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66 no more than a broad stage, where, when the subject demanded, the audience might see a wide space with several buildings at a time—the peristyle of a palace, the entrance to a temple—different places where the audience might observe every event of the action; while one section should be hidden for the use of the actors. Such was, or might well have been, the stage on which The Eumenides of Æschylus was performed. Shall we ever have anything of the sort on our stage? ''There we can never show more than one action, while in nature there are many simultaneous actions, which, if performed at the same time, would intensify the whole, and- produce a truly terrible and wondrous effect. …'' We are waiting for the genius who will combine pantomime with dialogue, mingling dumb-shows with spoken scenes, and render effective the combination; above all, the approach, terrible or comic, to such simultaneous scenes."

Diderot's happy inspiration found a passionate echo in- the Shakespearians of the Sturm und Drang-periode: Gerstenberg, Herder, and the adolescent Goethe.

Louis-Sébastien Mercier, an original man,