Rolland has openly proclaimed the name of the intellectual father of his tragedies. Shakespeare was no more than the burning bush, the first herald, the stimulus, the inimitable model. To Shakespeare, Rolland owes his impetus, his ardor, and in part his dialectical power. But as far as spiritual form is concerned, he has picked up the mantle of another master, one whose work as dramatist still remains almost unknown. I refer to Ernest Renan, and to the _Drames philosophiques_, among which _L'abbesse de Jouarre_ and _Le prêtre de Nemi_ exercised a decisive influence upon the younger playwright. The art of discussing spiritual problems in actual drama instead of in essays or in such dialogues as those of Plato, was a legacy from Renan, who gave kindly help and instruction to the aspiring student. From Renan, too, came the inner calm of justice, together with the clarity which never failed to lift the writer above the conflicts he was describing. But whereas the sage of Tréguier, in his serene aloofness, regarded all human activities as a perpetually renewed illusion, so that his works voiced a somewhat ironical and even malicious skepticism, in Rolland we find a new element, the flame of an idealism that is still undimmed to-day. Strange indeed is the paradox, that one who of all modern writers is the most fervent in his faith, should borrow the artistic forms he employs from the master of cautious doubt. Hence what in Renan had a retarding and cooling influence, becomes in Rolland a cause of vigorous and enthusiastic action. Whilst Renan stripped all the legends, even the most sacred of legends, bare, in his search for a wise but tepid truth, Rolland is led by his revolutionary temperament to create a new legend, a new heroism, a new emotional spur to action.