THE DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT OF ROBERT SHERWOOD 
AS REVEALED IN HIS FIRST ELEVEN PLAYS 
THESIS 
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 
of The University of Texas in Partial 
Fulfillment of the Requirements 
For the Degree of 
MASTER OF ARTS 
Allen Ludden 
Austin, Texas 
June, 1941 
TO
DEDICATED 
MISS COETA TERREL PREFACE 
Let us suppose, as a premise, that we accept the fact that Robert 
thinking American. If it
Sherwood is an intelligent, he is more, can 
be proved. In 1941 the student of Robert Sherwood and his work can ob­
serve the technical and spiritual growth of a playwright who has writ­
ten eleven produced plays since 1926. That will be my task. 
The plays will be studied in the order in which they were pro­
duced, No attention will be paid to Sherwood’s transactions or sce­
nario writing. Because consistency is important for the full under-
of each will be
standing a study of this kind, play analyzed, first, 
in general terms; then, in the light of the critical reception and the 
author’s own comment on his work; and, finally, through detailed study 
of the play itself and its relation to its particular stage of the au­
thor’s development. 
Robert Sherwood is a young playvvright. His career has only be­
gun. This study is no final answer. It is a recognition of a good 
beginning. 
I wish to thank Dr. Harry Ransom, first of all, for his instruc­
tion and assistance and to mention clearly that this thesis could not 
have been written without his kind encouragement. To Dr. R. H. Griffith 
I owe a course in drama, that has provided me with a background and 
philosophy of drama which I hope has made this writing more sound. A 
lengthy conversation with Mr. John Mason Brown was an invaluable source 
of inspiration and first-hand facts, Mr, Marc Connelly, too, was of 
IV 
great assistance, particularly in his description of the London pro­
duction of Acropolis, which he directed. And, finally, I wish to thank 
Miss Coeta Terrel, without whose assistance this thesis could never have 
been written. 
June, 1941 Allen Ludden 
V 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Page 
Chapter I 
The Road to Rome, 1926 1 
Chapter II 
The Love Nest. 1927 32 
,. 
The Queen*a Husband. 1928 36 
This Is New York. 1930 40 
Waterloo Bridge. 1930 47 
.. 
Chapter 111 
Reunion in Vienna. 1931 56 
Chapter IV 
Acropolis. 1933 77 
The Petrified Forest. 1934 83 
Chapter V 
Idiot’s Delight. 1936 109 
Chapter VI 
Abe Lincoln in Illinois. 1938 128 
Chapter VII 
There Shall Be No Night. 1940 146 
Hierarchy of Robert Sherwood’s First Eleven Plays 154 
Bibliography 155 
Vita 
170 
CHAPTER I 
In 1926 Robert Sherwood wrote The Road to Home, his first play 
and his first great success. The actual writing took him three weeks, 
and the first draft was the one that was put into rehearsal and on 
the stage. 
The Road to Rome is set in Rome in 216 B. C., during the time of 
the Second Punic War, The immediate scene shows Hannibal, the Cartha­
ginian conqueror, outside the gates of Rome after the disastrous bat­
tle of Cannae. The character of the a
principal story is Amytis, 
beautiful Greek lady. 
Her husband, the celebrated Fabius Maximus the Delayer, adores her because of her beauty and perfection, be­cause she puzzles and fascinates him with her joy of 
life, her boredom, her scorn for the simple, profit­able ideals that he and the Romans live by. His ideals are sentimental without passion, he is too exhausted with succeeding in Rome to have any energy left for love or at least sex. Hannibal nears the gates of Rome, Fabius is made dictator. Amytis hears of Hannibal, he comes into her dreams, idealistic and erotic. The Roman la­dies are to perish for Rome; she sets out on the pre­tense of but visit
joining her mother at Ostia, really to Hannibal. 
At Hannibal’s camp Amytis is to be put to death as a 
In her talk with Hannibal she sets forth her Greek ideas. Military ambition, she adds, is an affair of med­als and schoolboy orations. And what does it come to all this driving for power and glory, and this 
spy. 
success, confused forgetfulness of what she calls the human 
equa­tion? Before she dies, she expects at least the usual practice of great victories, ravishing women. Han-
the 
nibal, after much resistance, falls into her spell, she passes the night in his tent. In the last act, Fabius comes with his delegation of Romans, trying to bluff it out. Kasdrubal Hannibal on to
urges Rome. Amytis puts 
1 See S. Behrman, "Old Monotonous," New Yorker. XVI, June 1,
N. 
1940, p. 35, 
2 
Hannibal and his soul in the will he be a
balance; con­quering empty child, or will he follow his own far spirit; will he be above this the
vanity of power and striving, futility of conquest, and leave Rome to her own destruc­tion from within? He orders the army on to Capua and 
departs from the scene; Pabius thinks that Amytis has 
come there to save him and Rome. 2 
Even as a young playwright, Robert Sherwood paid attention to 
his preface. In the preface of the printed edition of The Road to 
Rome that appeared in 1927, he writes at length concerning the play 
and its historical background. He says here that his play "was in­
spired by an unashamedly juvenile hero-worship for Hannibal; in 
rz 
manner end in intent, it is incorrigibly Hie tries to 
persuade the reader that he is merely writing a play as every jour­
nalist should before he is thirty. The whole thing came about as 
simply as that with no great intention or purpose, no political 
double-meaning. That is what he said; that, no doubt, is what he 
sincerely believed. Since then, he has been hard to convince that 
his mind inadvertently connects his political views with his talent 
for getting a thing said on the stage. Of Sherwood*s first play, 
surer
The Road to Rome, Stark Young can "feel no than he [Sherwood"] 
4 evidently did as to what he meant by the play."Young, however, 
to formulate what he thinks Robert Sherwood was trying to
proceeds 
2  
Stark Young,  "The Road  to Rome,"  New  Republic, L,  March  9,  
1927,  p.  70.  
3  
Robert  Sherwood,  "Preface," The  Road  to Rome,  New  York,  1927,  
p,  xli.  
4  
Young,  "The  Road  to  Rome,"  p.  70.  

3 
6 
say, mentioning "a beautiful theme," but suspecting the innocence 
of And
its conception. Young is the least insistent of the critics 
upon the playwright’s message, Edmund Pearson 
argues that "Rome, 
as Mr. Sherwood writes, is used to represent American tendencies 
of today, tendencies of a regrettable nature. The dramatist is 
out to 100
wallop per-centism, big business, imperialism, boosting 
and boasting, and, incidentally, the Harding administration, the 
and
oil scandals, Mr, Coolidge, everything which prevents the reign 
of idealism in America,"6 Poor Robert SherwoodJ That was his plight 
with his first play and with the critics of that very successful pro­
duction. 
In the same to this first play Sherwood ttlt seemed
preface says, 
possible to me that Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, was sud­
denly afflicted with an attack of acute introspection that he 
’What
paused to ask of himself the devastating question, of it?’, 
7 and that he was unable to find an answer.” Is it not more logi­
cal that it was this idea that inspired The Road to Rome not 
hero worship for Hannibal, not the urge to write a play any 
play? 
There are four points in the preface to The Road to Rome, the 
significance of which has grown in the light of Sherwood’s plays 
5 
Young, MThe Road to Rome," p, 70. 

6 
Edmund Pearson, "Carthage Goes Demoeratic," Outlook, CXLVI, August 24, 1927, p, 546. 7 Road to Rome, xxxviii.
Sherwood, "Preface," The p. 
and his growth as a dramatist since 1926, They are: (1) that Sher­
wood’s first play deals with political foibles and the futility of 
war; (2) that Sherwood insists that he had no such purpose in the 
original conception of the play; (3) that Sherwood used in this 
first play infallible theatrical devices sex, a beautiful woman, 
and (4) that Sherwood’s for the use
witty, vulgar cliches; argument 
of
of lusty twentieth-century language in the expression the anal-
between ancient Rome and America in the boom days reveals
ogy early 
his characteristic sanity and 
logical thinking processes. 
The critical reception of The Road to Rome acknowledged almost 
unanimously the probable financial success of the play, predicting 
correctly the long mn and the emergence of a new American playwright 
of some importance. A characteristic review said: 
This is in no sense a great play indeed, it is doubtful if Mr. Sherwood could ever write a great one: 
he too amused and keen a sense of human ri­
possesses 
diculousness; but it is a fine and splendid piece of 
dramatic work. As a study real or
in personalities, fancied, his play more than stands erect it moves 
0 
irresistibly. 
Among the more significant observations made on the new play-
the of his work
wright and his play was comparison to that of George 
Bernard Shaw. Robert Sherwood acknowledged and tried to explain this 
comment in his preface,' but he was not so successful in his analysis 
of the reason for it as was Edmund Pearson when he said: 
8 
Independent. CXVIII, June 4, 1927, p, 592. 
9 
See Sherwood, "Preface. w The Road to Rome. p. xxxix. 
5 
Mr. Sherwood, in the readable preface to his play as now published, says for anybody
that to mention Bernard Shaw in connection with his work gives him great pain. Although it will hurt me more than it will hurt him, 
I must confess that I was instantly reminded of some 
other hours of happiness in a theater when I first 
saw Shaw’s ’Caesar and Cleopatra.* But that there is 
any reprehensible imitation, or anything more than the natural influence of the foremost dramatist of the time 
occur
upon a younger man, did not to me.^ 
A blatant and less secure declares:
critic, Richard Jennings, 
You will see that Mr. Sherwood’s fund of philosophy, the substance of his as well as his and
satire, style 
sense not so so
of probabilities, are ample, secure, as those of his Shavian models. Almost any labels, indeed, could be affixed to his puppets. Any costumes 
might clothe them. His Hannibal might be a Tussaud 
Charlemagne, Attila, Genghis Khan. 3-1 
an a 
In the selection of excerpts from the many and repetitious 
reviews of this first play by Robert Sherwood there must be 
a 
bias, 
a sense of whet is ambiguous and of what is agreeable to the point 
For
pre-determined. the analysis of the problem involved, definite, 
reliable sources must be cited as the most sound, the most careful. 
For a chronological study such as this is to be, Stark Young and 
Brooks Atkinson are the critics in whom more more schol­
confidence, 
arly dependence may be pieced than in any other available writers. 
For this reason we examine the first criticism by Stark Young of 
the new playwright. 
10  
Pearson,  op,  cit.. p.  546.  
11  
Richard  Jennings,  "The  Theatre," Spectator. CXL,  June  2,  1927,  
p.  827.  

Stark Young makes the following Interesting opening comment on 
the play: 
There are a dozen ways to begin an article on this of Mr, is one of the most in-
play Sherwood’s, which teresting ventures of the season; what I had best be-is
gin by saying that I have only now seen it, some four weeks after its opening. Some changes may have no since that a
gone on, doubt, time, shifting of ac­
cents, At any rate I had the sense of an audience that 
had come largely on a pornographic hope, dreaming of 
smart lustful epigrams and inversions of stately
naughty histories. At the same time, I had the sense that the direction Mr, Merivale’s and Miss Cowl’s performances have taken must have grown more or less a disappoint­ment to such visitors. I had the feeling that on both these players the idea that is inherent in the play whether it is carried through or not, has taken deeper hold in the 
course of their performances; they appear little concerned the
to be with more risque possibil­ities of the lines and touched by the hint of the glory and exaltation in the theme.
of life that persists 
And we have the word of an astute observer that the actors of
so, 
the play have found more than an ordinary interest in the merit of 
the lines which they must speak. Certainly we must suppose that 
Young is aware that any actor is anxious for the success of the 
in which he is currently performing; and for that reason we
play 
ask if he is giving Sherwood credit for writing such a play that 
should excite more than the usual inspiration in the actor. If 
he is however
Young is making this point, admitting subtly, slightly, 
than the
that here is a play more worthy average. From Stark Young 
that is enough. For he is more attentive to the details of a 
per­
formance than the average critic, and within his analysis of the 
12 
The Hoad 70.

Young, nto Rome,* p. 
is to be found a sensitive statement of the theatri­
acting always 
of
cal as well as the literary merits a script. For example: 
Miss Jane Cowl brings to the role of Amytis the per­suasion of her beauty and a dignity of approach 
that 
must deepen considerably the meaning of the part, and that helps us toward a knowledge of what Mr, Sherwood at least might have meant by it. Miss Cowl could very 
wisely sharpen her attack at times in the witty effects. If also she would vary the speed of her second act more, she might give us more of the intellectual excitement 
and restlessness of this rebellious Greek in the midst of Rotarian Rome, and give us more, too, of this wo­
abounding love of life and of what must seem to her Roman husband her fickleness of mood, her odd de­light in the useless qualities of things, and her strangely perverse taste for what one of her own fool­ish philosophers would have called the immortal in mor­
tality. 
To put Mr, Philip Merivale into Hannibal’s role was a brilliant piece of casting. Mr, Merivale has taken the character that the dramatist supplied him and de­
it toward a curious This Hanni­
veloped completeness. bal is a mystic all his life; his first mysticism a hatred for Rome as a baby his father had lifted him 
up to Baal and pledged him as Rome’s destroyer his second the dream of his own reality in the midst of a blind and extraneous world of men and action; Amytis awoke that in him. 
Here are imaginative pictures of Amytis and Hannibal, Even Sher-
a
wood failed to invent such glowing prose picture of his characters. 
The significance lies in the fact that he created characters to stim­
ulate Young’s interest, and that the performances-of the actors are 
discussed without belittling the vehicle, accepting it as an ade­
motivation
quate for the performances. From Stark Young’s point of 
view, then, The Road to Rome fulfills one of the first requisites 
13 
Young, ”The Road to Rome,” p, 70, 

8 
of a play: characters are provided for the actors to interpret fully 
and with a certain aesthetic satisfaction. 
Perhaps because it is a critic’s responsibility to analyze what 
his reader understands as "a deeper meaning," Stark Young struggles 
to do just this in his second paragraph: 
He has launched, how innocently I cannot tell, a beautiful theme: in the the finer
person of the woman, mind of Greece, its subtler values, its sense of life, 
its final analysis, its zest of living, is presented in the midst of a naive, progressive, patriotic, mate­rialistic, and platitudinous Rome.l4 
How seriously we roust take this comment, so diffusely phrased by 
Stark Young, depends upon the later development of his critical at­
titude toward Robert Sherwood. For the moment, however, the simple 
reaction to this fragment of Young’s analysis would be to regard it 
as one of the critic’s more benevolent evasions. He seems not to be 
the
able to give the play his full approval, withholding always res­
ervation that it could be a better play. Not until he has written 
three paragraphs, is he able to get down to a concrete analysis of 
the as a whole.
play Here, finally, is Young’s opinion of Robert 
Sherwood and his first play: 
At one moment he seems a poet, at another a 
wise-cracker, 
and again a writer of historical burlesque, now obvious and now witty. I think The Road to Rome a most consider­able achievement, nevertheless; I found it far less bour­geois and tedious than Mr. Erskine’s Helen of Troy, and much more suggestive of a certain hard scorn that the 
po­etic can have. The family of the play is obviously that large one in which belong Landor’s magnificent Conversa­
14 
"The Road

Young, to Rome," p. 70, 
9 
tions and letters of Pericles and Aspasia, Andreyev’s Sabine Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and and
Women, Cleopatra, 
many  material usedother examples of classic to illum­ 
ine  or satirize  modern  life.  The  method  in general  in  
The Road  to Rome  is  to  take  pot shots  at  our  present- 

day problems and foibles in America, to put into Ro­man mouths into Roman souls
our Rotarian platitude and our naive pursuit of ends that we cannot analyze with relation to ourselves, sentiments we pick up by crowd and a certain naive innocence
imitation, of personal reflection and thought. The main theme in the play, or what might be the main theme and doubtless is, is presented through this Greek woman; it is difficult at best to into and in the third act
get stage terms; Mr. Sherwood it muddled and sidetracked into
gets up remarks about war and its futility. This is a natural but unfortunate turn to since to most of the au­
take, dience the theme can then be regarded as more or less and so at a great sacrifice of the
pacifistic labeled, 
essential point. It is in this scene, particularly, 
between Amytis end Hannibal in the third act, that Mr. 
Sherwood needs to think out find out ex-

his matter, actly what he does mean, and try to drive it home to the audience.^-5 
In this discussion Stark Young’s points are important, first, 
because they state clearly and intelligently the consensus of the 
critical acclaim because
in general and, secondly, Young’s analysis 
of the weaknesses and merits of the play provides an excellent 
oppor­
tunity for argument. Let us examine in detail the points made here 
by Stark Young. Ke says the play is a ”considerable achievement,” 
a
chiefly because Sherwood has managed to eke out comparatively hon­
est play, lifting the whole tone of it above the sentimental this,
—¦ 
I think, is what Stark Young means by his word "bourgeois” end keep­
ing its drama compact and direct enough to prevent its being tedious, 
”A certain hard scorn that the poetic can have" 
is, I think. Young’s 
15 "The Road 70.
Young, to Rome," p. 
way of acknowledging only slightly Sherwood’s sanity and direct 
dramatics, (This must be investigated further; it seems that the 
critics all stop too soon in discussion of this point. If there is 
in The Road to Rome evidence of this rare and worthwhile quality of 
playwriting and I think there is why was it not discussed? 
Why was not one critic, at least, able to see in it the very thing 
that all critics are later to recognize in Robert Sherwood’s plays? 
The answer may well be that a first play never allows the critic op­
portunity to compare and make conclusions about a writer’s style. 
However insecure the style may be in parts of The Road to Rome, 
there is abundant indication of the kind of writing that will be 
Sherwood’s when he has become familiar with his tools.) Finally, 
Stark Young decides that Sherwood gets his theme and his play mud­
dled in the last act. The third act, according to Young, is the 
weakest in the play. It gets away from the basic idea to talk about 
Uiis
the futility of war, is interesting, because it brings up the 
question of just what was the basic theme end wherein Sherwood does 
get sidetracked. Granted that the third act is a change in point 
of view, the question arises as to which of the two parts the 
first and second acts being part one, and the third act, part two—­
is the author’s original conception. 
Brooks Atkinson takes the following stand in the opening of his 
first review of The Road to Rome: 
In the last act of The Road to Rome, on at the
put Playhouse last evening, puts off his weari-
Mr. Sherwood somely professional sense of humor and gets down to ro­
mance and human values worthwhile. Hannibal, the deadly 
has his
Carthaginian, 	campfires burning just outside 
Rome. He is on the point of invading that defenseless 
capital, plundering it, and exalting in the fierce ha­
tred that has led him thousands of 	miles through Spain, 
across the Alps, and down the long 	dusty miles of It­
aly. But a Roman matron, who strayed mysteriously had robbed his victories of their
through his lines, to him duties far more eternal. As
glory by proving 
for the conqueror, Hannibal might have had her killed 
what
as a spy; or, is worse, might 	have betrayed her Fabius Dic­
infidelity to her pompous husband, Maximus, 
tator of Rome in the great emergency. But he does not. 
In a moment of human 	far nobler then the
ecstasy, grim determination of his profession, he gives Rome 
as a gift to the gods, whom he does not understand, 
and marches his indignant army on to Capua, As Amytis, 
the Miss Cowl plays this scene
woman, with depth and force, perhaps glad that at last she has something to after the trivialities of the first
tangible grasp 
of the And as the 	engaging Mr. Meri­
play. Hannibal, vale plays quietly a hero who has learned the joy of 
submission. 	the final curtain of Mr, Sher-
Accordingly, 
wood’s play comes after the one creditable incident in 
the play. 1® 
Atkinson is not favorably impressed with the play as a whole. But 
in regard to the third act, he finds it the one creditable moment in 
the 	in which Miss able
the play only one 	Cowl was to play with 
depth and force, the only one in which there was something tangible 
for the actress to the only 	one in which Sherwood down
grasp, 	gets 
and 	worthwhile."
"to romance human values 
Certainly Young and Atkinson do not agree. And that is good. 
It is significant, in observing their difference of opinions, that 
Atkinson in his praise of the third act does not mention that paci­
to 	In­
fistic theme that so sidetracked the play according Young. 
16 
Brooks Atkinson, "Hannibal’s Wild 	Times, Feb-
Oat," New York ruary 1, 1927, p, 24, col, 2. 
12 
deed, Brooks Atkinson never mentions the pacifistlc idea of the 
play. It is apparent that both he and Young found in The Road to 
Rome the same basic idea. That they do not feel the same about its 
presentation is clear in the following statement by Atkinson: 
Mr. Sherwood seems to have attempted a satire in the 
vein of Anatole France, Bernard Shaw, or our own sar­
donic John Erskine. Hais half-Athenian wife of a so-
Roman Senator does not share the stern virtues
norous 
of her city; with a smirking sort of superiority she pits Aristotle against Hannibal and talks smugly of science and learning while her husband thinks only of 
glory. In these Mr. Sherwood has given modern
scenes 
foibles the anachronistic settings of Rome, 216 B, C. 
"Oedipus Rex" is damned as "coarse play," ill-becoming the wife of a respectable Roman Senator; and this pleas­ure-loving woman is reproved for demanding more dinner 
on "Sweetless Saturday," observed in Rome for the ben­
efit of armies struggling on the battlefields. 
Instead of cutting us to the quick, Amytis, the 
... 
wayward wife, rather suggests the true reason why the Romans hated the Athenians, and were contemptuous of 
those obsequious countrymen who affected the graces of Greek culture. and the is
This part, burlesque, not superior wisdom. It is bourgeois sophistication and it soon becomes boring in the theater. 
Atkinson is so bitter I Young, so kind I Stark Young that The
says 
Road to Rome is "far less bourgeois and tedious than Mr, Erskine*s 
Helen of Troy." Brooks Atkinson says Mr. Sherwood has attempted 
a 
satire in the vein of John Erskine that results in "bourgeois sophis­
tication." Hie variance does not end there. What Stark Young calls 
a "creditable achievement" Brooks Atkinson labels "indifferent en­
-18 tertainment," And the greatest dissension between these critics
two 
17 
Atkinson, "Hannibal's Wild Oat," p. col, 2.

