The capacity to key oneself to the inner meaning of a play, to react on the genius of the author with sympathy and insight, sets apart the artist from the crowd of mechanical players. For different actors there are naturally different forms of this power. For Mrs. Fiske, it can be said that her genius displays itself in the naturalism that reveals at once the realities and the beauties of human nature. Let us see how the group of representative plays named above has represented this power. It can fairly be said that the distinguishing mark of this group of plays has been its close relation to actual human life. This is of course the distinguishing work of the most characteristic and significant of modern English drama as a whole; but there is much more of this sort of drama now than there was eighteen or twenty years ago, and there has been, until very recently, more of this leaven of truth to nature in the British theatre than in the American. Consider for a moment the character of the average play upon which the public in the United States spent during this period (and rightly enough still spends) millions of dollars and hours. To name a few undoubted successes: _When Knightwood was in Flower_, _The Heart of Maryland_, _Lovers’ Lane_, _The Christian_, _Way Down East_, _Secret Service_, _The Music Master_, _The Man from Home_, _Zaza_, _Charley’s Aunt_, _The Prisoner of Zenda_, _Sherlock Holmes_, _The Chorus Lady_, _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_, _The Woman_, _Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford_. Without denying the necessity of the theatre of mere amusement, of light sentiment, of melodrama, one feels grateful for an ambition that has sought and found something deeper. To examine Mrs. Fiske’s plays more in detail will indicate both the temper of the modern realistic school and the quality of her interpretations.