William Vaughn Moody: The Dramatist as Social Philosopher

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY: THE DRAMATIST AS SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY, POET, PLAYWRIGHT, AND SCHOLAR} was born in Spencer, Indiana in 1869, and achieved maturity in one of the most challenging and turbulent eras in the American historical experience. One can easily get a glimpse into what Grant C. Knight has called the "strenuous age" in American literature by delving into Moody's "reflective" drama, his verse trilogy and especially his two prose plays, The Great Divide (1906 under the title of The Sabine Woman) and The Faith Healer (1909). Yet the importance of Moody's dramas as indicators of the social milieu must also take into consideration the impact that Moody has made on American theatrical history. Therefore , what Robert E. Spiller calls "historical criticism," and what Wilbur S. Scott calls the "sociological approach to literature" provides the necessary access to what Moody has revealed in the body of his dramatic work. Such an analysis must, however, be preceded by an appreciation of both the then existing social milieu and its effect on the total body of his work. Thus it becomes necessary to explore briefly Moody's background prior to 1900 and the first of his verse dramas, The Masque of Judgment. Some attention must also be paid to the period from 1900 to 1909, when he published both Divide and Healer. Moody was raised in New Albany, Indiana, where he taught school briefly before coming East. He also taught at'the Riverside Academy in New York while preparing to enter Harvard in 1889. Having completed the work for his bachelor's degree in 1892, he spent a year traveling in Europe, returning to take his degree in 1893, and in 1894 he took his master's degree, also from Harvard. After one year spent as a member of the Harvard English Department, Moody left to become an instructor and then assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where he remained from 1895 to 1902. During this period Moody made two more trips to Europe, where he accumulated an abundance of themes and ideas which are explicitly expressed in his poems and to a lesser extent in his verse plays.1 However, the travels which were the most seminal to his two prose dramas were his travels through the American "Wild West." The great impression that these travels in western America made on the mind of Moody can be clearly 1 John M. Manly. ed. Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody, 2 vols. (New York, 1912), p. xii. ' 93 94 MODERN DRAMA May seen in the excellent collection of Letters to Harriet} gathered by Percy MacKaye. Taken as a whole, the early years of education-years of teaching and traveling-provided that store of ideas and themes which weave their way throughout Moody's writings, regardless of the medium. Furthermore, the product of this experience was a man motivated toward expressing his deepest emotions. Evidence of this attitude can be found in the primary reason behind his leaving the University of Chicago in 1902~a desire for independence from academic drudgery. Moody had decided that his greatest work would be his poetry, but he needed a financial base from which to write; hence, the joint publication with Robert Lovett of A History of English Literature (1902) was but a means to an end, the end being freedom from the classroom and the pursuit of art. Nevertheless, the mark Moody was to make on the literary scene was primarily as a dramatist, albeit a poetic one even in his prose plays. It is of interest to note that Moody's writings can conveniently be divided into two periods. The early period, primarily devoted to poetry, is distinguished by two volumes, The l\Jasque of Judgment and Poems (1902). In these works Moody is predominantly a lyric poet, though Masque begins his career as a dramatist. The late period is made up chiefly of dramatic works. Following his escape from teaching , Moody wrote what was intended to make up a trilogy of poetic dramas, ending with a fragment, The Death of Eve (1910), and his two prose plays. During the early period Moody treated the common poetic themes of...