d reveal their relative importance. Those
actions which we term comic address themselves to the sense of the
ridiculous, and their themes are those vices and moral infirmities the
representation of which is capable of touching the springs of laughter.
Where, accordingly, a drama confines itself to effects of the former
class, it may be called a pure "tragedy"; when to those of the latter, a
pure "comedy." In dramas where the effects are mixed the nature of the
main action and of the main characters (as determined by their
distinctive features) alone enables us to classify such plays as serious
or humorous dramas--or as "tragic" or "comic," if we choose to preserve
the terms. But the classification admits of a variety of transitions,
from "pure" tragedy to "mixed," from "mixed tragedy" to "mixed comedy,"
and thence to "pure comedy," with the more freely licensed "farce" and
"burlesque," the time-honoured inversion of the relations of dramatic
method and purpose. This system of distinction has no concern with the
mere question of the termination of the play, according to which
Philostratus and other authorities have sought to distinguish tragic
from comic dramas. The serious drama which ends happily (the German
_Schauspiel_) is not a species co-ordinate with tragedy and comedy, but
at the most a subordinate variety of the former. Other distinctions may
be almost infinitely multiplied, according to the point of view adopted
for the classification.

The historical sketch of the drama attempted in the following pages will
best serve to indicate the successive growth of national dramatic
species, many of which, by asserting their influence in other countries
and ages than those which gave birth to them, have acquired a more than
national vitality.

The art of acting.

Its means.

Gesture.

Speech.

The art of acting, whose history forms an organic though a distinct part
of that of the drama, necessarily possesses a theory and a technical
system of its own. But into these it is impossible here to enter. One
claim, however, should be vindicated for the art of acting, viz. that,
though it is a dependent art, and most signally so in its highest forms,
yet its true exercise implies (however much the term may have been
abused) a creative process. The conception of a character is determined
by antecedents not of the actor's own making; and the term originality
can be applied to it only in a relative sense. Study an