THE CORNERSTONES OF MODERN DRAMA 715 



are we lagging behind in this our own native art of the Drama, where 

 by right we should lead the other nations at our heels ? How is it 

 that these three poor thin volumes of plays are all that we have to 

 show for 200 years, while of living, serious, operative Modern Drama 

 to-day America and England have barely a fragment that will stand 

 the final test of a quiet hour in the study ? 



The fundamental reason is to be found in the character of our race. 

 We are a dramatic race; we are also a deeply religious race. Reli- 

 gion easily runs riot to fear and meanness and madness, and creates 

 abominable hells in its panic. After the mellow pomp of the Eliza- 

 bethan age Religion ran riot in England. We owe the imbecility and 

 paralysis of our Drama to-day to the insane rage of Puritanism that 

 would see nothing in the theatre but a horrible, unholy thing to be 

 crushed and stamped out of existence. Let our Puritan friends ask 

 themselves how far their creed is responsible, by the natural and 

 inevitable law of reaction, for the corruption of the national Drama 

 at the Restoration, and for its pitiable condition ever since. The 

 feeling of horror and fright of the Theatre, engendered at the Re- 

 storation, is even to-day widely prevalent and operative among reli- 

 gious classes in England and America. It muddles and stupefies our 

 Drama, and degrades it from the rank of a fine art to the rank of 

 a somewhat disreputable form of popular entertainment. 



I have pointed out what I believe to be the underlying cause of the 

 intellectual degradation of the Anglo-American Drama to-day. But 

 attendant on this primary cause, are those other secondary and result- 

 ant causes and signs of degradation which we have glanced at in 

 comparing the English and French Drama. I will repeat them in 

 the order of their importance. 



I. The divorce of the English Drama from English Literature, of 

 which it is, indeed, the highest and most difficult form, and of which 

 it should be the chief ornament. Accompanying this divorce of Liter- 

 ature and the Drama is the contempt of Englishmen of letters and 

 literary critics for the Theatre ; their utter ignorance of the difficulties 

 of the dramatist; their refusal to recognize the modern Drama as 

 literature, which refusal again reacts upon the dramatist, and tends 

 to lower the quality of his work, inasmuch as he is left without en- 

 couragement and without any appeal to high standards of literature 

 and good taste. 



II. The general absence from the English Theatre and from mod- 

 ern English plays of any sane, consistent, or intelligible ideas about 

 morality, so that, while the inanities and indecencies of Musical Com- 

 edy are sniggered at and applauded, the deepest permanent passions 

 of men and women are tabooed, and the serious dramatist is bidden to 

 keep his characters well within the compass of that system of mor- 

 ality which is practiced among wax dolls. 



