CONTEMPORARY DRAMA
From 1865 to 1900 the American drama occupied a place of so little
artistic importance in American life that the literary historians
have ignored it. There is no word about it in the substantial volumes
by Richardson and Wendell, none in the ordinary run of textbooks,
not a mention of playwright, producer, actor, or stage even in the
four-hundred-odd pages of Pattee's "American Literature since 1870."
This silence cannot, of course, be accounted for by any conspiracy
among the historians; it must be acknowledged that in itself the period
had almost no dramatic significance. Quinn's collection of twenty-five
"Representative American Plays" includes only three produced between
these dates. The basic reason for this is that literary conditions did
not induce or encourage play-writing in the English-speaking world
on either side of the Atlantic. The greatest artistry was expressing
itself in poetry, and in America no major poet but Longfellow attempted
even "closet drama." The greatest genius in story-telling was let
loose in the channel of fiction, and many of the successful novels
were given a second incarnation in play form. The names that stand
out in stage history in these years are the names of controlling
managers, like Lester Wallack and Augustin Daly, or of players, like
Charlotte Cushman, Booth, Barrett, Jefferson, and Mansfield; and the
writers of plays--encouraged by stage demands rather than by literary
conditions--were the theatrical successors of Dunlap and Payne (see
pp. 94-96)--men like Dion Boucicault (1822?-1890) with his hundred
and twenty-four plays, and Bronson Howard (1842-1908) with his less
numerous but no more distinguished array of stage successes. Side
by side with these, and quite on a level with them, rose one eminent
critic of stagecraft and the drama, William Winter (1836-1917).
With the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, a new
generation of playwrights began to win recognition--men who knew
literature in its relation to the other arts and who wrote plays out of
the fullness of their experience and the depth of their convictions,
hoping to reach the public with their plays but not concerned chiefly
with immediate "box-office" returns. The movement started in England
and on the Continent and--as we can now see--in America as well, but
the traditional American neglect of American literature[38] led the
first alert critics on this side the Atlantic to lay all their emphasis
on writers of other nationalities. Thus in 1905 James Huneker's
"Iconoclasts" discussed Norwegian, French, German, Russian, Italian,
Belgian, and English dramatists. E. E. Hale's "Dramatists of To-day"
of the same year dealt with four from Huneker's list, substituted
one Frenchman, and added two Englishmen. This selection was quite
defensible, for the significant contemporary plays which reached the
stage came from these sources. But by 1910 the drift of things was
suggested by the contents of Walter Pritchard Eaton's "At the New
Theatre and Others." In this book, of twenty-three plays reviewed, ten
were by American authors, and in the third section, composed of essays
related to the theater, two of the chief units were discussions of
Clyde Fitch and William Winter. And the dedication of Eaton's book is
perhaps the single item of greatest historical significance, for it
gives due credit to Professor George P. Baker of Harvard as "Founder
in that institution of a pioneer course for the study of dramatic
composition" and as "inspiring leader in the movement for a better
appreciation among educated men of the art of the practical theater."
[38] See "American Neglect of American Literature" by Percy H.
Boynton. _Nation_ (1916), Vol. CII, pp. 478-480.
The field into which we are led is so broad and so near that in a brief
excursion we can undertake only a rough classification of the main
products and the soil in which they are growing. Such a classification
may be found if we consider in turn first the better play written for
a better theater, which began to appear about 1890, then the various
new types of theater which grew from the people's interest instead of
from managerial enterprise, and, finally, the literary drama in poetry
or prose which profits from the coöperation of actor and stage-manager,
but can survive in print unaided.
"The movement for a better appreciation among educated men of the art
of the practical theatre," although led by one college professor, was
itself a symptom of fresh developments in the art to which he addressed
himself. Omitting--but not ignoring--the rise of the modern school of
European dramatists in the 1890's, we must be content for the moment
to note that this decade brought into view in America several men who
were more than show-makers, even though they were honestly occupied in
making plays that the public would care to spend their money for. The
significant facts about these playwrights are that they gave over the
imitation and adaptation of French plays, returned to American dramatic
material, and achieved results that are readable as well as actable.
