Mr. Shaw—but no, it is impossible for Mr. Shaw himself, let alone any one else, to guess beforehand what Mr. Shaw will do. Finally, it may be conjectured that the rank and file of our playwrights will write for us precisely the same plays they have written before, under new titles. It would be an agreeable innovation if they would keep the old titles and write new plays for them. A THEORY OF BRUNETIÈRE There is a theory of the late Ferdinand Brunetière about the periods of dramatic activity which the time we are now passing through ought to put to the test. Brunetière was an incorrigible generalizer, first because he was a Frenchman, and next because he was a born critic. Criticism without general ideas, without a substructure of principle and theory to build upon, is an idle thing, the mere expression of likes and dislikes, or else sheer verbiage. This French critic was always throwing theories at the drama, and some of them have stuck. Perhaps the soundest of them and the most lasting was his theory of the drama as the spectacle of the struggle of will against obstacles. There has been much controversy about it, there has been no difficulty in instancing cases which it fails to cover, but I venture to think that as a rough generalization it still holds good. I am not, however, concerned with that famous theory for the moment. I am thinking of another theory—a historical one. Brunetière asserted that every outburst of dramatic activity in a nation will be found to have followed close upon a great manifestation of national energy—Greek tragedy, for instance, after the Persian War, Calderon and de Vega after the Spanish conquests in the New World, Shakespeare after the Armada, the French romantic drama after the Napoleonic campaigns. He might have added that the war of 1870 was followed by the best work of Dumas fils, by the Théâtre Libre, by Ibsen and Björnson, Hauptmann and Sudermann, and the Russo-Japanese War by the Moscow Art Theatre and Tchekhov. I confess, then, my doubts about the soundness of this theory. Throughout the past history of any nation wars have been of so constant occurrence that it would be difficult not to find one preceding, by a fairly short term, any particular outburst of dramatic activity you like to fix upon. One is always _post_ the other; it is not necessarily _propter_. And instances to the contrary will readily occur: periods of dramatic activity that were not immediately preceded by, but rather synchronized with, great manifestations of national energy; for instance, the period of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. And sometimes, when you look for your dramatic sequel to your national energizing, you only draw a blank. Did any outburst of dramatic production follow the American Civil War? The theory, in short, is “an easy one,” relying on lucky coincidence and ignoring inconvenient exceptions.