A friend of mine, not yet forty, told me that as an undergraduate he had read half-a-dozen Greek plays with a professor, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Greek literature, who had spent a winter in Athens, and who had acquired modern Greek. This professor spared no pains to make his students appreciate the poetic beauty of Athenian tragedy; but never once did he call their attention to the circumstances of original performance or arouse their interest by pointing out the theatrical effectiveness of the successive situations. To this ardent lover of Greece and of Greek literature, the ‘Agamemnon,’ the ‘Œdipus,’ and the ‘Medea’ were only poems in dialog; they were not plays composed to be acted, adjusted to the conditions of the Athenian theater, and conforming to the conventions tacitly accepted by the Attic audience. But worse remains behind. The writer of the chapters on Shakspere in the composite ‘Cambridge History of English Literature,’ deals skilfully and cautiously with the dates of composition and performance of each of the plays; but he criticizes them with no examination of their theatrical effectiveness. It is scarcely too much to say that he considers them as dramatic poems intended to be read rather than as poetic dramas intended to be acted. Nothing in either of his chapters is evidence that he ever saw a comedy or a tragedy of Shakspere’s on the stage. He reveals no knowledge of the principles of playmaking; and it may be doubted whether he suspects the existence of these principles. And in one passage of his commentary he has given us the absolute masterpiece of undramatic criticism: It is, of course, quite true that all of Shakspere’s plays were written to be acted; but it may be questioned whether this is much more than an accident arising from the fact that the drama was the dominant form of literature. It was a happy accident, because of the unique opportunity this form gives of employing both the vehicles of poetry and prose. (1921) III OLD PLAYS AND NEW PLAYGOERS III OLD PLAYS AND NEW PLAYGOERS I