If the older plays, either tragedies or comedies, seem to us sometimes richer in detail than the more modern pieces, we shall do well to remember that these earlier dramas have profited by the accretions of business and of unexpected readings due to the unceasing endeavor of several generations of actors and of stage-managers.  The plays of Shakspere that are most frequently performed, the comedies of Moliere also, have accumulated a mass of traditions, of one kind or another, some of these being of hoary antiquity.  In ‘Hamlet,’ for example, in the graveyard scene, it was the habit of the Second Grave-digger to take off his coat before beginning his work, and then to proceed to divest himself of an indeterminate number of waistcoats, to the increasing disgust of the First Grave-digger.  Oddly enough, this same business is traditional in the ‘Precieuses Ridicules,’ the less important of the two comedians going through exactly the same mirth-provoking disrobing.  Probably the business was elaborated for some medieval farce long before Moliere was born, or Shakspere either.  Of late, it has been omitted from ‘Hamlet,’ but it is still religiously preserved in the performances of the ‘Precieuses’ by the Comedie-Francaise, the company of actors that Moliere founded.

Many another tradition is also cherished at the Francais, the origin of which is lost in the mists of antiquity.  In the ‘Malade Imaginaire,’ for example, Thomas Diafoirius is always provided with an absurdly high child’s chair, apparently the property of Louison; and in the ‘Avare,’ after the miser has blown out a candle twice and finally pocketed it, the custom is for his servant to sneak behind him and to light the candle once again as it sticks out of his coat.  Regnier, the cultivated and brilliant comedian (whose pupil M. Coquelin was in his ’prentice-days), published a text of Moliere’s most powerful play, which he called ‘Le Tartuffe des Comediens’ because he had recorded in it all this traditional business.  M. Coquelin has told me that he hopes to be able some day to edit other of Moliere’s masterpieces on this principle.  And it is greatly to be wisht that some stage-manager of scholarly tastes would provide us with a record of the customary effects to be obtained in the performance of most of Shakspere’s plays, as these have been accumulated in the theater itself.  Perhaps this book might be able to tell us why it is that tradition warrants the same rather trivial practical joke in the performance of the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ and in the performance of ’Romeo and Juliet,’—­the business of embarrassing a servant by repeated bows of mock courtesy and protracted farewell.