helped to make the new realism a strong organized movement. Such it became with the publication of a volume of co-operative studies entitled The New Realism (1912) by Walter Taylor Marvin, Ralph Barton Perry, Edward Gleason Spaulding, W. P. Montague, Edwin Holt, and Walter B. Pitkin. The new realism began as an appeal to the naïve consciousness of reality; but relying naïvely as it does on modern physics, physiology, and experimental biology (as opposed to the field and speculative biology of the Darwinians) its doctrine necessarily becomes very technical and complicated. Its insistence on rigorous definitions and definitive intellectual solutions to specific problems has brought on it the charge of being a new scholasticism. But whatever the merits of scholasticism-the renaissance of logical studies has begun to reveal some of them -the new realism has certainly tried to avoid the tendency of philosophy to become a branch of apologetics or a brief in behalf of supposed valuable interests of humanity. In this a technical vocabulary and the ethically neutral symbols of mathematics are a great aid.

The period covered by the greater portion of this chapter is too near us to make a just appreciation of its achievement likely at this time. In the main it has been dominated by two interests, the theologic and the psychologic.' The development during this period has been to weaken the former and to deepen but narrow the latter and make it more and more technical. For this reason the philosophers covered in this chapter have as yet exerted little influence on the general thought of the country. The general current of American economic, political, and legal thought has until very recently been entirely dominated by our traditional eighteenth-century individualism or natural-law philosophy. Neither does our general literature, religious life, or current scientific procedure as yet show any distinctive influence of our professional philosophy. But it must be remembered that all our universities are comparatively young

The history of philosophy has occupied a large portion of American philosophic instruction and writing. But apart from the books of Albee, Husik, Riley, and Salter (mentioned in the bibliography to this chapter) and articles by Lovejoy on Kant, and on the history of evolution, American philosophy has no noteworthy achievement to its credit-certainly nothing comparable to the historical works of Caird, Bosanquet, Benn, or Whittaker, not to mention the great German and French achievements in this field.

institutions and our university-trained men numerically an almost insignificant portion of our total population. In the field of education William T. Harris and after him Dewey have undoubtedly exerted potent influences, and it looks as if American legal thought is certain to be profoundly impressed by Roscoe Pound, who draws some of his inspiration from philosophic pragmatism as well as from Ward's social theories.

From the point of view of European culture, America has certainly not produced a philosopher as influential as was Willard Gibbs in the realm of physics or Lester Ward in the realms of sociology. Though Ward and even Gibbs may with some justice be claimed as philosophers, this can be done only by disregarding the unmistakable tendency to divorce technical philosophy entirely from physical and social theory. James, however, is undoubtedly a European force, and, in a lesser degree, Baldwin, Royce, and Dewey. Serious and competent students in Germany, Italy, and Great Britain have also recognized the permanent importance of C. S. Peirce's contribution to the field of logic. History frequently shows philosophers who receive no adequate recognition except from later generations, but it is hazardous to anticipate the judgment of posterity.

F

CHAPTER XVIII

The Drama, 1860-1918

OR the ten years preceding the advent of Bronson Howard, the American drama settled upon staid and not very

vigorous times. The Civil War was not conducive to original production at the time; and its influence was not great upon the character of the amusement in the American theatre. Only after many years had passed, and after local and national feeling had been allowed to cool, did the Civil War become a topic for the stage,-in such dramas as William Gillette's Held by the Enemy (Madison Square Theatre, 16 August, 1886),' Shenandoah (Star Theatre, 9 September, 1889) by Bronson Howard, The Girl I Left Behind Me (Empire Theatre, 25 January, 1893) by David Belasco and Franklyn Fyles, The Heart of Maryland (Herald Square Theatre, 22 October, 1895) by David Belasco, William Gillette's Secret Service (Garrick Theatre, 5 October, 1896), James A. Herne's Griffith Davenport (Washington, Lafayette Square Theatre, 16 January, 1899), Barbara Frietchie (Criterion Theatre, 24 October, 1899) by Clyde Fitch. No one dared to take the moral issue of the war and treat it seriously, Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (first played 24 August, 1852) having ante-dated the internecine struggle. Even today, the subject of the negro and his relation with the white is one warily handled by the American dramatist. Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon (Winter Garden, 5 December, 1859), was typical of the way that dramatist had of making hay out of the popular sunshine of others. William DeMille wanted to treat of the negro's social isolation, but compromised when he came to write Strongheart (Hudson Theatre, 30 January,

Unless it is otherwise stated, the theatres and dates given with the titles of plays apply to initial New York productions.

