is a romantic
fantasia, but is not without its keen social satire. Mr. Sheldon's _The
Havoc_ seems also farcical in its type; nevertheless it is a serious
satiric thrust at certain extreme conceptions of marital relations. And
numerous dramas, melodramatic in form and intention, dealing with the
darker economic and sociological aspects of our life--the overworked
crime play of the day--indefinitely swell the list. And so with many
more plays, pleasant or unpleasant, which, while clinging close to the
notion of good entertainment, do not refrain from social comment or
criticism. The idea that criticism of life in a stage story must of
necessity be heavy, dull and polemic is an irritating one, of which the
Anglo-Saxon is strangely fond. The French, to mention one other nation,
have constantly shown the world that to be intellectually keen and
suggestive it is not necessary to be solemn or opaque; in fact, that one
is sure to be all the more stimulating because of the light touch and
the sense for social adaptability. This view will in time, no doubt,
percolate through the somewhat obstinate layers of the Anglo-Saxon mind.

From these considerations it may follow that our theater-goer, while
generally receptive and broad-minded in his seat to the particular type
of drama the playwright shall offer, will incline to prefer those plays
which on the whole seem in some one of various possible ways to express
the time; which drama that has survived has always done. He will care
most for the home-made play as against the foreign, if equally well
made, since its problem is more likely to be his own, or one he can
better understand. But he will not turn a cold shoulder to some European
drama by a D'Annunzio, a Sudermann, a Maeterlinck or a Tolstoy, if it be
a great work of art and deal with life in such universal applications
and relations as to make it quite independent of national borders. One
of the socializing and civilizing functions of the theater is thus to
draw the peoples together into a common bond of interest, a unit in that
vast community which signifies the all-embracing experience of being a
human creature. Yet the theater-goer will have but a Laodicean regard
for plays which present divergent national or technically local
conditions of life practically incomprehensible to Americans at large;
some of the Gallic discussions of the French menage, for instance.
Terence taught us wisely that nothing human should be alien