This effort to reproduce man in his moods is no mere trick of fancy carried into execution.  It is a part of the character of a strong nation, and has a wider bearing on national life than perhaps unthinking people are aware.  Mr. Froude, in his survey of early England, gives it a special place; and I venture to quote his words, for they carry with them, not only their own lesson, but the authority of a great name in historical research.

“No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power, unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes.  Noble conceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution which will launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, are indispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare’s plays were as much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered his road for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those of Copernicus.

“No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out of a nation of materialists; no great drama, except when the drama was the possession of the people.  Acting was the especial amusement of the English, from the palace to the village green.  It was the result and expression of their strong, tranquil possession of their lives, of their thorough power over themselves, and power over circumstances.  They were troubled with no subjective speculations; no social problems vexed them with which they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance of vigor and spirit, they were able, in the strict and literal sense of the word, to play with the materials of life.”  So says Mr. Froude.

In the face of this statement of fact set forth gravely in its place in the history of our land, what becomes of such bold assertions as are sometimes made regarding the place of the drama being but a poor one, since the efforts of the actor are but mimetic and ephemeral, that they pass away as a tale that is told?  All art is mimetic; and even life itself, the highest and last gift of God to His people, is fleeting.  Marble crumbles, and the very names of great cities become buried in the dust of ages.  Who then would dare to arrogate to any art an unchanging place in the scheme of the world’s development, or would condemn it because its efforts fade and pass?  Nay, more; has even the tale that is told no significance in after years?  Can such not stir, when it is worth the telling, the hearts of men, to whom it comes as an echo from the past?  Have not those tales remained most vital and most widely known which are told and told again and again, face to face and heart to heart, when the teller and the listener are adding, down the ages, strength to the current of a mighty thought or a mighty deed and its record?