SOURCE: “William Vaughn Moody: A Study,” in The Drama: A Quarterly Review of Dramatic Literature, No. 2, May, 1911, pp. 177-211.

In the following essay, Barr and Caffin examine Moody's dramatic poems.

I. the Lyrist and Lyric Dramatist

William Vaughn Moody's journalistic eulogy has been intoned as a De Profundis from ocean to ocean, and echoes have reached the gulf, and doubtless the polar pack-ice affecting the barometric pressure and the boreal dawn. The product of our much derided Hoosierdom as to birth and early education, he received that academic baptism entitling him to serious poet-hood in New England's most sacred minster of the Muse, (A.B.'93; A.M.'94.) From Harvard as instructor in English, ('94-01), it was natural for him to migrate Westward to the metropolis of continental United States. There he performed the duties and wore the honors of an assistant professor ('01-'07) in...