Excerpt from Mary, Queen of Tragedy: A Tragedy in Three Acts Plays are written either to be read in the study, or to be acted on the stage. In the former case the play is simply a poem written in a particular form - in my opinion a most unnatural and inconvenient form. These plays are, like all affectation, generally bad; some of them are beyond measure insufferable, inflicting on an ear accustomed to the music of real poetry the keenest torture. Plays written for the stage, on the other hand, labour under the disadvantage of requiring for their perfect elucidation what some one has very happily called the "living commentary of the actors." The following play belongs to the latter class. It will not appeal strongly, except to the reader who is sufficiently familiar with the stage to supply to some extent this commentary for himself as he proceeds. It is the same with the choruses. To realise their possible effect, it must be remembered that they are intended to be sung. It is the fault of all our modern drama that it does not use this most powerful of all effects, and that from opera alone are we able to realise the sublime heights to which the Greeks in their divinely beautiful choral poetry so often attained. And yet the popularity of some recent plays, in which music was introduced, appears to show that we are at least approaching a state of civilisation equal to that in which the Greek drama took its rise. It is my conviction that the production of such a play as this, inferior as it may be to the great masterpieces of the past, would reveal to the world that the general drift of popular fancy is not after all in the direction of decadence, and that the highest kind of dramatic art would now attract sufficient public support to permit of its revival. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.