t-run" plan, similar to that of the
Vedrenne-Barker management. The Manchester enterprise was to some extent
subsidized by Miss E. Horniman, and may therefore claim to be the first
endowed theatre in England. The need for endowment on a much larger
scale was, however, strongly advocated in the early years of the 20th
century by the more progressive supporters of English drama, and in 1908
found a place in the scheme for a Shakespeare National theatre, which
was then superimposed on the earlier proposal for a memorial
commemorating the Shakespeare tercentenary, organized by an influential
committee under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor of London. The scheme
involved the raising of L500,000, half to be devoted to the requisite
site and building, while the remainder would be invested so as to
furnish an annual subvention.

It remains to say a few words of the English literary drama, as opposed
to the acted drama. The two classes are not nearly so distinct as they
once were; but plays continue to be produced from time to time which are
wholly unfitted for the theatre, and others which, though they may be
experimentally placed on the stage, make their appeal rather to the
reading public. Tennyson had essayed in his old age an art which is
scarcely to be mastered after the energy of youth has passed. He
continued to the last to occupy himself more or less with drama, and all
his plays, except _Harold_, found their way to the stage. _The Cup_ and
_Becket_, as we have seen, met with a certain success, but _The Promise
of May_ (1882), an essay in contemporary drama, was a disastrous
failure, while _The Falcon_ (1879) and _The Foresters_ (acted by an
American company in 1893) made little impression. Lord Tennyson was
certainly not lacking in dramatic faculty, but he worked in an outworn
form which he had no longer the strength to renovate. Swinburne
continued now and then to cast his creations in the dramatic mould, but
it cannot be said that his dramas attained either the vitality or the
popularity of his lyrical poems. _Mary Stuart_ (1881) brought his Marian
trilogy to a close. In _Locrine_ he produced a tragedy in heroic
couplets--a thing probably unattempted since the age of Dryden. _The
Sisters_ is a tragedy of modern date with a medieval drama inserted by
way of interlude. _Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards_ (1899), perhaps
approached more nearly than any of his former works to the concentration
essential to drama. It may