24, 
18 
"Sentiment

Brooks Atkinson, to Satire," New York Times, Feb­1927, sect, VII, p. 1, col, 1,
ruary 6, 
lies not so much in the opinion of the writing of the play as in 
the attitudes toward
two the central character, Amytis, Stark Young 
is obviously in sympathy with the beautiful theme launched in the 
19 person of Amytis. And Brooks Atkinson is vociferous in his lack 
of sympathy: 
Ahl And Aristotle! While her husband declaims in orotund the
periods about greatness of Rome, she sings the praises of Aristotle, the peripatetic of who left the world wiser than he found
the Lyceum, it, and ruined polite conversation for all times by laying down the principles of logic. No wonder the Romans despised the soft-handed Greeks with their soporific tea-table conversation. Nothing is more 
irritating than the condescending skepticism of a 
pretender. If Amytis had lived two hundred years 
earlier, she might have encountered Socrates in the 
market place and forthwith turned her skepticism mod­
estly upon herself rather than her contemporaries. 
Then Mr. Sherwood would never have offered her in 
the role of She
a prophet. is not; she is a soph­
ist, As a satire ”The Road to Rome” suffers from 
presenting her as inordinately wiser than the Ro­
mans, Mme, Bovary was no more egregious,^ 
We shall leave the discussion 
of the philosophical aspects. 
The two attitudes explain themselves. It is with the realistic 
Brooks Atkinson’s more technical opinions that we must deal at 
He in this sure From
length. is, instance, in his opinion. the 
two articles that he wrote on The Road to Rome, the following se­
lections are important in the analysis of the play as a piece of 
writing; 
19 
See p. 9, supra. 
20 
"Sentiment to 1
Atkinson, Satire," p, # col. 1, 
Written neatly, with a sense of spoken dialogue in the these thrusts might a full load of
theater, carry irony and criticize the stupidities of the present day through the loose costumery of ancient as Mr.
history, Shaw does it with a red-hot pen point. Mr. Sherwood 1 s humor, however, seems mechanical and obvious. It is seldom edged with the reproving double meaning of bril­liant irony, 2! 
Having begun on the note of satire, ’’The Road to Rome” then drifts off into risque farce of the boule­vards, Amytis has heard what calamities the Cartha­ginian soldiers visit upon the defenseless women of 
the region through which the army passes. Describ­
ing the cruelty and pestilence of Hannibal, 
Fabius Maximus concludes: "And an epidemic of pregnancy follows the course of his army,’’ Married to an ag­
ing husband, all this seems far less dreadful to Amy-tis than to Fabius, and she seeks out Hannibal appar­ently with no other motive. Again Mr, Sherwood writes 
with heavy touch; and an episode that might seem brisk 
and salty in the suave style of an accomplished farceur 
becomes crude and at length stupid through its uncer­
tainty. Mr, Sherwood does better with the ”What Price Glory” satire of a squad of Carthaginian soldiers who 
suffer verbal indignities from an officious ser­
top 
22 
geant. 
Capital in its main idea, ’’The Road to Rome” emerges 
as indifferent entertainment, after all, by reason of 
its unsteady writing. For Mr. Sherwood dissipates his 
satire in clumsy workmanship; nor does his flat humor 
2*^ 
prick the surface to the bubbling pot of irony beneath, 
Because Atkinson furnishes only one specific example substan­
to 
we must the
to see
tiate his accusations, go play directly to exactly 
what he means and if he is just. For emphasis let us review the 
21  
Atkinson,  "Hannibal’s  Wild  Oat," p.  24,  col. 2.  
22  
Ibid.. p.  24,  col.  2,  
23  
Atkinson,  "Sentiment to  Satire,"p.  1,  col.  1.  

points made by our critic: first, that Sherwood’s humor is mechanical 
and obvious; secondly, that the satirical thrusts miss fire because 
the play is not written neatly with a sense of spoken dialogue in 
the theater; thirdly, that Sherwood writes with a heavy touch; fourthly, 
that Sherwood does better with the nVi!hst Price Glory” satire of a 
squad of Carthaginian soldiers; fifthly, that Sherwood dissipates 
his satire in clumsy workmanship; and finally, that the third act 
is the one creditable moment in the play. 
For centuries good plays have opened with servants on the stage 
to set the 
scene and speak the necessary introductory exposition. 
no a under
It is, doubt, the simplest device for getting play way. 
Robert Sherwood, then, must not be discredited for the opening scene 
of The Road to Rome; it is commonplace, but it accomplishes quickly 
and efficiently what it must do. The servants, Meta and Varius, are 
quickly established and their story is-told with a few bold strokes. 
Typical of several of the pedestrian passages in the play is the man-
in which Sherwood tells the story of these two lovers. Within
ner 
minutes of the not he
two opening curtain, only does tell their story, 
also has them establish the characters of Fabius and
but he Amytis, 
describe the background for the threatened Carthaginian invasion, and 
present a vivid picture of the Rome in which the play is set. 
That, 
to say the least, is efficient playwriting, Robert Sherwood makes 
a
the most of his training as journalist. 
No point could be made of the writing in this opening scene if 
it were the only instance of the kind. But here is an indication of 
the young playwright that shows through in almost all of the exposi­
tory passages of the play. This and other similar ones through-
scene, 
the
out play, are much the same as an elementary exercise; and the care­
ful student, Sherwood, is following his rules closely, permitting no 
flight of fancy that will confuse his story-telling. The following 
dialogue will illustrate the playwright f s self-conscious treatment 
of the smaller parts of his play. It is clear here that Sherwood 
does not allow himself to write excitingly. He is saving his best 
for the better and bigger moments. 
META Cheer up, Varius, (She puts her arm about him and strokes his hair.) It might have been worse —it might have been much worse. Suppose we had been sep­arated when they captured us? 
VARIUS 
I know. But why can't we have our love? Why are we compelled to smother our natural impulses? We be­long to each other but we can't have each other, be­cause we're slaves I 
META In Rome, it's wise for a slave to forget that he is a human being. 
VARIUS weren't here,
If you I might be able to forget it, (He takes her in his arms.) But when I look at you, I can't remember anything except that I love you. 
META And I love you, Varius, I shall always love you. (She backs away from him, nervously.) 24 
more must
How much he have enjoyed writing the following scene. 
Re is introducing his chief character. He has 
thought how cleverly 
24 
Sherwood, The Roe.d to Rome. Act I, p, 10. 
he 
might do it. 
FABIUS the Roman Senate conferred a singular
Amytis, honor on husband to-day....
your 
AIvIYTIS (taking another garment from the slave) But here f s the real prize a peacock-green dress from Damascus made of silk. Think of it! Real silk I The merchant told me that it came from the farthest reaches of the Orient. It was carried 
the backs of camels the desert "ell for you, fair lady" those were his very words... Isn’t it beautiful! 
on across 
FABIUS 
Yes, I suppose so. But do you think —do you think it’s quite the sort of thing to be worn by a lady of your position? 
AMYTIS 
My position? I have no position, I’m just the wife of an ordinary Roman Senator and, certainly, that doesn’t mean much. 
FABIA  (bristling)  
The wife  of  an  ordinary Roman  Senator,  indeed I  
Do  you  realize  what  happened  in  the  Senate  to-day?  

AMYTIS Now, don’t tell me they passed another law. 
FABIA To-day the proclaimed your husband,
Roman Senate Fabius Maximus, Dictator. 
FABIUS Yes, my dear, they have pieced me at the heed of the Roman state. 
AMYTIS Isn’t that nice..,, Tanus, put those things in 
my room. Gro on with dinner. I’ll be right back. (She 
goes out at the left. with hurried instructions to TANUS to "lay them out on the bed so that I can see them all at once. ’* META follows her out.) 
FAEIUB She took it calmly, 
25 
Sherwood, The Roed to Rome. Act I, p, 22* 
And he has done it cleverly! Any actress would enjoy such an en-
such
trance and an introductory scene, Amytis is brought on stage 
for two minutes and whisked off in a sprightly manner, leaving the 
audience smiling and eager to see her again. Sheer theatrics. 
Sheer trickery. The scene reveals nothing, perhaps, but a keen 
sense of the craft. But here, early in the first act, is an ex­
ample of the imagination and craftsmanlike construction that 
is go­
to Sherwood’s his shar­
ing punctuate plays distinguish comedies, 
pen the edge of his satire, and add poignancy to his tragedy. 
But The Road to Home was Sherwood’s first play. His stroke 
is not so sure as it will be later; and in this first play the tech­
nique that will be his is still strange to him. In the scene cited, 
between Meta and Varius, Sherwood was being careful. The scene be­
tween Fabius and Amytis, after her first entrance, xvas successful 
theatrics. But there are many scenes, and particularly speeches, 
in this first act that might be cited as in between these two ex­
tremes, Such speeches as 
FABIA 
I have lived in Rome I
for seventy-three years, have not found it monotonous. 
AMYTIS 
must remember that
But, my dear mother, you you’ve never been anywhere else. I had the misfortune to be born in Athens, where gaiety is not listed the
among 
sins.26
unpardonable 
and 
26 
The Road to Rome. Act 26,
Sherwood, I, p, 
AMYTIS 
The trouble with me is I’m bored. And I don’t 27
like it. Being bofed is so —so snobbish. 
miss being what their author intended. They are not quite readable—­
neither bed nor good, simply commonplace, half-pronounced ideas. And 
there are whole scenes that suffer from the same sort of off-center 
pointing. Particularly in the first act do they occur most disas-
The scene between Fabius and Amytis at the dinner table,
trously. 
in which Amytis talks of going to see that exciting tragedy Oedipus 
Rex, might well be one of the scenes that motivate Brooks Atkinson’s 
statement that if the ironic thrusts had been written neatly with a 
sense of spoken dialogue in the theater, they might have carried a 
2B 
full load of irony and astute criticism of present-day foibles. 
For as this scene reads too much is left to the actors. No
now, 
doubt. Miss Cowl and Mr. Merivale injected enough spirit and intelli­
gent double-meaning into the scene to make it move at the proper pace 
and leave the less critical of the audience unaware that the lines 
themselves were for the most part sophomoric. But a playwright must 
such to his actors.
never leave a thing Indeed, written neatly, the 
scene would have been one of the high points of the satire. It is 
that Sherwood was to write satiric
apparent trying brisk, dialogue. 
Not for one minute, however, must we conclude that Sherwood writes 
of
completely without a sense spoken dialogue in the theater. If he 
writes
does nothing else, I believe he consistently with a remarkable 
27 
Sherwood, The Road to Rome. Act I, p. 27. 
28 
See 
p. 14, supra. 
sense of spoken dialogue. At his worst, he is better than the av­
erage playwright in this respect. 
For this first play, at least, a generalization might suffice 
to explain the great variance in the quality of the dialogue. When 
Sherwood is is in the heat the
pointing his thesis or of his plot, 
dialogue on the whole is more dramatic and is delivered with more 
punch. As the first act gains momentum, the dialogue is increasingly 
better. For instance, with the introduction of Scipio and the news 
that Hannibal at Sherwood’s flu-
is the gates, writing becomes more 
ent. It no longer creaks. The speeches on the whole are more read­
able and the action less impeded. Such moments as the following 
into the giving brilliance at times to the di­
fall easily action, 
alogue that runs for the most part in a prosaic key: 
AMYTI3 
Is Hannibal good-looking? 
SCIPIO Hannibal’s personal appearance did not interest me at the moment. 
FAEIUS This is a serious matter, Amytis, I must ask you not to bother us with irrelevant questions now... 
AMTTIS  
But  this  isn’t irrelevant.  It is  very important  
for Hannibal  to  be  handsome.  Think of the  statues.  

FABIUS 
2^ 
What else happened, Scipio? 
It would be impertinent to say that Robert Sherwood was not 
2$ 
Sherwood, The Road to Rome. Act I, p, 54, 
pre-concerned with the message of his play if he had not admitted 
as much fourteen years later when he said; 
When I wrote "The Road to Rome" I didn’t know what 
sort of playwright I might he, provided I might be 
a playwright at all. So I tried in it every style 
of dramaturgy high comedy, low comedy, melodrama, 
(both sacred and profane), hard-boiled beautiful 
romance re­
alism, writing and, of course, I in­30 serted a "message,"
With this statement before us, it might be possible to assume that 
the message was "inserted" after Sherwood had started the action 
rolling, the characters speaking. For within the first act there 
is, with little warning, a rather surprisingly new element thrown 
into the character of Amytis, She in answer to Fabius as he
says 
asks her what she is thinking about, "I was just wondering whet it 
31 would be like to be despoiled." And after little more than
soon, 
a subtle indication that Amytis might be more sophisticated than Fa­
bius and his mother, Sherwood confronts us with a woman who thinks 
and is able to say in answer to Vanins 1 question concerning the des­
tiny of the Greeks, "... We have the misfortune to be thoughtful peo­
ple and there’s no place for us in the world, as Rome is organiz­
ing it. We haven’t that air of destiny, nor the self-confident strength 
that it gives. Thoughtful people are never very For 
we
fear of seeming fatuous, merely suggest that perhaps with this 
30 
Sherwood, "Preface," There Shall Be No Night. New York, 
1940, 
xiii. 
p. 
31 
Sherwood, The Road to Rome. Act I, p, 42. 
32 
Ibid,, Act I, p. 47. 
speech Amytis grew to be Sherwood’s message-bearer. It is not an un­
common phenomenon for characters to grow in the process of their con-
in Sherwood’s no other
ception, But justice to planning, if for rea­
we must that there is a possibility was created
son, say that Amytis 
entirely according to a pre-conceived pattern. At any rate, after 
this speech Amytis is no longer the flippant wife that she appears 
to be upon her introduction. The audience is prepared for the women 
who is to turn Hannibal from the gates of Rome. (It is very likely, 
however, that Sherwood intended to use little more than sex to de­
feat the The intellect and
Carthaginian, its force might well have 
been a noble afterthought.) 
In regard to the humor of the play. Brooks Atkinson made the 
general statement that it is mechanical and obvious. We have ob­
served at humor that were just that. But we wonder if At-
attempts 
kinson is justified in so broad a condemnation. Certainly the line 
about the statues amuses without any labor, without seeming too ob­
vious, There is, emphatically, reason to say that some of Sherwood’s 
humor is mechanical and obvious, but if Atkinson is condemning the 
type of humor at the end of Act I, then we question the validity of 
his criticism, Sherwood is bringing down the curtain on his first 
act; he is writing a comedy and needs a curtain line that will give 
No
to his scene a substantial punch. gentle tap will do. This play 
in the final analysis, written with broad comedy strokes. And
is, 
so we feel that Sherwood was right when he "feeds his curtain line” 
a whole minute of the obvious and mechanical device
by of having 
Fabia try to attract the attention of Fabius, and finally the dis­
23 
treated Febius hears her. 
FABIUS 
Vfliet is it, Mother? 

FABIA Did you notice anything about Amytis when she left? 
FABIUS 
She seemed to be in a hurry. 

FABIA Did you notice anything strange in her appearance? 
FABIUS (impatiently) I did not.
No, 
FABIA She was wearing that new green silk dress. 
FABIUS (not interested) She was she? Now, if Hannibal attacks us
was, ... 
on the right, you, Scipio, will move forward to meet him in pitched battle. If he concentrates on the left... the the ehJ Isn’t that rather
green dress, a strange costume for traveling. (In the distance the war drums continue to beat their weird tattoo as the 
33 
CURTAIN FALLS.) 
The audience is left with the play on the upbeat, slightly amused, 
anxious. Here is the first moment the audience is permitted to re­
flect. If the playwright has succeeded in grasping his material 
well enough by this time to recapture the interest lost by the te­
dious opening scenes, then certainly he has redeemed himself to some 
that we are not
degree. Remembering proving this piece to be great 
but
literature, or even great dramaturgy, are investigating only the 
mechanics of its humor, then certainly we must admit that our play­
33 
Sherwood, The Road to Rome, Act 66.

I, p. 
wright has not failed irreparably. The humor in the first act, then, 
and that is the weakest act is not, in the final analysis, so mech 
anical and obvious that it is lost sufficiently to total
spoil the 
effect of the act. 
The of a to set his scene
responsibility playwright theatrically 
in keeping with the kind of play he is writing is as great as his re­
sponsibility to create consistent characters. It is not extraordin­
that the scenic
ary a playwright provide designer with opportunity 
to 
express theatrically his artistic enthusiasm, but in studying Rob­
ert Sherwood it is interesting to see that he consistently mounts his 
play in such a theatrical setting theatrical in the Elizabethan 
sense: vigorous, romantic. This fact seems to be significant because 
it indicates a quality in his playwriting that he later develops con­
scientiously into one of his most potent aptitudes. Alone, the de­
scription be presents of his second-act set in The Road to Rome means 
nothing. But in the light of its implications in regard to the type 
of mind the playwright has, it is, I think, most significant. Robert 
Sherwood bothers to tell his scenic designer in detail just how he 
visualizes the physical setting for his second act. Almost 
surely 
he wrote this description first; his second act was conceived in this 
setting. 
Although the scene is a Roman temple, end although it is probable that HANNIBAL did not carry many house­
hold effects with him on his strict realism
long march, and logic may be sacrificed of dramatic
for purposes ef­fectiveness in this scene. The barbaric 
splendor of Carthage itself must be reflected in all the trappings distant
in this camp; the audience must feel that the 
action of the play has shifted from the virtuous but 
unimaginative simplicity of Rome to the Oriental opulence of its enemies. 
Speaking of Hannibal’s soldiers, Robert Sherwood’s insistence 
that their speech be as tough and hard-boiled as that of the corpo­
rals in What Price Glory is almost naive. He seems determined to ar­
gue the fact that it is not "unreasonable to assume that professional 
soldiers twenty-one hundred years ago did not differ materially from 
35 the professional soldiers of today." Granted. It is a good point. 
The Road to Rome proves the point. But for the most part Maxwell 
Anderson and Lawrence Stalling were more successful in putting words 
into the mouths of their idyllic soldiers than was Sherwood. Sher­
wood has caught the spirit certainly, but he misses the validity of 
selection. On the whole the dialogue is perfectly satisfactory, but 
our playwright has not yet mastered such earthy expressions that give 
to that kind its force and interest. For
of dialogue example, if 
Sherwood meant the Second Guardsman to mean what he apparently does, 
he must know by now that the Second Guardsman would never have 
said, 
"If you ask me, Mago and the rest of the officers ain’t been missing 
much. The women around here in Italy are terrible. They ain’t got 
36 
no originality at all!" The writer of such conversation for the 

stage must learn when and when not to pull his punches, 
Sherwood 
appears to have been timid in this instance, and he should not have 
34 
Sherwood, The Road to Rome. Act 11, p, 70. 
35 
Ibid.. Act 11, p. 71. 
36 
Ibid.. Act 11, p. 77. 
been. If this is what Brooks Atkinson means by "a heavy touch,"*
then I concur. But Atkinson declares that Sherwood "does better 
with the ’Whet Price Glory* satire of a squad of Carthaginian sol-

diers"38 than with his more sophisticated dialogue of the first act. 
Briefly, Brooks Atkinson and I are not of the same mind. 
The effort in the writing is so much less when Sherwood leaves 
his What Price Glory soldiers and turns to the introduction of Han­
nibal. How much more easily he finds words for Hannibal: 
That’s just the trouble with victory, Maharbal. You can’t rest. You’re only allowed to quit when you’re losing.... Look at those seventy thousand Roman sol­diers we butchered at Cannae. They don’t care now whether Rome is destroyed or not. Their work is done. They’re at liberty to take a rest a long rest. 2^ 
Ever present in the study of The Hoed to Home must be the fact 
that this was the first play of Robert Sherwood. The play’s chief 
merit is that it offers an opportunity to observe the beginnings of 
a playwright. In it are concrete illustrations of wthe raw materi­
als” that Sherwood brought with him to his chosen profession. From 
it he 
grew. 
We have investigated the critical reception given the play. The 
critics had no mind at the time to predict the possible growth of 
the playwright; their aim was to criticize the play as it stood, an­
alyzing its virtues and its faults for what not for what
they were, 
37 
See p. 18, supra. 
38 

See p. 18, supra. 
'' 
39 
The Road
Sherwood, to Rome, Act 11, p. 88. 
in birth of a But must look
they might represent the playwright. we 
further. We have plays that were written since The Road to Rome to 
furnish 
us the perspective we need, and from them we are able to 
learn what in this first play was Sherwood’s good and Sherwood’s bad. 
Sherwood’s characteristic sanity was mentioned earlier. The 
meaning of this term becomes clear as we look closely at The Road 
to Rome. Within this play the evidence of Sherwood’s sanity is more 
in his recognition of his needs as a young playwright for sound, sim­
ple construction than in any great philosophy he chose to propound. 
Certainly the fact that a young playwright recognizes his limitations 
is not astounding, but the fact that he is able to have the 
courage 
of his convictions as he writes his first play indicates something 
of the person behind the playwright. To the least, he is a
say prac­
tical man. As for the playwright Robert Sherwood the same distin­
guishing quality appears. He is a practical man of the theater. But 
we must admit that within The Road to Rome he does reveal himself as 
For The Road to Rome offers proof of the young, the
full-fledged. 
naive, the experimental playwright. Even the most unobservant would 
in it evidence of whet the critics chose to call
recognize "unsteady 
the unsteadiness to
writing." However, of the writing of The Road 
Rome is due to the fact that the writer is new to his medium and is 
not sure of his purpose. 
The Road to Rome
The writing within presents a graphic picture 
of the eventual development of the playwright. For the first act 
illustrates the young, insecure writing of the earlier era of Sher­
wood’s plays. The second act is the middle the
•
period period in 
which Sherwood begins to feel his way toward having a thing to say, 
yet is shy in his attempt to give weight to his thinking. And the 
third act illustrates behind his
the playwright with his play him, 
method
ideas and of presentation clear in his mind, making bold, 
somewhat brilliant strokes in the presentation of his play. 
In the character Sherwood concentrates
of Amytis, his play. 
In the of Amytis are the most vivid examples for illustra­
speeches 
tion of the points made in regard to the change in writing in the 
first, second, and third acts. The change within the first act has 
been discussed. Within the second act we offer the following two 
speeches for illustration: 
AMYTIS 
You know, someday you’ll have reason to think to 
... 
this thing out for yourself. Someday you’ll say 
yourself, "Here, I’ve marched three thousand miles, and crossed mountains and things, and spilt a lot of blood and what good has it done?” It would be most 
embarrassing if you suddenly realized that you’d been 
time.^
wasting your 
and 
AMYTIS 
That wasn’t the voice of Ba-el, Hannibal. That was the voice of the shopkeepers in Carthage, who are afraid that Rome will interfere with their trade, 
Hatred, greed, envy, and the passionate desire 
... 
for revenge those are the high ideals that 
inspire you soldiers, Roman and Carthaginian alike.,, and when realize the shameful futility of your great con-
you turn around and attribute it all to the
quests, you 
40 
Sherwood, The Road to Home. Act 11, 113,

p, 
41 
gods,... The gods are always convenient in an emergency. 
We suggest that the first speech serve as an example of unsteady 
writing unsteady in that the idea but the statement
is there, 
of it is weak, almost apologetic, end particularly within a play it 
thereby becomes undramatic. On the other hand, the second speech 
is written with a firm of the idea and a deft choice of words 
grasp 
in the expression of it. It is dramatic; it has the force that the 
intended it to have. Almost incidental to the in-
playwright point 
volved is the fact that the latter of the two speeches occurs within 
a scene which Sherwood seems to have written with more concentrated 
intensity than any in the second act. Here Sherwood makes no apol­
and writes with a that anticipates the
ogy for his writing, vigor 
writing of the third act. 
The controversy between our critics, Stark Young and Brooks 
Atkinson, lends to the discussion of the third act a note of dog­
matic opinion. We agree with neither of the critics. We do not 
believe with Young that Sherwood sidetracked his theme in the third 
act to discuss the futility of war. If, ever, a theme is 
sidetracked, 
we think it occurs in the second act as Sherwood is finding arguments 
for Amytis to dissuade Hannibal from his war-like purpose. Nor do 
we with Atkinson that only in the third act does Sherwood find
agree 
his theme and create with it a telling moment in the theater. Of 
the two, Brooks Atkinson more nearly approaches the truth. The 
third act on the whole, the best of the three acts; for within
is, 
41 
The Road
Sherwood, to Rome, Act 11, p. 123. 
it Sherwood’s is clear from beginning to end. But if a-"mo­
purpose 
ment" of the play is to be cited as the most exciting, we suggest 
that the "moment" begins in the middle of the second act. Bor it 
is from here that the play takes shape. The third act is written 
closely; there is little waste. It opens with a most successful 
scene between the generals much more successful then that of the 
What Price Glory soldiers in Act 11. Hannibal’s entrance is of
one 
the best And Sherwood felt the need
in the play. although of naively 
describing the change in his hero, "he is now gay, buoyant, care­
free, and reluctant to concentrate on the serious business at hand. 
He has the air of one who doesn’t much care whether school keeps or 
not"42 —it was for the lines he gives Hannibal
unnecessary, convey 
clearly what he intended and reveal a remarkably adult taste on the 
part of a young playwright. 
The author moves through his scenes easily with a graceful 
stride. Only in the scene in which he must dismiss that what-must­
be-annoying sub-plot of Meta and Varius does he revert to the sterile 
writing of the first act. But he dismisses the slave-lovers quickly 
effective
and moves directly into the most scene in the play. Ihe 
following speech of Amytis is not only the best in the play from the 
point of view of sheer dramatic technique, but is proof that Robert 
Sherwood anticipates his growth in The Road to Rome: 
Then I choose to go back to my husband.,,. Go ahead with your great work, Hannibal, Burn Rome to the 
ground; obliterate it. Keep your army here forever, to make 
42 Sherwood, The Road to Rome. Act 111, p. 141. 
sure Rome stays destroyed. Instruct men to crush
your 
any grass, any

