In his use of all the well-worn motives of serious drama and his constant imitation of Shakespearean and Elizabethan diction, Colman displays remarkable cleverness as well as the most cheerful effrontery. He represents, too, a curious stage in the history of tragedy. He was born and bred in the theatre and had an exceptional opportunity to become familiar with the Elizabethan drama through his father's revivals and editorial labors. His method was to start with some incident, like that of Queen Philippa, and to connect with it any scenes that suggested themselves as interesting and varied, so that the motives, types of character, situations, and the very phrases of the Elizabethan and the later stock plays reappear to play their parts in his variety shows. He did not burlesque; in fact, he imitated so well that, while the judicious might grieve, the vulgar subscribed to pity and terror when his plays were performed by the great actors of the day. He popularized, vulgarized, and musicalized the great traditions of English tragedy, and passed them along to the nineteenth century as the possession of the illegitimate drama. At the height of Colman's career, however, the illegitimate drama found a still more powerful ally. Englishmen who in 1802 went to Paris to enjoy the peace were delighted with an entirely new kind of theatrical entertainment there, the _mélodrame_. The industrious Holcroft promptly translated its most successful representative, and "The Tale of Mystery" heralded the long ascendancy of this new species of drama in England and America. The peculiar novelties of the _mélodrame_ were the supplementing of the dialogue by a large amount of dumb show and the accompaniment of both dialogue and dumb show by descriptive orchestral music; otherwise, with its songs, sensations, and mechanical devices, it resembled the preceding musical drama of Colman and others. With this new recruit, the illegitimate held full sway. Its influence spread into all dramatic performances, and many regular plays were supplemented by songs, music, spectacle, or machinery. From the start, _mélodrame_ allied itself to most of the paraphernalia, of medievalism and of the terrific school, but it soon showed the capacity for absorbing varied material. Reynolds in 1812 turned Dryden's "Don Sebastian" into a musical play in three acts written in prose; equestrian combats, real water, cataracts, and machinery for thrilling escapes became usual adjuncts. Soon Scott's poems and novels supplied splendid material. As each novel appeared the theatres vied with one another in bringing out the first melodramatization; and often several versions were acted at the same time. Macready gained one of his first large successes with "Rob Roy" in a version that reduced Di Vernon to a singing part (1818). Any kind of a story, providing it offered strange scenes, an exciting and lively action, and marked contrasts between bad and