Excerpt from The New Spirit in Drama Art It cannot be denied that the theatre and drama in England are in a transition state. Between the theatre and drama of the nineteenth and those of the twentieth century a long period of transformation will be necessary. The question for students is whether this transformation is to give us a great theatre and a great drama or only a weak imitation of bygone and obsolete forms. At the outset we are faced by the fact that England can no longer be regarded as insular in the matter of ideas. Ideas know no boundaries, and those of the reform of the European theatre and drama are at our doors. This involves us in the necessity of opening our stage to what may be called European influences: influences which we have to employ for our own purposes in the erection of a truly national theatre. In the following pages I have been at pains to examine the ideas now being experimented upon in the chief art centres of Europe. It must be understood that I collected them during a brief tour through Europe last autumn; that I visited only the cities and towns dealt with; that the book does not exhaust the subjects of which it treats, but is intended to be an outline survey of Continental influences in drama and art that are beginning to make themselves felt in this country; and that in no instance do I feel bound to any one of the Continental ideas I herein expound. But they are all to be taken into serious account. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.