The eighteenth century is often regarded as a sterile period in the
history of theatre. How can its accomplishment compare, for instance,
with Shakespeare's stage, with that of Lope de Vega, with the theatre
of Molière? Obviously, it does not approach the greatness of any of
these. Yet in its own way it was an exceedingly interesting and fertile
period. It was a time of seeding rather than of harvest, a begetting
rather than a consummation. It was a period of great ideas, great
contradictions, great conflicts, and some few great emergences. The-
atre to some measure reflected all of these, and if there was no really
great theatre in the eighteenth century, it was simply that the climate
for it did not exist.

France found tinsel in the tradition of the Roi Soleil; England
learned to curb the incompetence of monarchy with parliamentary
powers; Germany and Italy struggled for a recognizable national
identity; Russia made her first tentative contacts with the Western
world; and Spain had long since passed her glory. These were, as
Thomas Paine observed in 1776, "the times that try men's souls."

The application of this phrase is wider than Paine believed, for
in addition to political ferment, there was a like ferment in theology,
in philosophy, in sociology, in aesthetics. This was the age of Lessing,
Kant, Rousseau, Voltaire--pathmakers all. On the Continent, more

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