Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/474

 470 Coad Bronson Howard's first stage success, which inaugurated a more specifically American era in native drama. He has examined the available plays of this period, some six hundred and fifty in all, and he finds that about thirty per cent, reflect American life more or less realistically. The most frequently depicted types of character are the Indian, the frontiersman, the Yankee, the man of affairs, the workingman, the high society fop or lady, and above all the politician. Among these, concludes Dr. Reed, "I should feel safe in saying that there are abundant examples of native realism which present many of the essentials of their originals, but that there are very few which reproduce distinctive types of American people with an exact and complete verisimilitude." Indeed one might ask whether such thoroughly representative characters are not extremely rare in the drama of any nation. In this regard the novel has undoubtedly surpassed the play witness, for instance, in this country Howells's Rise of Silas Lapham and James's American. In his conclusion the author further declares that of the best plays written during his period, "scarcely one has any realistic significance a fact that proves how completely Amerian realism was divorced from dignified American dra- ma. " Since 1870, it may be observed, this condition has been somewhat remedied by the work of Howard, Fitch, Moody, and Thomas. A final observation of importance is that of the plays con- taining native realism, fully two-thirds deal with American history or political affairs, which "proves that the highest concern of the American republic until after the Civil War the business of building a nation finds almost ample expression in native dramatic writing." Dr. Reed has produced a monograph of genuine interest and value to the student of American literature. His investigation of the dramatic material has been painstaking and thorough, his conclusions are sound, his bibliographies are useful, and his sketches of the development of play writing, which precede each section, are very illuminating. And yet these sections might well contain something more than a catalogue of the various realistic types found in the plays with a description of the better examples of each. A careful analysis of some of the types as they actually existed, the Yankee for one, would be more convincing than such vague statements as: "In spite of exaggeration, however, there is much that seems to suggest the real." Also why not some discussion of the progress our play- wrights made in depicting real characters, with some indication of those who were most successful? And why not an index? ORAL SUMNER COAD. Columbia University.