a faith in democracy
and an aspiration to see established on the earth a social condition
which will make democracy a fact, not merely a convenient political
catch-word.

Some authors, in their obsession with truth on the stage, have too much
neglected the fundamental demands of the theater and so sacrificed the
crisp crescendo treatment of crisis in climax as to indulge in a tame,
undramatic and bafflingly subtle manipulation of the story; a remark
applicable, for example, to a writer like Granville Barker.

But the growth and gains in both countries, with America modestly
second, are encouraging. In these modern hands the play has been
simplified, deepened, made more truthful, more sympathetic; and is now
being given the expressional form that means literature. The bad, the
cheap, the flimsy are still being produced, of course, in plenty; so has
it always been, so ever will be. But the drama that is worthy, skillful,
refreshing in these different kinds--farce, comedy light, polite, or
satiric; broad comedy or high, melodrama, tragedy, romance and
morality--is now offered, steadily, generously, and it depends upon the
theater-goer who has trained himself to know, to reject and accept
rightly, to appreciate and so make secure the life of all drama that is
worth preservation.

* * * * *

This survey of the English theater and the drama which has been produced
in it from the beginning--a survey the brevity of which will not
detract, it may be hoped, from its clearness, may serve to place our
play-goer in a position the better to appreciate the present conditions;
and to give him more respect for a form of literature which he turns to
to-day for intelligent recreation, deeming it a helpfully stimulating
form of art. From this vantage-point, he may now approach a
consideration of the drama as an artistic problem. He will be readier
than before, perhaps, to realize that the playwright, with this history
behind him, is the creature of a long and important development, in a
double sense: in his treatment of life, and in the manner of that
treatment.

Naturally, the theater-goer will not stop with the English product. The
necessity alone of understanding Ibsen, as the main figure in this
complex modern movement, will lead him to a study of the author of _A
Doll's House_. And, working from center to circumference, he will with
ever increasing stimulation and delight become familiar with many