leaving her politics out of the question. For example, she wrote
bushels of plays. I confess I have not yet read any of them. The
truth is, this play grew out of the relations which inevitably
exist in the theatre between authors and actors. If the actors
have sometimes to use their skill as the author's puppets rather
than in full self-expression, the author has sometimes to use his
skill as the actors' tailor, fitting them with parts written to
display the virtuosity of the performer rather than to solve
problems of life, character, or history. Feats of this kind may
tickle an author's technical vanity; but he is bound on such
occasions to admit that the performer for whom he writes is "the
onlie begetter" of his work, which must be regarded critically as
an addition to the debt dramatic literature owes to the art of
acting and its exponents. Those who have seen Miss Gertrude
Kingston play the part of Catherine will have no difficulty in
believing that it was her talent rather than mine that brought
the play into existence. I once recommended Miss Kingston
professionally to play queens. Now in the modern drama there were
no queens for her to play; and as to the older literature of our
stage: did it not provoke the veteran actress in Sir Arthur
Pinero's Trelawny of the Wells to declare that, as parts, queens
are not worth a tinker's oath? Miss Kingston's comment on my
suggestion, though more elegantly worded, was to the same effect;
and it ended in my having to make good my advice by writing Great
Catherine. History provided no other queen capable of standing up
to our joint talents.

In composing such bravura pieces, the author limits himself only
by the range of the virtuoso, which by definition far transcends
the modesty of nature. If my Russians seem more Muscovite than