literature. Incomparably the
most important of recent additions to the literary drama is Thomas
Hardy's vast panorama of the Napoleonic wars, entitled _The Dynasts_
(1904-1908). It is rather an epic in dialogue than a play; but however
we may classify it we cannot but recognize its extraordinary
intellectual and imaginative powers.

_United States._--American dramatists have shown on their own account a
progressive tendency, quite as marked as that which we have been tracing
in England. Down to about 1890 the influence of France had been even
more predominant in America than in England. The only American dramatist
of eminence, Bronson Howard (1842-1908), was a disciple, though a very
able one, of the French school. A certain stirring of native
originality manifested itself during the 'eighties, when a series of
semi-improvised farces, associated with the names of two actor-managers,
Harrigan and Hart, depicted low life in New York with real observation,
though in a crude and formless manner. About the same time a native
style of popular melodrama began to make its appearance--a play of
conventional and negligible plot, which attracted by reason of one or
more faithfully observed character-types, generally taken from country
life. _The Old Homestead_, written by Denman Thompson, who himself acted
in it, was the most popular play of this class. Rude as it was, it
distinctly foreshadowed that faithfulness to the external aspects, at
any rate, of everyday life, in which lies the strength of the native
American drama. It was at a sort of free theatre in Boston that James A.
Herne (1840-1901) produced in 1891 his realistic drama of modern life,
_Margaret Fleming_, which did a great deal to awaken the interest of
literary America in the theatrical movement. Herne, an actor and a most
accomplished stage-manager, next produced a drama of rural life in New
England, _Shore Acres_ (1892), which made an immense popular success. It
was a play of the _Old Homestead_ type, but very much more coherent and
artistic. His next play, _Griffith Davenport_ (1898), founded on a
novel, was a drama of life in Virginia during the Civil War, admirable
in its strength and quiet sincerity; while in his last work, _Sag
Harbour_ (1900), Herne returned to the study of rustic character, this
time in Long Island. Herne showed human nature in its more obvious and
straightforward aspects, making no attempt at psychological subtlety;
but within his own lim