meant, I think that his sentence is an epitome of the history of our
stage; and it struck me at once that I could not select anything more
appropriate--I will not say as a text, for that sounds as if I were
going to deliver a sermon--but as the _motif_, or theme of the remarks
I am about to address to you. The four actors of whom I shall attempt
to tell, you something--Burbage, Betterton, Garrick, and Kean--were
the _four_ greatest champions, in their respective times, on the stage
of Nature in contradistinction to Artificiality.

When we consider the original of the Drama, or perhaps I should say
of the higher class of Drama, we see that the style of acting must
necessarily have been artificial rather than natural. Take the Greek
Tragedy, for instance: the actors, as you know, wore masks, and had to
speak, or rather intone, in a theatre more than half open to the air,
and therefore it was impossible they could employ facial expression,
or much variety of intonation. We have not time now to trace at length
the many vicissitudes in the career of the Drama, but I may say that
Shakespeare was the first dramatist who dared to rob Tragedy of her
stilts; and who successfully introduced an element of comedy which
was not dragged in by the neck and heels, but which naturally evolved
itself from the treatment of the tragic story, and did not violate the
consistency of any character.

It was not only with regard to the _writing_ of his plays
that Shakespeare sought to fight the battle of Nature against
Artificiality. However naturally he might write, the affected or
monotonous _delivery_ of his verse by the actors would neutralize all
his efforts. The old rhyming ten-syllable lines could not but lead to
a monotonous style of elocution, nor was the early blank verse much
improvement in this respect; but Shakespeare fitted his blank verse to