high comedy, and in The Rainbow (1912), a play of sentiment, shows a remarkable gift for writing dialogue characterized by brilliant wit and easy conversational flow. RACHEL CROTHERS, one of the few successful women dramatists, has won deserved recognition, especially by the plays in which she deals with women's responsibilities and rights in modern society, such as The Three of Us (1906), A Man's World (1910), He and She (1911), renamed The Herfords, and Ourselves (1913).

During the last few years a new movement of much interest and significance has been spreading in the world of drama in America, the counterpart of an earlier movement in France, Russia, Germany, and Great Britain. In general it is a revolt from the commercialization of the drama, and a struggle for more freedom and art in the composing and production of plays. In one aspect it is the protest of the amateur against the professional, of the lover of art against the exploiter of art. Because of the expense of running large theatres, with the inevitable tendency toward a commercial point of view in the selection and staging of plays, the new movement has resulted in the opening of so-called "Little Theatres" in several cities. The actors and playwrights are for the same reason often amateurs. The plays are usually simple productions, in one act, easily allowing a high degree of compression and unity and not overtaxing the abilities of the writers and performers. In staging, the new movement insists upon simplicity and artistic sincerity, aiming at a com plete harmony between the play, the acting, and the setting. Whether the new theatre will succeed in get

ting upon a sound financial basis without itself incurring the dangers of commercialism and professionalism, remains to be seen; but the widespread interest in the new plays in university communities and other cultivated centres is at least a good omen.

The plays thus far produced in this country are by no means equal to the best of those called forth by the same movement abroad, such as the plays by Synge and Dunsany. But some of them have considerable merit either for acting or for reading. Suppressed Desires, by GEORGE C. Cook (1873- ) and SUSAN GLASPELL (Mrs. Cook) (1882- ), in The Provincetown Plays, Second Series (1916), is a delightful satire on recent fads in psychoanalysis. Simple but intense pictures of human passion may be found in The Clod, by LEWIS BEACH, published in Washington Square Plays (1916); in Trifles (1916), by SUSAN GLASPELL; and in Confessional (1916), by PERCIVAL WILDE (1887- ).

Even this brief discussion of the modern American drama would not be complete without a reference to masques and pageants, the best of which combine historical or allegorical significance with spectacular magnificence and poetic beauty. PERCY MACKAYE is a leader in this form of dramatic production; he has written seven masques, including Sanctuary, a Bird Masque (1913), first given in New Hampshire in honor of President and Mrs. Wilson, and since repeated before some two hundred thousand spectators in various parts of the South and West; Saint Louis, a Civic Masque (1914), on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the city of St. Louis; and Caliban, a Community Masque (1916),

given in New York City as a part of the celebration of the Shakspere centenary.

The widespread and growing interest in the drama as a form of art is one of the most significant elements in the artistic life of the country. It has its roots in the new scientific and humanitarian view of life, with its sense of liberation from old shackles and its realization of the profound mysteries in the human spirit. There has recently been enacted upon the stage of the world the Great Tragedy of the most awful war in history. When this has thoroughly done its purgation of the human soul through pity and terror, and the world enters upon a new and better age, it may enter also into a period of great drama, some portion of which will perhaps be written in the United States of America.

This imperfect record of three centuries of literature in America may profitably conclude with a backward glance over the entire tract which has been traversed, and with a forecast, necessarily tentative and vague, of that which lies yet unrevealed. Upon a broad survey, three stages in the historical development of American literature become manifest. The first stage, lasting some two hundred years, was that of crude or feeble Imitation of English Models. The writings usually had little artistic merit, and the intrinsic interest of the subject-matter grew less rather than greater as the years went on; there was, however, a fairly steady improvement in clearness and ease of style. The second stage, extending through about two-thirds of the nine

teenth century, was preëminently that of English Culture in American Soil. Barren imitation gave place to absorption and free reproduction. Distinctively American elements, in style, subject, and point of view, also became a larger part of the whole. But English literary traditions, often those of the eighteenth century, underlay most of the best American literature of the period. Continental culture also exerted a strong influence, the deepest impress being made by the poetry and philosophy of Germany. The third stage, not yet completed, is one of Transition, Experiment, and a New Spirit, a spirit more independent, more bold, sometimes more rash and crude, reaching out, often blindly, after new sources of power and new methods of expressing the life of the Present in America. What will be the final issue remains to be seen. The best literature yet produced in the New World is that which was dominated by the culture of the Old World. But the prophecy may be hazarded that if America ever achieves supreme excellence in any form of art, it will be by giving freest and fullest expression to her own life. This is not saying that the great American poet will write in an obscure dialect, and the great American novelist confine his studies to pork-packers, miningcamps, and ignorant mountaineers. The truest Americanism, instead of being limited to what is peculiar to America, includes the entire life of the American people, what they have in common with England, Europe, and the world, as well as what they have alone. Americanism of this sort may be made the basis of a great literature; and such a literature would be appreciably different from that of any other country, for

physical conditions, political institutions, and the mingling of many powerful and talented races are combining to produce in North America a new type of man. An American literature which, while courageously welcoming all good influences from abroad, at the core remains true, in form and spirit, to the life of the Great Republic may yet become one of the sublime literatures of the world.