elementary distinction as that between verse and prose was in this case
inaudible to cultivated ears, how much harder must it be for the average
audience to distinguish between a good phrase and a bad! The fact is that
literary style is, for the most part, wasted on an audience. The average
auditor is moved mainly by the emotional content of a sentence spoken on
the stage, and pays very little attention to the form of words in which the
meaning is set forth. At Hamlet's line, "Absent thee from felicity a
while"--which Matthew Arnold, with impeccable taste, selected as one of his
touchstones of literary style--the thing that really moves the audience in
the theatre is not the perfectness of the phrase but the pathos of Hamlet's
plea for his best friend to outlive him and explain his motives to a world
grown harsh.

That the content rather than the literary turn of dialogue is the thing
that counts most in the theatre will be felt emphatically if we compare
the mere writing of Molière with that of his successor and imitator,
Regnard. Molière is certainly a great writer, in the sense that he
expresses clearly and precisely the thing he has to say; his verse, as well
as his prose, is admirably lucid and eminently speakable. But assuredly, in
the sense in which the word is generally used, Molière is not a poet; and
it may fairly be said that, in the usual connotation of the term, he has no
style. Regnard, on the other hand, is more nearly a poet, and, from the
standpoint of style, writes vastly better verse. He has a lilting fluency
that flowers every now and then into a phrase of golden melody. Yet Molière
is so immeasurably his superior as a playwright that most critics
instinctively set Regnard far below him even as a writer. There can be no
question that M. Rostand writes better verse than Emile Augier; but there
can be no question, also, that Augier is the greater dramatist. Oscar Wilde
probably wrote more clever and witty lines than any other author in the
whole history of English comedy; but no one would think of setting him in