When, in the future, Poetic Drama once more attains the position to which the self-preservative instincts of humanity entitle it, it will be recognized for what it is—the true religious focussing of man’s permanent protest against Fate—lifted above the dust of all ephemeral questioning. It will then be seen that in Poetic Drama, rather than in the noblest sacraments of Religion, the race must find its orchestral unity, the rhythm of its natural and Tragic breathing. And when this is seen, and the history of the thing written, The Chicago Little Theatre, its directors and its company, will receive (too late, as always, for personal relief) their delayed appreciation. It would be unjust, in any such tentative anticipation of Time’s verdict as these pages suggest, to praise Maurice Browne at the expense of those who so wonderfully work with him. We may have our European blood, our European Formalism; but, after all, our stage is an American stage, our company an American company. In estimating the actual contribution of individual members of the company, to the Idea behind it, it were wise to be cautious and discreet. Any praise of a particular performer must needs fall a little discordantly when a certain impersonal rhythmic orchestration is the note of the whole matter. No such faux-pas is risked in the mention of three names. This “Chicago Renaissance” in which Maurice Browne plays the part of the golden-mouthed Mirandola hath also its young Angelo, “seeking the soul” of light and form and color. The work that has been done is so much, after all, a matter of technical inspiration, that to omit the name of Raymond Johnson from its annals were to write the history of Florence without alluding to Michele. Chicago may indeed regard itself, for all its chaotic tumult, as the Tuscan City of America; for nowhere else is so pure a flame, of single-hearted devotion to Beauty, burning on this side of the Atlantic! And with the name of Raymond Johnson, the artist of the company, it is necessary to link that of Edward Moseman, its greater actor. It is strange that it should have been left to a wandering European—and yet perhaps not strange!—to make audible the prediction, which all discerning dramatic critics must inevitably be making in their hearts, that in not so very many years Mr. Moseman will be recognized, from shore to shore, as the most interesting and most personally-arresting player that this country has produced since Booth. That a genius of his peculiarly _idiosyncratic_ type should have been magnetized—against his will—into the “formalism” of the One Tradition, is about as good an evidence as could be found of the power and conviction of Maurice Browne’s impersonal Ideal!