Clayton Hamilton, Seen on the Stage, "The Athenian Drama" Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1920, pp. 208-212.

"If Margaret Anglin had accomplished nothing else, she would be entitled to a vote of gratitude for proving that there is a large and eager public in this country which is willing to pay money for the privilege of seeing the tragic dramas of the Greeks. For Miss Anglin's first performance oin New York of the Electra of Sophocles, on the after noon of February 6, 1918, the house was crowded to the roof; and it must be remembered that Carnegie Hall is capable of seating more than three thousand people. Miss Anglin was required, by a popular demand that was literally undeniable, to offer half a dozen repetitions of the Electra of Sophocles and the Medea of Euripides; and, for each if the matinee performances the gross receipts amounted, in round numbers, to six thousand dollars. There is always a great public for great art; and this Miss Anglin knows.

"She has taught our public also that "Sophocles" and "Euripides" are not dead names, to be listed merely in card catalogues of dusty libraries, but living names of living playwrights, fitted to arouse the emotions of a public young and eager for sensation. Like all great artists, Miss Anglin is gifted, quite uncommonly, with common sense. She understands the simple point --which has escaped the notice of innumerable scholars and proffessors--that the Athenian public attended the drama not in answer to the call of duty but in answer to the call of pleasure. The aim of the theatre is not instruction; it is merely entertainment; and the most high-minded dramatist tries only to overwhelm the members of his audience with an awareness of "God being with them when they know it not." Euripides and Sophocles are not aloof and distant, like the "high-brows" of this present time; for, in their own day, they fraternized with common men and sought to entertain the inarticulate but none-the-less appreciative "gallery" of Helots who could neither read nor write. …

"Miss Anglin, having seized the spirit of Greek tragedy, has decided that the thing to be pursued is not the interest of archaeology but the interest of immediate theatrical appeal. She has handled the recorded texts of Euripides and Sophocles as if these ancient dramatists were contemporary and were standing at her elbow throughout the tentative period devoted to rehearsals. She has never allowed herself to think of either of these authors as any less alive than Sir Arthur Pinero or Mr. Augustus Thomas, or any less responsive to the predictable reactions of a contemporary audience. She has discarded the mask, and the cothornus, and many other minor and mechanical conventions of the ancient drama; but she has preserved the wonder and the sting.

Miss Anglin's interpretations of Euripides and Sophocles were first disclosed in the summer of 1915, in the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, California. Rumors began immediately to drift eastward that she had "discovered" a couple of "young authors" wgho promised, in due time, to be "accepted" on Broadway.

The present writer, among others in the east, received letters, at the time, which told the tale. Miss Anglin had imagined, for the end of the Electra, a bit of "business" that was thoroughly in keeping with the high intention of the dramatist. Orestes, according to the orderly progression of the play, has entrapped Aegisthus, and challenged him to fight a duel for his life. The young avenger marches the elder murder off stage, to the blood-bedewed halls of Agamemnon. From this heroic region, beyond the boundaries of the visible scene, there comes a noise of the clash of steel on steel and of the groans and grunts of supermen engaged in mortal combat. This sound listened to by lone Electra, clad in dismal rags, who looms before the audience as a pillar of cloud, awaiting fearfully the outcome of the combat between the man who is ;her brother and the man who is her father's murderer. Off stage, there arises, in due time, a cry of agony, and then there comes a silence and a pause. Then, from out the portal of the house of Agamemnon, is hurled the sword of the vanquished. This token clatters, hurtling, down a stairway of enormous length. Electra shudders away from the symbol of defeat. Then, stealthily, she climbs down many steps, to examine it with anguished curiosity. With a wild cry, she catches up and flings the thing aloft: for she has recognized it as the sword of the hated murderer, Aegisthus. Then, at last, she dashes it beneath her feet, and tramples on it with a tardy sense of triumph. This point of high dramatic tensity concludes the play.

When Miss Anglin first presented the Electra of Sophocles in Berkeley, California, this final moment was received with utter silence. No hands were clapped together in the entire auditorium. A friend of mine was standing in the wings; and he told me--in a letter that was written at the time--that he heard Miss Anglin say aloud, "I've failed:--My God, I've failed!" Then, after an appreciable pause, there came a noise that sounded like the rushing of the tide at Mont Saint Michel. This noise was compounded of the cheering from ten thousand throats. Louder and louder grew the acclamation, until it seemed to shake the skies. Then, suddenly, the stage itself was assaulted by hundreds and hundreds of clamorous spectators. They swarmed about Miss Anglin and strove to touch her finger-tips. One old man, whose face was bathed in tears, tore his own hat into shreds and tossed the pieces high into the air. … That was what he wished to say in tribute to a dramatist who had been dead and buried for two dozen centuries.