Clear distinctions between the genres, relatively unimportant in an historical study of the drama, are, or ought to be, of vital importance in a more absolute criticism. But though the term “tragedy” is loosely applied to some of the crudest as well as some of the greatest productions of the stage, and though for the last hundred and twenty-five years the term “melodrama” has been in current use, no critic has made more than a casual attempt properly to distinguish them. Indeed, such is the power of tradition that ill-formed and sensational productions of the Elizabethans or of the Restoration, because they were styled tragedies by their authors or contemporaries, continue to bear that proud title along with Lear and (Edipus tke King. It would seem obvious that a term so stretched as to include within its limits Hoffman and Hamlet, Lust's Dominion, Tke Revenge and Othello, will not serve for purposes of strict definition.