Turning to Berenice, we find a curious contrast.  The whole tragedy takes place in a small antechamber; the action lasts hardly longer than its actual performance—­about two hours and a half; and the characters are three in number.  As for the plot, it is contained in the following six words of Suetonius:  ’Titus reginam Berenicem dimissit invitus invitam.’  It seems extraordinary that with such materials Racine should have ventured to set out to write a tragedy:  it is more extraordinary still that he succeeded.  The interest of the play never ceases for a moment; the simple situation is exposed, developed, and closed with all the refinements of art; nothing is omitted that is essential, nothing that is unessential is introduced.  Racine has studiously avoided anything approaching violent action or contrast or complexity; he has relied entirely for his effect upon his treatment of a few intimate human feelings interacting among themselves.  The strain and press of the outer world—­that outer world which plays so great a part in Shakespeare’s masterpiece—­is almost banished from his drama—­almost, but not quite.  With wonderful art Racine manages to suggest that, behind the quiet personal crisis in the retired little room, the strain and the pressure of outside things do exist.  For this is the force that separates the lovers—­the cruel claims of government and the state.  When, at the critical moment, Titus is at last obliged to make the fatal choice, one word, as he hesitates, seems to dominate and convince his soul:  it is the word ‘Rome’.  Into this single syllable Racine has distilled his own poignant version of the long-resounding elaborations of Antony and Cleopatra.

It would, no doubt, be absurd to claim for Racine’s tragedy a place as high as Shakespeare’s.  But this fact should not blind us to the extraordinary merits which it does possess.  In one respect, indeed, it might be urged that the English play is surpassed by the French one—­and that is, as a play.  Berenice is still acted with success; but Antony and Cleopatra—?  It is impossible to do justice to such a work on the stage; it must be mutilated, rearranged, decocted, and in the end, at the best, it will hardly do more than produce an impression of confused splendour on an audience.  It is the old difficulty of getting a quart into a pint bottle.  But Berenice is a pint—­neither more nor less, and fits its bottle to a nicety.  To witness a performance of it is a rare and exquisite pleasure; the impression is one of flawless beauty; one comes away profoundly moved, and with a new vision of the capacities of art.