One cannot help feeling that these young people were being effectively trained to enjoy the best drama in the best way.

Not only is modern drama being read and studied in the English classes, but the schools are becoming centres of Little Theatre movements and leading their communities in pageants and dramatic festivals. An editorial in The New York Evening Post in 1918 put it in this way: "As Froude states that in Tudor England there was acting everywhere from palace to inn-yard and village green, so, the prediction is made, future historians will record that in our America there was acting everywhere—in neighborhood theatres, portable theatres, church clubs, high schools and universities, settlements, open amphitheatres, and hotel ballrooms."

One reason that amateur dramatics have taken on a new lease of life in the schools is because other teachers besides teachers of English have become interested in the project of giving a play. Students in physics classes have planned and executed lighting systems for the school theatre, students in carpentering and manual arts have built the scenery from designs made in drawing classes, curtains have been stenciled, costumes made and cloths dyed in domestic art classes, programs printed by the school printing squad, music furnished by the school orchestra and dances taught by the physical training department. In most cases the line coaching and the general direction of the play have been part of the work in English.

A concrete example will illustrate this kind of co-operation. Several years ago the department of English at the Washington Irving High School gave two plays, Three Pills in a Bottle, a product of the 47 Workshop, by Rachel Lyman Field, and The Goddess of the Woven Wind, by Alice Rostetter. The Goddess of the Woven Wind had grown out of class-room work. The girls in an industrial course were studying the origin of the silk industry. A pamphlet stated that the wife of Hoangti, Si-Ling-Chi, was the first to prepare and weave silk. This legend offered suggestive dramatic material peculiarly appropriate for a girls' high school.

The work of obtaining the setting and the properties was divided between two committees, each working under the direction of a chairman. Since fifty dollars had been fixed as the limit of expenditure for the two plays, the problem was rather a difficult one. Fortunately, Three Pills in a Bottle calls for a small cast. The cast of The Goddess of the Woven Wind, however, included thirty-four girls, most of whom had to be orientally clad and equipped. The teacher who contemplates putting on a rather elaborate costume play in his or her high school will be interested to learn that the amount was so exactly fixed and the department so resourceful that fifty-one dollars and nine cents was the total sum spent on the two plays. Then, lest anyone think that there had been a miscalculation, let it be added that this sum included the money spent for hot chocolate to serve to the casts of the plays, between the afternoon and evening performances.

The problem of staging Three Pills in a Bottle was greatly simplified by the fact that the frontispiece of the play gives a simple, effective setting not difficult to copy. With the aid of some amateur carpentering, the regular interior set was easily transformed to suit the purpose. The problem of color was solved when the chairman of the committee found a patchwork quilt in the attic, during a visit to her mother's home; a conference with the janitress of her city apartment developed the fact that she possessed a freshly scrubbed wash-tub, which she was willing not only to donate to the cause, but to have painted green.

The task of staging The Goddess of the Woven Wind was difficult and interesting, because it was decidedly a costume play, and because it was a first production. Some of the difficulties that confronted the chairman of the committee for that play were amusing.

For instance, after some perplexed thought on the subject, she tacked the following list of costumes and properties on the Bulletin Board of the English office: