Whatever the explanation may be, it was left for Molière, inspired by the external elegancies of the court of Louis XIV, to create the pattern of high-comedy in ‘Tartuffe’ and the ‘Misanthrope’ and the ‘Femmes Savantes,’—the pattern which was to serve Congreve for the ‘Way of the World,’ Sheridan for the ‘School for Scandal,’ Augier and Sandeau for the ‘Gendre de Monsieur Poirier.’ And Molière really created the formula, with little or no help from any earlier dramatists, either Greek or Latin. Neither in Athens nor in Rome was there the atmosphere of breeding which might have stimulated Menander or Terence to the composition of comedies of this distinction. It is the more remarkable that Molière should have accomplished this feat, since he sought no originality of form in his earlier efforts, contenting himself with the loose and liberal framework of the Italian improvized plays, the Comedy-of-Masks. One of the many reasons for the sterility of the English drama in the middle of the nineteenth century is that the dramatists of our language seem to have believed it their duty to abide by the patterns which had been acceptable to the Jacobean and Restoration audiences and which were not appropriate to the theater of the nineteenth century, widely different in its size and in its scenic appliances. The English poets apparently despised the stage of their own time; and they made no effort to master its methods. As a result they wrote dramatic poems and not poetic dramas. They did not follow the example of Victor Hugo and lift into literature a type of play which was unliterary. Stevenson, in his unfortunate adventures into playmaking, made the unpardonable mistake of trying to varnish with style a dramatic formula which had long ceased to be popular. In the past half-century the men of letters of our language have seen a great light. They have no contempt for the dramatic patterns of approved popularity; and of these there are now a great many, suitable for every purpose and adjustable to every need. They have found out how to be theatrically effective without ceasing to be literary in the best sense of the word,—that is to say, they are not relying on “fine writing” but on clear thinking and on the honest presentation of human nature, as they severally see it. (1921) VI DID SHAKSPERE WRITE PLAYS TO FIT HIS ACTORS? VI DID SHAKSPERE WRITE PLAYS TO FIT HIS ACTORS? I