at they have always detested RACINE. English critics, from Dryden
to Matthew Arnold, have steadily refused to allow him a place among the
great writers of the world; and the ordinary English reader of to-day
probably thinks of him--if he thinks of him at all--as a dull, frigid,
conventional writer, who went out of fashion with full-bottomed wigs and
never wrote a line of true poetry. Yet in France Racine has been the
object of almost universal admiration; his plays still hold the stage
and draw forth the talents of the greatest actors; and there can be no
doubt that it is the name of Racine that would first rise to the lips of
an educated Frenchman if he were asked to select the one consummate
master from among all the writers of his race. Now in literature, no
less than in politics, you cannot indict a whole nation. Some justice,
some meaning, France must have when she declares with one voice that
Racine is not only one of the greatest of dramatists, but also one of
the greatest of poets; and it behoves an Englishman, before he condemns
or despises a foreign writer, to practise some humility and do his best
to understand the point of view from which that writer is regarded by
his own compatriots. No doubt, in the case of Racine, this is a
particularly difficult matter. There are genuine national antipathies to
be got over--real differences in habits of thought and of taste. But
this very difficulty, when it is once surmounted, will make the gain the
greater. For it will be a gain, not only in the appreciation of one
additional artist, but in the appreciation of a new _kind_ of artist; it
will open up a whole undiscovered country in the continent of art.

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and
it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value
of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already
implanted in his mind. But, after all, Shakespeare himself was but the
product and the crown of a particular dramatic convention; he did not
compose his plays according to an ideal pattern; he was an Elizabethan,
working so consistently according to the methods of his age and country
that, as we know, he passed 'unguessed at' among his contemporaries. But
what were these methods and this convention? To judge of them properly
we must look, not at Shakespeare's masterpieces, for they are transfused
and consecrated with the light of transcendent genius, but at the