Dramatics A

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To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In an editorial, some time ago, you brought once again to the attention of your readers the sad state of the curricular treatment of the drama here at Harvard. This is so deplorably true that much more should be said about it.

There are courses at Harvard treating of the actor's art as well as of the literary history of the drama, but there is no presentation of the important visual side of this subject, nor any attempt at the correlation of the various sides in a course in the theory of play writing.

The Harvard Dramatic Club is the only serious group concerned with the practical business of complete production of plays which are new and with-out production precedent. Its fine work in the past and bright outlook for the future are gratifying in so indifferent a university. Nevertheless, it is handicapped by its very nature, as an extra-curricular activity, for it doubtless should be complementary to an adequate treatment of the theory, if not the practice, in the college curriculum.

Playwriting may be considered as a professional study, and therefore belonging in a graduate school, but since no such school exists its omission from the English department seems almost inexcusable. Actual play production, as a course, is doubtless out of the question, but a study of it theoretically and historically, with model stages, is well within the range of possibility, and there seems to be no very potent reason why it should not be added either to the department of Education or to that of Fine Arts, since its necessary laboratory characteristics put it out of the range of English or Comparative Literature.

The point that should be stressed, it seems to me, is that such a treatment of the subject would have its greatest value if it were frankly designed for the student with a casual rather than a professional interest in the Drama. It is a part of the equipment of an educated man to understand the purposes of the various prose and poetical forms, and the drama being, as is often said, the synthesis of all the arts, it should certainly be given a more complete treatment than the disgracefully scanty one now accorded it here at Harvard. John Cornell.