A Short History of the Drama by Martha Fletcher Bellinger; H. Holt and Company, 1927

A whimsical and humorous gift belongs to Sir James Barrie, born in Scotland in 1860, whose first plays appeared near the end of the nineteenth century. In common with the realists, Barrie has the power to produce local types of character, details of speech and conduct, and shades of temper, with uncanny exactitude. His tendency towards realism, however, goes no further. He has a careful regard for form, and he never allows his desire for truthfulness of characterization to lead him into depressing side-alleys. With subjects and people taken from small-town Scotch life, as in Quality Street, The Little Minister (dramatized from his novel), and What Every Woman Knows, he has been a valiant defender of a sort of sane idealism and happy fantasy. His romanticism does not belie or misrepresent the essentials of human nature. He has taken the old themes of the woman in revolt against too much domesticity, the brilliant public man who needs a lesson in humility, and the perfect servant who, by an unexpected turn of affairs, exchanges places with his master ( The Admirable Crichton), and given them to the public with humor, sympathy, and quiet understanding. His Peter Pan, a fairy play, with the title rôle enacted by Miss Maude Adams, was one of the few dramas which could compete in popularity with Rostand Cyrano.

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