266

The Civil War Period

267

1905) by making the hero an Indian; and he later fell into the conventional way of treating the war when he wrote The Warrens of Virginia (Belasco Theatre, 3 December, 1907). The more sensational aspects of the negro question, as treated by Thomas Dixon in The Clansman (Liberty Theatre, 8 January, 1906) were wisely softened and made into an elaborate record of the Civil War, in the panoramic moving picture, The Birth of a Nation (New York, 1915). Though Ridgely Torrence, in a series of one-act plays (Granny Maumee, The Rider of Dreams, and Simon the Cyrenian, Garden Theatre, 5 April, 1917), has sought poetically to exploit negro psychology, the only Ameri- . can dramatist who has approached the topic boldly, melodramatically, and effectively, thus far, has been Edward Sheldon, in The Nigger (New Theatre, 4 December, 1909).

It will be seen from this enumeration that during the period immediately preceding the Civil War the issues of the coming struggle were not treated for propaganda purposes, as were the issues of the Revolutionary War in our pre-national drama. The fact is, the features of the American theatre, and of the plays on the American stage, preceding the year 1870, were fairly well predetermined by the strong personalities among the managers and actors: by the distinct predilection, among theatre-going peoples, for plays to fit the temperaments of the reigning stage favourites, and by the styles and fashions that emanated from London and Paris. Neither the Wallacks, John Brougham, W. E. Burton, nor Augustin Daly showed, by their actual productions, that their tastes were native, although Brougham was led, through burlesque, to exercise his Irish wit on the land of his adoption, and Daly, as shown by his recent biographer, attempted to turn such literary workers as Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Howells to dramatic writing. Men expert in other literary forms have seldom fully grasped the demands of the theatre. Thomas Bailey Aldrich had his Judith of Bethulia produced (Boston, Tremont Theatre, 13 October, 1904) and his biographer says that in New York "it failed to take the taste of the large luxurious audiences that throng the Broadway theatres betwixt dinner and bedtime." But the poetic purple patches of Aldrich's verse might be another explanation for its short life on the stage.

When 1860 dawned, Dion Boucicault (1822-1890) and John Brougham (1810-1880) reigned supreme in American popularity, and they were both Irish. The former had yet to do his most popular and characteristic pieces, in which he won deserved success both as an actor and playwright: to read Jessie Brown; or, The Relief of Lucknow (Wallack's Theatre, 22 February, 1858) and The Colleen Bawn (Laura Keene's Theatre, 29 March, 1860), and to compare them with the later Arrah-naPogue; or, The Wicklow Wedding (London, 22 March, 1865) and The Shaughraun (Wallack's Theatre, 14 November, 1874), is to sound the genial depths of a flexible workman, who could find it as easy to shape a drama for Laura Keene as to re-fashion Charles Burke's version of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle for presentation by Jefferson (London, Adelphi, 4 September, 1865). One would say of Boucicault, as one would claim of John Brougham, that his local influence was due to local popularity rather than to any impetus he gave to native drama. While Brougham's Po-ca-hon-tas; or, The Gentle Savage (Burton's Lyceum, 24 December, 1855) and his Columbus et Filibustero (Burton's Lyceum, December, 1857) exhibited the good-nature of his irony; while his dramatizations of Dickens's David Copperfield and Dombey and Son were in accord with the popular taste that hailed W. E. Burton's Cap'n Cuttle -these dramatic products were exotic to the American drama, while reflecting the fashion of the American stage.

Yet nothing Boucicault enjoyed better than to descant on the future of the American stage. Like Palmer, like Daly, he was continually writing about the reasons for its poverty and the possibilities of its improvement. No one of these men, however, had any real faith in the American drama or in the native subject. Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) encouraged the Philadelphia group of writers,' but the topics chosen by Bird, Conrad, Stone, Smith, Miles, and Boker were largely in accord with English romantic models. Stone's Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags spoke the language of James Sheridan Knowles; Boker's Francesca da Rimini reflected the accents of the Elizabethans. Forrest, therefore, encouraged the American drama indirectly. Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876) never even went so far, though her friendship with Bryant, R. H. Stod'See Book II, Chap. II.