Like so much else in his life, his heroic effort to finish his last novel came too late; and the luck which might have kept him alive until he had finished was not with him. He had predicted to Perkins in the middle of December that he could complete a first draft by January 15, and at the rate he was going he might have done so; on December 20 he completed the first episode of Chapter VI. The next day he had a second, fatal heart attack.
The drama in America is gathering strength and individuality. Little more than a year ago Europe became aware of Eugene O'Neil; it must now recognise a very considerable dramatist in Susan Glaspell. Behind these two is a host of playwrights of more than average quality: Elmer Rice, Channing Pollock, Lula Vollmer, Gilbert Emery, and many others. While it remains perfectly true that one swallow does not make a summer, it remains equally true that a number of swallows certainly indicates that "Sumer is icumen in." The number of considerable dramatists in the United States at present is an indication that within a comparatively short time American drama may lead in quality as well as in quantity. In proportion to its population and its wealth America has yet done very little for drama. The plays of European writers provided the theatrical fare for American citizens, and upon American citizens depended, to a very large extent, the financial status of European authors. There is now a perceptible change; plays which have long run in America are now as often of American as of European authorship. Sun Up, by Lula Vollmer, and Tarnish, by Gilbert Emery, have shared their great successes in New York with Saint Joan and Outward Bound. This emergence of the distinctively American drama is one of the most significant things in our time. America is beginning to examine its conscience, having just lately discovered that it had a conscience of its own, and that interestingly significant examination is passing into literature as in Main Street, Poor White, The Three Black Pennys, The Hairy Ape, or Inheritors. This searching of conscience is certain to be very good for America—it will make Americans more tolerant and tolerable.
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