SIXTEEN PLAYS FROM THE RECENT
DRAMA OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA

SELECTED AND EDITED BY

erbert

THOMAS H. DICKINSON

EDITOR "CHIEF CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS"

AND

JACK R. CRAWFORD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN YALE UNIVERSITY

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THOMAS H. DICKINSON AND JACK R. CRAWFORD

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

All rights on plays reprinted in this volume are reserved by the authorized
publishers, either in their own right or as agents for the authors represented

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

THIS book contains sixteen plays from the contemporary drama of England and the United States. The period covered is from the year 1900 through 1923, comprehending approximately a quarter of a century of dramatic development. The publication of a group of plays in such a volume as this presents the reader with a chronological sequence of typical plays, thus offering a bird's-eye view of the period covered by the list. The editors advise those who use this book to add to the study of the plays in this volume the reading of the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Sir James Barrie, John Masefield, John Galsworthy, and of the Irish dramatists. Plays by this particular group of writers were omitted either for external causes or by editorial design. The student is further advised to supplement this survey of English and American plays by a study of the plays somewhat earlier in composition in Chief Contemporary Dramatists, First and Second Series. These volumes, taken together and supplemented by the reading indicated, contain ample and adequate materials for a school or college course in contemporary drama in English. Some aspects of this collection of plays require comment. The first play in this book, Stephen Phillips's Paolo and Francesca, dates from the year 1900, although it was composed, at least in part, a year or so earlier; the last play, John Drinkwater's Oliver Cromwell, was produced in 1923. Six of the plays in this collection were written during the last eight years. The rapid movement of events in the theater, no less than certain other restrictions, precludes the issue at this time of a definitive selection of the chief plays written in English during the twentieth century. This fact is not one to be regretted. The variety of types and styles represented in this book is an illustration of the experimental period through which dramatic art is now passing, and a proof that the creative spirit of the contemporary stage is alive and vigorous.

The various types of plays reveal, however, certain tendencies in the present-day theater. When Stephen Phillips's plays were first produced, they were hailed by certain critics as a presage of the renascence of the poetic drama. This prophecy was, unfortunately, not fulfilled, in spite of the fact that Stephen Phillips's plays were successful in the theater. He had no immediate followers; he founded no school of poetic drama. Instead of being the first of a new race of dramatists, he was the last of the romantic dramatists of the Victorian age, and it is perhaps appropriate that the drama of the nineteenth century should come to an end in poetry that is delicate and musical.

The freedom to experiment and to express the spirit of revolt characteristic of the contemporary dramatists has been in part fostered by the age itself and in part made possible as dramatic expression by the growth and development of local, experimental theaters. A significant proportion of the plays published in this book had their origin in the provincial and experimental theaters. From such local theaters have come the plays of Drinkwater, Hankin, Houghton, Baker, and Sowerby, to mention only the dramatists here represented. If these theaters in America have hitherto sent forth only their Eugene O'Neill, the reason is to be found in the later rise of local theaters in America — a development delayed in part by the different conditions of our purely commercial theater. The evolution of an experimental theater in America required for its progress a reorganization and a reconstruction from the beginning. Such a development is now well under way. But it is a safe statement to make that no play of any importance has been written in England or America during the last fifteen years that does not carry in its greater freedom of structure and honesty of idea evidence of its indebtedness to the experimental reorganization of the theater.