Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/309

 Literary and Poetic Drama 291 might have grown into theatre requirements because of an innate dramatic touch, in The Great Divide created something which in substance showed a deep feeling for native atmosphere and a broad understanding of human passion. However un- satisfying certain features of The Great Divide, — for instance, its lack of unity of scene, its mistakes in motive, — yet it gives one a comprehension of stern reality which makes Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter so permanent a contribution to literature. But Moody's poetic sense, which was stronger and greater than his sense of drama, led him entirely astray in his The Faith Healer (Savoy Theatre, 19 January, 1910), with its mystical atmos- phere where belief did not mix with reality, and conviction did not rise above picturesqueness. But in The Great Divide Moody caught the permanent passions of j real people. This also may be said of Alice Brown's Children of Earth (12 January, 1915), which won a $10,000 prize offered by Winthrop Ames in the hope that competition would bring forth the American master- pieces which popular belief imagined were hid under a bushel by the ruthless hand of the managers of commerce. Miss Brown committed extravagances in her desire to reflect the New England life she knows so well — an atmosphere which relates her to the school of fiction ably represented by Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. WUkins Freeman, and Mrs. Margaret Deland. ' But Children of Earth failed because a narrative declaration of passion was substituted for the reality which would have made the heroine's moment of June madness grippingly con- vincing. Mrs. Josephine Preston Peabody Marks, a poet with liter- ary feeling, with an eye for the pictorial, won a prize offered by the English actor, Frank Benson, with The Piper (New Theatre, 30 January, 191 1) — a charming resetting of the old Hamelin legend which has modern implication and applica- tion. Patches of poetry beautify the text but weight the acting quality. Its imaginative stretch was refreshing in the Ameri- can theatre, however, and the production given by Winthrop Ames was distinctive. It possessed youthful spirit, and hints of dramatic tenseness. But Mrs. Marks has not yet added con- vincing proof that she is a dramatist above a poet, though her Marlowe furnishes a commendable example of poetic drama. ' See Book III, Chap. vi.