From the American Drama [antikvár]

It would of course have been possible to include American plays in the first three volumes of my Modern Theatre series; but surely many readers would prefer that the American drama be given a whole volume to itself. Such at any rate was the thought behind the present collection. Now, among the thousands and thousands of American plays, which five would do best service here? What a problem! There was obviously no foolproof solution to it. There was one class of plays, however, that would not do good service, namely, the plays which everyone interested in the subject already has in his library. For, while the European drama is to an alarming extent unavailable in English translation, inexpensive editions of American plays, separate or in collections, pour constantly from the presses. On the other hand, this is no place to reprint "America's lost plays" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: such a collection would be too narrowly antiquarian in its appeal. Merít-the power to amuse and if possible to fascinate-must remain a chief desideratum. And-again, if possible-the five texts should form somé sort of unity; each should gain from the co-presence of the others. Possibly, even, a view of the American theatre might be hinted at-a particular direction might be given, for what this is worth, an editor s blessing. "What do they know of England who only England know?" To see America as a distinct phenomenon, one has to be non-American. For this book, a foreign-born editor has chosen a group of scripts which are inalienably-incurably, if you like-American. American dramatists have produced no profound masterpieces to set beside the profound masterpieces of American fiction. The American theatre has produced no Moby Dick, no Scarlet Letter, no Portrait of a Lady, nor even a Great Gatsby, a Sun Alsó Rises, an