agers as John Hare, George
Alexander, Beerbohm Tree and Charles Wyndham. Nor must it be forgotten
that, though the laws of literary property, internal and international,
remained far from perfect, it was found possible to print and publish
plays without incurring loss of stageright either at home or in America.
The playwrights of the present generation have accordingly a motive for
giving literary form and polish to their work which was quite
inoperative with their predecessors, whose productions were either kept
jealously in manuscript or printed only in miserable and totally
unreadable stage editions. It is no small stimulus to ambition to know
that even if a play prove to be in advance of the standards of taste or
thought among the public to which it is originally presented, it will
not perish utterly, but will, if it have any inherent vitality, continue
to live as literature.

Influence of foreign drama.

Having now summed up the economic conditions which made for progress,
let us glance at certain intellectual influences which tended in the
same direction. The establishment of the Theatre Libre in Paris, towards
the close of 1887, unquestionably marked the beginning of a period of
restless experiment throughout the theatrical world of Europe. A.
Antoine and his supporters were in open rebellion against the artificial
methods of Scribe and the Second Empire playwrights. Their effort was to
transfer to the stage the realism, the so-called "naturalism," which had
been dominant in French fiction since 1870 or earlier; and this
naturalism was doubtless, in its turn, the outcome of the scientific
movement of the century. New methods (or ideals) of observation, and new
views as to the history and destiny of the race, could not fail to
produce a profound effect upon art; and though the modern theatre is a
cumbrous contrivance, slow to adjust its orientation to the winds of the
spirit, even it at last began to revolve, like a rusty windmill, so as
to fill its sails in the main current of the intellectual atmosphere.
Within three or four years of its inception, Antoine's experiment had
been imitated in Germany, England and America. The "Freie Buhne" of
Berlin came into existence in 1889, the Independent Theatre of London in
1891. Similar enterprises were set on foot in Munich and other cities.
In America several less formal experiments of a like nature were
attempted, chiefly in Boston and New York. Nor must it be forgo