blade of flower that dares to thrust its head above the ashes of the dead city. Prolong your victory. Glory in it till your dying day But don’t look to or
ever 
me, to my memory, for sym­pathy or applause, 
Say that Sherwood’s humor is mechanical and obvious. But re­
member it is the first attempt; it amused Broadway and Chicago au­
diences and is
for two years, still played frequently in amateur 
theater. Say that Robert Sherwood writes with a heavy touch. But 
observe that the writing improves within the play itself, and rec­
ognize that the mind behind the writing is not slow and, in any 
dull. The Road to Rome remains a Be-
sense, very good beginning. 
cause of it, a playwright took stock of his materials at hand and 
about his
set conscientiously to replenish and improve implements 
for writing. 
We must remember The Road to Rome, for the next four plays 
are less encouraging. 
43 
Sherwood, The Road to Rome. Act 111, p. 162. 
CHAPTER II 
If Robert Sherwood’s playwriting career had ended with the writ­
ing of his fifth play, This Is New York, he would most certainly have 
remained an undistinguished playwright. But regarded as mechanical 
exercises, the plays that follow the writing of The Road to Rome are 
valuable documents in the study of the dramatic development of Rob­
ert Sherwood. Because the The Love Nest. The Queen*s Hus-
four plays 
band. Waterloo Bridge. and This Is New York represent a single phase 
in this development, they are to be observed together as such. Each 
an in Robert
play is but integral part of this early period Sherwood’s 
development. 
The Love Neat was the first play by Robert Sherwood to be pro­
duced after The Road to Rome. It was a dramatization of a Ring Lard­
ner short story satirizing Hollywood and its movie industry. The 
play was not successful. But the critical reception was only mildly 
disparaging. In the Saturday Review of Literature. Oliver M, Sayler 
wrote at length of the play, but his writing seemed to be prompted 
he took in the fact of a satire
more by the pleasure on Hollywood 
than by any great merit in the play itself. 
In the mere game of making motion pictures, with all its exaggerated self-importance, there would seem to be a fertile field for the of the satirist.
pen 
At least that 
is evidently what Ring Lardner thought when he wrote his acidulous tale, The Love
w Nest;” what Robert E, Sherwood thought when he decided to expand its ironic hints into a full-length play; what the Actor-Managers thought when they chose this play to open their season at the Comedy Theatre. 
If "The Love Nest" were a little better play than it 
is, if it did not run thin in its preparatory first act 
and again would have an excellent test
in its third, we of whether the public wishes to hear the truth about its idols. As a matter of fact, if it were better play,
a 
the could well afford to
motion picture industry buy up the production and close it provided owners wou}.d
the 
sell, which I doubt I Even as it is, skating as it does over the thin ice of barely plausible illusion, except through its superb second act, "The Love Nest," thanks 
to a well-nigh perfect production, cuts deeply and fear­lessly at the same time as it amuses. 
To Sherwood, despite an achievement less consistently flawless than in "The Road to Rome," must go more credit 
than is usually due to him who dramatizes novel or short 
story. Ihe actual and deliberately suggested materiel 
in Lardner’s tele might be good for ten or fifteen min­
utes on the stage. Sherwood’s independent creative power not
is disclosed only in generally providing atmosphere and background for this story of a gnawing canker be­neath the placid exterior of a supposedly happy home, 
but more explicitly in transferring his scene from the banks of the Hudson to Hollywood’s pretentious palaces 
and its manufactories of false in
emotion; altering Lardner’s newspaper reporter to a resplendent sob-sis­ter of the profession, uncannily, though I am told not 
intentionally, like a composite of two of the best-known 
actual figures in that profession; and in creating the whimsical when not tragic character of Forbes, the but-to motivate Celia Gregg’s revolt from a life of un­
ler, endurable artificiality. In other words, Lardner was interested only in the personal problem of this whited of a whereas
sepulchre home, Sherwood, retaining the per­
sonal element, has given it institutional and social sig­
nificance.. •. 
As I have said already, Sherwood has used Lardner’s short 
story only as a hint, a springboard to independent crea­
tion in strictly dramatic terms,... 
Working independently as he fSherwood] was, he could not set his own limits. Accepting the traditional duration, he assumed the
however, responsibility of filling it to the brim with invention.
cogent It is this responsibil­
ity which I feel that he has occasionally betrayed. And 
it is this betrayal that suggests to me that "The Love Nest" might have been a more eve-
more
pungent, incisive, ning in the theatre, a more devastating and unanswerable satirical attack on 
if
the humbug of the motion pictures, 
34 
it had been written and played as a concentrated hour or hour and a half.l 
Sherwood’s talent for the creation of theatrically effective 
atmosphere and background will establish itself even more vividly 
in the plays that are to follow. The ability to reconstruct another 
author’s characters into theatrically substantial ones will mature 
into the greeter talent for the conception of theatrical personages 
of Sherwood’s own invention. The cogent invention Mr. Sayler speaks 
of will recur and we will see why Sherwood might easily have been 
guilty of over-indulging in his flair for such inventive devices. 
It is one of the last lessons that Sherwood is to learn, and logic­
ally his most grievous error in this respect could have been made in 
this early play. He had to learn when to stop talking. 
Brooks Atkinson was not kind to Robert Sherwood in his review 
of The Road to Rome. For The Love Nest he had even fewer kind words 
to speak. 
and mixed of acting, the essential tragedy of Ring Lardner’s bril­liant story still obtains in "The Love Nest”, put on by the emigres Grand Streeters at the Comedy last eve­
ning, From the compact, savagely ironical story of fireside buncombe in Hollywood, Robert E. Sherwood, editor of Life and author of "The Road has 
In spite of rickety playwriting styles 
to Rome,” ground out a sprawling play mechanically comic in the first act, mechanically dramatic in the last with 
act
a taught, revealing in between.... 
On its way to the stage Mr. Lardner’s story loses the swift, relentless that
quality distinguished it in book form. First it presented the immaculate ex­terior of a director’s home life
great in Hollywood 
1 Oliver M. Sayler, "The Play of the Week," Saturday Review of Literature. IV, January 7, 1928, p. 499. 
35 
wife devoted to her guiding genius end their
the pure three little kiddies. Then, swiftly, it tore the mask to reveal a wife driven to madness and to drink
away 
by the false part her position required her to play. 

As a short it was no more than the germ of a
story play. Filling it out to three-act form, Mr. Sherwood 
has 	prefaced it with a scene on "the stage of the Gregg 
Unit in the World-Famous-Schipstein studio at Hollywood," 
where the majestic Lou Gregg himself is directing a 
banal shot in a hokum scenario. Here are all the of-the exotic sheik in
ficial obsequious hangers-on, per­son posing for a moonlight scene, and a "double" per­forming a boudoir silhouette against a curtained window, 
"Drop it rhythmically," the director bellows as Mae Jen­
nings 	her negligee don’t forget the homogene­
loosens ous rhythml" And here comes the sinuous, hobbledehoy New York motion picture 
critic into whose astonished ears Mrs. her Bourbonized disillusion.
Gregg pours 
To give the story conventional dramatic form Mr. Sherwood has been compelled to provide a solution, Mrs. Gregg makes off with the butler. One suspects this would be a scurvy trick to play upon an earnest stage heroine if her husband were not such a chuckle-head. 
In his dialogue, as well as in his play form, Mr. Sherwood does not tend towards subtlety. He makes a wry face at his motion picture idols more as a bur­lesque than as irony, meanwhile trundling in a "gag" or two. And somehow the dialogue seems to sputter 
when in good playwriting it ought to flow. Yet the 
central situation of a 
woman reluctantly completing the idyllic background of a charlatan’s domestic life still as true and sombre. Told
emerges swiftly in the cynical vernacular of the day it carries tragic impli­cations. 
Like 	the
the 	play, acting ranges from dramatic to and
caricature, the pace from desultory to fast.,.. 
Ihe 	pity is that the play and the direction do es-
not tablish one Then the
style for all parts. story might be told in its 
true proportion, not merely as farce but 2 as mordant irony. 
2 
Lardner
Brooks Atkinson, "Double Play, to Sherwood," New York Times. December 24, col, 1,
1927, p, 9, 
36 
Of in Robert Brooks At-
this early phase Sherwood’s development, 
kinson is consistently articulate. His criticisms of the four plays 
of the period explain themselves, and when compiled they present a 
remarkably clear picture of Mr. Atkinson’s opinion of the young play­
wright, Robert Sherwood, But what is more Mr. Atkinson
important, 
has found the vital weaknesses of the plays of this period and has been 
persistent in his attack on them. 
On the heels of his review of The Love Nest, Atkinson wrote hut 
8 month later two discussions of The Queen 1 Husband,
s 
In the composition of his latest comedy, "The Queen’s 
at
Husband,” shown the Playhouse last evening, Robert 
Emmet Sherwood is so fickle in his moods and so bewil­
dering in his transitions that the innocent 
playgoer scarcely knows what to believe. After nearly a year 
of ’’The Road to Rome,” which was Mr. Sherwood’s first 
play, one might not unreasonably expect irreverence and burlesque in the new piece, and, incidentally, is
one 
not disappointed. But Mr, Sherwood also talks solemnly of politics and economics; he concludes with Greustark romance. On the whole, ”The Queen’s Husband” makes for 
mixed entertainment in which the various ingredients do 
hot blend well. 
Although the program announces specifically that ”the action of the play takes place in an island kingdom in the North Sea” the situation does not seem purely im­
aginative. For the domineering queen of this principal­ity, like one of recent memory, travels to America where she stands for her photgraph with Grover lilhalen and Char­
lie Chaplin and negotiates a substantial loan. She is, 
an industrious matchmaker.
moreover, 
But Mr. Sherwood does not 
dwell upon that single char­acter. The chief figure is, as the ’’The
title declares, Queen’s Husband,” King Eric VIII, impersonated pleas­antly by Roland Young, Like the Hannibal of ”The Road this Eric does not stand He
on
to Rome,” ceremony. plays checkers with a flunky. He speaks flippantly of his of­fice. When revolution breaks out he 
impetuously wel­comes the excitement. In the opening scenes, under the 
37 
lash of the Queen’s 	termagant tongue, Eric appears to be but husband
a weakling, amiable futile, superfluous as a and ruler. Before "The Queen’s Husband" reaches a con­clusion, however, he suddenly asserts the old royal pre­rogatives by turning out the dictator and the Prime Min­
ister, dissolving Parliament, installing the radical leader and furtively marrying his daughter to the son of a wholesale plumber. A benevolent monarch, indeed. 
As the curtain drops he is patiently off to the cathe­
dral where his shrewish wife and officer of the State expect to witness his daughter’s marriage to 
Prince William, What they will say, how he will ex­
plain it, are wisely left to a malicious imagination. 
every 
In all this rigmarole there is sufficient material suggested for several plays of individual temper: The farce of the unregal, bored ruler,the tragedy of the daughter betrothed unwillingly as a pawn of state, the drama of political revolution. Three acts of ”The Queen’s Husband” leave all these points inconclusive. Yet Mr. Sherwood several times makes them effective in individ­ual scenes. The spectacle of a monarch playing check­ers with a frog-like flunky who is none too trustful of his master’s ethics is both concrete and entertain­ing. When the military wagons clatter outside in the courtyard and the bombs of the revolutionists whine and crash the drama takes effect-
in the palace, of politics ive form. When the Princess Anne and Prince William discuss hopelessly the prospect of their loveless mar­riage, the romantic tragedy of political marriage trem­
bles on the edge of pathos. Although seldom writing with subtlety or distinction, Mr, Sherwood often man­ages these episodes well. What they need, for complete 
fruition in the theatre, is sustained and resourceful 
cultivation. The profitless conclusion of ”The Queen’s Husband,” one suspects, is a matter of incompetent crafts­manship. • • • 
Written with a firm 	hand and a sense ”The
of proportion, Queen’s Husband” might completely justify the good stuff that is in it.s 
In at least one respect Robert Emmet Sherwood’s 
new ”The
comedy, Queen’s Husband,” recalls his first play, ”The Road to Rome,” which drew enthusiastic audiences* in New York 
for nearly a year. The central situation without
in both comedies, 	exaggeration or clowning, 
3 
Brooks Atkinson, "Among the Royalty," New York Times. January 1928, p. 14, col, 3.
27, 
38 
yields the absurd incongruity from which good humor is distilled. Accustomed to regard the 
great figures of Roman history as demigods, we found them in "The Road to Rome" flatly contemporary in their vernacular end modernly half-hearted about the grand militaristic en­
terprises we have been taught to reverence solemnly. Accustomed to regard royalty as heroic people apart from the ordinary human scene, we find them in "The 
Queen’s Husband" henpecked and roundly abused like any of the plowboys and cabbage-cutters of democratic Mr. Sherwood
society. Thus, in both plays has con­trived a situation satiric in its immediate im­
major 
plications; little specific exposition

it needs on his part. As soon as we have grasped it we understand and if we are in the least bit irreverent ourselves we relish the comic incongruities that are promised all 
through the play. 
The initial situation in "The Queen’s Husband" is technically similar to that of "The Road to Rome." Far from being a hero to his Prime Minister, or even his valet, King Eric VIII is the caricature of the conventional His
king. bitter-tongued, monstrous, abuses him; officers of
domineering Queen constantly the State can scarce conceal their impatience. But, in spite of them, the likable, wistful, lonely monarch leads his life unobtrusively, furtively playing a
own 
clumsy game of checkers with his footman or secretly delighting in the armed forays of the revolutionists against his throne. With Roland Young in a beguiling 
interpretation of the role, King Eric is the disarming stuff of which hilarious and illuminating comedies are made. 
Yet "The Queen’s Husband" remains 
stubbornly incon­clusive, in humor, story and characterization. Mr. Sher wood appears not to have planned it fully or finished it scene by scene. After a creditable and promising first act it prattles commonplaces about politics, the rights of the populace and the story-book cruelty of marrying a princess a degenerate prince. Even when
to 
the King fearfully comes out into the open in the last act and amazes his henchmen by bluntly asserting the royal prerogative, Mr, still leaves the sur-
Sherwood 
render of the Queen undramatic, almost flat, Eor he has hardly developed his theme at all. Being content to take whatever lies ready to he lets his
his hand, 
comedy degenerate into mediocrity. More’s the 

pity, for "The Queen’s Husband" might just as well be delight­
ful as an uneven bore. 
39 
The trick of candor, as a trick, has already lost its freshness. With the writing of "The Queen’s Husband," also, one suspects that Mr. Sherwood has not squeezed 
enough original substance out of his material to justify a full-length play. It is journeyman entertainment. Now that Mr. Sherwood has amply demonstrated his skill 
the 	exhibi­
in using stage as a platform for dramatic tions he needs only to take infinite pains with the de­
signing and writing of 	his plays, and plenty of time 
4 

for sapient reflection. 
Writing of Waterloo Bridge, Atkinson admits only a slight merit. 
Shortly after the curtain is up "Waterloo Bridge,"
on which was acted at the Fulton last evening, Robert Em­mett Sherwood down to the basic facts of modern
gets life the war and the women. In this case the wo­men are les belles impures, who draggle back and forth across a London bridge in the evening in search of way­ward soldiers and employment. Before the play is over Mr. Sherwood has found the tender in the heart of
spot one of his street-walkers and restored her to virtue by the example an upright American soldier sets her. It is a tedious in a voluble author of
journey play by the "The Road to Rome" and "The Queen’s Husband"; it is a 
play lacking the completeness of 	the major characteriza-Glenn Hunter and June
tion and the guileless acting of Walker, both of whom are singularly affecting, it is a desultory evening of sentimentalities that run toward a foregone conclusion. 
Mr. Sherwood begins with the romantic chiaroscuro of employment hour for the erring sisters who are the chief interest of his play. In the quiet and peace of 
a typical London evening Kitty is tagging after the soldiers and sieussing affairs of trade. Myra is just returning to it after several months of unprofit­able boredom as a farmerette. She is an American, and while she is still on the way to her old shabby lodg­ings she has the good fortune to meet a young American enlisted in the Canadian Amy. The first of the four thus introduces the two chief characters.
scenes 
introduced them, Mr. Sherwood devotes the
Having rest of his play to their salvation. For it soon ap­that Roy Cronin, who is the lad from up-State New 
pears 
York, never suspects the antiquity of Myra’s profession. 

4 
"Tender New York

Brooks Atkinson, Reproof," Times. February 12, 1928, sect. VIII, p. 1, col. 1. 
How he innocently falls in love with her, how Myra’s sense of fair play compels her to resist him, how he still loves her when at length he knows what breed she is and how his native chivalry touches her and shames her into reformation is the substance of the play. 
It is not much to go on for a full-length drama. 
It is, in fact, rather sophomoric in its point of view. What Mr, Sherwood does accomplish is illumination of his principal characters, especially in the first act when they are discussing the commonplaces of life over 
a scrappy meal in Myra’s lodging house. The part of Myra is meagerly developed except passively. But Roy, who is just out of the hospital and glowing with hap­
piness over his good fortune in finding an American, 
fairly bubbles over with youthful high spirits.,.. 
In a play composed so much of talk, it would be well if the talk were consistently pithy, for Mr, Sherwood has relied on the talk to make points that are always more vivid in action. It is the long way round and s
the easiest way to lose an audience’s interest, 
And finally, with the fifth play, Robert Sherwood won from 
Brooks Atkinson a favorable comment, and unknowingly Atkinson an­
ticipates himself by about four years. Not until The Petrified For­
est is Brooks Atkinson to speak so kindly again of Robert Sherwood 
as he does in this review of This Is New York: 
Without being especially fervent about anything in particular, Robert E, Sherwood has turned out a genial piece of entertainment in "This Is New York," which was acted genially at the Plymouth lest evening. It is his 
best comedy so far. In its story of a South Dakota Sen­ator flaming with wrath over the moral depravity of New York, it meanders a good deal, never quite sure in which 
direction it is going, and it is pretty dull going toward the end. But the dialogue is spontaneously humorous and the point of view is amiable. In "The Road to Rome" and "The Queen’s Husband" Mr, Sherwood’s sense of humor was 
on the professional side. Writing of his own town in the new play he is jovial and genuine, and his ideas are full of common sense, Eor the civilized 
playgoer the 
5 Brooks Atkinson, "Love Will Tell," New York Times. January 7. 1930, p. 29., col, 2. 
pleasantries of character and chatter should compen­sate for the aimlessness of the 
story. 
The characters represent two opinions about New York. Senator Harvey L. Krull from the pioneer Northwest and his be New York
grimly uninteresting wife would glad if seceded from the Union, Sitting over a rare steak and a in his suite at
piece of hot pie the Hotel Roosevelt, he declares passionately that Manhattan Island ought to 
be towed across the ocean to Europe where it belongs. 
But his daughter is somewhat less rigid. For she is in love with one of New York's most gilded youths, and she hopes him if he can matters with an av-
to marry square aricious mistress who lives in splendor on Central Park West. Squaring matters fills the rest of the play. It involves a loud, damp party given by an influential rack­eteer, a suicide, a scandal that brings the tabloid pho­tographers running fast, a long debate on Gotham wicked-and a decent reconciliation at the end. Sometimes
ness, that Mr. Sherwood has for-
you suspect absent-mindedly But he
gotten his story. puts it all in good order at 
the end. 
On the program title page he quotes an old saying: 
"New York is a nice I wouldn't live

place to visit, but 
there if me

you gave the place," which really has very little to do with the play. Since he is writing an eve­ning's entertainment he does not rush to the defense of Cosmopolis. But the frankness of the New York people he puts on the stage will predispose you in New York's favor. The avaricious mistress sounds formidable in the abstract. But when you meet her she is charming and intellectually honest. The racketeer is a man of decent impulses. It is only the Senator who is full of cant. Mr. Sherwood has discussed his characters with 
good-natured informality, rambled along leisurely about one thing or another and made impertinent remarks about a number of people of importance in the town.,., 
the actors have been as
In fact, unobtrusively genuine about their work as Mr. Sherwood has been about his. 
Not to be unduly secretive about these affairs of the "This Is New York" and
theatre, is genuine comedy 6
good entertainment in an unpretentious vein,
6 
Brooks 
Atkinson, "Gotham Gayeties," New York Times. November col. 2.
29, 1930, p. 21, 
42 
With this lengthy evidence of Brooks Atkinson’s critical style 
and turn of mind, the reader can judge his critical method. Because 
Brooks Atkinson’s criticism will be an important source in this study, 
it is wise to point out at this time this critic’s one important lim­
itation. He is a New is in
Englander whose critical perspicacity 
most cases reliable, but whose one blind spot is his weakness for a 
noble sentiment. If Atkinson is inclined to agree with a playwright’s 
point, he sometimes indulges his sympathy to the extent of neglecting 
his critical In the case of Robert
responsibility. Sherwood, however, 
it is to Atkinson’s credit that he has been on the whole admirably 
consistent and astute. In the reviews just investigated, Atkinson 
has succinctly summed up the major points of interest and has dis­
cussed them for the most part sufficiently, but it cannot be the fi-
The
nal answer. Queen’s Husband, for instance, is not necessarily as 
worthless a Atkinson is This Is New
play as indicates, nor York quite 
so as Atkinson would lead us to believe.
good In the main, however, 
we have based the discussion of these four plays on his comment. 
Limited to the development of Robert Sherwood’s dramatic 
prowess, 
this study will of necessity avoid discussions of certain of the 
import 
ant and interesting aspects in the playwright’s philosophical growth. 
But it is impossible to separate distinctly a playwright’s dramatic 
development from his mental and emotional The two are
development. 
integrated. Therefore, in so far as is possible, the investigation 
of the prefaces written by Robert Sherwood will be guided by the light 
throw on the actual 
at the time of
those prefaces playwriting their 
Out of the period under at
composition. investigation 
the moment, 
43 
of work by Robert Sherwood
perhaps the most significant single piece 
is the preface he wrote for the printed edition of The Queen’s Hus­
band. 
John Mason Brown says that the preface to The Queen’s Husband 
is none of the sanest, soundest, most irrefutable, and important es­
says that have yet been written on the contemporary American drama." 
It is that what it is the sanest and soundest bit of
and, is more, 
writing yet to come from Robert Sherwood’s pen. Brown’s use of the 
words ’’sane’’ and "sound” is fortunate because as this argument pro-
we shall strive that these words become more and
gresses, to prove 
more characteristic of the kind of writing that is Robert Sherwood’s. 
In the case of this preface the motivation for the writing of it is, 
of course, less important than the thing itself; but for the full un­
derstanding of it, a reader must realize that it was no doubt prompted 
by the critical reception of his play The Queen’s Husband. But Robert 
Sherwood is not a man to quibble with the critics merely because they 
censured The Queen’s Husband for its sentimentality and fantasy. To 
Sherwood this critical attack was unjustified and indicative of the 
state of the American theater. And so with a clear voice Robert Sher­
wood speaks against the critic and the playwright of the day, avoid­
ing the sound of a petulant playwright with an unsuccessful play and 
justly irritated. His
as
speaking one logic is sound, his perception 
acute, and his writing effective. 
Robert Sherwood makes his point in the following manner: 
John Meson Brown, Saturday Review of Literature. V, June 
8„ 1929 
p. 1093. 
The critic is a product of the journalistic tradition He
that governs contemporary American letters. is a "good newspaper-man"; large "following" (or
hehas a "consumer and
appeal"), is consequently highly paid by his employers.,., 
The writer who would endear himself to the critic 
and to the cash customers, or boobs, for whom the critic speaks, must be a "good newspaper-man” himself* He must be literal. He must "get down to brass tacks" and "come 
down to cases." He must under 
circumstances,
never,  any  
expose  himself  to  the  damning charge  of  sentimentality.  
He  must  establish  himself  as  an  iconoclast,  a  misan­ 

thrope, a fearless esposer of the mediocrity and hypoc­risy of life.,.. He must be illusionless and, like all other successful Americans, he must be "he." 
As a result of the dominance of this journalistic we have a literature that is hemmed
tradition, developed in on all sides by city desks a literature that is not literature but "copy," dedicated to a muse who wears a wields a and in a
green eye-shade, blue pencil asks, 
"Have verified

cold, contemptuous tone, you this?"... 
The American writer wants to be known as one who faces facts facte and the bet-
grim the grimmer, ter. Reporting is his job, and he does it well. Our literature gives an extraordinarily faithful, honest, and 
revelatory portrait of our country and its people. But a honest not
faithful, and revelatory portrait is necessarily a work of art; it can only be a work of art if it retains its merit in the of one who knows
eyes and about
nothing cares nothing its subject,... 
Probably the main trouble with the American writer is that he is eternally afraid of being kidded,,,. 
Knowing that that which passes for "realism" is still the most fashionable of the
literary commodity day, he goes to the great realists for his models. He fraternizes with Flaubert, Tchekov, Stendhal and Ibsen.. 
But he never achieves the one made these
faculty that men is the
great great, which faculty of appreciations. He may describe ugliness remarkable fidelity, but
with he is rendered inarticulate in the 
presence of beauty. He charts "the American scene" 
with mathematical exact­ness, but he has not dared to explore those lost contin­ents where dwell the immortals.,,. 
In the theatre, we have set up Ibsen and Tchekov as 
models of tragedy, end Shaw es the model of comedy. We heve neglected to notice that the tragedies of Ibsen and Tchekov are high tragedies because they came from the in­
tense, aching sympathy of artists, rather than from the calculated
cool, scorn of reporters,,.. 
The American writer is desperately afraid of glamor­ous romance.... He knows, because the critics have told him so, that Romance is Hokum, Fantasy is Hokum, and Sentiment is the lowliest Hokum of all. Poetry may also be hokum unless it is salted with references to "mus­
cles,” "guts,” "blood" and "sweat.”.,. 
It be as well to eliminate hokum from the novel
may 
(though none of the great novelists, including Samuel 

