Written in blank verse, the superior quality of which is admirably sustained, the style of the drama is undeniably poetical, as Edwin Björkman, the editor of Mr. Kennerley's Modern Drama Series, states in an interesting biographical sketch; but where there is so much consciousness of workmanship--so much preoccupation with an imported idea instead of sweeping control by an inner, personal urge like that, for example, which produced _Thus Spake Zarathustra_--poetry is not to be expected. What surprises me is that, despite this restriction, Mr. Ficke strides upward in many lines to the borderland of the gods. In the first three acts he writes as one possessed--as an intellectualist furiously interested in Americanizing, if you please, the racial implications of the philosophy of a superhumanity which will always be associated with the name of his temporary master, Nietzsche. In these acts there is a deal of amazing revealment of insight; of aspiration for transcendent goals; of the spiritual insatiability of man. And there is a cold humor. Underneath the whole thing lies its own by-product: social dynamite! I think that Mr. Ficke finished his play in three acts, but he added two more--to make it five, I was about to say, but in the fifth he achieves a measurable justification, for the last sentence, "Touch me across the dusk," is poetry--the wonderful words of the dying Faust, addressed to Midge, the only person who understood him. Near the middle of the opening act, Faust, roused by an inquiring mind to an analytical protest against things as they are, says, ... I would go Out to some golden sun-lighted land Of silence. That is poetical; it is cosmic in its feeling. Looking at a bust of Washington, he enviously--no, compassionately--remarks, ... Not a star In all the vaults of heaven could trouble you With whisperings of more transcendent goals. At this juncture Satan appears, gains recognition by recalling an incident involving Faust with a blackmailing woman in a college during his youth, and thereafter tempts him into empty, unsatisfying paradises. In his wandering and winding pilgrimage through the world Faust makes the footprints that we recognize as those of our own humanity, seeking its way--somewhither. He is offered but rejects peace, happiness, salvation and all the rest of their related consolations, knowing that none of them could satisfy his restless heart. To his uncomprehending friends he is lost, and Satan himself, to whom in such circumstances he is obviously resigned by society, fails to claim him. But Midge, the heroine, knew him; she could touch him across the dusk, which was his kind of immortality. And so Faust, with a vague consciousness of his own godhood, a sense of his own supremacy, an unshakable faith in one thing--himself--passed from the earthly freedom of his will into the great release.