Page:Representative American plays.pdf/824



The Faith Healer represents the drama of revolt, in which the protest of the individual is made against the controlling power of social law and custom. Only as long as the "Faith Healer" has confidence in himself does his power survive the ever-present disbelief of the world. This drama of revolt found its most powerful expression in the work of a group of dramatists to which Mr. Moody, Mr. George Cabot Lodge, and, to a certain extent, Mr. Percy MacKaye, belonged.

William Vaughn Moody was born at Spencer, Indiana, July 8, 1869, the son of Francis Burdette Moody, a steamboat captain, and Henrietta Stoy, to whom he pays such an exquisite tribute in "The Daguerreotype". He was brought up in the town of New Albany, Indiana, and after teaching in a neighboring school, came east to Riverside Academy, New York, where he also taught while preparing to enter Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1893. Having already completed his work for the bachelor's degree in 1892 he travelled in Europe for a year and then returning to the Graduate School at Harvard University he took his master's degree in 1894. After being a member of the Department of English at Harvard for a year, he became Instructor in English at the University of Chicago in 1895 and remained there, as Instructor and Assistant Professor, until 1903. Two European trips occurred during this period and Mr. Moody's poems, especially the lyrics and the verse plays, show the result of the experiences encountered in his wanderings. Notwithstanding his success as a teacher and lecturer, he gave up active work at the University of Chicago after 1902, retaining merely a nominal connection with the English department. He felt that his best work was to be done as a poet and to do that work well he must have freedom from academic drudgery. His History of English Literature written in collaboration with Robert M. Lovett, and the publications of which he was editor, served simply to provide him with the means to devote himself to poetry. Already he had become recognized through his poems on public affairs, such as the "Ode in Time of Hesitation," as one of the foremost of American poets, and though his first volume, published in 1902, contained only a small number of poems, this was due to his capacity for selection rather than to lack of inspiration.

Mr. Moody's early death, which occurred at Colorado Springs, October 17, 1910, cut short his career just as his work was reaching its best development. His lyrics are exquisite and at times magnificent in their phrasing. In the poems on public affairs he expresses true patriotism and concern for his country's fidelity to her ideals. In his love poetry he shows deep insight into the emotional