o say
nothing of others who are authors of works in the form of drama, but
nevertheless, like a Shelley, Swinburne or Longfellow, may not have been
stagestruck.

As conspicuous modern instances Balzac, Byron and Browning may be
selected, and a writer who, if hardly of the same class, has written at
least one masterpiece. This is Charles Reade, whose delightful book "The
Cloister and the Hearth" seems likely to attain immortality. Reade, we
know, was absolutely stagestruck, and wrote dozens of plays and spent a
great deal of money over them; indeed, it is not too much to say that
his mania for the theatre seriously injured his work as a novelist. Yet
who will pretend that any of the pieces that he concocted alone or in
conjunction with others is worth the least valuable of his novels?

Balzac, though not stagestruck in the same degree as Charles Reade, had
a great desire for success as a playwright; part of the desire may have
been due to eagerness to make money with which to pay off those terrible
debts. Yet in one biography of him no mention is made of his dramas.
Nevertheless, he sweated hard over _Vautrin_, _La Maratre_, _Les
Ressources de Quinola_ and _Mercadet_; none of them helped
substantially to pay off the debts, nor can any be rated equally with
the poorest of his novels. _Mercadet_, certainly, has one brilliant
scene of comedy in it, and under the name of _A Game of Speculation_
proved a trump-card with Charles Mathews. G.H. Lewes was author of the
version which, according to a popular story, was written and rehearsed
between Saturday and Monday. The original, with the full title of
_Mercadet ou Le Faiseur_ was not acted till after the death of Balzac,
when it was reduced to three acts by D'Ennery and given with success at
Le Gymnase.

Everybody knows that Browning wrote a number of plays. _A Soul's
Tragedy_ was lately presented by the Stage Society, an interesting
hardly successful experiment. _A Blot on the 'Scutcheon_ was produced at
Drury Lane in 1842 and revived by Phelps at Sadler's Wells, and also in
1893 by the Independent Theatre, when Miss May Harvey gave an admirable
performance as Mildred; whilst _Strafford_, _Colombe's Birthday_ and _In
a Balcony_ have all seen the footlights and achieved at the most a
_succes d'estime_. Few, however, even putting aside the vulgar,
fallacious test of the box-office, would say that these works are really
valuable stage dramas, despite the superb qualities obvio