her in lyric or dramatic expression, is Josephine Preston
Peabody. Her lovely reshaping of the familiar legend known best in the
hands of Browning, _The Piper_, took the prize at the Stratford on Avon
spring Shakespeare festival some years ago, and has been successful
since both in England and America. Her other dramatic writing has not as
yet met so well the stage demands, but is conspicuous for charm and
ideality.

In the imaginative field of romance, poetry and allegory we may also
place the Americanized Englishman, Charles Rann Kennedy, who has put the
touch of the poet and prophet upon homely modern material. His beautiful
morality play, _The Servant in the House_, secured his reputation and
later plays from _The Winter Feast_ to _The Idol Breaker_, inclusive of
several shorter pieces, the one act form being definitely practiced by
this author, have been interesting work, skillful of technic and
surcharged with social sympathy and significance. Edward Knoblauch, the
author of _The Faun_, of _Milestones_ in collaboration with Mr. Bennett,
and of the fantastic oriental divertissement, _Kismet_; and Austin
Strong, who wrote _The Toymaker of Nuremberg_, are among the younger
dramatists from whom much may yet be expected.

In this enumeration, all too scant to do justice to newer drama in the
United States, especially in the field of realistic satire and humorous
perception of the large-scaled clashes of our social life, it must be
understood that I perforce omit to mention fully two score able and
earnest young workers who are showing a most creditable desire to depict
American conditions and have learned, or are rapidly learning, the use
of their stage tools. The purpose here is to name enough of personal
accomplishment to buttress the claim that a promising school has arisen
on the native soil with aims and methods similar to those abroad.

And all this work, English or American, shows certain ear-marks to bind
it together and declare it of our day in comparison with the past. What
are these distinctive features?

On the side of technic, a greater and greater insistence on telling the
story dramatically, with more of truth, to the exclusion of all that is
non-dramatic, although preserved in the conventions of the theater for
perhaps centuries; the elimination of subplot and of subsidiary
characters which were of old deemed necessary for purposes of
exposition; the avoidance of the prologue and such ancient and use