This list calls for two immediate comments. First, only two of these plays have been acted in any New York theater in the past score of years, that is to say, in the twentieth century; and therefore playgoers under forty have not had the opportunity of seeing any of the others performed by a professional company. Second, every one of these plays was acted in New York during the final forty years of the nineteenth century, some of them being produced at different times by different companies in different theaters. For example, I have had the pleasure in the course of a half-century of playgoing of attending performances of the ‘School for Scandal’ at Wallack’s, at Niblo’s, at the Union Square and at three different Daly’s theaters. Perhaps a third comment is warranted, to the effect that my catalog of Old Comedies includes specimens of almost every subdivision of the comic drama. The ‘School for Scandal’ is the foremost example in English of what has been called high-comedy, the humorous play in which character is more important than story and of which the plot is caused by the clash of character on character. ‘She Would and She Would Not’ is a vivacious comedy-of-intrigue; and so is the ‘Belle’s Stratagem.’ The ‘Jealous Wife’ in some of its situations, and the ‘Road to Ruin’ also, are almost too serious to be classed as comic dramas. The ‘Critic’ and ‘High Life Below Stairs’ are frankly farces, bustling with business and charged with high spirits. Even the ‘Rivals’ and ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ reveal themselves as closely akin to farce, in so far as their respective actions are not caused spontaneously by the volition of the characters but are arbitrarily brought about by the author himself, visibly pulling the wires which control the movements of his puppets. Probably it was the excessive laudation bestowed on these two more or less farcical pieces of Sheridan and Goldsmith which led Sir Arthur Pinero to formulate his satiric definition: “A comedy is a farce by a deceased author.” Possibly a fourth comment may be appended altho it must be apologized for as a doubtful digression. In my list the ‘Liar’ is credited to Samuel Foote, because it could not very well be credited to any other author. But when it was last acted in New York, the text used was a revision by Lester Wallack of an earlier condensation by Charles James Mathews. Moreover Foote’s own play was an adaptation of Corneille’s ‘Menteur,’—an adaptation more or less influenced by an earlier version of the French piece, Steele’s ‘Lying Lover.’ To go still further back, Corneille had taken his story from a Spanish original, the ‘Verdad Sospiciosa’ of Alarcon. And we may bring to an end this summary record of the strange adventures of a plot by setting down the fact that Alarcon, altho a Spaniard, had been born in Mexico. So we can, if we so choose, claim the ‘Liar’ in all its many transformations as the earliest play to be written by a native American.