Their immediate forerunners were Steele MacKaye (1842-1894) and James
A. Herne (1840-1901)--the former devotedly active as a teacher of
budding players and as a student of stage technique, the latter the
quiet realist of "Shore Acres" and other less-known plays of simple
American life. Coming into their first prominence at this time were
Augustus Thomas (1859- ) and Clyde Fitch (1865-1909).
They both appeared as theatrical craftsmen of the new generation, and
like their prototypes in America, Dunlap and Payne (see pp. 96-98),
they wrote abundantly, for audiences rather than for readers, and
with definite actors and actresses in mind as they devised situations
and composed lines. Clyde Fitch in twenty years wrote and produced
on the stage thirty-three plays and adapted and staged twenty-three
more--an immense output. In the first ten years the most important
were all built on historical themes: "Beau Brummel," "Nathan Hale,"
and "Barbara Frietchie." It is easy to see and to say that in writing
these he was carrying on the tradition of Bronson Howard with his
Civil War melodramas,--a half truth, however, since "Beau Brummel" in
no way fits the generalization, and other plays of the decade were
on contemporary social life. In the second ten years the keynote was
struck with "The Climbers," a social satire on a shallow city woman
and her two daughters whose social ambition deadens them to any fine
impulses or natural emotions. In the long roster of Fitch's successes
a few constant traits are obvious. He built his stories well, set them
carefully, combined the resources of the playwright who knows how to
devise a "situation" with those of the stage-manager who knows how
to present it, and cast his stories into simple, rapid-fire, clever
dialogue. He took advantage of up-to-date material for the superficial
dress of his plays, introducing the background of latest allusion,
recently coined turns of phrase, the newest songs, the quips and turns
of fashion. And he went beneath the surface to the undercurrents
of human motive as in the wifely constancy in "The Stubbornness of
Geraldine," the jealousy of "The Girl with the Green Eyes," and the
weak mendacity of Becky in "The Truth." Fitch was never profound,
never sought to be; but he was deservedly popular, for he combined no
little skill with an alert sense of human values in everyday life,
and he brought an artistic conscience to his work. Because he was so
successful his influence on other dramatists has been far-reaching; and
those who have been neither too small nor too great to learn from him
have learned no little on how to write a play.
Mr. Augustus Thomas has lived in the atmosphere of the theater from
boyhood. He began writing plays at fourteen, was directing an
amateur company at seventeen, and had his first New York success
in his twenty-eighth year. Since 1887 he has been a professional
playwright; he has nearly fifty productions to his credit, and he is
now art director of the Charles Frohman interests. His first widely
known works were the plays of states: "Alabama" (1891), "In Mizzoura"
(1893), and "Arizona" (1899)--plays which exerted the same general
appeal as "Shenandoah" and "Barbara Frietchie." As a practical man of
the theater he adapted and worked over material, dramatizing novels of
Mrs. Burnett, Hopkinson Smith, and Townsend. His attractive "Oliver
Goldsmith" was built not only around the character of that whimsical
man of letters but included as its own best portion an act out of the
hero's play "The Good-Natured Man." With the kind of adaptability
which belongs equally to the practical man of the theater and to the
enterprising journalist, he undertook in time the type of play that
deals with questions or problems of modern interest. The same current
of speculation that led Mark Twain to write his essay on "Mental
Telepathy" and Hamlin Garland his book on "The Shadow World" accounts
for Thomas's "The Witching Hour" (1907), which interweaves the strands
of hereditary influence and mental suggestion; and he contributed his
word on the complex problems of the modern family in "As a Man Thinks"
(1911). Up to 1917 he had written and adapted forty-six plays, of which
eleven had been published after their production, but his work of real
distinction belongs to the period opening with "The Witching Hour." In
his later plays he has coupled his highly developed ability to tell a
story with a vital feeling for the positive values in life. In "The
Harvest Moon" he makes a playwright-character say, "I would willingly
give the rest of my life to go back and take from my plays every word
that has made men less happy, less hopeful, less kind." And in "The
Witching Hour" he declares through Jack Brookfield the text of that and
succeeding plays, "You're a child of _the everlasting God_ and nothing
on the earth or under it can harm you in the slightest degree"--a text
which, said of the soul, is immortally true.
