SOURCE: "After the Play," in The New Republic. Vol. XXVI, No. 331, April 6, 1921, p. 162.

A major twentieth century American literary and cultural critic, Wilson wrote several influential critical studies, including Axel's Castle (1931), which examined literary symbolism. In the following essay, he reviews Mary Stuart.

The great thing about John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln was that, unlike most historical plays, it dramatized an idea. The Disraelis and Paganinis and Sophies and Madame Sands have been merely attempts to dramatize picturesque personalities; one shuddered when one heard that Mr. Arliss was thinking of producing a Voltaire, because one apprehended a Voltaire like Disraeli and Paganini, a Voltaire reduced to a wig and a wicked grin, who would be shown, in spite of all his waspishness, to have had a heart full of wholesome sentiment. And the fiction inspired by Lincoln—The Toy Shops and The Perfect Tributes—had suffered especially from this...