his position as an original and fertile
dramatic humorist of no small literary power. It is to be noted,
however, that Pinero was almost the only original playwright represented
under the Bancroft, Hare-Kendal and Clayton-Cecil managements, which
relied for the rest upon adaptations and revivals. Adaptations of French
vaudevilles were the staple productions of Charles Wyndham's management
at the Criterion from its beginning in 1876 until 1893, when he first
produced an original play of any importance. When Herbert Beerbohm Tree
went into management at the Haymarket in 1887, he still relied largely
on plays of foreign origin. George Alexander's first managerial ventures
(Avenue theatre, 1890) were two adaptations from the French. Until well
on in the 'eighties, indeed, adaptation from the French was held the
normal occupation of the British playwright, and original composition a
mere episode. Robertson, Byron, Albery, Gilbert, Tom Taylor, Charles
Reade, Herman Merivale, G. W. Godfrey, all produced numerous
adaptations; Sydney Grundy was for twenty years occupied almost
exclusively in this class of work; Pinero himself has adapted more than
one French play. The 'eighties, then, may on the whole be regarded as
showing a very gradual decline in the predominance of France on the
English stage, and an equally slow revival of originality, so far as
comedy and drama were concerned, manifesting itself mainly in the plays
of Pinero.

The reaction against French influence, however, was no less apparent in
the domain of melodrama and operetta than in that of comedy and drama.
Until well on in the 'seventies, D'Ennery and his disciples, adapted and
imitated by Dion Boucicault and others, ruled the melodramatic stage.
The reaction asserted itself in two quarters--in the East End at the
Grecian theatre, and in the West End at the Princess's. In _The World_,
produced at Drury Lane in 1880, Paul Meritt (d. 1895) and Henry Pettitt
(d. 1893) brought to the West End the "Grecian" type of popular drama;
and at Drury Lane it survived in the elaborately spectacular form
imparted to it by Sir Augustus Harris, who managed that theatre from
1879 till his death in 1896. The production of G. R. Sims's _Lights o'
London_ at the Princess's in 1881, under Wilson Barrett's management,
also marked a new departure. This style of melodrama was chiefly
cultivated at the Adelphi theatre, from 1882 until the end of the
century, when it died out there as a r