COMMENT

From one point of view it is a pity the Puritan parsons who set up the college at New Haven did not foresee that it was destined to have a theatre of its own and a professor of playwriting and play-acting--and imported, at that, from Harvard. Not even "the abominable habit of shaving on the Sabbath" or "the godless levity of kissing one's wife on the Lord's Day" could inspire such racy and colorful English. But in a measure the deficiency is supplied. Racy and colorful English is copiously emitted at Harvard. There is occasion for philosophy of the kind that consoled Barrett Wendell under the stress of athletic defeat. "Yale was founded half a century after Harvard," he used to say, "to counteract our radical influence. She has been after us ever since, until now she has taken to winning." Nevertheless, the tribe of Harvard men and of Wendells continued to strive for victory, and the chances are that hereafter the dramatic muse will be even more assiduously wooed.

It is a curious and questionable principle upon which the authorities at Harvard denied Professor Baker adequate equipment, even forbade him to raise an endowment fund by outside subscription. As to library and laboratory, their liberality knows no bound short of an unbalanced budget. Undergraduates are trained to the manipulation of microscope and dissecting knife. Doctorates in philosophy are awarded for theses on the digamma in Anglo-Saxon or on the iota subscript in Greek dialect. But if young men and women are bent upon analyzing the life about them, on assembling the results of their observation in dramatic character, upon organizing it in dramatic action illumined by the accent and vernacular of today, they and the teacher who abets them are suspect. So-called English composition is encouraged and the drama of Greece and Old England. But the humanities themselves are not sufficiently human to include modern life and art. "Art," of course, is a big word. Very few of the plays written for the "47 Workshop" are even good theatre. The creative talent is rare, especially rare in the drama and among folk of undergraduate years. Of the productions that have proceeded from Cambridge the largest and better portion have been by adult writers who have entered Harvard mainly or solely for the opportunity Professor Baker offered. But since when have students in the laboratory been master scientists, students of English composition accomplished men of letters? In after life graduates of the Workshop have given a very good account of themselves.

The fact seems to be that we are living in an age and a land vigorously dramatic. Some forty years ago Edmund Clarence Stedman, lamenting "the twilight of the poets," predicted that the next important movement would be in the theatre. It might not be easy to convince the free versiflors that their genius is fading in crepuscular gloom. But the playwrites have no doubt whatever that they are ascending the skies on the car of Aurora. Young and old, they are up and doing in the tank town and the university no less than in Broadway. If the eager groping of the many proves wiser than those who are appointed to guide it, it will not be the First time