its work, exactly as it has done in the past, and probably with more
rapidity.

The question has been discussed as to whether we are ever likely to
produce an Ibsen or a Shaw, and under what conditions he would be
received. As far as concerns what may happen in the future in the way
of producing absolutely great dramatists and great plays, using the
word 'great' in the international and historical sense, the opinion of
anyone on that subject is mere guesswork and absolutely valueless.

The greatest drama in history was produced by Greece about four or
five centuries before Christ, and for a few generations afterward.
Since Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Greece has scarcely given us
anything. Aristophanes and Menander are of course remembered, but the
writers who endeavoured to follow in the footsteps of the masters
were of far inferior merit. The Roman Empire existed for nearly two
thousand years without producing any drama of its own worthy of
the name. The Romans were not a dramatic people. The works of the
so-called Latin dramatists, such as those of Plautus and Terence, were
mere imitations of the Greek.

France and England had sudden bursts of greatness followed by general
mediocrity, with occasional great writers whose advent could not
possibly have been predicted by anything in art preceding them. Even
the exception to this in France, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, was apparently a flash of light that disappeared almost as
suddenly as it came. What is the use of posing as a prophet with such
a record of the past? Anyone else is at liberty to do so. I would
as soon act as harlequin. Was there any wise man in England who,
twenty-four hours before that momentous event in April, 1564, could