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Perhaps the student who is going to read the plays in this collection may have felt at some time or other a gap between the "classics" that he was working over in school and the contemporary literature that he heard commonly discussed, but he does not know that until recently few books were studied in the high school that were less than half a century old. Consciousness of the gap often drove him to trashy reading. He recognized Addison as respectable but remote, and yet he had no guide to the good literature which the writers of his own day were producing and which would be especially interesting to him, because its ideas and language would be more nearly contemporary with his own.

Even though the greatest literature has the quality of universality, it has been almost invariably my experience that, only as one grows older, is one quite ready to appreciate this quality. When one is young, it is easier to enjoy literature written from a point of view nearer to one's own life and times. Reading good contemporary literature is likely also to pave the way for a deeper appreciation of the great masterpieces of all time.

This is a collection of one-act plays, some of them less than five years old, chosen both because their appeal seems not to be limited to the adult audiences for which they were originally written, and because they may well serve the purpose of introducing the student to contemporary dramatists of standing. Some of them, it is true, make use of old stories and traditions, but the treatment is in all cases modern, if we except the literary fashion that we find in Josephine Preston Peabody's Fortune and Men's Eyes. This, though it is a one-act play, a modern development, is written more or less in the Shakespearian convention; but whether we are bookish or not, we can hardly help having a knowledge of Shakespeare's plays, because, popular with all kinds of people, they are continually being revived on the stage, and quoted in conversation.

The plays in this book, though intended for class-room study, may be acted as well as read. The general introduction will be found helpful to groups who produce plays, to those who live in cities and go to the theatre often, and to those who like to experiment with dramatic composition. For this book was planned to encourage an understanding attitude towards the theatre, to deepen the love that is latent in the majority of us for what is beautiful and uplifting in the drama, and to make playgoing a less expensive, more regular, and more intelligent diversion for the generation that is growing up.

H. L. C.

Washington Irving High School,

New York, 1 February, 1921.