In a short chapter it is impossible to discuss in detail any other of
the play-writers who have done with less applause but with no less
devotion the kind of writing represented by the best of Fitch and
Thomas; and it would be invidious to attempt a mere list of the others,
as if a mention of their names would be a sop to their pride. The case
must rest here with the statement that these two men were the leaders
of an increasing group and that the desire to compose more skillful
and more worthy plays was paralleled by a revival of respect for the
modern drama and the modern stage. This leads to the middle section
of our survey, and turns from the drama itself to the fifteen-year
struggle for possession of the American stage--the actual "boards" on
which the plays could be presented. It is as dramatic as any play,
this story of the conflict between intelligent idealism,--whether in
playwright, actor or theatergoer, and commercial greed,--and it is far
from concluded, though a happy dénouement seems to be in sight.
The first step has already been mentioned: the development of a student
attitude toward the contemporary play and its production. Professor
Baker at Harvard and Professor Matthews at Columbia were looked at by
some with wonder and by others with amused doubt when they began as
teachers to divide their attention between the ancient and the modern
stage. Yet as the study progressed their students became not only
intelligent theatergoers but constructive contributors, as critics and
creators, to the literature of the stage; and then in the natural order
of events the whole student body came to realize that the older drama
should be reduced to its proper place and restored to it; that it was
an interesting chapter in literary and social history because it was
not a closed chapter, but a preliminary to the events of the present.
At the same time modest but important beginnings were being made in
the education of the actor, and men like Franklin Sargent, President of
the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, opened the way to a professional
training for actors that would compare with the training demanded of
and by the singer, painter, or sculptor. These beginnings were full
of promise, but the promise was to be long held in abeyance by the
machinations of the theatrical syndicate.
This commercial trust is the heavy villain of the play, the charge
against it being that whereas the business management of the theater
was called into being in order to serve the drama, it managed so
effectively that by the winter of 1895-1896 it was strong enough to
demand that henceforth the drama support the business management.
The six men who were able to assume control handled their business
according to the approved methods of the trust, trying to get salable
goods and to multiply the output of what the public wanted, trying to
control all the salesmen (players) and all the distributing points
(playhouses) and to put out of business any player or local manager who
would not market their choice of goods at their schedule of dates and
prices. For nearly fifteen years the syndicate were as effective in
their field as the Standard Oil or United Shoe Machinery Companies were
in theirs. One actress, Mrs. Fiske, endured every sort of discomfort
and, no doubt, heavy losses for the privilege of playing what, when,
and where she pleased; but for a while she had her own way only to the
extent of appearing in theaters so cheap that they were beneath the
contempt of the monopoly. In the meanwhile, however, discontent spread,
a rival firm of managers erected rival theaters, and, conducting
their business on principles of more enlightened selfishness, in 1910
enlisted twelve hundred of the smaller revolting theaters with them and
forced the syndicate to share the field. Since that time the theaters
of America have been administered as well, perhaps, as the system
will allow; but it is a mistaken system that puts a fine art in the
market place and demands that it maintain itself because "business is
business."
The first really great attempt to ask anything less of the modern
drama in America, to demand no more of the play than is demanded
of the opera or the symphony, was the founding of the celebrated
and short-lived New Theater in New York (1909-1911). That it failed
within two years is not half so important as that it was founded, that
others on smaller scales have since been founded and have failed,
that municipal theaters have sprung up here and there and are being
supported according to various plans, that scores upon scores of little
theaters, neighborhood playhouses, and people's country theaters have
been founded, that producers like Winthrop Ames and Stuart Walker are
established in public favor, that the Drama League of America is a
genuine national organization, and that the printing of plays for a
reading public is many fold its proportions of twenty years ago. The
Napoleonic theatrical managers are still in the saddle in America, and
the commercial stage of the country is still managed from Broadway, but
the uncommercial stage is coming to be more considerable every season.
The leaven of popular intelligence is at work.
