William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910), Playwright

Indiana native and Harvard graduate (B.A. 1891 with two years of graduate study) William Vaughn Moody left a secure faculty position at the University of Chicago when he decided that his true calling was as a poet. He wrote to his friend Percy Mackaye in 1904 that he was "heart and sould dedicated to the conviction that modern life can be presented on the stage in the poetic mediums and adequately presented only in that manner." A thoughtful, meticulous worker, Moody wrote his impressive History of English Literature to support himself while he travelled abroad and in the American West. Greatly influenced by his studies of Milton and Bunyan, Moody's work as a playwright centered on his own view of Christian theology. He wrote several plays dealing with subjects that in our own day would be regarded as "liturgical." A century ago, such subjects were more central to our culture.

In three verse plays, Moody attempted to put his theses into practical stage terms. In The Masque of Judgement (completed in 1900 and never professionally produced), Moody explores the conflict of good and evil from the Incarnation to Judgement Day. The Fire Bringer (1904, also unproduced) is Moody's treatment of the Prometheus legend. In the unfinished The Death of Eve Moody returns to specifically Christian themes, this time returning Eve to Cain's city where she (in Quinn's words), "becomes ... the individual mother of Cain, the author of his sin as of his life, who takes upon herself his guilt." All three deal with the nature and necessity of atonement and salvation as well as Moody's lifelong preoccupation with reconciling Man's physical and spiritual natures.

The first of Moody's plays to be produced was the extremely successful The Great Divide (1906). Staged as The Sabine Woman by Margaret Anglin at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago and later in New York at the Princess Theatre and on tour with Henry Miller, the play ran through the seasons of 1906, 1907 and 1908. It deals with a story discovered by Mrs. Moody about a New England lady of Puritan stock, who accompanies her brother to a cabin in the West only to be attacked by three men when she was left alone for a time. She appealed to one of the three to save her and agreed to marry him, but the marriage failed and ended in divorce.

In The Faith Healer (1910), Moody dealt with his evolving belief that man might be wholly human and still pursue his ultimate calling. Michaelis, a Christian American Indian had been the instrument of healing in numerous cases all over the country including one involving the apparent raising from the dead of a young Hopi man, who accompanies him as his companion. He finds himself in the household of