us in them.

Some of Lord Byron's plays have been given upon the boards; but the real
Byron of the stage is the author of _Our Boys_ and goodness knows how
many more successful works, all as dead to-day as the dramas of Sheridan
Knowles. It has been said that _The Cenci_, when produced privately by
Sir Percy Bysshe Shelley, with Miss Alma Murray as heroine, acted very
well. Has the Stage Society ever considered the question of a revival?

How, then, did it happen that Balzac, Byron, Browning and Reade failed
as dramatists, despite the eager desire of three of them, at least, to
win success on the boards? It is undeniable that the three--one may put
aside Byron--are intensely "dramatic" writers. _Les Chouans_ reads
almost as if it were a play converted into a novel, and has been adapted
successfully, and like _Le Pere Goriot_, which someone has called the
French _King Lear_, has been used for the stage after the time when the
long-desired marriage with Madame Hanska was ended by the premature
death of the author of the fine phrase, "_Vierges de corps nous etions
hardis en paroles_." Indeed, in half the works composing the prodigious
_Comedie Humaine_ are passages of immense dramatic force. Clearly, too,
the author of "The Cloister and the Hearth" could paint character and
was a splendid storyteller into the bargain. It would be impossible to
say this without certain qualifications in the case of Browning; yet who
that has been fascinated by that colossal work "The Ring and the Book"
can deny it? Why, then, should Balzac and Browning have failed where
Shakespeare and Sardou have succeeded?

The question brings forward another, and it is this: whether
Shakespeare, if he were writing nowadays, would be a successful
dramatist. At first sight it seems an absurd question, but it is
permissible because one must recognize the fact that what perhaps
prevented Balzac and Browning from being successful has not proved an
impediment to the triumph of Shakespeare. The dramas of our national
dramatist are the most heavily thought-burdened plays that have had
popular success in modern times, and in the works of Browning there are
so many ideas that it is often difficult to see the idea. To the modern
writer of anything like Shakespeare's calibre, or Browning's, the simple
joy in the story is no longer possible, and probably Shakespeare, if
born forty years ago, and if content to work for such a medium as the
stage, would, like an Ibse