In regard to subject matter, and the author's attitude to his work, a marked tendency may be seen to emphasize personality in the character drawing, to make it of central interest (contrasted with plot) and a bold attempt to present it in the more minute variations of motive and act rather than in those more obvious reactions to life which have hitherto characterized stage treatment; and equally noticeable if not the dominant note of this latter-day drama, has been the social sympathy expressed in it and making it fairly resonant with kindly human values: the author's desire to see justice done to the under-dog in the social struggle; to extend a fraternal hand to the derelicts of the earth, to understand the poor and strive to help those who are weak or lost; all the underlings and incompetents and ill-doers of earth find their explainers and defenders in these writers. This is the note which sounds in the fraternalism of Kennedy's _The Servant in the House_, the arraignment of society in Walter's _The Easiest Way_ and Paterson's _Rebellion_, the contrast of the ideals of east and west in Moody's _The Great Divide_, and the democratic fellowship of Sheldon's _Salvation Nell_. It is the note abroad which gives meaning to Hauptmann's _The Weavers_, Galsworthy's _Justice_ and Wedekind's _The Awakening of Spring_, different as they are from each other. It stands for a tolerant, even loving comprehension of the other fellow's case. There is in it a belief in the age, too, and in modern man; a faith in democracy and an aspiration to see established on the earth a social condition which will make democracy a fact, not merely a convenient political catch-word. Some authors, in their obsession with truth on the stage, have too much neglected the fundamental demands of the theater and so sacrificed the crisp crescendo treatment of crisis in climax as to indulge in a tame, undramatic and bafflingly subtle manipulation of the story; a remark applicable, for example, to a writer like Granville Barker. But the growth and gains in both countries, with America modestly second, are encouraging. In these modern hands the play has been simplified, deepened, made more truthful, more sympathetic; and is now being given the expressional form that means literature. The bad, the cheap, the flimsy are still being produced, of course, in plenty; so has it always been, so ever will be. But the drama that is worthy, skillful, refreshing in these different kinds--farce, comedy light, polite, or satiric; broad comedy or high, melodrama, tragedy, romance and morality--is now offered, steadily, generously, and it depends upon the theater-goer who has trained himself to know, to reject and accept rightly, to appreciate and so make secure the life of all drama that is worth preservation. * * * * *