Butler, Thackeray, Dostoievsky, Hardy and Conrad, 
have done it); but the elimination of hokum and buncombe from the theatre would result in the elimination of the the­atre itself. as the term is applied in these
Hokum, disillusioned states, is the life-blood of the theatre, its animating force, the cause of and the reason for its existence. The theatre is end always has been a nursery of the arts, a romping-ground for man's more childish emotions., Ibsen, the most relentless of the realists, knew this; that is why he equipped little Eyolf with a crutch so that, when the child is drowned at the end of Act I, the audience may be chilled by a description of the crutch, floating on the water.,,. 
to be obvious that wholesale 
illusions would be disastrous to the which sur-

It ought any slaughter of 
theatre, vives solely because of its ability to create and sustain the illusion of reality.... 
To be able to write a play, for performance in a the­
atre, a man must be sensitive, imaginative, naive, gul­must be
lible, passionate; he something of an imbecile, something of a poet, something of a liar, something of a damn fool. He must be a chaser of wild as well
geese, as of wild ducks.... He must be independent and 
brave, 
and sure of himself and of the importance of his work; because if he isn't, he will never survive the scorch­ing blasts of derision that will probably greet his first efforts. He must not shrink from the old he must
hokum; it..,.
actually love 
The theatre is no place for consciously superior per­sons, It is a place for those incurable sophomores who have not been blessed by God with the to rise above
power their emotions. The theatre is and forever will be 
the theatre of Rose Trelawney and Fanny Cavendish and 
the 
Crummels family,... 
Nevertheless, it is my firm and unshakable belief that a playwright should be just a great, big, overgrown boy, reaching for the moon. 
The moon is not unattainable. Playwrights have reached it in the past; they have even brought it down to earth, and pasted it on a back-drop. The moon is never more beautiful than when it is seen shining down on an inse­
cure balcony in a canvas Verona. 8 
From the point of view of this study it is not necessary that 
these words written by Robert Sherwood in 1928 be his final words 
on the subject or even a credo by which he is to write in the future. 
The is that after his
significant point third Broadway production 
Robert Sherwood was able to so sound and so earnest
produce an argu­
ment. No other evidence is so conclusive as this for the fact that 
Sherwood was a playwright with a firm foundation in even this, his 
growing period. Lengthy debate of some interest could arise from this 
end the that followed it. Proof could be offered to sub-
preface plays 
stantiate the claim that Robert Sherwood did not live up to his 
argu­
ment for playwrights, that he himself became the most successful ex­
ample of a "journalistic” playwright. But such an involved argument 
is unnecessary. Hie answer is that Sherwood grew in his times and 
adapted himself and his artistic philosophy to the deep he
need felt 
for writing plays of his times. No one can argue that Sherwood has 
lost his feeling for the romantic; that feeling has matured. Few 
will deny consistent love for theater ”hokum” is the 
And
word he used. let no one ever say that Robert Sherwood lost the 
8 Robert Sherwood, "Preface," The Queen* s Husband. New York, 1928, xi-xix.
pp. 
47 
the
quality of the little boy reaching for the moon on painted 
backdrop. But such will be the matter for the rest of this study. 
Now we must take this for what it is in the time of its writ-
essay 
ing, It is honest; it is intelligent; it is sound. 
For the printed edition of Waterloo Bridge the playwright again 
provided a preface. Writing this time because he seemed to feel that 
his play did not sufficiently cover the material he had provided for 
it, Sherwood reverts to prose and does excellently in his preface 
hedo is
what fails to in his play. The preface an exciting descrip­
tion of war-time London, Although it was written of the first World 
War, it might well serve as a description of London in this present 
grotesque sequel. Such paragraphs as the following, selected more or 
less at random, illustrate vividly the timeliness of their words and 
the 
poignancy of their present application: 
In the air-raid shelters underground stations and cellars were strange gatherings of noblemen and nav­vies, most of them either very old or very young, some in evening dress, in their night clothes, some
some 
playing bridge, some reading, some carrying on their domestic squabbles in strident tones. All of them were trying, in an obviously self-conscious manner, to ap­pear unconcerned; and each of them, while recognizing stoicism
that his neighbor’s was no more genuine than his own, was infinitely comforted to know that whatever the circumstances Englishmen would not precipitate em­barrassing scenes. 
It was an imcomparable performance of what Alexander Woollcott has correctly called ”the tragedy of the stiff upper lip.” 
London 
was wearing its traditional armor of phlegm. Viewed from this remote distance 
{twelve years), that 
armor appears absurdly thin and false. One may truth­fully say, ”poor things they were kidding themselves. But in 1917 the British phlegm was both an 
imperishable 
48 
wall of defense and a saving grace. It caused the alien 
observer to realize that not achieved
these people had their previous estate of world domination by accident. What they had gained they had earned.^ 
The play is but a weak reflection of such a picture. Obviously 
it was intended to be more, but it failed pathetically to live up 
to any such promise. The one moment in the play that is even remin­
iscent is
of the feeling displayed in the preface a speech obviously 
intended by the playwright to be the important speech in the play: 
Yes fight the war! What’s the war, anyway? It’s that there in his aeroplane. What do I care
guy up about him and his bombs? (He_ goes to the wall and leans over it as though beyond it were vast crowd listening
ja to him.) What do I care who he is, or what he does, or to him? That war’s over for me. What I’ve
what happens got to fight is the whole dirty world. That’s the enemy that’s against and me. That’s what makes the rotten
you mess we’ve got to live in,.,. Look at them shooting their guns up into the air, firing their little shells at something they can’t even see. Why don’t they turn their guns down into the streets, and shoot at what’s there? Why don’t they be merciful and kill the people that want to be killed?... Oh God if they’d ever stopped to figure things out the way I’ve had to do, the whole lot of them would be committing suicide in­stead of shooting into the air.^® 
This speech stands out as an aria. Surrounded by the most middling 
the itself might have an obvious at
dialogue, speech proved attempt 
profundity if the playwright had not been careful to mold his play 
with a craftsmanlike touch that gives it an air of being a better 
it is.
play than 
9 Robert Sherwood, "Preface," Waterloo Bridge. New York, 1930, 
xvi.
p. 10 
Sherwood, Waterloo Bridge. Act 11, Scene 2, 168,
p. 
49 
Said the critics of Waterloo Bridge: 
Some plays are unconvincing because they are obviously untrue to life; others for no other reason than that they 
have been seen so often that they inevitably remind one 
of the theater; end the present piece belongs to the lat­ter class. For all I know, events something like those it recounts may have happened frequently and, in so far 
as I am able to judge again a bit of writing so much 
like countless others, I am inclined to suspect that 
the author has done a reasonably competent job. But a tale told so often inevitably lulls the faculties to 
sleep, 
The piece was evidently written in haste, the lines contain no meat of any kind and no dramatic diction, 
no has
no dialogue with point, speech that any reality 
of any kind or any sort of edge; and yet, by virtue of 
its resting on a story that is safe stage platitude, and through the staking out of the curtains and main points in the story, a considerable effect of drama 
arises, "Waterloo Bridge" remains rubbish, it is the well-scrutinized rubbish of an intelligent man, and 
so, at least, it does not block the actors* steps,3-2 
The reader or playgoer may not quite believe in the story of "Waterloo Bridge," but the action is smoothly and tenderly fashioned, and it does convey something of the English spirit in wartime. 3-3 
The character-drawing is pleasant, easy but shallow; it is a smooth adaptation of a tragic theme to the taste of comfortable playgoers; it is but
competent theatre, 
3-4 
no more. 
There would be to that the
no reason believe author of three 
11 
Joseph Wood Krutch, "Magdalene,” Nation, CXXX, January 22, 1930, 106,
p, 12 
Stark Young, "Mostly the Actors," New Republic. LXI. Jenuarv 22 1930, p. 251. 13 Springfield Republican. 
May 28, 1930, p. 14, 
14 
London Times. 

Literary Supplement, May 15, 1930, p. 410, 
50 
plays and as many prefaces would decide to omit the preface for such 
a play as This Is New York. Certainly this play came no nearer to 
saying all the playwright had to say than any of its predecessors. 
The fact that it had less to say in toto does not alter the 
case. 
The preface for This Is New York, however, is little more than a 
smart journalist arguing cleverly on a weak and unimportant subject. 
It is not that something of the subject of This Is New York is of no 
real consequence; it is simply that the playwright did not treat it 
as of consequence. The play and preface are almost wholly "smart" 
writing. 
But This Is New York 
fits admirably into the pattern of the 
growth of our playwright. The smart dialogue of its characters, the 
melodramatic the
basically plot, slight but evident attempt at modern 
satire all are to be seen again in Robert Sherwood 1 s 
writing and 
might well have benefited from this early exercise. 
Once again the reviewers explain themselves admirably, and the 
compilation of excerpts seems to make its own point: 
It is a shrewd and pleasant comedy, chiefly notable for its portrait of a canting Senator, admirably acted by Robert T. Haines. 15 
This Is New York.., is the most ambitious of Mr, Sher­
wood’s ventures into and I like
satire, for that reason it best, even though it is not so completely realized as The Road to Rome, But there is in it a of
good deal remarkably intelligent comedy, even though it is mostly episodic. The dramatist starts out contrast
to the mod­ern New Yorker with 
and
the Provincial, he ably presents each point of view granting that his representatives 
15 
H... E..., Nation. CXXXI, December 

24, 1930, p. 716, 
of each ere fairly typical, which we can if we are not but trouble that when ideas
overparticular; the is his run through and his plot shows he is led into an
up, entirely new channel, starting out, toward the end of the second act, to write something perilously close 
to 
a conventional crook drama, with police inspectors, boot­
leggers, judges and all. From this point on, we bid good­
bye to satire and try to adjust ourselves to something quite different. 
Yet,ell the time I found myself held it was the oc­casional flashes of comedy that did the trick. But I wish Mr. Sherwood would think his play through next time. I believe he has it in him to write a play that will sat­isfy himself and the rest of us at the same time.-^ 
From a first act, that seems rheumatically slow, Act II jumps briskly into melodrama, low company and the po­of them
lice, The jokes are many so eminently topical 
that they seem timed for a limited run. The Mirror, 
the Graphic and the News are particularly featured; 
the scale of humor being below the strata of the New 
Yorker.^-7 
A humorous play on the present day morals of New York City, as contrasted with those of a senator from the wide open spaces. The upshot of it is that South 
when is not far behind New York in the
Dakota, roused,
’ip * 
AO
matter.
"This is New York" was not a great success in the theater. Perhaps the trouble was that even the Broad­way first nighters had a sneaking suspicion New York 
is considerably more than the collection 
of bootleggers, rounders and rotters here presented for our delectation and for the horror of the Senator from the West, whose daughter gets mixed up with them.-^-^ 
16 "This is New York," Drama. 13.
XSCE, January, 1931, p. !7 Catholic World. CXXXII, January, 1931, p. 464. 18 Book Review Digest, edited by Marion A. 
Knight, Mertice M, and
James, Dorothy Brown, New York, 1932, p, 968, 19 Walter Pritchard 
Eaton, "Books," New York Heraid-Tribune. 
8.
June 21, 1931, p. 
shrewd and
It is a pleasant comedy, chiefly notable 
for its portrait of a canting Senator. 
Apart from a lot of wise and witty lines and the in­evitable brilliant second act This Is New York
climax, is distinguished by the freest use of the real names of 
celebrities that I have heard on the stage, 
Interesting as it is, the criticism that Sherwood veered from 
an original intention for satiric writing in This Is New York will 
assume its real significance when we see it again in a more import­
ant and successful instance. Of the rest of the critical comment 
little need be said except that it will prove more interesting as 
our history develops and we are able to see that from the good and 
the bad of this play Sherwood has worked to make of himself the play-
is We cannot leave This
wright that he today. Is New York, however, 
without offering concrete evidence of the type of play that it is. 
In the third act Sherwood voices his thesis. Although the scene 
almost explains itself, the reader should observe the lack of re­
straint within the writing of the lines, the flagrant gaudiness of 
the speeches and of the people from whom they come: 
KRULL 
I am listening to him. I’m treasuring every word he says. I am glorying in the realization that such as he 
is opposed in every way to such as I the realization that I have been right, eternally right, when I have said that New York is not America..,, 
PHYLLIS 
Now listen.,. 
20 
E... E..., Nation. CXXXI, December 24, 1950, p. 131. 
21 

Otis 
Chatfield-Taylor, Outlook. CLVI, December 17, 1930, p. 629, 
JOE 
You keep your mouth shut. 

PHYLLIS I’ve heard that crack before. Will Rogers always gets it when he’s playing Chatauque
a hand with time. Well what I want to know is, if you foreigners don’t like back where came from
it here, why don’t you go you 
and take your amendments with you? 

KRULL It’s peculiarly appropriate that the spirit of this city should find voice in one of kind.
your 
MRS. KRULL You’re degrading yourself by entering into any dis­cussion with her. 
PHYLLIS Why don’t you get into it yourself, Mrs. Erull? It’s turning into free-for-all.
a 
KRULL 
By God I wish the whole pack of you would secede, 
and precipitate another Civil War, so that the true pa­
triots might have opportunity to wipe this
an out this bawdy shambles of law-breakers, and millionaire wastrels, end drug addicts, and perverts and harlots,... 
EMMA 
That’s right. Pop, Stand up to ’em. 

J°E (to KRULL) there aren’t law-breakers or harlots
I suppose any 
in Sioux Fa115.... 

KRULL If there it’s because this its stink-
are, city with ing money power is seducing the inherently decent minds of our people.,.. 
PHYLLIS I thought it was Hollywood that was supposed to be doing that. 
KRULL 
Hollywood is the illegitimate offspring of Broadway! 
PHYLLIS 
Don’t let Will Hays hear that. 

KRULL 
Oh you New Yorkers are willing enough to eaploit America, to suck America’s life-blood end at the same to flout
cause
time champion every that’s un-American, to 
sneer
the Constitution, to at the very flag itself! 
JOE Oh, for God’s sake! Who what’s un-American
cares and what isn’t? 
KRULL 
Who, indeed, in this European pig-sty! 

EMMA Don’t Joe. You’re not in Pop’s class as a de­
argue, 
bater. 

JOE I don’t want to argue. (He approaches the senator.) want to with you, and be on
I only agree Senator, your side, and admit that the whole thing is rotten, and de­
graded. 
KRULL 
I do not solicit your support. 

JOE You believe that don’t
I’m speaking in good faith, Mrs. Krull?
you, 
MRS. KRULL I do not! You’d best leave your defense to this 
trollop of yours. 
EMMA 
Mother! 

PHYLLIS That’s what I am, Mrs. Krull. A hundred per cent American trollop! 
KRULL 
Don’t you befoul the name of my country by mention­ing it in that... 

PHYLLIS 
Your country! Your exclusive country? Would 

you 
like to know 'where I come Senator? I come from

from, Texas, That’s in America, too. 
KRULL I take note that you’ve found your own level, here. 
PHYLLIS I got here just the seme way that you got to Wash­You’re not the one who has
ington. only represented the U, S. in an official way. You may not know it, but I’ve been Miss America in time. Yes, sirl I carried 
my the Stars and in the International
Stripes Beauty Contest, end whet’s I won. If it hadn’t been for me, the
more, championship would have gone to Czecho-Slovakia, And then where would our great nation have been? So maybe you’ll pay a little more attention to me when I tell you that New York America boot-leggers and millionaires and crooked politicians and all. In fact that’s my2^
chief complaint against this town. 
And such was the play that Robert Sherwood wrote in 1931. It 
was his fifth play. He had been writing plays for five years. With 
the writing of This Is Nev; York, Robert Sherwood seemed to have purged 

himself of those bad influences that permeate young playwrights’ work, 
end he was free to take a deep breath of clean air and pause a moment 
for contemplation. 
22 
Robert Sherwood, This Is New York. New York, 1931, Act 111, 
168 ff.
pp. 
CHAPTER III 
The pause was but one year. In 1932 Robert Sherwood wrote Re­
union in Vienna. It followed closely the experience of This Is New 
York, rather remotely, The Road to Rome, Reunion in Vienna is the 
of Robert Sherwood’s first stage
climax, the end, of development. 
Again Sherwood chooses a romantic setting for his play; again 
he leaves this continent for the more colorful background of Europe. 
In this respect the play is directly comparable to The Road to Rome 
and The Queen’s Husband. And, as in The Road to Rome, he hinges his 
plot on the maneuverings of one sex in pursuit of the other. 
The story is that of a former archduke who returns 
to Vienna for a reunion dinner that the mistress of 
a famous hotel gives for her onetime royal patrons. 
The real reason for Rudolph’s return is to see again 
his oldlove Elena, now married to a famous psychoan­alyst. The husband, jealous in spite of his skill in 
curing others, urges Elena to give herself the test, in order to see how Rudolph has changed, and so to clear her mind of his image. Rudolph arrives, having 
smuggled himself through the frontier; the two meet; he is certain of his old charms; she, unlike the rest 
of Vienna, has not faded; she responds and does not re­spond to her returning lover. She finally escapes through the bathroom and comes home again, followed by Rudolph, who in turn is followed by the police. It is 
the husband who has to use his influence with the 
gov­ernment in order to get Rudolph safely out of the coun­try; he leaves the house on this errand; the archduke 
and the former mistress are she decides
left together; after he has given himself to
at last, despair over him­self, the past, present, and future, that she will join him in the bedroom. In the morning the husband and the 
lover of other days depart for the 
frontier; Elena and the old father are left at and
breakfast, we have a 
of happy solutions,^*
sense 
1 
"Three More

Stark Young, Plays," New Republic. IXDC, December 2 1931, p. 70. * 
Around this set of situations Sherwood has contrived to introduce 
many theatrically interesting characters. He has successfully realized 
the type of comedy prescribed by his situation, and the play moves with 
a grace that permits the inherent comedy full opportunity for its ex­
pression, As a piece of theatrical writing it is far superior to The 
Road to Rome. There is practically none of the looseness of construc­
tion so evident in that earlier play. Perhaps the intervening five 
years explain this new oneness of construction; and perhaps it may be 
explained by the fact that Sherwood took time to think his play out 
more carefully before he started writing it. VJhatever the explanation, 
it is not simple, and is less important at this moment in our analysis 
than the fact that the unity is there. 
Before we go further, we must dismiss the problem of his pref-
can 
ace to the play. We must decide which play we are going to investi­
gate the one described in the preface or the one that was actually 
written. For indeed these are two plays. Reunion in Vienna, through 
the eyes of the preface, is a laborious attempt to be "another demon­
2 
stration mechanism We be

of the escape in operation." may grateful 
that Sherwood did not interrupt the course of his play with his com­
mentary on social issues that seems to seethe v/ithin him and found its 
expression in his preface. Granted that in 1941 the problem of the 
depression and kidnapping in the world is less by comparison than 
so
other problems flagrantly displayed today by the bombing of London 
and Berlin, it is none the less apparent that Sherwood displayed in 
2 
Robert Sherwood, "Preface," Reunion in Vienna. 

