The American Mind

Many years ago as a student in a foreign university I remember attacking with the complacency of youth a German history of the English drama in six volumes. I lost courage long before the author reached the age of Elizabeth but I still recall the subject of the opening chapter: it was devoted to the physical geography of Great Britain. Writing as the good German professor did in the triumphant hour of Taine’s theory as to the significance of place period and environment in determining the character of any literary production what could be more logical than to begin at the beginning? Have not the chalk cliffs guarding the southern coast of England have not the fatness of the midland counties and the soft rainy climate of a North Atlantic island and the proud tenacious self-assertive folk that are bred there all left their trace upon A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Every Man in his Humour and She Stoops to Conquer? Undoubtedly. Latitude and longitude soil and rainfall and food-supply racial origins and crossings political and social and economic conditions must assuredly leave their marks upon the mental and artistic productiveness of a people and upon the personality of individual writers.