There is so little hint of a deeper meaning in either ’Love’s Labor’s Lost’ or the ‘Etourdi,’ of a moral, so to speak, of a message of ulterior significance, that, if Shakspere and Moliere had died after these plays were produced, nobody would ever have suspected that either youthful playwright had it in him to develop into a philosophic observer of the deeper realities of life.  Of course, neither of them was long satisfied with this dexterous display of technical adroitness alone; and, as they grew in years, we find their plays getting richer in meaning and dealing more seriously with the larger problems of existence.  But technic was never despised; and, if it was not always the chief end of the playwright, it remained the means whereby he was enabled to erect the solid framework of masterpieces like ‘Othello’ and ‘Tartuffe,’ in which the craftsmanship is overshadowed by the nobler qualities, no doubt, but in which the stark technical skill is really more abundant than in the earlier and emptier plays.

As Shakspere and Moliere matured mentally and morally, so also did they grow in facility of accomplishment, in the ease with which they could handle the ever-present problems of exposition and construction.  The student of dramaturgy notes with increasing delight the ingenuity with which the first appearance of Tartuffe is prepared; and he finds an almost equal joy in the bolder beginnings of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and of ‘Hamlet,’ where the difficulty was less, it may be, but where the interest of the craftsman in the excellence of his device is quite as obvious.  Shakspere was the greatest of dramatic poets and Moliere was the greatest of comic dramatists; and both of them were good workmen, taking an honest pride in the neatness with which they finished a job.  In his later years, Shakspere seems to have relaxed a little his interest in technic, and the value of his work is at once seen to suffer.  Altho his mind is as powerful as ever up to the last years of his stay in London, ‘Cymbeline’ and ‘A Winter’s Tale’ are far inferior to ‘Hamlet’ and to ‘Macbeth’; and the cause is apparently little more than a carelessness of technic, an unwillingness to take the trouble needful to master his material and to present it in due proportion.

If Shakspere and Moliere ever meet in that other world which was so much in the mind of the one and so little in the thought of the other, and if they chance to fall into chat—­Shakspere spoke French, pretty certainly, even if Moliere knew no English—­we may rest assured that they will not surprize each other by idle questions about the meaning of this play or that, its moral purpose or its symbolic significance.  We may be confident that their talk would turn promptly to technic; and, perhaps, Shakspere would congratulate Moliere on his advantage in coming later, when the half-open, semi-medieval playhouse, with which the English dramatist had perforce to be contented, had been superseded by a more modern theater, roofed and lighted and set with scenery.  And, in his turn, Moliere might be curious to inquire how the English playwright was able to produce upon the spectators the effect of a change of scene when, in fact, there was no actual scenery to change.