New York, 1932, 
vii.
p. 
his preface a too passionate concern for even the problems of 1931 
or perhaps it is that his concern confuses his articulation of the 
problems, and the result is a sophomoric analysis. It is no doubt 
that Sherwood the 	It is
good, however, 	got things said. significant 
that 	he was concerned by them. But we cannot now, considering Sher­
wood’s ultimate point of view, regard such statements as the follow­
ing as his final analysis of the problems of the world: 
The discredited vicars of God believe they can be helpful* They say, "Go back to the faith of your fathers!" 
They 	might as well say, "Crawl back into the wombs mothers."
of your 
The discredited 
ideologs of the laboratory believe that they can be helpful* They say, "Be aware! Be confident! Go forward with firm tread through the en­tanglements (which purely logical), inspired by the
are 
assurances of our continued research. If you feel that 
you suffer from a plethora of science, then the only 
cure for it is more science," They even go so far as 
to suggest that the physicists might mark time for a 
while, to allow the biologists, psychologists and so­
ciologists to catch up. The human organism must be 
reconstructed so that it will be as fool-proof as the 
adding machine. 
Man is, for the 	scornful of the formulae
moment, of the scientists, for he believes that it was they who got him mess. hell with them, and
into this To their infallible laws, their experiments noble in mo­tive and disastrous 
in result, their antiseptic Uto­their vitamines and their lethal 
their mic rays their neuroses, all tidily encased in cel­
pia, 	gases, cos-
and 
To

lophane. hell with them, says man, but with no rel­ish, for he has been deprived even of faith in the po­tency of damnation. 3 
This 	frantic search 
for truth, this exaggerated statement of 
3 
Sherwood, "Preface." Reunion in Vienne, p. xii. 
things as the author sees them, reveals a Robert Sherwood not yet 
able to strip his thinking of passionate detail to reach a simple, 
sane analysis. The fact that he must write a preface to state his 
idea and is unable to incorporate it successfully into the play he 
is writing at the moment is significant because it illustrates the 
state of Robert Sherwood the at
playwright the time of the writing 
of Reunion in Vienna in relation to Robert Sherwood the thinker, the 
man. But here again we are able to see an example of Robert Sherwood’s 
characteristic sanity; he did not delude himself; he was aware that 
his talent at that time was for the writing of sophisticated dialogue. 
He did not overstep his limitations while writing his play. The union 
come
of the playwright and the social philosopher was to later, af­
ter the success of Reunion in Vienna, after he was more sure of his 
tools. 
Although the preface reveals an over-anxious writer, there is 
also in it slight evidence of the quality of Sherwood’s thinking that 
is to make itself felt in Abe Lincoln in Illinois and There .Shall Be 
No Night. Certainly such comparatively quiet moments as the follow­
ing from his preface predict the type of writing and thinking that will 
lend stature and essential sanity to his later plays; 
When man the
accepts principles of collectivism, he 
a
accepts clearly stated, clearly defined trend in evo­the theoretic outcome is
lution, of which inescapable. He is enlisting in the 
re-forever his 
great army of uniformity, 
nouncing right to be out of step as he 
marches with all the others into that ideal state in 
which there is no flaw in the 
gigantic rhythm of tech­nology, no stalk of wheat too few or too no de­
many, 
structive no no

passion, waste, fear, no provocation to revolt the ultimate ant-hill. Man is afraid of 
communism not because he thinks it will be a failure but because he suspects it will be too complete a 
success.^ 
And so we must consider the play and the preface as two dis­
tinct commentaries. The preface may be dismissed as an expression 
of what Sherwood would like to have done with his play. The play 
remains the thing he did. The two are finally incompatible. We 
find in Robert Sherwood’s
justification for this arbitrary attitude 
own words, written nine years after the writing of the play and its 
preface: 
I went into this play with what seemed to me an import­ant if not strikingly original idea science hoist with its own petard and came out with a roman-
gay, 
s
tic comedy, 
The critics were not of one mind in regard to the play; indeed, 
they did not even form opposing camps. Each took a stand of his own 
and no two quite agreed. In so far as general comparison is possible, 
the critics fall into two categories: those who sought and criticized 
the theme of the play and those who reveled in the and
comedy sophis­
tication of the plot and lines. Such as the fol-
interesting excerpts 
lowing may be compiled to illustrate the differences of opinion: 
of
In spite of its atmosphere airy satire and quick-spoken comedy, of his play is nothing more
the theme 
nor less than the condoning of adultery. 

4 Sherwood, "Preface." Reunion in Vienna, p. xiv. 5 Sherwood, "Preface," There Shall Be No n. xiv. 6 Richard Dane Skinner, "The Play," Commonweal. XV, December 9 1931, p. 160. 
61 
It makes of the ruined Viennese
rather pitiless game aristocracy but is a broad burlesque of Dr. Freud. 
From that standpoint it serves a worthy end.... 
The best one can say of the morals of the play is 
that there are none. Perhaps that is better than hav­
ing some perverted, Mr. Sherwood has wit and dash and 
a good sense of honest hokum but he does not err on the 
side of delicacy. 7 
"Reunion in Vienna" is as modem as the latest theory 
of the neuroses, and yet it is a modernism that is 
now mature enough to have languors and regrets and nostalgias. B 
Mr, Sherwood might perhaps have delved a little deeper into his characters without slowing things up percep­
tibly, 9 
"Reunion in Vienna" is robust, sophisticated,
gay, popping comedy of a very high order, by far the best play Mr. Sherwood has yet written.^-0 
the real content of the play, which deals with 
... 
royal, conjugal, Freudian and other reactions among 
the characters, and which as a situation is in itself full of brilliant possibilities. As for the comedy 
itself, it is now and again dragged along, many of its implications are but slightly touched, and the finish it might acquire is lacking.^
often 
Though Robert Sherwood, the author, has concocted a 
7 
of Some
"Plays Importance," Catholic World, CXXXIV, January, 1932, p. 467• 8 Thomas H. 
Dickinson, "The Angle of Incidence." Saturday Review of Literature. VIII, May 14, 1932, p. 728. 9 
Otis "The Latest
Chatfield-Taylor, Plays," Outlook. CLIX, De­
438.
cember 2, 1931, p. 10 De
Benjamin Casseres, "Broadway to Date," Arts and Decorations. 
68.
XXXVI, January, 1932, p. 
"Three More 
Plays," p. 70. 
62 
in whet to call
rather amusing tale we are pleased the ’Continental’ manner, there is in the comedy it­
self little to distinguish it from a dozen other com­petent jobs of the same sort; but it does, on the 
other hand, afford so excellent a romp for Lunt and Is 
Fontanne that few will ask for more. 
a
Occasionally play approaches modern problems 
only to slither weakly away from them, as did Rob­
ert W. Sherwood’s Reunion in Vienna..» Hie Archduke’s 
beautiful ex-mistress who has become the dutiful wife 
of a psychologist whose father was a cobbler, the psychologist himself, now a of influence and
person importance, famous on two continents, the ex-Archduke, transformed into an all but penniless taxi-driver, the 
adherents
poverty-stricken of the old regime, the up­
start officials of the all were characters who
new, might have been at once personalities and expressions of the opposing forces which have so rapidly changed 
places. This they were to some extent, but to an ex­tent both limited and obscured the author’s deter-
by mination to be smart and ”sexy.”J-3 
It is evident that this is a pretty flimsy playlet 
the
even loquacious liberality of the wise Herr Deb­tor (which is much too liberal for an old fogy like fails to add much substance to
myself) the evening’s entertainment 
And Atkinson makes what
finally Brooks is, perhaps, the most 
significant comment. In this play Atkinson sees (and is one of the 
first to point out) the quality in Sherwood’s 
writing and thinking 
that is to distinguish the playwright. Of particular interest is 
Mr. Atkinson’s fine distinction between a wit and a humorist and 
12 Joseph Wood Krutch, "Sham Battle of the Sexes," Nation. 
CXXXIII, 
December 650,
9, 1931, p. 13 Louise Maunsell Field, "The Drama Catches 
Up," North American 
“ 
Review.  CCXXXIV, August,  1932, p.  174.  
14  
Francis  Fergusson,  "A Month  of the  Theatre," Bookman.  LXXIV,  
January,  1932,  p.  564.  

his declaring the pley a slap-stick comedy. 
Just how good a play Mr. Sherwood has written this 
ordinarily informative column is unable to declare. 
Probably that depends on how good a play you want. If 
you want a thoroughly compact comedy, carefully de­signed, solidly built and towering toward that Gals­worthian "Reunion in Vienna" will
"spire of meaning," 
not satisfy your ideal.,.. 

As a playwright Mr. Sherwood continues to be lack­
ing in technical skill. The fine points in his plays 
never You miss in his work the pure crafts-
crystallize. manlike joy of a thing that is perfectly thought out and 
finished. From the technical point of view "Reunion in 
Vienna" is apprentice work. But all that really matters 
in the present instance is that Mr. Sherwood has an ex­
uberant sense of humor. He is not one of the wits, of 
whom we have several, but he is one of the humorists, 
of whom we have few. He sees the ludicrous side
very of solemn subjects, such as psychoanalysis and royalty. It is fresh, boyish humor, bubbling over with fun. It 
mischievously takes psychoanalysis out of character by 
the logical process of showing you a psychoanalyst hot with unscientific jealousy. Taking royalty out of char­acter is much easier, since it is a thoroughly tangible subject, and it delights Mr. Sherwood most of all. 
The most uproarious part of "Reunion in Vienna" is, accordingly, the second act in the Hotel Lucher dur­
ing the reunion of the deposed royalists. It is humor 
in the purest sense to present counts and countesses 
not as imposing personages, hut as shabby, petulant old boors, gravely honoring a tradition that is dead. But Mr. Sherwood's funniest prank 
is his portrait of Prince Rudolph Maximilian von Hapsburg as a high-spi­
rited schoolboy with his mind not on matters of State 
but on the lusty joys of living. Between Mr, Sherwood 
and Mr. Lunt this prince emerges as hilarious 
company. He is a topsy-turvy fellow, lacking in dignity, yet alert to his royel authority. He steams around the 
room, hugs Frau Lucher, slaps her where the slapping is broadest, takes an unabashed royal bow in his shirt­tails, handles his former mistress shamelessly and car-
storm. it suits Mr. Sherwood's abilities better than the 
ries everything by Being fantastic, 
comedy of logic in the final act. It is abdominal humor; it is out­rageous burlesque. produced by the Theatre
As Guild, where "Intellect knows Fashion's fond it is
Caress," 
the heartiest slapstick of the season.^ 
But there is no one critic to whom we for confirmation
may go 
Our own
or agreement. analysis of the play must, then, follow its 
course 
unguided by any one contemporary critic. 
Sherwood has said of the writing of his play that he "came out 
with a gay, romantic We Essentially Reunion in
agree. 
Vienna must be treated as a romantic comedy. In the final analysis, 
what Sherwood has actually done with his Freudian his
psychologist, 
dashing Hapsburg prince, and the glamorous ex-mistress is to have con­
cocted a clever, scientific, and modem version of the age-old tri­
is
angle-comedy. If it were meant to be more, that now completely 
incidental. Its merits lie in the fact that the new version of the 
age-old comedy situation is interestingly embroidered and 
cleverly 
phrased. Wherein, then, might we call Reunion in Vienna a comedy? 
Investigating the definition that comedy is the result of the frus­
tration caused by a departure from the pattern set down by society 
for the moral behaviour of its members,-*-7 we find that Sherwood’s 
play fits admirably into this mould. Pursuing the point, we find 
that in light of this definition, whatever serious intention Sherwood 
may have had for his character of the Freudian psychologist-husband 
fails miserably when that character turns out to be merely the basis 
15 
Brooks "Lunt and

Atkinson, Fontanne, Comedians,” New York Times, November 29, 1921, sect. VIII, p. 1, col. 1, 16 
See p, 6, supra. 
17 
From R, H, 222 class The
Griffith, English lecture, University of Texas, 1940, 
for the comedy that is to result from a departure from pattern. If 
Krug had behaved in the conventional manner, Sherwood would have had 
no comedy. The character of the psychoanalyst is by no means the 
chief but
comedy character, his part in the play is to provide the 
motivation for the antics of the two chief comedy characters. Iron­
ically enough it is through this very psychoanalyst that Sherwood 
gives to his play its semblance of reality and to the situations 
the necessary logic, however unreal the character himself may ap­
at times to be.
pear 
One of the tests of the finesse of a is the
playwright degree 
of expertness with which he handles minor characters. The Road to 
Rome. for example, displayed an inability on the part of the play­
wright to create interesting people in whom he could place the re­
sponsibility of caring for the necessary details of exposition and 
transition. On the other hand, Reunion in Vienna reveals a play­
wright who has mastered the problem and handles minor characters 
with a deftness and an imagination that make his play theatrically 
more substantial and as a piece of writing, more artistic. Although 
old Krug is best of the minor characters in Reunion in Vienna, his 
characterization is representative of the manner in which Sherwood 
was able to infuse interest and well-chosen theatrical detail into 
each of the many lesser characters. In fact, old Krug remains the 
most nearly perfect characterization in the play, Sherwood has done 
a brilliant piece of devising here. Old Krug is able to articulate 
the necessary exposition that Sherwood, as a builder of a play, in­
tended him to do and at the same time he is able to 
appear to the 
audience coherent
a vitally interesting, essentially amusing, and 
character. Within Krug, Sherwood was able to incorporate what are 
often unfortunately incompatible ingredients of a play: the Greek 
chorus, the local and character. It is old
color, the interesting 
Krug who must first introduce the reunion party; it is he who de­
scribes the doctor’s background; he again must tell the audience for 
the first time that Elena was at one time "more than a doctor’s wife”; 
and finally he lends to the whole third act interest and the essen­
tial focus on Rudolph, Old Krug, too, represents the old order of 
things and the inability of that order to adjust itself to the new. 
And withal, old Krug turns out to be a lovable, amusing old gentle-
whose
man, childish pleasure in the past life of his daughter-in­
law and in his new wireless from American succeeds in delighting the 
audience and the reader, and in persuading them that they want to see 
more of him, (We feel, after ell, that one of the truest tests of 
the merits of a characterization can be found in the to the
answer 
question, "Does the audience want to see this character again?”) 
For fear of leaving the impression that all of the minor char­
acters are as well handled as old Krug, we must mention that there 
is one character who is inartistically treated. Gisella 
is only one 
of the broken-down aristocrats whom Sherwood introduces, and her char­
acter is not of itself tremendously important. She is in the general 
framework little more than but
a piece of mosaic, her part of the gen­
eral picture is the weakest. Where in the other members of the reu­
nion party Sherwood was able to create a type and to choose substan­
tial and clever details for the succinct statement of that he
type, 
seems to have failed in the case of Gisella. What he intended is 
perfectly clear, and the idea of her character is good. But the 
lines he gives her are a little too blatant they smack of the 
amateur, the inexperienced; there is none of the subterfuge or sub­
tlety that can give to a character drawn in outline form flesh and 
blood, reality and substance. 
Sherwood’s saying that he started writing Reunion in Vienna 
with what seemed if not idea
"an important strikingly original 
science hoist with its own petard—is best substantiated by the 
way he prepares his audience for the character of Anton Krug. He 
has old Krug in the early part of the first act tell the young stu­
dents of his son’s earlier life. Old Krug is given the following 
difficult two speeches difficult in that they are completely out 
of key with the character and the rest of the play; 
Whenever
They fthe HapsburgsJ were smart, too. became too hot for ’em here at home
things they’d war,
start another and send all the worst of the trouble makers into the front line. They did that with him. to all the
They put him work patching up soldiers broken there in Gorizia
they’d patching ’em up so that they could send ’em out to be broken But do know whet he said about it? He
again. you said it was murder they were doing that the en-were our comrades. Comrades! The Italians! And
emy on top of all that, every soldier that was sent to him was marked unfit for further military service. 
He told ’em all to go home. But they soon put a stop to that. They took away his commission from him, and made him a laborer in their stone and
quarries; that’s why he could never be a surgeon again. They crushed his hands with their stones!^ 
18 
See p. 6, supra, 
19 
Reunion Act I, p. 

21.
Sherwood, in Vienna. 
it didn’t upset him. He said, "If I can’t
Oh, use my hands to chop people to pieces, I can still use this.” (He taps his head.) And he did. And 
now they don’t put him in prison for what he says. They pay himl Why they sent for my boy all the 
and he went across the ocean to
way from America, tell those Americans how to live. They didn’t know. And when he came back he brought me a present that wireless machine, there. Did you ever see as fine a one as that? (He gazes lovingly at the radio.) It’s mine but they won’t let me play it.2o 
It is obvious that with this as a beginning Anton Krug was origin­
ally to develop into quite another character from the one in the fi­
nal writing of Reunion in Vienna. It does not take Sherwood long to 
abandon such a serious attack on the character of Krug, for it is 
ap­
parent that he felt its incongruity in the play he was writing. In­
deed he lightens the impact of the speech introducing Krug within 
the speech itself by allowing old Krug to "throw away" the end of 
it with talk of the wireless machine. However, it is somewhat re­
markable that he even permitted these lines to remain in the final 
staging of the script. The explanation for the existence of these 
be that Sherwood was loath to alto-
speeches might simply relinquish 
gether his original purpose, end found in them some satisfaction for 
his burning determination to make a comment. "Whatever the reason, 
the fact remains that the characterization of Anton Krug suffers from 
a change in the point of view of the playwright. But Sherwood is 
more of a technician than he was when he wrote The Road 
to Rome, and 
he is more able to disguise his change in the course the character 
was to take than he was in that earlier play. Krug undergoes no 
20 
Reunion Act

Sherwood, in Vienna, I, p. 22. 
69 
the most of
abrupt metamorphosis; rather, Sherwood manages to make 
Krug in the comedy that was to come later. And so, in the final 
all that does
analysis, this introductory speech to the play end to 
the character itself is to lend an uncomfortable note of virility 
and sordid reality. As for the rest of the play, we are of the opin­
ion that Sherwood was never quite sure just how far he was to take 
his psychoanalyst. In the scene between Elena and Krug at the end 
of the first act, Sherwood seems to have hit 
upon the right Anton 
faith
Krug. He is completel}' sympathetic, entirely worthy of the 
put in him by his students, and attractive enough to have won a wife 
such as Elena. For the moment, the audience forgets that his hands 
were crushed by the Hapsburgs or that he is a world-famous scientist 
representing to them all science and its deadly presumption that it 
can master the human equation. Left with this impression, the audi­
ence encounters no difficulty in believing Rudolph’s being defeated 
by Anton’s charm in the beginning of the third act. But soon after 
this scene in the third act begins, Sherwood starts to write with too 
heavy a and Anton takes on too serious a mien for the
pen, light, gay 
comedy of which he is a part. It appears that Sherwood is over-anxious 
to make the situation clear, and forgets to write with all the grace 
that his play demands. We admit that we might be stretching a point, 
but we suggest that in this scene Anton’s charm becomes too labored 
too soon that Sherwood anticipates the direction he gives when he 
says, "ANTON is beginning to betray evidences of impatience which 
might easily develop into violent wrath, by several pages of dia­
21 
Reunion
Sherwood, in Vienna. Act 111, p. 170. 
70 
logue when he permits Anton to make such condescending replies to 
Rudolph’s effusive explanation as: 
RUDOLPH 
For I assume that she would have become a com­
... 
monplace, obese, bourgeois housewife. 
ANTON She has resisted the influences surrounding her. 22 
RUDOLPH That sounds a bit disgusting, doesn’t it? 
ANTON 
Nothing is disgusting that is said with such art­23
less sincerity. 
It is difficult to be sure that Sherwood was wrong in suggesting so 
clear to his audience that Anton was not above being a normal hus­
band. But we cannot how much more consistent the
help conjecturing 
would have been with the scene in the first act if Sherwood
scene 
had permitted Anton a few moments more of complete composure. Along 
with this consideration we wonder about the scene in which Anton 
weakens and all science slips for a moment. By comparison with some 
of the other moments in the play, this scene is not all that it should 
be. Perhaps there are too many words spoken; Rudolph is allowed to 
elaborate his proposal for too long a time. Or perhaps it is that 
Sherwood in his effort to give his scene the ’’punch” that he felt it 
needed was too careful to keep Elena out of it. For although Elena’s 
words are well chosen, the effort on the part of the playwright to 
22 
Reuhion in Vienne,

Sherwood, Act 111, p. 166, 
‘ 
23 
Ibid.. Act 111, p. 167. 
place those words at the right moments shows through, and the scene 
of
as a whole falls from the lilting grace a well-made high comedy 
into a craftsmanlike comedy moment that is too technically perfect. 
Sherwood forgets here that human beings do not behave so appropri­
and he fails to add the unstudied detail of lifelike behavior
ately, 
that would have given to his scene a believable and would
more aspect 
not, in the final analysis, have cheated him of what he had devised 
as his biggest scene in the This weakness construction
play. in play 
did not, most certainly, show through in the stage production of the 
play; for the author had live people to speak his lines and to give 
to his moment its semblance of life. Indeed the scene the first
upon 
reading does not appear to be faulty. Only when the reader looks at 
the play again and again as a piece of play construction, regarding 
carefully the remarkable facility that the playwright displays in 
so
telling his romantic story so charmingly and yet believably, is 
he able to sense the difference between this scene and the for
one, 
example, between Elena and Rudolph immediately following. The only 
possible point that can be made of this rather tedious discussion can 
be that it illustrates a quality tn the writing of Reunion in Vienna 
at
that, although it is not prevalent, appears times and prevents the 
play from being a truly good one. We suggest that it was this qual­
ity that caused the critics so much concern and 
disagreement, although 
they at the time did not appear to realize it. 
Francis Fergusson said; 
The third act is weak; but the Lunts, with the aid of Mr. Henry Travers, an excellent comedian who 
plays 
toit to
Dr. Krug*s father, 	menage put across a vastly 24
delighted audience, 
while Richard Skinner had the following to say: 
Robert Sherwood has spoiled what might have been an interesting comedy about the dregs of old Austria by a very obvious and unimaginative ending.2s 
And with that the critics completed any attempt at a comment on the 
end of the play as 	a piece of writing. The critics concerned them­
selves almost exclusively with the problem of whether or not Elena 
really did spend the night \vlth Rudolph. Their reactions are inter­
esting and varied. The Catholic for instance, declared:
World, 
The ending is lame for everyone but Rudolph. Elena had shown admirable intentions but she did not seem 
to new 2^ 
to object trying a remedy. Chastity has no 
premium in the Freudian theories. 
Richard Skinner seems to have no doubt in his mind as to what hap­
pens after the curtain goes down: 
The play ends with the departure of the archduke after he has accomplished his main purpose. 27 
And Joseph Wood Krutch offered the most elaborate discussion of the 
of the and his
problem of the ending play, 	answer is, I think, sig­
24 
Fergusson, ”A Month of the Theatre,” p. 564, 
25 

160.
Skinner, "The Play,” p. 
26 

"Plays 	Importance,” p. 467,
of Some 
27 

160.
Skinner, ”The Play,” p. 
nificant because in it is a clear revelation of just bow much the 
critics of this play were influenced by the performances of Alfred 
Lunt and Fontanne:
Lynn 
Next morning no questions are asked, and the audience, as well as the husband, is left to guess what really happened. Did Miss Fontanne consent or did she not? Now, I do not know whether I am supposed to give an 
is it upon a certain blankness which passed over Miss 
Fontanne*s face at the instant when she had just said "no" so effectively that the departing Hapsburg shut the door of his bedroom behind him. At that moment the second-act curtain descends, but a temptation is 
never so seductive as in the instant when we are struck by the fear that we have just succeeded in conquering it once for all. It leaves an emptiness behind which only the forbidden can fill, and it is at that moment that we begin to hunt eagerly through the tall grass for the apple we have just thrown away. Surely it was thus that Eve it was Eve who set the old fash­
answer, but if I am, then my guess yes, and I base 
fell, and 
ion which never changes. 

