquée without them, then we can only answer his question by asking some of our own. Why build libraries, train librarians, perfect systems of library administration and bibliography, if we get nothing out of a book in a library that we could not get out of it in our study at home? Why develop the arts of typography and binding, if we can get as much pleasure out of a volume in manuscript as out of a printed book; or why have beautiful type and rich bindings, if we can find the real soul of a book in the cheapest and ugliest of types and bindings? These questions bring with