Homer's _Odyssey_ and Dante's _Inferno_. Signs have not
been wanting of public anxiety to acknowledge with generosity these
and other serious endeavours in poetic drama, whatever their precise
degree of excellence. But such premisses warrant no very large
conclusion. Two or three swallows do not make a summer. The literary
drama is only welcomed to the London stage at uncertain intervals;
most of its life is passed in the wilderness.

The recognition that is given in England to literary or poetic drama,
alike of the past and present, is chiefly notable for its
irregularity. The circumstance may be accounted for in various ways.
It is best explained by the fact that England is the only country in
Europe in which theatrical enterprise is wholly and exclusively
organised on a capitalist basis. No theatre in England is worked
to-day on any but the capitalist principle. Artistic aspiration may be
well alive in the theatrical profession, but the custom and
circumstance of capital, the calls of the counting-house, hamper the
theatrical artist's freedom of action. The methods imposed are
dictated too exclusively by the mercantile spirit.

Many illustrations could be given of the unceasing conflict which
capitalist methods wage with artistic methods. One is sufficient. The
commercially capitalised theatre is bound hand and foot to the system
of long runs. In no theatres of the first class outside London and New
York is the system known, and even here and in New York it is of
comparatively recent origin. But Londoners have grown so accustomed to
the system that they overlook the havoc which it works on the theatre
as a home of art. Both actor and playgoer suffer signal injury from
its effects. It limits the range of drama which is available at our
great theatres to the rank and file of mankind. Especially serious is
the danger to which the unchangeable programme exposes histrionic
capacity and histrionic intelligence. The actor is not encouraged to
widen his knowledge of the drama. His faculties are blunted by the
narrow monotony of his experience. Yet the capitalised conditions of
theatrical enterprise, which are in vogue in London and New York,
seem to render long runs imperative. The system of long runs is
peculiar to English-speaking countries, where alone theatrical
enterprise is altogether under the sway of capital. It is specifically
prohibited in the national or municipal theatre of every great foreign
city, where the i