With developments of this sort taking place and gaining in momentum,
there is a growing attention to the printed literary drama and an
encouraging prospect for it in the theater. As far back as 1891, when
Clyde Fitch and Augustus Thomas were coming into their reputations,
Richard Hovey (1864-1900) published "The Quest of Merlin," the first
unit in his "Launcelot and Guenevere," which he described as a poem in
dramas. It was a splendidly conceived treatment of the conflict between
the claims of individual love and the intruding demands of the outer
world. In resorting to the Arthurian legends Hovey "was not primarily
interested in them," according to his friend and expounder, Bliss
Carman, "for their historic and picturesque value as poetic material,
great as that value undoubtedly is ... the problem he felt called upon
to deal with is a perennial one, old as the world, yet intensely
modern, and it appealed to him as a modern man.... The Arthurian cycle
provided Tennyson with the groundwork of a national epic; ... to
Richard Hovey it afforded a modern instance stripped of modern dress."
It was to have been completed in three parts, each containing a masque,
a tragedy, and a romantic drama; but only the first was completed--"The
Quest of Merlin" (1891), "The Marriage of Guenevere" (1891), and "The
Birth of Galahad" (1898). Shortly after finishing "Taliesin," the
masque for the second part, Hovey died.
Another and greater cycle of poetic dramas which was interrupted by a
premature death was a trilogy on the Promethean theme by William Vaughn
Moody (1869-1910). The theme is the unity of God and man and their
consequent mutual dependency. "The Fire-Bringer" (1904) presents man's
victory at the supreme cost of disunion from God through the defiant
theft of fire from heaven. "The Masque of Judgment" (1900) is a no
less fearful triumph of the Creator in dooming part of himself as he
overwhelms mankind. The final part, "The Death of Eve," was to have
achieved the final reconciliation, but it was left a fragment at the
poet's death in 1910 and so stands in the posthumous edition of his
works. It is significant in the literary history of the day that the
culminating product of both these young poets was an uncompleted poetic
play-cycle. Moody's connection with the stage, however, was closer
than Hovey's, for he wrote two prose plays which were successfully
produced--"The Great Divide" (1907) and "The Faith Healer" (1909).
In "The Great Divide," produced first under the title of "The Sabine
Woman," Moody wrote a dramatic story on a fundamental, and hence a
modern, aspect of life. The problem of the play is stated flippantly
yet truly by the heroine's sister-in-law:
Here on the one hand is the primitive, the barbaric woman, falling
in love with a romantic stranger, who, like some old Viking on a
harry, cuts her with his two-handed sword from the circle of her
kinsmen, and bears her away on his dragon ship toward the midnight
sun. Here on the other hand is the derived, the civilized woman, with
a civilized nervous system, observing that the creature eats bacon
with his bowie knife, knows not the manicure, has the conversation
of a preoccupied walrus, the instincts of a jealous caribou, and the
endearments of a dancing crab in the mating season.... Ruth is one of
those people who can't live in a state of divided feeling. She sits
staring at this cleavage in her life.... All I mean is that when she
married her man she married him for keeps. And he did the same by her.
The play was produced in Chicago, put on for a long run in New York
and on tour, and presented in London, and in 1917 was revived for a
successful run in New York again. "The Faith Healer," the idea for
which occurred to Moody in 1898, was completed ten years later, after
the success of the first play. The theme is not so close to common
experience as that of "The Great Divide," and perhaps because of this
as well as the subtler treatment it did not draw such audiences. Both
plays end on a high spiritual level, but the second failed to register
in the "box office" because the relief scenes are grim rather than
amusing and because there is no fleshly element in the love of the hero
and the heroine.
Percy MacKaye (1875- ) embodies the meeting of the older traditions--his
father was Steele MacKaye (see p. 439)--and the most recent development
in American drama, the rise of pageantry and the civic festival. As a
professional dramatist he has been prolific to the extent of some
twenty-five plays, pageants, and operas. His acted plays have varied in
range and subject from contemporary social satire to an interesting
succession of echoes from the literary past--plays like "The Canterbury
Pilgrims" (1903), "Jeanne D'Arc" (1906), and "Sappho and Phaon" (1907),
which he seems to have undertaken, in contrast to Hovey, for their
picturesque and poetic value alone. His special contribution, however,
has been to the movement for an uncommercialized civic and national
theater through the preparation of a number of community celebrations.
