So far as their outward appearance goes the great plays of Sophocles, of
Shakspere, and of Molière are closely akin to the plays of their
undistinguished contemporaries. It is in their content that they are
immeasurably superior. They differ in degree only, never in kind.
Shakspere early availed himself of the framework of the tragedy-of-blood
that Kyd had made popular; and later he borrowed from Beaumont and
Fletcher the flexible formula of the dramatic-romance. His genius
towered above theirs, but he was content to appropriate their patterns.
Molière modeled many of his earlier plays upon the loosely-knit
comedy-of-masks of the Italian comedians, and the difference between his
work and theirs is not external but internal; it is the difference
between adroitness and cleverness on their part, and supreme comic
genius on his. Probably it was this apparent similarity of Shakspere's
work and Molière's to the uninspired efforts of their competitors which
prevented their contemporaries from discovering their preëminence--the
preëminence which is so obvious to us now that the plays of their
fellow-craftsmen have fallen out of memory.

The blindness of the contemporary critic of Shakspere and of Molière,
inexplicable as it may appear nowadays, has its parallel in the
blindness of the contemporary critic in regard to 'Don Quixote' and 'Gil
Blas,' 'Robinson Crusoe' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He had not the
insight to see in these comparatively commonplace narratives the
essential truth of the enduring masterpiece. He was seeking an outward
and visible sign; he saw nothing unusual, abnormal, eccentric, in these
books, nothing novel, nothing that cried aloud for recognition; and so
he past by on the other side. These books seemed to him in nowise raised
above the common; they were to be enjoyed in some measure, but they
evoked no high commendation; and the contemporary critic never suspected