with the theatre to realise that the former's _Antony and Cleopatra_ is,
considered solely as a play, far inferior to the latter's dramatisation of
the same story, entitled _All for Love, or The World Well Lost_.
Shakespeare's play upon this subject follows closely the chronology of
Plutarch's narrative, and is merely dramatised history; but Dryden's play
is reconstructed with a more practical sense of economy and emphasis, and
deserves to be regarded as historical drama. _Cymbeline_ is, in many
passages, so greatly written that it is hard for the closet-student to
realise that it is a bad play, even when considered from the standpoint of
the Elizabethan theatre,--whereas _Othello_ and _Macbeth_, for instance,
are great plays, not only of their age but for all time. _King Lear_ is
probably a more sublime poem than _Othello_; and it is only by seeing the
two pieces performed equally well in the theatre that we can appreciate by
what a wide margin _Othello_ is the better play.

This practical point has been felt emphatically by the very greatest
dramatists; and this fact offers, of course, an explanation of the
otherwise inexplicable negligence of such authors as Shakespeare and
Molière in the matter of publishing their plays. These supreme playwrights
wanted people to see their pieces in the theatre rather than to read them
in the closet. In his own lifetime, Shakespeare, who was very scrupulous
about the publication of his sonnets and his narrative poems, printed a
carefully edited text of his plays only when he was forced, in
self-defense, to do so, by the prior appearance of corrupt and pirated
editions; and we owe our present knowledge of several of his dramas merely
to the business acumen of two actors who, seven years after his death,
conceived the practical idea that they might turn an easy penny by printing
and offering for sale the text of several popular plays which the public
had already seen performed. Sardou, who, like most French dramatists, began
by publishing his plays, carefully withheld from print the master-efforts