These include the Saint Gaudens Pageant at Cornish, New Hampshire
(1905), the Gloucester Pageant (1903), "Sanctuary, a Bird Masque"
(1913), "St. Louis, a Civic Masque" (1914), and "Caliban, a Community
Masque" (New York, 1916, and Boston, 1917). The fusing interest in a
common artistic undertaking has brought together whole cities in the
finest kind of democratic enthusiasm, and the effects have not been
merely temporary, for in a community such as St. Louis the permanent
benefits are still evident in the community chorus and in the beautiful
civic theater which is the annual scene of memorable productions
witnessed by scores of thousands of spectators.
Charles Rann Kennedy (1871- ), the last of the dramatists to be
considered here, is a man in whom a technical mastery of the play is
combined with a high degree of poetic fervor. He was born in Derby,
England, coming from a family which has been famed for classical
scholarship.[39] His own education was largely pursued outside of
the schools, and he is not a university man, but no element is more
important in his preparation for play-writing than his intimate
knowledge of the classical and, especially, the Greek drama. Between
the ages of thirteen and sixteen he was office boy, clerk, and
telegraph operator, but always imaginatively interested in the
technical aspects of his jobs. During his early twenties he was a
lecturer and writer, and it is a matter of literary as well as personal
moment that in 1898 he married Edith Wynne Matthison, widely known for
her work with Irving, with Tree, and at the New Theater and as the
creator of leading parts in her husband's plays. Since the beginning of
his authorship Mr. Kennedy has lived in the United States, of which he
is now a citizen.
[39] In the "Sketch Book" Washington Irving concludes "Rural Life
in England" with a poem by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, A.M., a
great-uncle of the dramatist.
His dramatic work has fallen into two groups: "The Terrible Meek" and
"The Necessary Evil"--Short Plays for Small Casts--and his Seven Plays
for Seven Players. As in the cases of Moody and Hovey already cited,
his plays are part of an inclusive program--a program which is the
more remarkable on account of the fact that it took definite shape in
the course of a single discussion with a group of literary friends--G.
B. Shaw, Gilbert Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc among them--before he
came to this country. As a result of this discussion he undertook to
write seven plays: each for five men and two women, each holding the
mien between a heightened and decorative romance and an objective and
unimaginative realism, each dealing with a separate great central theme
in life, each attempting a new or revived technical difficulty in play
construction, and each subjected to the most rigid conformity to the
dramatic unities, being written with no break in time sequence or shift
of scene.
The series includes (1) "The Winterfeast" (1906), of which the central
theme is "The Lie and Hate in Life which destroy"; (2) "The Servant
in the House" (1907), on "The Truth and Love in Life which preserve";
(3) "The Idol-Breaker" (1913), on "Freedom"; (4) "The Rib of the Man"
(1916), on "The New Woman already in the World, and the New Warrior
coming as fast as the European War will let him"; (5) "The Army with
Banners" (1917), on "The Coming of the Lord in Power and Glory and the
New World now culminating." Of these five, all but the fourth have been
produced, "The Rib of the Man" having been withheld temporarily because
of its nonmilitant theme and the resultant managerial timidity; and all
but the fifth have been published. The series will be completed with
"The Fool from the Hills," the central theme being "The Bread of Life,
or The Food Problem"; and the last will be "The Isle of the Blest," on
"The Consummation of Life in what Men call Death."
Plays written in such a progression are clearly approached in a spirit
of high seriousness and with little regard or any expectation of
immediate applause. But they are also written in a spirit of high
defiance, with deliberate consciousness of the methods employed, and
an inspired certainty that they will be heard at last. Adam--the
Idol-Breaker--has thrown down the definite challenge:
"I've told these people things before. Many times. Why, it was me, six
years ago, as called them here, and told them of the brotherhood of
man." [Cf. "The Servant in the House."]