Interestingly enough, Stark Young dismissed the ending of the play 
by saying, "And we have a sense of happy solutions,”2® And there 
you have what we think is a rather pertinent indication of the me­
rit of the general critical comment of Reunion in Vienne. Whether 
or not the critic was favorably impressed, the production of the 
seems to have succeeded critical
play in precluding any studious 
3o
analysis. True, several critics mentioned briefly Sherwood’s 
failure to live up to the promise of the first act and some mentioned 
28 
"Sham Battle

Krutch, of the Sexes,” p. 650, 
29 

See p. 56, supra. 
30 
See Catholic 

World, CZXXIV, p. 467; Field, "The Drama Catches Up, 
p. 174; De Casseres, "Broadway to Date," p. 68; Dickinson, "The Angle of Incidence," p. 728; Skinner, "The Play," p. 160. 
bothered to
slight irregularities in characterization; but no one 
take the and study it as a piece of dramatic literature.
play 
To of Alfred Lunt Fontanne in
ignore the presence and Lynn 
the writing of the characters of Rudolph end Elena would be fool­
hardy. Sherwood himself admits in his preface that he wrote the 
31 play "with the help of God and a few Lunts," No critic reviewed 
the play who did not write at length about the brilliant perform­
ances of this acting couple. Indeed most criticisms of the play 
treated it more as a vehicle for the Lunts than as a play in itself. 
And the characters and Elena as
so, in analyzing of Rudolph portrayed 
in the play, it is essential that the reader bear in mind at all times 
that these actors were on hand to do their bit in the formation of 
the characters we
they were to play. It is, think, not presumptions 
to assume that they spoke no lines they did not want to speak, that 
they had lines written when they needed them to allow for certain 
business or stage movement that they, as had devised.
stage actors, 
Just how much of Elena and Rudolph is Robert Sherwood and how much 
is the Lunts is difficult to ascertain. But it is fairly certain 
that there is little, if any, of Elena and Rudolph in the play that 
is Robert Sherwood without the of the Lunts.
grace A playwright 
would be foolish (and Robert Sherwood is not foolish) to have ig­
nored their wishes. We do not feel that the play suffers from their 
part in it. Conceivably the whole tone of the play might have been 
different without them; but if they were the influence that kept 
Sherwood to the writing of a comedy without 
comment, they were right. 
31 
Sherwood, "Preface." Reunion in Vienna, p. xvi. 
As we have said Robert Sherwood was not ready to bear a mes-
before, 
sage and a play. 
Elena moves through Reunion in Vienna as easily as Lynn Fontanne 
a the If Elena at times is
moves through performance on stage. super­
ficially conceived, it is because Lynn Fontanne plays comedy super-
ZP 
in the moments does
ficially. Only previously discussed Elena, as 
a literary character, fail to live up to her obligation to life and 
Those On
theater. moments, we hope, have been explained. the whole, 
then, Elena remains one of the most delightfully drawn women that we 
have encountered in dramatic literature. The ease and consistency 
of her characterization, along with the almost complete absence of 
self-conscious writing, make Reunion in Vienna a much better play 
than it would have been without her. 
As for Rudolph, almost the same may be said for him as for Elena, 
except that here possibly Sherwood should be given credit, be-
more 
cause the character of Rudolph was a much more difficult one to write 
than it was to play on the stage. Whatever Alfred Lunt did with the 
part must have been remarkable, for everyone who wrote of the play men 
tioned its merit. But it was Robert Sherwood who 
conceived originally 
idea
the of this happy, half-mad, egocentric archduke; and it was he 
32 
Here we digress to mention that we have never been convinced 
that the term "superficially” is necessarily adverse in regard to 
such theatrical technicalities as 
the playing of comedy on the stage. If it implies that the actor or actress plays a part with an to
eye making the audience laugh, then we ask only, "What else should a 
comedian do?” If it means that an actor or actress does not 
con­ceive a comedy part fully and with then
all its ramifications, we think the term 
is misapplied. Miss Fontanne, for instance, has been blamed for being a superficial actress. We feel that she is an ad­mirable technician and an intelligent person. 
who accepted the responsibility of creating such a theatrically 
worthy character. If it was Lunt who insisted that Rudolph be made 
as attractive as he is instead of the unattractive person he might 
have been, then he is to be commended. If it was Sherwood, then he 
is to be commended. Whatever philosophical inconsistencies may be 
found in the characterization are, we think, tedious and out of the 
spirit of the play. For Rudolph is not a realistic character at all, 
but rather a romantic idealization of a person who, if he were real, 
would be little more than a fool. Existing as he does, though, as 
a representative of the last of the glorious Hapsburgs forced to 
live in this twentieth century, he is an imaginative end tastefully 
drawn character for the 
stage. 
With this consideration the discussion of Reunion in Vienna 
might be ended. In an effort to sum up the total effect of the 
play, 
we turn to Thomas Dickinson for his statement of this effect: 
"Reunion in Vienna" of far more than 
an-
is, course, 
other dramatization of a Viennese waltz. It is so much 
more that I have had moods while reading it (and it 
should be read as well as seen) of thinking that it is 
the wisest and ripest comedy ever written in America, I cannot at the moment think of another that moves with 
such a lively grace and still keeps an 
intelligent head on its shoulders... Sherwood has so often been com­pared with Shaw that the association of their names is 
no longer flattery to either, and yet Shaw has done so 
many things with a provocative badness that it is a sat­isfaction to see the same done with a graceful fi­
things 
nality. 

We  do  not  dare  go  so  far as  Dickinson  in saying  that  it is  the  wisest.  
35  
Dickinson,  ojo*  cit.. p.  728.  

ripest comedy ever written in America. We can conclude, however, 
that it is the best comedy Robert Sherwood has ever written and 
that its 
success is of great importance for the full understanding 
of Robert Sherwood’s as a
later development playwright. 
But Sherwood is taking full strides as an adult playwright. 
He seems at last to have acknowledged the writing of plays as his 
medium. He knows the theater is his mode 
of expression. 
CHAPTER IV 
Knowing this, Robert Sherwood put eway the romance, the dis­
tance of the old world with its foreign attractiveness and turned 
his talents to the present and, what is more important, to America, 
The writer who had moved consistently from the awkwardness of The 
Road to Rome, to the refreshing dexterity of Reunion in Vienna, 
through the maudlin exercises of This Is New York and Waterloo 
Bridge and the flimsy moment of The Queen * s Husband, the author 
who shouted the need in the and
for romance theater, 1 proceeded 
to find the most efficient and yet exciting means of injecting that 
romance at to have focused his
into his theater, seemed, last, pow­
ers and himself in the The Petrified Forest. The Petrified
play 
Forest is, according to Robert Sherwood himself, the beginning of 
I 
f) 
the real playwright. 
In the to Reunion in Vienna we found a
preface playwright who 
was unable to integrate his message end his play. It was apparent 
that here was a man who thought with clarity and vigor and whose 
writing displayed an exciting mastery of the theater and its vital 
forces. Yet the playwright was forced to state his ideas in his 
preface and to write his play with emphasis on the theater therein, 
moment of the
ignoring for the the possibility play’s exposition 
of 
his thesis. For The Petrified Forest Robert Sherwood wrote 
no 
pref­
1 
See The
Sherwood, "Preface,” Queen’s Husband, pp, xi ff. 
2 
"Old
See Behrmsn, Monotonous, I” p, 34. 
ece. At lest he was able to combine the two. S. N. Behrman astutely 
suggests that this new integration was not a sudden development ap­
pearing for the first time in The Petrified Forest, but one that is 
first seen in the unsuccessful Acropolis. It is logical, certainly, 
that Sherwood might have taken a half-step in the direction of The 
Petrified Forest before he made the successful leap. We cannot move 
on The Petrified Forest without at least, of the
to acknowledgement, 
significant yet unsuccessful Acropolis. 
"It was by all odds the best play I had written and the most 
positive affirmation of my own faith. It was a reaction, a rebel­
lion against the despairing spirit of the ’Reunion in Vienna 1 pref­
ace, a rebellion that I have continued ever since, ’Acropolis* was 
'
another historical analogy, but a legitimate one."1 Thus speaks 
Robert Sherwood in 1940 of his play of 1933. The play was coolly 
received in London, and was never produced professionally in the 
United States. As a step in the development of Robert Sherwood it 
is an interesting document. It is reminiscent of the The
first, 
Road to Rome, and anticipates the latest to the extent that phrases 
in it recur in There Shall Be No 
this
Night. 4 It is apparent why 
play stands as the only completely unsuccessful play in Robert Sher­
wood’s experience. (It cannot be compared, of course, with The Love 
Nest.) The playwright forgot, in the effort to inculcate his 
message, 
to employ to a great enough extent his first and finest tool: ex­
3 
Sherwood, "Preface," There Shall Be No Night, xix.
v. 
4 
xix.
See ibid., p. 
As to Reunion had the
citing theater. opposed in Vienna. Acropolis 
idea but neglected the ln writing of Acropolis the New York 
Times reviewer in London showed remarkable perspicacity. He could 
not have written a more significant review. 
Robert Sherwood’s "Acropolis* was performed for the first time last night at the Lyric Theatre under the direction of Marc Connelly, with Raymond Massey 
as 
Cleon, Gladys Cooper as Aspasia and lan Hunter Phi-
as dias, now engaged in the building of the Parthenon. Mr. Sherwood has permitted himself a certain liberty 
in the adjustment of dates, but none that fsntasti­cates his study of Periclean Athens, and though he al­lows his people to speak modem English instead of at­
tempting to impose upon them, he has avoided, with ad­
mirable conscience, all the chances which Shaw and les­
ser men than Shaw would have eagerly taken to get cheap laughter by deliberately anachronistic challenges. In brief, Aspasia f s house is in no way related to a night club or a speakeasy. It is what Mr, Sherwood has im­
agined Aspasia*s house to have been. 
There comes Hyperbolus, the rich man, contemptuous of the civilized detachment that has its cen­
supreme, tre in Phidias and seeing in Cleon and his warlike na­tionalism his passionate doctrine of blood and iron, a chance of profit. And Aspasia orders him to leave. The steadiness and discretion of this scene are typical of the restraint with which the whole play is written, A fool with one eye on the gallery and the other on the box-office would have treated the expulsion of Hyper-
bolus as if he were a vulgar old man being thrown out of a brothel. What we see, instead, is a request that he will not continue to use a club where he is not wel­
come, He goes and the remaining company is a happy one— Socrates, viiom we first encountered chisel and mallet in hand on the Acropolis, now talking at ease and 
leisure; Anaxagoras, a gentle and skeptical old man; Alcibiades, 
5 
arbitrary statements must be

Such regarded es generalities, and as ell-inclusive
cannot be accepted facts. In this of
case, course, we do not seem to indicate that Reunion in Vienna abandoned the the­sis altogether while Acropolis ignored completely the theatrics. The point is merely that the proportions of these two elements were re­versed in each play. 
uncer­and 
hot-headed, proud, generous, intellectually 
tain; Aristophanes, gay wise, thinking of him-tradition of Soph­
self as a tragic dramatist, in the his
cares exalted 
ocles; Phidias himself, who for nothing but 
art, an example of passionate and singleness of mind. Pericles himself does not but he
appear, emerges from the conversation of the others as the po­litical support of their ideal. 
The play’s conflict is a conflict of values. On the one hand is the set of values represented by an eager­ness for enduring beauty, for the adornment of the city, 
for the work of Phidias, for the independence of Soc­
rates’s thought; on the other is the doctrine of Cleon, who, caring for imperial aggrandizement military
and prowess, taunts the Athenians for their effeminacy and for not being as the Spartans are. When the Spartan in-
in the to
vasion comes, Cleon, eyes of the mob, appears be Phidias and tried
justified. Aspasia, Anaxagoras are 
and Phidias condemned to death. ?fe witness his end; 
then on the Acropolis the completed Parthenon looking 
out, as it were, across the future to justify the age 
of Pericles when the heats of the Peloponnesian wars 
are cold. 
The contemporary moral is not remote. The world is 
thick with Cleons, inflaming nationalism with their rhetoric men whose triumphs are the disasters of mankind; and because Mr. Sherwood keeps to his Athen­
ian and makes no parade of modern instances
subject 
there is no reason that modern audiences should 

suppose that the fate of Athens as a political entity and its survival as a source of art and philosophy are discon­nected with their own lives. 
But I shall not be if the
surprised general public 
finds "Acropolis” dramatically too cool for its taste, 
(It did; the play closed a week ago, after nine days,— Ed.) Mr. Sherwood has neither concentrated upon the 
personal life of any one of his people nor, even while 
writing of a group, has he driven his play to an emo­
tional climax of the sort that makes 
the gallery shout. So much the 
better, in my personal judgment; I like the quietness and dignity of his approach; but I will con­fess and waited
that I waited, in vain, for that plunge below the surface of ideas which his method seemed to 
invite. Mr. Sherwood is over-much inclined to be con­
tent with presenting aspect of each character.
one 
I would have 
given much for light on Cleon in private, when he had no longer the support of his as a
pose demagogue and when, as even tub-thumpers must now and had
then, he 
a of life from his
glimpse opponents* point of view. 
All the parts are well performed and the produc­tion has an even distribution of emphasis. As far 
as they go, the people are carefully drawn and the 
group is shrewdly assembled. The play is, in conse­quence, continuously and steadily interesting but not as intellectually exciting as it might have been. Phidias in the hour of death visited by Aspasia 
what a prospect of the Greek mind that scene could have opened upj As it stands, it has tenderness and restraint; it gives a light suggestion of the truths underlying it; it is, like everything else in the play, admirable as 
far as it It does not strike the heart of its sub-
goes. 
Ject.6 
discussion there two that
From Morgan’s are pertinent points 
fit into the larger scheme of Robert Sherwood’s whole development. 
From Charles Morgan we learn that in Acropolis Sherwood ”has neither 
concentrated life of
upon the personal any one of his people nor, 
even while writing of a group, has he driven his play to an emotional 
climax of the sort that makes the gallery shout,” Here then is one 
of the weaknesses that Robert Sherwood subconsciously, at least, must 
n 
in this his He
have recognized first important play, ' was never again 
more
to be guilty in this way. The other point is perhaps the import­
ant because the problem in playwriting that it represents is the one 
that Sherwood has been least able to solve and remains as a more or 
less on all of Sherwood’s
general comment writing, Morgan by his very 
choice of words indicates the difficulty in laying one’s finger on the 
to make the
fault. Refusing opinion dogmatic, Morgan rather resorts 
6 
Charles Morgan, "Elegy on a London 

’Acropolis/" New York Times. 
December 10, 1933, sect. I, col, 6, p, 1. 7 See Sherwood, "Preface." Ihere Shall Be No Night, p, xxi. 
83 
”1
to subjective ambiguity and says that in his personal judgment, 
like the quietness and dignity of his approach; but I will confess 
that I waited, and waited in vain, for that plunge below the sur­
face of ideas which his methods seemed to invite.” It is that 
phrase "below the surface of ideas” that is to recur in the discus­
sion of Robert Sherwood as a serious playwright. It is not suf­
ficient, or just to that Robert Sherwood is super-
accurate, say 
ficial, He is not. But in the consideration of him as an import­
ant and
playwright dealing with serious sociological political prob­
lems the student confronts the disturbing question of Mr. Sherwood’s 
lack of thoroughness and profundity. Hie problem is not one that 
can be answered here. For the moment we must content ourselves with 
a recognition of it and herewith include it in further discus-
any 
sion of Robert Sherwood’s writing, aiming at a final answer. As for 
the quietness and dignity of approach mentioned by Mr. Morgan, it is 
to remember this comment. It is one that will be
important not re­
peated in the criticism of the following two plays. And for the mo-
must content ourselves with
ment we the logical assumption that Sher­
wood was unable to incorporate into such an approach the other ele­
ments of lacks and that
playwriting that Morgan suggests Acropolis 
Sherwood set about to infuse in his next plays. Morgan also intro-
the consideration of Sherwood’s inclination to
duces deal with one 
of each character. Of this we will have much to in
aspect say our 
of The Petrified Forest.
observations 
Although no critic at the time made a critical
point of it, the 
reception of The Petrified Forest reveals clearly that the critics 
generally seemed to take a new lease on the business of considering 
Robert Sherwood and his plays and treated him with more deference 
and respect than they had ever shown before. It is not to the dis­
credit of the critics that they were unable to recognize and state 
clearly the significance of this play in light of the other plays of 
not
Robert Sherwood; they did enjoy the advantage of the perspective 
we now have. Our consideration of the play must, however, be guided 
that Robert Sherwood himself said of it six
always by the fact years 
later: 
"The Petrified Forest" was a negative, inconclusive sort of play, but I have a great fondness for it be­
cause it pointed me in a new direction, and that proved 
to be the I really wanted to go.^
way 
And we must dissociate from the bulk of the critical comment those 
points that touch, however unintentionally, the essential qualities 
of The Petrified Forest that make it the play that pointed Robert 
Sherwood in the new and right direction. 
have the
Again we chosen to present pertinent comments of the 
critics in a series because in this way the most accurate impression 
be got of the critical tenor inspired by the play.
may 
Mr. Robert Sherwood after extended 
wanderings through ancient Rome, the Balkans and Vienna has last
at set­tled down temporarily in his native land, and cele­
to brate the event has not satiric but
given us comedy, melodrama. Of course it is melodrama with modern trim­
mings, with philosophical ones, for Mr.
even and social 
7 Sherwood, "Preface." There Shall Be No Night, p. xxi. 
Sherwood is ever Mr. Sherwood, The petrified forest 
is in Arizona, and it symbolizes the philosophical content of the book or what we ere assured is that content that the pioneer is passing away, as is the esthete and the gun-man. These we are told by the esthete, in the person of Leslie Howard, are the 
last individualists, and they are all doomed to ex­
tinction. Perhaps they are, though the gun-man just 
now shows small signs of it, but I for one refuse to 
believe that the girl who recites Francois Villon be­tween bursts of up-to-date profanity is the hope of the future. In fact I am very much of the opinion that the cow-boys, the gun-men, the esthete, and the girl herself are simply age-old types of American mel­
odrama, and despite their greater power of expression might very well have come out of "Arizona" or "The Girl of the Golden West." The only difference is in the fact that Mr. Sherwood knows how to write and loves to play with ideas. Over the rough bones of the
an impossible story he lays patina of real bril­a patina which may very well deceive the av­
liancy, 
erage theatre-goer into the belief that he is present 

at the birth of something new in dramatic art. But 
though he isn’t, he is present at a vibrant, exciting 
melodrama which will probably run as long as any play now extant in New York,,., 
The is but the excitement
patina in Alan’s monologues, is in the vibrant action and in the humors of the char­
acters,^ 
There have been filling stations before and Arizona deserts and machine guns and fleeing bandits, but never before has a lunch room housed 
more interesting types or developed their characters under more breathless circumstances. That is because Mr. Sherwood has writ­ten a soul into each he has teased
of his creations; a bit of romance out of every spirit and has shot po­etry out of the last rattle of the machine gun. Even Duke Mantee, the Killer, steps out of melodrama and shows the comer of a human heart. He knew 
enough about poetry at any rate to know that he had to fire that last shot, "I’ve spent the most of my life be­hind the "and I’ll most
bars,” he says, likely spend the rest of it dead," He had 
just staged a small 
before the Court House
massacre 
in Albuquerque when 
9 Grenville Vernon, "The Play," Commonweal. XXI, January 25, 1955, p. 375. 
with 	a rucksack on walks into
Alan Squier, his back, 
the Black Mesa Bar-E-Q, which was owned by Gramp Maple. 
Gramp was an old-timer and an original pioneer who had 
been shot at by Billy the Kid, the Killer of the ’7o’s. 
Gramp*s son had fought in the Great War which had won 
him a French wife who couldn’t stand the Desert and re­turned to France leaving Mr. Jason Maple the solace of 
the American Legion and little Gabrielle. 

It was of Bourges and spires and poppies and gay French laughter and dancing in the streets that lit­tle Gabby dreamed as she served hamburgers and read 
the translated rondeaux of Villon in the volume her faraway mother had sent her from France. She wasn’t interested in the love-making of the gas station at­tendant, a half-back from Nevada Tech but when Squier 
from
tramped in the Riviera, her precocious childish 
eyes recognized another Villon under his shabby tweeds. The unsuccessful author of one novel; the disillusioned young husband of a rich woman, Alan has come from the 
Riviera to try to find the secret treasure of life that he has lost. Strangely enough it is Duke Mantee who 
gives him the helping hand,^ 
The new play for Mr. Howard is a frequently strange, with Mr. Howard and
but always likable, preachment, 
half-a-dozen 
competents taking the place of Mr. Sher­wood in making the observations which tuck the jitters of this era into their proper pigeon-holes, Mr. How-
a
ard, 	as Alan Squier. New England-born novelist, comes the sad realization that he
upon is no major artist, boxes up religion, morality, ethics, romance, the Amer­ican Legion, machine-gun-swinging killers, 
even thiev­and murder with the of
ery mass 	and, expert help 
the others in the cast, does that boxing up tidily 
and neatly.... 
The becomes a mixture
play of thoughtful contemplation of today’s evils and melodrama, with the latter rising to flood for the last few minutes of the action. 
The first act is smooth and alluring, and more than ordinarily cosmic. The second, suddenly, is exciting, filled with tension, and makes its points with a thump.^ 
10 Euphemia Van Hensellaer Wyatt, ’’The Drama,” Catholic World. CXL, February, 1935, p. 601. 11 "The 
Petrified Novelist,” Literary Digest. CXIX, January 19 1935, p. 19. 
87 
than
Mr. Sherwood’s argument is less impressive his The should be the ac-
stagecraft. play great fun when tors start to substitute firearms for philosophy: the 
dialogue is lively and the whole is easily read.l^ 
The scene is a desert gas-filling station and the 
petrified forest refers both to the actual forest ad­jacent and to several of the characters. The garru­
lous old ex-pioneer, living in the past and off the 
income from his real-estate speculations the Ameri­
—¦ 
can legionnaires, unaware that a new world has grown 
up  since  they  came  back  from the war,  and  several  oth­ 
ers,  are  ’petrified,’.,.  The  gunmen  who  finally shoot  
are the  ones who 

