drama
and melodrama. Irving's lack of physical and vocal resources prevented
him from scaling the heights of tragedy, and his Othello, Macbeth, and
Lear could not be ranked among his successes; but he was admirable in
such parts as Richard III., Shylock, Iago and Wolsey, while in
melodramatic parts, such as Louis XI. and the hero and villain of _The
Lyons Mail_, he was unsurpassed. Mephistopheles in a version of _Faust_
(1885), perhaps the greatest popular success of his career, added
nothing to his reputation for artistic intelligence; but on the other
hand his Becket in Tennyson's play of that name (1893) was one of his
most masterly efforts. His management of the Lyceum (1878-1899) did so
much to raise the status of the actor and to restore the prestige of
poetic drama, that the knighthood conferred upon him in 1895 was felt to
be no more than an appropriate recognition of his services. But his
managerial career had scarcely any significance for the living English
drama. He seldom experimented with a new play, and, of the few which he
did produce, only _The Cup_ and _Becket_ by Lord Tennyson have the
remotest chance of being remembered.

To trace the history of the new English drama, then, we must go back to
the Prince of Wales's theatre. Even while it seemed that French comedy
of the school of Scribe was resuming its baneful predominance, the seeds
of a new order of things were slowly germinating. _Diplomacy_, an
adaptation of Sardou's _Dora_, produced in 1878, brought together on the
Prince of Wales's stage Mr and Mrs Bancroft, Mr and Mrs Kendal, John
Clayton and Arthur Cecil--in other words, the future managers of the
Haymarket, the St James's and the Court theatres, which were destined to
see the first real stirrings of a literary revival. Mr and Mrs Kendal,
who, in conjunction with John Hare, managed the St James's theatre from
1879 to 1888, produced A. W. Pinero's first play of any consequence,
_The Money-Spinner_ (1881), and afterwards _The Squire_ (1882) and _The
Hobby Horse_ (1887). The Bancrofts, who, after entirely rebuilding the
Haymarket theatre, managed it from 1880 till their retirement in 1885,
produced in 1883 Pinero's _Lords and Commons_; and Messrs Clayton and
Cecil produced at the Court theatre between 1885 and 1887 his three
brilliant farces, _The Magistrate_, _The Schoolmistress_ and _Dandy
Dick_, which, with the sentimental comedy, _Sweet Lavender_, produced at
Terry's theatre in 1888, assured