"Well, didn't they listen to you, that time?" says Naomi.
"Ay, at first," replies Adam, "while I was new to them. Then they
turned again to idols; and twisted my plain meaning into tracts for
Sunday School. I up and spoke again, and told them of the lies and
hate they lived by. [Cf. "The Winterfeast."] Shewed them the death and
bitterness of it!--Well, they soon let me know about that. I preached
their own God's gospel to them, and brought Christ's Murder to their
blood-stained doors. [Cf. "The Terrible Meek."] They spat upon me.
I told them of the lusts as fed their brothels; [cf. "The Necessary
Evil"] and every red-eyed wolf among them said I lied. Even when they
didn't speak, I knew the meaning of their leering silence. This time,
it's freedom--the thing they're always bragging of; and as long as I am
in the world, they'll have it dinned into their heads, as freedom isn't
all a matter of flags and soldiers' pop-guns. It's something they've
got to sweat for. Don't you think they're going to get off easy, once I
see them stuck in front of me!
"Oh, I make them laugh, all right. They want to be amused. Lot of jaded
johnnies! Every one of them thinking I mean his next-door neighbor; and
I mean just him!"
In "The Winterfeast" there is no laughter; at most only a smile in
the first meeting of the two young lovers. It is a relentless tale
of Nemesis following on the path of hatred, set in Iceland of the
eleventh century, told in the tone and at times plainly in the manner
of Sophocles. All the others of the Seven Plays, however, are put in
the present day, with characters who are modern examples of perennial
types, with abundant "relief scenes" in confirmation of Adam's "I make
them laugh," and with an undertone of irony,--whimsical, derisive,
grave, or bitter, as the occasions demand. Of these "The Servant in the
House" has been the preëminent popular success because of its appeal to
the conventionally religious, who accepted its pervasive beneficence
and ignored its strictures on the church.
None of Mr. Kennedy's plays is more completely representative of his
spirit, his purpose, and his method than "The Rib of the Man." It is
located on an island in the Ægean, amid "the never-ending loveliness
of all good Greek things." It is dedicated to the New Woman, to whom
a recently unearthed altar inscribed "To the Mother of the Gods" has
given the authority of the ages. The persons of the play are morality
types, although intensely human. They are "David Fleming, an image of
God, the Man; Rosie Fleming, an help-meet for him, the Rib; Archie
Legge, a gentleman, a Beast of the Earth; Basil Martin, an aviator, a
Fowl of the Air; Peter Prout, a scientist, the Subtle One; Ion, the
gardener, the Voice Warning; and Diana Brand, a spare rib, the Flaming
Sword." And finally, the play is written "with an inner and an outer
meaning, symbolical, instinct with paradox and irony, leading deeply
unto truth."
Only one of Mr. Kennedy's plays has achieved a popular triumph, and
the success of that one was due to its limited and somewhat perverted
interpretation. They all, however, repay study and disclose new depths
with each re-reading. Serious art rarely makes quick conquests.
Audiences of spirit and intellect will develop for them as they have
for the plays of Ibsen and Maeterlinck. The new audience, the new
theater, and the new drama--old as the oldest literature--in due time
will come to their own again.
BOOK LIST
=_Plays by Individual Men_=
CLYDE FITCH. The Plays of Clyde Fitch, Memorial Edition, edited by M.
J. Moses and Virginia Gerson, 1915.
RICHARD HOVEY. Plays, uniform edition, 1907-1908.
CHARLES RANN KENNEDY. The plays have been published in succession by
Harper's.
PERCY MACKAYE. Poems and Plays. 1916. 2 vols.
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY. Poems and Plays. 1912. 2 vols.
AUGUSTUS THOMAS. Arizona, Alabama. Dramatic Publishing Co. As a Man
Thinks. Duffield. The Witching Hour, Oliver Goldsmith, The Harvest
Moon, In Mizzoura, Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots, The Other Girl, The
Capitol, and The Earl of Pawtucket. Samuel French.
=Collections=
DICKINSON, THOMAS H. Chief Contemporary Dramatists. Boston,
1915. (Contains four American plays.)
