The most
striking piece of psychology known to me in American drama is the Faith
Healer in William Vaughn Moody's drama of that name. If the last act of
_The Faith Healer_ were as good as the rest of it, one might safely call
it the finest play ever written, at any rate in the English language,
beyond the Atlantic. The psychologists of the modern French stage, I
take it, are M. de Curel and M. de Porto-Riche. MM. Brieux and Hervieu
are, like Mr. Shaw, too much concerned with ideas to probe very deep
into character. In Germany, Hauptmann, and, so far as I understand him,
Wedekind, are psychologists, Sudermann, a vigorous character-drawer.
It is pretty clear that, if this distinction were accepted, it would be
of use to the critic, inasmuch as we should have two terms for two
ideas, instead of one popular term with a rather pedantic synonym. But
what would be its practical use to the artist, the craftsman? Simply
this, that if the word "psychology" took on for him a clear and definite
meaning, it might stimulate at once his imagination and his ambition.
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