up the place only definitely know what 
they want and go straight about getting it in the hot 
present, 
Though it has a deceptive gloss of realism and vivid 
speech, it is at bottom warmly sentimental and roman­
tic, A filling station at a lonely crossroads in Ari­zona Mr. Sherwood peoples with a bankrupt writer hitch­hiking West and gang of desperadoes fleeing from a
a 
bank disillusioned
hold-up. Quixotically, the writer, with life, makes over his insurance policy to the daugh­ter of the filling station proprietor and asks the band­its to shoot him. He has fallen in love with the girl, and by such means he will give her opportunity for a fortune in which neither he nor the bandits belong. They and himself, like the trees in the neighboring petrified forest, he believes, ere relics of a past age. 
Though the plot has familiar aspects which can be seen through its modern dress, Mr. Sherwood decorates 
it with sparkling comments ranging over a variety of topics from the American Legion to French characteris­14
tics, 
Although much of this critical ’’talk" is effusive and in the fi­
nal analysis inconsequential, it is of a different kind from that in­
12 Manchester
Ivor Brown, Guardian. January 2, 1936, p. 5, 13 Saturday Review of Literature, n. d, 14 of Back
E,,, F... M,,,, ”A Couple Bay Matters,” New York Times. December 30, 1934, sect. IX, col, 6, p. 1, 
spired by Reunion in Vienna. The critics agree that Sherwood has 
written a melodrama and that he has had something to say and has 
said it. The critics even agree as to the general outlines of what 
he has said, and there is an apparent interest manifested by the 
critics in the characters that Sherwood has chosen to people his 
This interest is before the critics
play. new; for although always 
have found it expedient to discuss one or two of Sherwood’s char­
acters, never before have Sherwood’s characters so consistently in­
spired the critics to such philosophical discussions of them. Per­
haps it is possible to say of the body of reviews represented by the 
excerpts quoted above that although they say more, or attempt to say 
more, than is usual, they really say nothing that is not apparent on 
the surface and nothing that is of any real critical consequence. 
And so again we turn to a few of the more inquisitive critics for 
our discussions. 
Edith J. R. Isaacs makes a point that can well serve as an open-
for a discussion of the characterization in The Petrified Forest.
ing 
Mrs. who is always interested in the actor in a has
Isaacs, play, 
to
this say; 
It provides an entertaining evening without strain on the intelligence or the imagination, but without barring their presence entirely. easy, fluent writing,
It is with a straight melodramatic story that has the inter­est of a lively game and with a fantastic love-story thrown in for good value. Moreover, it has a number of good if fairly obvious characterizations.,,. 
some
Robert Sherwood undoubtedly had pleasure in think­
ing out that character and its motivations. Leslie 
Howard undoubtedly saw in that 
life the possibility of character delineation. But while a can be
playwright 
a mistake
excused for making that playwrights often their
do make, thinking that they are putting into play what is really only in the play’s background, Leslie Howard is too shrewd and experienced a player not to have known when he read the script that all of the story, except the end of it, was done before 
he entered that gas station and put down his nearly empty pack beside the little lunch table. Although 
he is on the stage almost continuously throughout the play, there is nothing for Mr. Howard to do, af­ter the first speech in which he tells his story, but to exhibit Mr. Leslie Howard’s charming presence and listen to Mr. Leslie Howard’s pleasant English voice until the moment comes when he gets himself shot in 
Mr. Leslie Howard’s most graceful manner, in the fi­nancial interest new-found
of his love, Gabby Maple, who as Peggy Conklin plays her, really isn’t worth the shot, 
Besides being inconsistent, Mrs, Isaacs appears to be petulant and 
sophomoric. If the play is as she says, a melodramatic story with 
a lively interest, then how can it be a play whose story is done be­
fore the curtain goes up? But Mrs. Isaacs* point is not altogether 
we
invalid. Unintentionally, suspect, she has hit upon a quality in 
The Petrified Forest that tends to make 
it finally the "negative, 
inconclusive sort of that Sherwood calls it later. We can­
not credit Edith Isaacs with sensing this inherent weakness, because 
she is too obviously concerned with wanting Leslie Howard to have 
something to d£ in the course of the play. And her complaint is not 
aimed at an argument concerning the play*s philosophical substance, 
which is what Robert Sherwood is referring to in his declaration of 
its inconclusiveness. It is, however, only fair to say that argument 
15 Edith J. R, Isaacs, "When the Actor Is Bored,” Theatre Arts Monthly, XIX, March, 1935, p. 169. 16 
See p, 84, supra. 
can be found for the criticism that the characterization of Alan 
Squier is one-dimensional, and Edith Isaacs is the only critic who 
even approached such a consideration. 
Joseph Wood Krutch writes with his characteristic fluency: 
Mr. Sherwood, the author, has something to say and he is obviously in earnest, despite the light grace of his manner, Ke is also, however, too accomplished a craftsman to ask indulgence from any Broadway audience, 
since he knows the tricks of his trade and has a witty fluence quite sufficient to make something out of noth­ing.... I am saying only that "The Petrified Forest" 
could succeed upon its superficial merits alone, and that one has some difficulty in deciding whether or not one has been charmed 
into granting it virtues deeper than any it really has. 
To begin with, the play is quite capable of stand­ing on its feet as a simple comedy melodrama of a fa­miliar type. The lonely filling station on the edge of the desert has been used before, and so has the 
band of fleeing desperadoes which descends upon it to take charge temporarily of the assorted persons who happen to find themselves there. In itself all this 
is merely sure-fire theatrical material, and so is the 
fresh and innocent rebelliousness of the 
budding young 
girl, who happens in this case to be the daughter. Add, for love interest, a penniless young 
man who has made a failure at writing, end there is 
still little to distinguish the play from ordin­
very ary stage fare. Imagine further that the dialogue is bright and the characterization crisply realistic. You have now a play admirably calculated to please anyone intelligent enough to prefer the routine when it hap­pens to be well performed. What is more, this routine can detached which
play easily be from all the meanings Mr. Sherwood has given it. It is complete in itself and it is, as I remarked before, quite capable of stand­ing alone. 
Yet that .this
for all this, it is plain enough play is double and that the familiar situations may be taken, 
not at their face value, but as symbols. Solidly real­istic as the filling station is, it is obviously intended also as a place out of space and time where certain men can meet and realize that they are not only individuals 
but phenomena as well. Though there is no obvious 
pat­
terning, no hint of plain allegory even for an instant, the characters represent the protagonists in what the author conceives to be the Amageddon of society. The man is that civilized and sophisticated intelli­
young gence which has come to the end of its tether; the young 
girl is aspiration toward that very sensitivity and 
that very kind of experience which he has not ceased to ad­
mire but which have left him bankrupt at last. About 
them are the forces with which they realize they can­
not grapple: raucous bluster in the commander of the American Legion, dead wealth in the touring banker, pri­
mitive in the killer and his
anarchy resurgent gang. By whatever name the filling station may call it-
grotesque self, and no matter how realistic the hamburger being served across its lunch counter as "today’s special" may be, the desert tavern is Heartbreak House, a dis­integrating microcosm from which the macrocosm may be deduced. And the morel —or at least the only one which the only fully articulate in can
person the play deduce is a gloomy one. What he calls Nature, and what a poet once called Old Chaos, is coming again. We thought that she was beaten. We had learned her laws and we seemed to manipulate her according to our will. But she is about to have her way again. She cannot get 
at us with floods and pestilence because we are too clever for that. But she has got us through the thing, not even in itself. It can only stand idly by with re­finement end gallantry and perception while the world is taken over by the apes once more. And so when the bul­lets of the posse begin to shatter the windows, the 
man and the woman drop to the floor in each
young young 
other’s arms. It is a symbol of ell they know or can 
still believe in, but they have no illusion that it is 
enough. 
When Cervantes had finished the first part of "Don 
Quixote," he was visited, so he says, by a friend to whom he confessed his inability to describe in any In­
troduction what his aim in the book might be; and 
upon 
this the friend replied that he should not worry about 

either explanations or meanings, "Strive," said he, 
"that the simple shall not be wearied and the 
great shall not disprove it." One can hardly deny that the method worked in that particular instance, and it works again in the case of Mr, Sherwood’s to be
play. I have, sure, a lingering feeling that there are dangers inher­ent in the to on two levels at and
effort write 
once, 
some about

scruples accepting as symbols things as fa­miliar in their literal use as some whidh "The Petrified 
Forest" employs. There is an unresolvable ambiguity at not
times, only concerning the meaning but also concerning 
the emotional tone, and the melodrama as such sometimes intellectual But
gets in the way of the significance. such objections are purely intellectual, Mr, Sherwood has achieved the almost impossible 
feat of writing a play which is first-rate theatrical entertainment and 
1 *7 
as much more than that as one cares to make it. 
If Robert Sherwood recognized The Petrified Forest as an exercise 
in writing on two levels and approached the play with such premedi­
tated ambition, then we must begin to change our conception of Rob­
ert Sherwood as a playwright. But it is apparent that he did not. 
Joseph Wood Krutch does not indicate any such action on the part of" 
Robert Sherwood, and he would probably be the first to admit that 
the final result was not reached by any such self-conscious effort 
at writing allegory. The answer, we suggest, is a simple one. Rob­
ert Sherwood had a and his mode was de­
thing to say, of expression 
termined by the talents at his command: a natural gift for melo­
drama, sure-fire theatrics, end good humor. But the point of inter­
est raised by Krutch's lengthy and learned discussion is the proof 
it offers to the fact that at last our playwright has written a play 
and successfully incorporated his message. More than any other one 
critic Krutch offers elaborate evidence of the impact that The Petri­
fied Forest had on some of its thinking audience. 
the director and
Arthur Hopkins, producer of the play, was 
per­
haps prejudiced. Perhaps the article he wrote for the New York Timpg 
At
was a publicity gesture. any rate, it is not possible to regard 
his article without considering, at the doubt of his
least, serious­
17 
Joseph Wood Krutch, "Heartbreak House," Nation. 

CXL, January 
23, 1935, p. 111. 
said
ness. However, he has some very interesting things, interesting 
most of all because of the light they throw on The Petrified Forest 
as a As a document representing the director’s
directing problem. 
approach and conception of the play, Hopkins’ article is a valuable 
for a of this kind.
opportunity study 
Three plays that seem to me to fly side by side high above the realistic theatre are Gorki’s "Night Lodging," Berger’s "The Deluge” and Sherwood’s "The Petrified For­
est,” Each, curiously enough, 
finds its release in the same way. Each on its flight snares an unrelated group lifting them up from their normal paths
of travelers, to a new view of themselves end each other, revealing hidden aspects which somehow expose to them for the first time the meaning of that unknown and little explored re­lationship called brotherhood. 
It would seem that it is not what we know of each other that keeps us apart, hut what we do not know. It seems not to matter what really knowing reveals. It is as though a heart looked into generates love the love that is felt hy workers among the outcasts, by the con­
fessor in the death house. Perhaps it is not our faults that separate us, but our concealments. Our concealments build and with these effective barri­
up our pretenses, ers against understanding we walk alone amid our fellow-
pretenders. 
In crisis the barriers are down. In crisis men 
weep for each other. On this fundamental truth have Gorki, Berger and Sherwood founded their plays, Gorki pessi­mistically, Berger ironically, Sherwood affectionately. to
Sherwood’s approach seems me the soundest, since af­fection is the essence of the fundamental idea. 
There is singing in the first two plays which I miss in the Sherwood play. There is something about closer fellowship which seems to induce song as is witnessed 
by sobbing of Sweet Adeline, that touching
the survival lady of all lost loves or loves that were never found. Under her influence how many hearts have been unbur­secrets and found
trivial have
dened, how many tragic release, how many strong men have enfolded and comforted each other. The appearance may be alcoholic but there is should
more hunger then thirst, Adeline be glorified in sculpture. She is the only American goddess, the goddess 
of consolation. Men sing before her end weep. They 
their hearts to her.
open 
Though there be no song in "The Petrified Forest," 
there is music in Sherwood’s words and the complete­
ness of the spell he has woven is revealed not only 
by Squier’s desire to give his life for a good deed 
but by the startling offer of herself to Duke Mantee 
by the previously congealed and seemingly hateful Mrs. Chisholm, a situation comic in appearance but poign­ant is Sherwood’s use of
in significance. Surpassing people as symbols and his gift for evoking panoramas with words. 
Back of the speeches of Cramp one sees the whole colorful excitement and of the pioneer West
energy Indians, stage coaches, covered wagons, undaunted men 
and women pushing on, settling, battling bitter chal­lenge, never turning back. Piercingly 
are we reminded 
of our softened bones. 
three
Again hurtling eras are summoned in Squier’s speech, "I was born in 1901, the year Victoria died, 
too late for the too soon for the revolu­
greet war, tion," Two of these eras of us have lived in.
many In the third we are now What these
groping. pictures few words evoke I 
He summons the dismay of the intellectual world in the person of Squier and behind this defeated figure 
we see panoramas of frantic material development, mills, steamships, railroads, skyscrapers, subways, washing machines, refrigerators, telephones, airplanes, bomb­ing planes, poison carriers, politicians, Mickey Mouse, purgative crooners, bread lines, strikes, riots, new deals, communism, fascism, Around the intellectual 
whirls this chaos as he walks into the sunset toward 
the Petrified Forest. 
Behind Mr. Chisholm 
there is a parade of puzzled and weary bankers, pillars that have shaken loose. Be­hind his wife a line of bitter-faced 
women 
staring 
through limousine windows. 
Behind Jason Maple are seen all the futile men who 
with uniforms and affiliations 
and platitudes seek as-of their own
surance significance. 
Beyond Gabby the future, which summons different to
pictures all of us; to some dark, to others bright 
and full of promise. 
the outmoded on his
And Duke, tragic, bandit, way to the Petrified Forest, soon to be followed, perhaps, by his legalized brethren. May they all have "an hon­"lB
orable funeral. 
Here again we have seen evidence to establish the conviction that 
Sherwood’s people in The Petrified Forest are symbols, Hopkins’ 
appreciation for Sherwood’s choice of words is a new one and, we 
think, a just one. It is to become more and more apparent; this 
ability to choose the right word is not new, but one that is truly 
more manifest in The Petrified Forest than in any of the preceding 
plays. In the closer scrutiny of the play that is to follow we must 
remember this point and offer instances for its proof. But of all 
the points made by Arthur Hopkins, the most interesting, perhaps, is 
his statement that Sherwood founded his play on a fundamental truth 
affectionately. Brooks Atkinson was the first to sense in Sherwood’s 
writing this gently simple quality when he mentioned the good humor 
in the writing of Reunion in Vienna. And of The Petrified Forest 
Atkinson has even more to of this "affectionate"
say quality. 
Being pretty much in love with America, Mr. Sherwood 
has spun an exuberant tale of poetic vagabonds and machine-gun desperadoes; and Arthur Hopkins has drawn the tang of the open spaces into the direction. For literate melodrama, written by a man who is mentally restless in a changing world, "The Petrified Forest" 
is good, gusty excitement. 
If it differs somewhat from conventional 
shooting shows, it is because Mr. Sherwood has taken an interest 
18 
Arthur Hopkins, ’’Gorki and Berger and Robert 

E, Sherwood,” New York Times. January 20, 1935, sect, X, p, 1, col. 3, 
in his characters.... But Mr. Sherwood has a little 
wistful heroism for his concluding scene and a few drops of sentiment that will do no theatregoer any 
harm. 
As a matter of fact, Mr. Sherwood takes enormous pleasure in the company he is keeping,l9 
Although Robert Sherwood has been writing popular 
comedies for seven years he has never, I think, found 
such a congenial environment for his humors as in "The 
Petrified Forest." Nor, in spite of the wit and horse­
play of "Reunion in Vienna," has he ever written such a downright enjoyable play.... Fundamentally, it is Western melodrama, shot through with ideas as well as he
gun-fire, and free of sophistication. Although shares the general misgivings about the present and future of manifest destiny, America suits him. His relish of buccaneering excitement, his love of vivid 
character, his salty humor, his sense of romance and his earnest idealism exhale the indigenous American spirit. Underlying the humors and sentiments of his other plays there has always been a determination to think and act in terms of homely common sense. But 
it seems to me that he has never before chosen char­acters and dramatic material that are so becoming to his lanky turn of mind..,. 
Mr. Sherwood has written it in the robustious 
argot of tough plays, enjoying also the nervous tension of the scene. Having a sense of humor, he knows how comic serious thinking can sound in that febrile environment. 
As the background for a play that is soberly intended 
Duke Mantes 1 s fortified lunch hour is 
inspired showman­ship. 
For at heart Mr. Sherwood is serious, and he is tell­ing a story that is darkened with shadows of these times. 
Although Mr. Sherwood never climbs into the 
... 
pulpit, he contrives, very skillfully, very persuasively, to strike a few general echoes off these central charac­and to
ters, make, in passing, several pungent comments about the avarice of old age and the bumptiousness of the American Legion. He argues an idealistic faith in most
the future which theatregoers would not listen to 
if the background of the play were grandiose or solemn. 
19 Brooks Atkinson, "The Play," New York Times. January 9, 1935, 
p. 22, col. 1. 
As it is, Gabby and Alan talk about life and beauty 
with a fervor that often makes theatregoers uncomfort-But the of "The Petrified Forest”
able,.,. philosophy 
sounds as wholesome as the melodrama, for it is fired 
with the earnestness of Mr. Sherwood’s 
convictions, and Arthur Hopkins has staged it. Of all the directors in the New York theatre Mr, Hopkins is the one who can put the solid foundation of truth beneath a decent senti­ment.... 
As a man of the theatre with a number of thoughts in his head Mr. Sherwood has found a background as robust as his sense of humor.^o 
To say, "Yes, you’re right, Mr. Atkinson," could he presumptions, 
but risk
we must it. Brooks Atkinson is right. If nothing else, he, 
of all the reviewers, is the one who has caught the spirit of Sher­
wood’s writing and appreciates it as such. He did not like Sherwood’s 
Sherwood But
plays when was trying his "playwriting legs." now that 
come he
he feels that the playwright has into his o?m, is sympathetic 
and lyric in his comments. Our point has been and will be to 
prove 
that Robert Sherwood is a playwright of consequence and worth because 
he is a man of good sense and good humor and a playwright who is able 
to use that sense and humor in the writing of plays that tell on the 
does Sherwood is
stage. Sherwood not pretend. not self-conscious. 
Sherwood is what he is, and tries to be no more. Brooks Atkinson ap­
thisina we
preciates playwright; concur. 
If we are to believe S, N. Behrman, and there is reason why
no 
we should not, Robert Sherwood wrote The Petrified Forest in four 
weeks while he was in Reno awaiting a divorce. He got the idea for 
20 Brooks Atkinson, "Pistols, Bullets and Ideas," New York Times. sect.
January 13, 1935, IX, p* 1, col, 1. 
a one as he took a drive with his lawyer. The idea, it
play day 
seemed, was "the paradox of the perpetual sluicing through this 
primeval Nevada valley of the thick, sedimentary stream of decayed 
urban society,” The title of the play and the hero’s destination 
were found when Sherwood got a road map from a filling station and 
traced with his finger ”a line on the map from Reno to Truckee, Cal­
ifornia, At Truckee, on the map, beside a little arrow he saw a 
’This is the way to the Petrified Forest, It was
notation, 
probably as simple as that. 
By now it is apparent that much of Robert Sherwood’s writing 
is instinctive. He writes fast and finds no need for a great amount 
of rewriting. In a hypothetical reconstruction of the writing of 
The Petrified Forest we that Robert Sherwood sat down to
suggest 
write his play with a general outline of Alan Squier in mind and the 
of in the lunchroom of the
pleasurable contemplation setting his play 
Black Mesa Filling Station and Bar-B-Q, on the desert in Eastern Ari­
zona, From here the play took shape rapidly. From Reunion in Vi­
enna Robert Sherwood borrowed the character of Old Krug and redressed 
The character
him as Gramp Maple, of the Legionnaire might well have 
preceded the full picture of his daughter, Gabby Maple, Duke Mantee 
was very likely the most difficult character to conceive because with 
him came Sherwood’s effort at creating symbols out of his characters 
and the actual work of formulating his thesis into a succinct and 
well-made statement. 
21 
S. N. Behrman, "Profiles, Old Monotonous, I," p. 35, 
The opening scene of the play is adequate and shows Sherwood’s 
growing facility in the use of pungent dialogue to give his play the 
momentum it needs. Nothing can be said of the first moments in The 
Petrified Forest are or bril­
except that they not dull, profound, 
liant. They reveal clever use of devices, but no writing to dis­
tinguish them from thousands of similar moments. The introduction 
of Alan Squier is well devised. Sherwood’s stage directions for his 
entrance again offer an interesting illustration of his familiarity 
with the needs of theatrical presentation and now is as good a time 
as any to recognize this element in the writing of The Petrified For­
est. For the Sherwood
actor playing Alan Squier, provided his usual 
aid; 
He  is  a  thin,  wan,  vague  man  of about  thirty-five.  He  
wears  a  brown  felt hat,  brown  tweed  coat  end  gray  flan­ 
nel  trousers  which  came  originally but much  too  long  

ago from the best Savile How tailors. He is shabby and dusty but there is about him a sort of afterglow of ele­gance. There is something about him and it is impos­sible in a stage direction to say just what it is that brings to mind the ugly word "condemned.” He car­ries a heavy walking stick and a ruck-sack is slung over his shoulders. He is diffident in 
manner, ultra-polite and soft accent is that of an Anglicized
gpoken; his 
2 
American. 
With the straightforwardness that, as Brooks Atkinson points out, 
gives to Robert Sherwood’s writing the wholesomeness and honesty that 
maudlin and
prevent it from becoming uncomfortable, Sherwood launches 
immediately his most ticklish scenes and is successful. Gabby is no 
pastel characterization. Under other treatment Squier could easily 
22 Sherwood, The Petrified Forest. New York, 1954, Act I, p. 
50. 
be. But it is the sturdiness in the writing and the point of view 
be
behind the writing that permit such scene as the following to
a 
successful in a modern 
stage play: 
SQJJIER I don’t know anything. You see the trouble with me is, I belong to a vanishing race. I’m one of the 
intellectuals. 
GABBY That means you’ve got brains. I can see you have. 
SQJJIER purpose.
Yes brains without Noise without sound. Shape without substance. Have you ever read The Hollow Men? 
(She shakes her head.) Don’t. It’s discouraging, because it’s true. It refers to the intellectuals, who thought they’d con­quered Nature. They dammed it up, and used its wa­ters to irrigate the wastelands. They built stream­lined monstrosities to penetrate its resistance. They and
wrapped it up in cellophane sold it in drugstores. They were so certain they had it subdued. And now do you realize what it is that is causing world chaos? 
GABBY 
No. 
SQJJIER the
Well, I’m probably only living person who can tell It’s Nature hitting back. Not with
you the old weapons floods, plagues, holocausts. We can fighting back strange
neutralize them. She’s with instruments called neuroses. She’s deliberately af­flicting mankind with the jitters. Nature is proving that she can’t be beaten not by the likes of us. She’s taking the world away from the intellectuals and giving it back to the apes.,.^' 
pi 
Within this dialogue, Sherwood declares, is the essence of the play,*"** 
23 
The Petrified Forest. Act I, p. 62.

Sherwood, 
~~ 
24 
See Sherwood, "Preface/* There Shall Be No Night, p. xx. 
Here is the play’s preface. 
On this scene Sherwood embroiders, A few isolated speeches 
throughout the play stand out as further elaboration. In the sec­
ond act Squier says to the Duke: 
You'd better come with me, Duke. I'm planning to be buried in the Petrified Forest, I've been evolv­ing a theory about that that would interest you. It's 
the graveyard of the civilization that's been shot from under us. It's the world of outmoded ideas. Pla­tonism patriotism Christianity Romance the economics of Adam Smith they're all so many dead stumps in the desert. That's where I belong and 
do
so you, Duke, For you're the last great apostle 
of rugged individualism. Aren't you?*^ 
A characteristic Sherwood device the use of a comic incon­
gruity at the end of a serious speech that was seen in Reunion in 
Vienna at the end of one of Old Krug’s more serious is 
used time and time again in The Petrified Forest, but is best illus­
trated in the way Sherwood dismisses his big scene in which he states, 
as he says, the essence of his play, Squier has talked long and se-
At the end of the he finishes his of beer and
riously. speech glass 
says, "That beer is excellent," And Gabby replies, "It’s made in 
?7 Phoenix. You know talk like a Goddamn fool," In Reunion
you 
in Vienna the device was explained as Sherwood’s apology for the 
speech that preceded it. In The Petrified Forest it is used not as 
In Sherwood’s
an apology, but as a highlight. hands it is, in most 
25 
The Petrified Forest. Act 113.

