Percy MacKaye was an avid experimenter in poetry and drama who argued for and demonstrated the feasibility of a public and nationalistic stance in the arts. MacKaye's community dramas, his occasional poems, and his investigations into and adaptations of American folk materials are the most obvious manifestations of his interests. An enthusiastic literary pioneer who wished to serve his country through his art, MacKaye was a figure whose accomplishments brought him influence and respect through the first third of the twentieth century. MacKaye wanted literature to serve practical social ends, and he wanted American literary culture to embrace the whole society. Although he brought many significant projects to fruition, MacKaye's essentially optimistic vision lost force during the Depression years. The more private modes of literary art, especially in poetry, prevailed, and the broad audience that MacKaye sought to serve was abandoned by his more dominant contemporaries and successors...