Now, if this proves that Shakspere’s muse was of a sorry sort, then that heavenly visitor is in no worse case than the muse of many another dramatist. Sophocles is reported to have devised his great tragic parts specially for one actor, whose name has not come down to us. Racine wrote ‘Phèdre’ and ‘Andromaque,’ his masterpieces, for Mlle. de Champsmeslé. Rostand wrote ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ and ‘Chantecler’ for Coquelin. Sardou wrote ‘Fédora’ and ‘Théodora’ for Sarah Bernhardt. The younger Dumas wrote the ‘Visite de Noces’ for Desclée. Giacommetti wrote ‘Maria Antoinette’ for Ristori and the ‘Morte Civile’ for Salvini. D’Annunzio wrote the ‘Gioconda’ and the ‘Citta Morte’ for Duse. Bulwer-Lytton wrote the ‘Lady of Lyons’ and ‘Richelieu’ for Macready. Gilbert wrote ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ for Mary Anderson. Legouvé has told us in detail the circumstances which led to his writing (in collaboration with Scribe) ‘Adrienne Lecouvreur’ for Rachel. Jules Lemaître has told us how and why he came to compose his ‘Age Difficile’ for Coquelin; and Augustus Thomas has told us how he came to compose his ‘In Mizzoura’ for Goodwin. The line stretches out to the crack of doom. When Shakspere chose to produce made-to-order garments to fit the idiosyncrasies of a single actor, he was in very good company, ancient and modern. And we may go further and assert that very few of these plays are any the worse because they were made-to-order. The great dramatists, whose works we analyze reverently in the study, were all of them, in their own time, successful playwrights, stimulated now and again by association with the most gifted and the most accomplished of contemporary actors. If they had not made their profit out of the histrionic ability of the foremost performers of their own time and country, they would have been neglecting golden opportunities. Those who best know the conditions of playwriting will be the least likely to deny that not a few of the great characters in the drama came into being originally as parts for great actors. Of course, these characters are more than parts; they transcend the endowment of any one performer; they have complexity and variety; they are vital and accusable human beings; but they were parts first of all more or less made-to-order. In many cases we know the name of the actor for whose performance the character was conceived, Burbage for one, Mlle. de Champsmeslé for a second, Coquelin for a third. And in many another case we lack definite knowledge and are left to conjecture. There are peculiarities in the ‘Medea’ of Euripides, for instance, which seem to me to point to the probability that it also was a made-to-order garment.