might be urged that the English play is surpassed by the French one--and
that is, as a _play. Bérénice_ is still acted with success; but _Antony
and Cleopatra_--? It is impossible to do justice to such a work on the
stage; it must be mutilated, rearranged, decocted, and in the end, at
the best, it will hardly do more than produce an impression of confused
splendour on an audience. It is the old difficulty of getting a quart
into a pint bottle. But _Bérénice is_ a pint--neither more nor less, and
fits its bottle to a nicety. To witness a performance of it is a rare
and exquisite pleasure; the impression is one of flawless beauty; one
comes away profoundly moved, and with a new vision of the capacities of
art.

Singleness of purpose is the dominating characteristic of the French
classical drama, and of Racine's in particular; and this singleness
shows itself not only in the action and its accessories, but in the
whole tone of the piece. Unity of tone is, in fact, a more important
element in a play than any other unity. To obtain it Racine and his
school avoided both the extreme contrasts and the displays of physical
action which the Elizabethans delighted in. The mixture of comedy and
tragedy was abhorrent to Racine, not because it was bad in itself, but
because it must have shattered the unity of his tone; and for the same
reason he preferred not to produce before the audience the most exciting
and disturbing circumstances of his plots, but to present them
indirectly, by means of description. Now it is clear that the great
danger lying before a dramatist who employs these methods is the danger
of dullness. Unity of tone is an excellent thing, but if the tone is a
tedious one, it is better to avoid it. Unfortunately Racine's successors
in Classical Tragedy did not realize this truth. They did not understand
the difficult art of keeping interest alive without variety of mood, and
consequently their works are now almost unreadable. The truth is that