oung American
man of letters, like his fellow in France, may feel that a literary
_debut_ is not truly made until his drama has been seen and heard, as
well as read. While scholars are raking over the past with a fine-tooth
comb, and publishing special editions of second and third-rate
dramatists of earlier times, it is a good thing that modern plays, whose
only demerit may be their contemporaneity, are receiving like honor, and
that the dramas of Pinero, Jones, Wilde, Shaw, Galsworthy, Synge, Yeats,
Lady Gregory, Zangwill, Dusany, Houghton, Hankin, Hamilton, Sowerby,
Gibson, acted British playwrights; and of Gillette, Thomas, Moody,
Mackaye, Peabody, Walter, Sheldon, Tarkington, Davis, Patterson,
Middleton, and Kennedy, acted American playwrights (two dozen to stand
for two score and more) can be had in print for the asking. It is good
testimony that we are really coming to have a living theater and not a
mere academic kow-towing to by-gone altars whose sacrificial smoke has
dimmed our eyes sometimes to the clear daylight of the Present.
Preparation for the use of the theater looks before and after. At home
and at school the training can be under way; much happy preliminary
reading and reflection introduce it. By making oneself aware of the best
that has been thought and said on the subject; by becoming conversant
with the history, theory and practice of the playhouse, consciously
including this as part of education; and, for good citizenship's sake,
by regarding sound theater entertainment as a need and therefore a right
of the people; in a word, by taking one's play-going with good sense,
trained taste and right feeling, a person finds himself becoming a
broader and better human being. He will be quicker in his sympathies,
more comprehensive in his outlook, and will react more satisfactorily to
life in general. All this may happen, although in turning to the
theater his primary purpose may be to seek amusement.

Is it a counsel of perfection to ask for this? Hardly, when so much has
already occurred pointing out the better way. The civilized theater has
begun to come; the prepotent influence of the audience is recognized.
Surely the gain made, and the imperfections that still exist, are
stimulants to that further bettering of conditions whose familiar name
is Progress.

In all considerations of the theater, it would be a good thing to allow
the unfortunate word "elevate" to drop from the vocabulary. It misleads
and