character, its idealism and generosity and romance, with the result that people disbelieved in the other aspect of it, the cruelty and greed and treacherous materialism. Synge, a man without preposses- sions or creed, set down what he saw in words of acrid beauty, and the Irish people, horribly shocked, pronounced him to be a liar, a degenerate and even a traitor. The violence of their anger against The Playboy of the Western World died down in time, but Synge re- mains a man of genius of whom his countrymen, when they take pride in him at all, remain reluctantly proud. He and Lennox Robin- son are the principal products of the Abbey theatre, Dublin, which includes among its minor dramatists Lady Gregory, William Boyle, T. C. Murray, Padraic Colum, the late Seumas O'Kelly and St. John Ervine. W. B. Yeats has written plays for the Abbey theatre, but the dramatic form is intractable in his hands.
Lennox Robinson, who was appointed manager of the Abbey theatre in 1910, at the age of 23 and, except for a break of two or three years, has managed it ever since, has written nine plays, of which two, The Lost Leader and The White-headed Boy, have been successfully performed in London. The first was produced at the Court theatre June 10 1919, where it was acted 68 times. The second was produced at the Ambassadors' theatre Sept. 27 1920, and was acted for more than 300 times. His plays conform more closely to the conventional shape than do those of John Drinkwater, and they are more skilfully contrived than those of Stanley Hough- ton. He puts realistic, rather than romantic, speech into the mouths of his people, thus separating himself very distinctly from the Synge drama. His principal merits are great technical skill, veracity of character and speech, and natural exploitation of natural emo- tions. His defects are a lack of staying power and vagueness of thought, which causes his last act to drop considerably below the level of his first. But of all the Irish dramatists, he has the greatest comprehension of the theatre.
Stanley Houghton, after writing a number of meritable pieces of uninspired realism, presented the Gaiety theatre, Manchester, with a comedy in three acts, entitled Hindle Wakes, which, to fill an emergency, was first performed before the Stage Society June 16 1912. It made an immediate impression and was put into the evening bill at the Playhouse and afterwards at the Court, receiving in all more than 100 performances in London. It had greater success in the provinces, where at least one company has performed it ever since, but it failed to be popular in America. Hindle Wakes is not a profound play, nor has it conspicuous literary qualities; but it is fresh and forceful and it deals with a question of sex in a direct, natural and sincere, but unusual, manner. Whether or not Hough- ton would have grown into a dramatist of distinction (he was 32 when he died) is not a matter which can profitably be discussed. The plays which came after Hindle Wakes The Perfect Cure and Trust the People did not sustain the reputation it had made for him, but as they seemed to be written deliberately for commercial purposes and failed to realize them The Perfect Cure was performed for four nights only it is probable that Houghton would have returned to the milieu in which he was happiest and that, although he was un- likely ever to become a first-rate dramatist, he would have become a very competent and meritable one. The Gaiety theatre, Manchester, gave opportunity to a number of other dramatists, of whom the principal are Harold Brighouse and Allan N. Monkhouse, the first- named being the author of Hobson's Choice, which had great pop- ularity in America and London, and the second-named the author of Mary Broome and The Education of Mr. Surrage.
John Drinkwater is the product of the Birmingham Repertory theatre (founded in 1913 by Barry V. Jackson) of which for several years he was both manager and play-producer. He had already earned reputation as a poet, critic and dramatist when his historical play in five scenes, Abraham Lincoln, was first produced. This play, influenced by the form of Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, is written in prose, but the scenes are separated by a Chorus who speaks in verse. It was produced for the first time at Birmingham Oct. 12 1918, and afterwards at the Lyric opera house, Hammersmith, Feb. 19 1919, where it was performed for exactly one year. Much doubt was felt about the reception the play was likely to receive in America, but this doubt was dispelled when, Dec. 15 1919, it was produced at the Cort theatre, New York, where it was continuously performed for nine months. Abraham Lincoln will probably be per- formed throughout the United States for many years and has given a great impetus to the production of serious historical plays in America. Percy Mackaye, an American poet, wrote a pageant play on George Washington, at the request of President Wilson, but this piece was not a success when produced in New York. Other plays on Lincoln have been written since the production of Drinkwater's play, but the latter, which was derived, so far as its main facts are concerned, from Lord Charnwood's biography of the great President, is indisputably the best of them. The play is simply and directly written, in spite of its remarkably long cast, and its emo- tional quality is very high. Part of its appeal to the British people is probably due to the fact that Drinkwater with extraordinary skill has unobtrusively drawn a parallel between the circumstances of the Civil War and the World War, and many of the great crowds who saw it performed in London must have been more conscious of the war from which the world had just emerged than they were of
the war which had been so fiercely fought in America 60 years earlier. This was the first of a series of historical plays planned by Drinkwater, of which two others, Oliver Cromwell and Mary, Queen of Scots, have already been written. The latter was produced for the first time at the New Ritz theatre in New York March 21 1921, with Clara Eames in the title part. It is interesting to ob- serve that Lennox Robinson and John Drinkwater have followed faithfully in the footsteps of such dramatists as Shakespeare, Mo- liere and Ibsen by being practical theatre managers and pro- ducers and even, as in Drinkwater's case, an actor.
