ith as an appreciable
and welcome part of contemporary letters. In the United States, so far,
the showing is slighter and less impressive. Yet it is within the facts
to say that the native play-making has waxed more serious-minded and
skillful (this especially in the last few years) and so has become a
definite adjunct to the general movement toward the reinvestiture of
drama.

In the prose drama which attempts honestly to reproduce American social
conditions, elder men like Howard and Herne, and later ones like Thomas,
Gillette and Clyde Fitch, have done worthy pioneer work. Among many
younger playwrights who are fast pressing to the front, Eugene Walter,
who in _The Easiest Way_ wrote one of the best realistic plays of the
day, Edward Sheldon, with a dozen interesting dramas to his credit,
notably _The Nigger_ and _Romance_; and William Vaughan Moody, whose
material in both _The Great Divide_ and _The Faith Healer_ is
healthfully American and truthful, although the handling is romantic and
that of the poet, deserve first mention.

Women are increasingly prominent in this recent activity and in such
hands as those of Rachel Crothers, Ann Flexner, Marguerite Merrington,
Margaret Mayo and Eleanor Gates our social life is likely to be
exploited in a way to hint at its problems, and truthfully and amusingly
set forth its types.

Moody, though he wrote his stage plays in prose, was essentially the
poet in viewpoint and imagination. A poet too, despite the fact that
more than half his work is in prose, is Percy Mackaye, the son of a
distinguished earlier playwright and theater reformer, author of _Hazel
Kirke_ and _Paul Kauvar_. Mr. Mackaye's prose comedy _Mater_, high
comedy in the best sense, and his satiric burlesque, _Anti-Matrimony_,
together with the thoughtful drama _Tomorrow_, which seeks to
incorporate the new conception of eugenics in a vital story of the day,
are good examples of one aspect of his work; and _Jeanne d'Arc_, _Sapho_
and _Phaon_, verse plays, and the romantic spectacle play, _A Thousand
Years Ago_, illustrate his poetic endeavor. Taking a hint from a short
story by Hawthorne, he has written in _The Scarecrow_ one of the
strongest and noblest serious dramas yet wrought by an American. He has
also done much for the pageant and outdoor masque, as his _The
Canterbury Pilgrims_, _Sanctuary_ and _St. Louis, A Civic Masque_,
presented in May of 1914 on an heroic scale in that city, testify. A
poet, whet