In order to make a consecutive story we have followed the development of English art for a century and a half. We now go back to cover the same period on the Continent, where a new ruling class has acquired wealth and power and has ordered a supply of new artists. The difference between France and England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be summed up briefly. The English revolt against the Catholic machine was successful, therefore the spirit of the English race expanded, and new art forms were created. In France, on the other hand, the Catholic machine succeeded in crushing the Protestants; something over fifty thousand were slaughtered on St. Bartholomew’s Eve; and therefore the art of France was held within the mold of the classical tradition. The Elizabethan drama grew out of the old miracle and mystery plays, a native product, crude, but popular and democratic. There existed such a native drama also in France; but it was scorned and repressed by authority, and cultured art followed the tragedies of Seneca, a Roman millionaire of the time of Nero, who had of course derived from the Greeks. It may seem strange that Catholic absolutism should have made Greek and Latin art forms a part of its sacred dogma; but so it was. The doctors of the church in the Middle Ages had put together a theology, in part from the early Christian fathers, and in part from Athenian and Alexandrian philosophers. It was for denying Ptolemy’s doctrine that the sun moved round the earth that Galileo was forced to recant under threat of torture by the pope; and it was for denying the sacred “three unities,” derived from Aristotle’s “Poetics,” that playwrights were critically tortured by the priests of orthodox culture. These three dogmas of play-writing were unity of theme, unity of time, and unity of place. The first is, within reasonable limits, a natural requirement of any work of art; but unity of time, meaning that the play must happen within twenty-four hours, and unity of place, meaning that it must happen on one physical spot, are absurdities. It is hard for us to realize that such rules were compulsory upon any dramatist who wished to see his work upon the stage; it is harder yet for us to realize that such rules were used as weapons in the class struggle, along with the infallibility of the pope and the divine right of kings.