The " Intellectual " Drama. The record of the English repertory theatres up to the time the World War began was honourable and promising. We have now to consider the record of the ordinary com- mercial theatre, and here we discover that the standard of plays produced had been greatly raised. The authority of Sir Arthur Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones, already diminished by the work of Oscar Wilde, was now yielding to that of Shaw and Sir James Matthew Barrie and John Galsworthy. A number of young drama- tists of varying quality were appearing, whose allegiance was more definitely given to the school led by Shaw than to the school led by Sir Arthur Pinero, and these included Granville-Barker, the late St. John Hankin (d. 1909), Charles McEvoy, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Cicely Hamilton, Githa Sowerby and Elizabeth Baker. What was called the " intellectual " drama seemed to be established not on a broad basis, but on a basis sufficiently wide to make it steady. Shaw and Bennett were even able to obtain long " runs " for their plays, and Cicely Hamilton made a popular success with Diana of Dobson's. It is true that the " intellectual " drama did not make fortunes for its producers, but it is true also that it did not cause any bankruptcies, and probably, if an accurate statement of accounts could be prepared, the " intellectual " drama would be found to have caused less loss of money, relatively and absolutely, than the commercial drama. It might even be found to have paid its way. Following on the heels of the " intellectual " dramatists cited above came still younger dramatists, also of the school led by Shaw, whose intellectuality was perhaps less arid or severe, and these young dramatists contrived to write plays definitely of the " in- tellectual " school which made much profit for those who produced them. They have already been named in connexion with the re- pertory theatres. Their lack of aridity is due, possibly, to the fact that the stage is their first concern, whereas most of the generation between them and Shaw came to the theatre from the novel and the sociological survey.
Outside the " intellectual " or " highbrow " school, in what is called the commercial theatre, there was observable a great in- crease in the quality of the plays produced. The younger dramatists who were without any intellectual pretensions were indirectly affected by the work of Shaw, even when it was repudiated by them. Plays by Hubert Henry Davies, Rudolf Besier, Alfred Sutro, Bernard Fagan, Somerset Maugham and J. E. Harold Terry were notably better in quality than plays written by their predecessors at any time during the century immediately preceding their appearance in the theatre. The work of Besier in Don and Lady Patricia had a flavour of letters and a technical excellence which made it appear almost equal to the best work of Sir Arthur Pinero and Henry Arthur Tones and superior to the best work of Sydney Grundy. Somerset Maugham, who began his career with a sombre play, The Man of Honour, changed his metier completely and very soon reached a high and profitable position as a writer of light comedy. He is the most skilful writer of the comedy of manners now working for the English theatre and his plays, Home and Beauty (re-named Too- Many Husbands in America) and The Circle, put him in direct line of succession to Congreve. J. E. Harold Terry may be said to have been produced by the war. His plays are notable chiefly for their tropical quality, but they are well-done and are not without universal appeal. His first play, written in collaboration with Lechmere Worrall, was entitled The Man Who Stayed At Home. It was pro- duced at the Royalty theatre Dec. 10 1914, when the condition of theatrical enterprise was still sore from the effects of the war's beginning, and it was an immediate success. Terry wrote a second play with a war motive, entitled General Post, produced at the Hay- market theatre March 14 1917. This play, slightly similar in theme to Meredith's Evan Harrington, was also a great popular success. In 1921 he produced a play entitled The Fulfilling of the Law, in which special appeal was less direct.
The situation at the outbreak of the war, therefore, was one of great hope and of considerable achievement. A finer type of play was being written in every department of the theatre. The influence of Shaw, strong among the intellectuals and distinctly felt among the commercial dramatists, was even discoverable in the work of the melodramatists, whose plays began to show signs of sociological interest. A more enterprising form of management was obtaining a hold on some theatres, and even in minor matters, such as stage decor, a newer and better spirit was informing productions. The vicious principle of subordinating the play to the actor-manager was fading away. Demand was made for a high level of acting throughout the cast, for better team-work, and actors were busy forcing the Actors' Association into a trade union for the purpose of. improving their conditions of employment.