MOSES, MONTROSE J. Representative Plays by American Dramatists.
3 vols. Vol. I, 1918 (contains ten plays, 1759-1824); Vols. II
and III announced.
PIERCE, JOHN ALEXANDER. The Masterpieces of Modern Drama.
Abridged in Narrative with Dialogue of the Great Scenes.
Preface with a critical essay by Brander Matthews. (Vol. II
contains selections from twelve American plays.)
QUINN, A. H. Representative American Plays. 1917. Twenty-five
plays, 1769-1911.
=Criticism=
ANDREWS, CHARLTON. The Drama To-day. 1913.
BURTON, RICHARD. The New American Drama. 1913.
CHENEY, SHELDON. The New Movement in the Theatre. 1914.
CLARK, BARRETT H. The British and American Drama of To-day. 1915.
DICKINSON, THOMAS H. The Case of American Drama. 1915.
EATON, W. P. The American Stage of To-day. 1908.
EATON, W. P. At the New Theatre and Others. 1910.
HAPGOOD, NORMAN. The Stage in America, 1897-1900. 1901.
HENDERSON, ARCHIBALD. The Changing Drama. 1914.
MACKAYE, PERCY. The Playhouse and the Play. 1909.
MACKAYE, PERCY. The Civic Theatre. 1912.
MATTHEWS, BRANDER. Inquiries and Opinions. 1907.
MATTHEWS, BRANDER. The Historical Novel and Other Essays. 1901.
MOSES, M. J. The American Dramatist. 1911.
RUHL, ARTHUR. Second Nights. 1914.
=_Magazine Articles_=
The magazine articles on the drama cited in the "Reader's Guide" are
extremely numerous. From among those since 1900 the following are of
special interest:
1900-1904. Development of the drama. B. Matthews. _Nation_, Vol.
LXXVII, pp. 346-347. Oct. 29, 1903.
Poetry and the stage. H. W. Boynton. _Atlantic_, Vol. XCII,
pp. 120-126. July, 1903.
Theater and the critics. _Nation_, Vol. LXXIII, p. 106.
August 8. _Outlook_, Vol. LXIX, pp. 528-529. Nov. 2,
1901.
Future of drama. B. Matthews. _Bookman_, Vol. XVII, pp.
31-36. March, 1903.
Makers of the drama of to-day. B. Matthews. _Atlantic_,
Vol. XCI, pp. 504-512. April, 1903.
1905-1909. Literature and the modern drama. H. A. Jones.
_Atlantic_, Vol. XCVIII, pp. 796-807. December, 1906.
Playwright and the playgoers. B. Matthews. _Atlantic_,
Vol. CII, pp. 421-426. September, 1908.
Elevation of the stage. _Atlantic_, Vol. XCIX, pp.
721-723. May, 1907.
New theatre. M. Merington. _Bookman_, Vol. XXVII, pp.
561-566. August, 1908.
Theatrical conditions. _Nation_, Vol. LXXXIV, pp. 182-183.
Feb. 21, 1907.
1910-1914. What is wrong with the American drama? C. Hamilton.
_Bookman_, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 314-319. May, 1914.
Exotic plays. _Nation_, Vol. XCIV, pp. 142-143. Feb. 8,
1912.
1915. Decay of respectability. F. Hackett. _New Republic_, Vol.
II, p. 51. Feb. 13, 1915.
Work of the Drama League of America. R. Burton. _Nation_,
Vol. XCIX, pp. 668-669. Dec. 3, 1914.
1916. Realism of the American stage. H. de W. Fuller.
_Nation_, Vol. CII, pp. 307-310. March 16, 1916.
The Public and the theater. C. Hamilton. _Bookman_, Vol.
XLIV, pp. 252-257. November, 1916.
The Public and the theater. Reply to Mr. Hamilton. G. R.
Robinson. _Bookman_, Vol. XLIV, p. 401. December, 1916.
1917. Belasco and the independent theater. C. Hamilton.
_Bookman_, Vol. XLV, pp. 8-12. March, 1917.
East and West on the stage. _Nation_, Vol. CIV, p. 321.
March 15, 1917.