Sherwood, 11, p. 
26 

See p, 68, supra. 
27 

Sherwood, The Petrified Forest. Act I, p. 63, 
sound and perhaps more than other one trick 
cases, theatrics, any 
gives his writing that quality of good humor and reality that re­
lieves the audience of embarrassment. Sherwood is not willing
any 
to take himself too 
seriously. 
But he comes very near at times in this play to committing the 
very error he consciously tries to avoid. Granted that his play is 
moving well and that he has given Squier alcohol and excitement to 
excuse such talk, the following speeches nevertheless stand out in 
the reading and of the scene as a bit too thick and slightly
playing 
out of character: 
SQUIER And let me tell you one thing you’re a forget­ful old fool. Any woman is worth everything that 
any man has to give anguish, ecstasy, faith, jeal­ousy, love, hatred, life or death. Don’t you see 
that’s the excuse for our existence? It’s what makes 
the whole thing possible, and tolerable. When you’ve reached learn better sense.
my age, you'll 
SQUIER (to GRAKP) That lovely girl that granddaughter of yours 
do know what she is? No don’t. You haven’t
you you 
the remotest idea. 
GRAMP 
What is she? 
SQUIER She’s the future. She’s the renewal of vitality and and aspiration all the strength that
courage has out Hell I can’t what she is
gone of you. say hut she’s essential and the whole damned
to me, country, and the whole miserable world. And please, Mrs. Chis­holm please don’t look at me quizzically, I know 
how I sound, 
28 
Sherwood, The Petrified Forest. Act 11, p. 136. 
And to Mrs. Chisholm does not the trick
Squier’s apology quite do 
of relieving such talk. Here the device does not come off, but 
again we see evidence of Sherwood’s use of it. 
Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm stand as of what
interesting examples 
Sherwood can do with auxiliary characters. Perhaps it is fanciful 
to consider such an idea; but nevertheless it seems logical to sug­
gest that if Mr, and Mrs. Chisholm were in the original plan the 
characters they turn out to be in the final draft, then Sherwood 
is not the kind of writer we think he is. The Chisholms in the 
hands of some playwrights would have remained stock characters, 
useful to the action of the play. But Robert Sherwood turns Mrs, 
Chisholm into a surprise character and uses her to extraordinary 
advantage. Her long speech is in itself inexcusable, but Sherwood 
does not allow it to drag down his action or interest and it is 
Without the
eminently readable. saving grace of its readability, 
this speech would be an atrocity: 
You haven 1t the remotest conception of what’s in­side me, and never have had and never will have
you as long as you live out your stuffy, astigmatic life. (She turns to GABBY.) I don’t know about 
you, my 
dear. But I know what it 
means to repress yourself 
and  starve  yourself through what  you  conceive  to be  
your  duty  to  others.  I’ve  been  through that.  When  
I was  just about  your  age,  I went  to  Salzburg  be­ 

cause I’d had a nervous breakdown after I came out and I went to a psychoanalyst there and he told me I had every right to be a great actress. He gave me a letter to Max Reinhardt, and I might have played 
the Nun in ’’The Miracle,” But of
my family course started yapping about my obligations to them who had me
given everything, including life. At least, they called it ’’life,” They whisked me back 
to Day­ton, to take my place in the and the
Junior League, Country Club, and the D. A. R. and 
everything else 
that’s foul and obscene. And before I knew it, I was married to this pillar of the mortgage, loan and trust. And what did he_ do? He took soul and had it sten­
my cilled on a card, and filed. And where have I been ever since? In an art metal cabinet. That’s why I 
2 *'
think I have a little right to advise you, 
Two pages later the Duke "I’ve most of my time since I
says, spent 
grew up in jail, and it looks like I’ll spend the rest of my life 
dead. So what good does it do me to be a real man when you don’t 
get much chance to be crawling into the hay with some dame?" And 
Mrs. after a and thoughtful pause, "I wonder
Chisholm, slight says, 
if we could find any hay around The question arises as to 
whether or not this "gag" is legitimate playwriting. It is doubtful 
that it got by without a laugh, a big laugh; and Sherwood does not 
construct the scene of which it is a part so as to suggest that he 
wants a laugh here, Mr. Sherwood’s inclination for comedy misleads 
him. If the long speech was written as a springboard for this "gag," 
it is a serious breach in dramatic good taste. But we prefer to be­
lieve that Mrs, Chisholm’s line about the hay was a spontaneous ex­
cursion of the moment and not a premeditated one. 
Of the construction of The Petrified Forest into two acts lit­
tle need be said other than the recognition of the variation from the 
conventional three-act form and the fact that it is the first time 
that Sherwood has felt the need for a variation. Perhaps a point 
could be made of this initial excursion from the conventional; but 
143*
Sherwood, The Petrified Forest, Act 11, p. 
30 
Act
Ibid., 11, p. 146, 
105 
we feel rather sure that if Sherwood had wanted hut two acts in his 
first play, he would have used them. The critic for the Saturday 
Review of Literature modifies his favorable review of the show by 
the statement that wthe showman gets with the witty satirist
away 
before he finishes and that which starts as a sort of study of a 
bewildered generation ends in frank melodrama.No other crit­
icism states so definitely the opinion that the construction of the 
play is inconsistent. And this is what this reviewer is trying to 
If it is, we do not for we believe firmly that for the
say. agree, 
first time in Sherwood’s career he has written a play that is, on 
the He started out with the inten­
whole, structurally consistent. 
tion of writing philosophical melodrama, and he wrote it without 
course.
veering from his 
Critics have been sufficiently distinct in their statement of 
the more philosophical points of interest within The Petrified For­
est. There is little left to be said concerning Sherwood’s success 
in the presentation of his thesis and the mastery of his use of his 
characters to gain his proclaimed end. Whet is left unnoticed 
without sufficient notice is Sherwood’s peculiar use
or rather, 
of the melodramatic elements of his play and the especial merit in 
this use. Already in the study of Robert Sherwood’s writing we have 
observed his fluency and his leaning toward the romantic. We have 
noted his inclination for solid gusty humor. We have seen that Sher­
wood seldom in his use of the theatrical devices at his command.
errs 
31 
Saturday Review of Literature, XI, March 23, 1935, p. 572. 
for
of
He is, we have concluded, a playwright particular talent 
the theatrical. And now we must observe closely these factors in 
the writing of The Petrified Forest because in the further study 
of Robert Sherwood and his development newer and more important 
interests will attract our attention. It is then because we 
intend, 
for the time being, to conclude our consideration of this point that 
we dwell on it at such length at this time. 
In the scene in which Boze tries to gain possession of the ma­
chine gun and is thwarted by the alert bandits, Sherwood includes 
the following direction: 
PYLES has followed JACKIE out of the kitchen, his 32 
machine-gun at the alert, his mouth full.
Small as it is, such a detail as this is representative of the kind 
of right moments with which Sherwood fills his plays. 
When Squier asks Gabby if her paintings are good, she replies, 
I"33 What a cue this is for the actress
"Hell, no playing Gabbyl 
Here Sherwood hits the character accurately and with such a deft 
stroke that it goes completely unnoticed but lends to the whole 
scene the feeling of rightness that obscures whatever else might 
be there to detract from it. It is such a sense of dialogue that 
makes for successful playwriting. Profanity, as such, is often a 
device to shock an audience
cheap into listening; but when it springs 
out of a masterly feeling for characterization such as it is
this, 
32 
The Petrified Forest.
Sherwood, Act 11, p, 122. 
33 
Act I, p.

Ibid., 53. 
107 
right. 
Still another example of the same sort of sure grasp on the 
dialogue he is writing, yet a variation, is found in the final end 
big scene of the play. The blustery, frightened legionnaires have 
entered and are confronted by the bandits. The Duke says: 
Sit down, boys. 
ANOTHER LEGIONNAIRE (very basso) Where? 
JACKIE 34
On your can, Legion. 
Incidentally, yet so powerfully, Sherwood here makes his comment on 
the Legion. It is such a comment that rings sound, such a comment 
that an audience gets without knowing it. Such playwriting is right. 
Stark Young characteristically is the only reviewer to make a 
specific comment on the point in question. He says: 
The end of "The Petrified Forest" wobbles a bit, for the last two minutes, as if seeking a way to bring the curtain down. But in the main the play 
fantastic and atmos­
is engaging, vibrant, slightly 
It has

pherically and humanly poetic. many full, revealing speeches. One of these comes where the hero, after the killer has kept his promise and shot 
him, says to the girl that it does not hurt, at least 
it does not seem to. Granted the dramatic 
moment, almost the whole character is in that speech. It would make a fine curtain. 35 
We feel that Stark Young 1 s suggestion is a good one. The end of the 
34 Sherwood, The Petrified Forest. Act 11, p. 153. 35 Stark Young, "Particular and General," New Republic. 
LXXXII, 
February 13, 1935, p, 21. 
created the
play does wobble. Having moment, filling it with such 
he talks on. His final stroke is diffused.
a stringent potency, 
But Sherwood learns quickly from his own mistakes. 
CHAPTER V 
Idiot's Delight was the Pulitzer Prize play of 1936. Its suc­
cess warranted a two-season run on Broadway, a successful cross-
country tour, and an enormous sum for the movie rights. It estab­
lished Robert Sherwood as one of the leading American playwrights 
and proved to him end the public that he was a playwright to be lis­
tened to. 
In a hotel on a mountain peak just inside the Ital­ian border, an international collection of travelers 
are interned until Rome has time to see who is going 
to fight whom in an impending war. There are a pair a German a French
of honeymooning Britons, scientist, Communist, all of whom give every evidence of being 
men of good will. There are also a French armament maker, his Russian mistress Irene (Lynn Fontanne), a 
troupe of U. S. showgirls whom she calls "obvious lit­tle harlots,” and their blatant but philosophical mas­ter of ceremonies, Harry Van (Alfred Lunt), When a the
nearby Italian airport provides required military 
"incident” by sending planes off to destroy Paris, 
when England squares off against Germany, France against 
Italy, Russia against Japan, one by one the 
interned 
travelers break out their national colors. For some 
unindicated the hoofer and Russian
reason, the girl remain critically aloof from the passions of nation­alism, However, in an emotional outburst which turns 
her protector toward more sympathetic arms, Irene looks Heavenward, declares: dear God I
"Poor, Play­ing Idiot’s Delight. The game that means anything and never ends.” 
Shortly thereafter Harry Van recalls that he and 
Irene once spent a night together in the Governor 
Neb.
Bryan Hotel in Omaha, This union, plus some re­
markable pyrotechnics indicating a bombing raid, ends the piece. 
isn't it?cries
"It’s positively Wagnerian, n Irene, as the whole world starts toward annihilation. 
"It looks to me like
exactly ’Hell’s Angels,’" says 
Harry.l 
And thus Time. with its characteristic vividness, tells the story 
of the pley that was so honored by the Pulitzer Prize Committee, 
The more curious might well ask why a play of this sort should me­
rit a piece on the supposedly venerable rostrum of Pulitzer prize 
winnters. The answer is simple. Idiot’s Delight was the most ex­
citing theater, the most important com lent seen on Broadway that 
season by the supposedly venerable committee. The play was more 
then it appeared to be. 
Por ten years Robert Sherwood had written plays that were more 
than they appeared to be or rather, Robert Sherwood had thought 
were. The Petrified Forest had been successful
they in its presenta­
tion of a message by means of exciting melodrama. And Idiot’s De-
two The in Idiot ’s
light is its parallel with exceptions. message 
Delight is more exciting because it is more concrete, less philo­
sophic; and its vehicle for expression is similarly more exciting, 
more vivid. The Petrified Forest was set in the somber colors of a 
desert filling station, and its chief protagonist was a dusty world-
wearied philosopher. Idiot *s Delight is set in the Italian Alps on 
the eve of the next World War, and its protagonists are a pseudo-
Russian harlot with a blond wig and a brassy American hoofer with a 
straw hat. The differences in these two plays, then, are a differ­
ence in color and a difference in the quantity and potency of excite­
ment. But the
fundamentally, from the point of view of playwright’s 
1 
"New Plays 
in Manhattan,” Time. XXYII, April 6, 1936, p. 28. 
111 
and Idiot’s Delight and The Petrified Forest
craftsmanship style, 
in our of Robert 
occupy a single place hierarchy of the stages 
Sherwood’s dramatic development. 
Joseph Wood Krutch compares the plays thus: 
Lest year Robert E. Sherwood’s **The Petrified For­
est** to
was a delight to its audiences, a god-send its actors, a gilt-edged investment for its produc­ers, and an embarrassment to no one except those of 
us whose business it is to break butterflies on wheels. 
Our problem was the problem of deciding whether or 
not it really was merely one of the lepidoptera safely to be treated as such, and to this day I am not quite 
sure just how seriously I ought to have taken the 
gaudy creature which flitted gaily about while osten­
sibly discoursing upon one of the grimmest of topics the and
namely, social spiritual bankruptcy of modem life. One expects that a man who goes about crying **Woe to Israel** shall behave 
with something of the prophet’s uncouthness, end it is more than little
a 
disconcerting to find him delivering his message with all the disarming facility of the parlor entertainer. Mr. Sherwood was not merely skilful. He was positively 
slick. And yet what he had to say still seems to me 
to have been both interesting and sound. 
His latest play, ’’ldiot’s Delight, ** acted by the 
Lunts and presented by the Guild at the Shubert The­
ater, is the same, only more so. The audiences find 
even greater entertainment, the actors are even more perfectly suited, and the producers will be even more 
substantially enriched. At the same time the theme 
war is, if anything, even more grim, while the man­ner and methods are even more conspicuously those of 
the slickest contemporary stagecraft. Whatever else 
’’ldiot’s Delight” may or may not be, it is the result 
of the most accomplished showmanship exhibited in New 
York since ”Broadway” set a new fashion, and, indeed, there is much in both the pace and the methods by Which 
the pace is maintained to suggest those of that phe­nomenal melodrama,^ 
While Richard Lockridge 
says, 
2 
Joseph Wood 
Krutch, "Idiot’s Delight," Nation, CXLII April 15 
1936, p. 490. 
It is a play of flashing moods, racing and shining 
like quicksilver from comedy to stinging protest; it is at once brilliant entertainment and bitter 
ques­tioning of the idiot stupidity which lets war happen. It is, beyond any possible doubt, best
Mr. Sherwood’s 
play. 3 
Brooks Atkinson decides that "Mr. Sherwood’s new play is a robust 
theatre not so heroic and ebullient as ’The Petrified
charade, quite 
Forest,’ but well inside the same And the Catholic 
World agrees: 
It is the same effective structure that Mr. Robert 
Sherwood used in his Petrified Forest as a background 
for his satire on the mechanistic in America. Now
age against the immobility of the snow mountains instead 
of the desert, he gathers together another collection 
of incongruous types, but this time they are interna­tionally selected... 
As a play, Idiot’s Delight suffers by contrast to The Petrified Forest, in line, characterization and s
story.
With its place identified, Idiot’s Delight provokes next an ob­
servation of its message. Because this study is concerning itself 
of Robert it is
with the dramatic development Sherwood, imperative 
of Rob-
that we not be misled by the equally interesting development 
ert Sherwood’s point of view. And so again, it is pointed out that 
the discussion of what we please to call ’’the message’1 in the play 
3 Richard "'ldiot’s Delight/ With the hunts,
Lockridge, Opens at the Shuhert Theatre/’ New York Sun (Quoted in Theatre Arts Monthly. 466.)
XX, June, 1936, p. 4 Brooks Atkinson, "Alfred hunt and Lynn Fontanne Appearing in Kerch
Sherwood’s ’ldiot’s Delight,’" New York Times. 26, 1936, p. 26, col. 5. 5 
Catholic World. CXLIII, May, 1936, p. 212, 
113 
is justified because, to a degree, the author*s message and his 
presentation of it are fundamental indications of his 
development 
as a playwright. But in no instance must we concern ourselves pri­
marily with what Robert Sherwood thinks or feels on a 
given subject. 
Our problem will remain the investigation of his statement of what 
he thinks. Because Idiot’s Delight dealt with so timely a subject 
as it excited much critical discussion. Indeed the critics
war, 

so concerned themselves with agreeing or disagreeing with Robert 
Sherwood’s point that it has been difficult to find succinct state­
ments on the more important subject of how he made that point. But 
sooner or later most critics voice such an opinion. 
Brooks Atkinson states what is the consensus of the critics: 
that Robert Sherwood’s argument is inconclusive; 
If this column observes that the discussion of war 
is inconclusive and that the mood of is some-
the play what too trivial for such a macabre subject, it is 
too
probably taking "Idiot’s Delight" much seriously. 
Mr. Sherwood’s talk is not conclusive, but it is in-
In the course does
teresting, of the play he manage 
to show that all but one of his characters are helpless 
victims of internationalism, drawn unwillingly into con­tests between fear and inferiority, jungoism and bra­vado. "Idiot’s Delight" draws that grotesque distinction between the personal, casual lives people want to live 
thunder that crack-brained
and the roar and governments foment. As the hoofer says, the people are all right 
as individuals. They are bowled down by a headlong, force that is generated apart from themselves.
angry 
Sherwood’s not
All this Mr. play suggests, though he for the
so forcefully as perhaps intends, rag, tag and bobtail mood is misleading. What you will probably 
enjoy more than his argument is the genial humor of his dialogue, his romantic flair for character and his 
relish of the incongrous end the ridiculous. 6 
It is too platonic. Mr. Sherwood’s sentiments'are on the right side. He also makes several shrewd comments. Every one will agree with his main thesis that the world 
who not
is populated chiefly by decent people do make war nor want it. As the hoofer remarks about his ex-with human nature: "It has made me sure that
perience no matter how much the meek may be bulldozed or gypped, 7
inherit the
they will eventually earth,"
Stark Young speaks thus: 
Mr, Sherwood’s play, as performed by the Lunts, sup­plies a point in esthetic principle. The reason for its not being a significant play is easy to It
state. exhibits ideas on themes of the individual’s
many war, worth and the overwhelming public thing destroying him, and it has brilliance in statement now and then. But the measure of it lies in its tone as a whole. The 
tone does not convey, or create, anything very signif­
icant on a large theme. But it is a delightful play, 8
witty, inventive, full of theatre.
Charles Morgan, after the London production, wrote a lengthy essay 
on the problem Robert Sherwood approaches in his play. He alone, 
what Sherwood
of the reviewers, suggests might have done. Although 
Morgan might be accused of taking the play too seriously, his reac­
tions are significant and were no doubt read with interest by Robert 
Sherwood. 
own admiration for it as a piece for the theatre and
My 
6 Atkinson, "Alfred Limt and Lynn Fontanne Appearing in Sherwood’s ’ldiot’s Delight,’” p. 26, 
col. 5. 7 Brooks the Cannon," New York Times.
Atkinson, "Dancing before April 12, 1926, sect. IX, p, 1, col. 1. 8 Stark Young, "Idiot’s Delight," New Rer;ublic. LXXXYI, 24,
March 
1926, p. 252. 
115 
for its evident sincerity is qualified by dissatisfac­
tion in it as an intellectual contribution to the sub­
ject# 
•.. 
Mr. Sherwood’s characters offer several tentative replies. Quillery lays the blame on capitalism, 
Achille Weber accepts the blame for the heavy indus­
tries. Dr. Waldersee’s abandonment of scientific de­tachment and his return to Germany in her hour of need implicitly sets up nationalism as the key of the problem, Harry Van ’’Why? Why?” in agonized fury,
asks 
and, finding no answer, spends himself in generalized moral indignation. No one and this is the play’s defect pauses to analyze the problem itself or to 
ask whether the seeming paradox may not be based upon 
false assumptions.,.. 
If Mr. Sherwood had asked; ’’Are the ideas for which men will die worth defending?” he would have gone to the root of his own problem. If he had asked; ”Is the idea of non-resistance greater than all the ideas, 
resistance
even that of freedom, by which warlike is 
inspired?” he would have come near to solving the prob­
lem as mankind may one day solve it. As it is, his 
play, in the last analysis, though skillful in treat­ment and powerfully effective in the theatre, may al­most be summed up in the phrases: ”War is dreadful. No one gains anything by it. Why do men take part in 
it? Why don’t they refuse to fight?” 
*** 
The answer is that men will always fight a defen­sive war as long as there is something they value more than their property or their skins, and other men, pro­ceeding from a determination to impose their faith, their Weltanschauung, upon others, will always fight an aggressive war until they reach that degree of civ­
ilization in which it becomes apparent that the impo­
sition of their ideas others is not to
upon necessary the validity or the enjoyment of those ideas. Because it fails to recognize this, Mr. Sherwood’s piece, though 
a  splendid piece  of rhetoric,  remains  unsatisfying be­ 
cause  it seems  to  have  missed  its aim  as  a  criticism  
of contemporary  life.s  

of 
a more
Richard Lockridge, being peaceful turn of mind, seems not 
to be angry or even very much annoyed with Sherwood’s lack 
of conclu­
9 
"London
Charles on
Morgan, f ldiot*s Delight,’" New York 
Times. 
p. 2, col, 1.
April 10, 1938, 
sion. His comment that the play is little more than a fine evening 
in the theater is particularly interesting because it reveals a 
critic who is still a audience.
good 
But Mr. for all his is
Sherwood, expert showmanship, really time making his protest good asking
this and his questions in a voice which is not muffled although it pierces through comedy, ’Why?* says his wandering 
carnival man, when the bombers fly. ’What I want to know is, why? 1 
it is even naive. But it has not been asked better on the stage and it is evidently one of those naive ques­tions which bear since it has never 
It is not a new question, of course. Perhaps 
infinite repeating, 
yet been answered. 

Mr, Sherwood doesn’t answer in so I
it, any case, suppose that, except for a fine evening in the theatre, 10 
we are left much where we were. 
And finally we quote John Meson Brown; 
Whether one grasps the full meaning of all of Mr, Sherwood’s symbols or not, or feels he has not said all that might have been said on the subject of war and the hysteria which causes peacetime internation­alists to revert overnight to the blindest prejudices of nationalism. Idiot’s Delight can be counted upon 
to an often
provide amusing, stimulating, evening.ll 
And here is the answer. Idiot’s Delight does not propose a solution, 
does not suggest an answer. Robert .Sherwood is yet to produce a 
play with a great world-shaking argument. Carefully and consist­
ently, though, he is moving toward the writing of such a play. Within 
10 
’’’ldiot’s With

Lockridge, Delight/ the hunts, Opens at the Shubert Theatre,” p. 466. 11 John Hason Brown, "Idiot’s Delight,” Two on the Aisle. New 
York, 1958, p. 167. 
117 
this play he asks why, and has the good sense to realize that he 
does not know the answer. His good sense also persuades him to 
state 
that question in such a way that people will enjoy listening. 
His passion and sincere concern for the state of world affairs do 
not obscure the use of his medium, and at the risk of being accused 
of inconclusiveness he proceeds to write a play dealing with a 
con­
temporary momentous problem in the best way he is able. There are 
high, grand moments in Idiot’s Delight, but there is no moment that 
is pompous or self-consciously profound. The author of Idiot’s De­
light cannot be accused of doing a half-hearted piece of writing. 
He has written honestly, saying no more than he feels himself ca­
pable of saying. 
Whatever be said of the of
may incompleteness the philosophy 
within Idiot *s Delight it cannot be denied that Robert Sherwood 
. 
chose for himself an extremely difficult technical he
problem when 
wrote such a play on such a theme, John Mason Brown recognized the 
Idiot’s Delight, and discussed it more
feat of writing within clearly, 
than other critic.
perhaps, any 
In Idiot’s Delight. Mr. Sherwood shows that, solemn as his major theme may be, he cannot resist laughing when the world’s funeral is interrupted by the gay tinkling of a musical chair. The background of this 
latest of his entertaining allegories is the grim out­
break of the next and
European war; time, any day now; the special observation turret from which he surveys it is hotel in the Italian Alps near the Swiss and
a 
Austrian frontiers. 
His foreground includes a group of stranded trav­for the most are more
elers who, part, typical as spokesmen for their respective nations than are the high-hatted representatives who assemble in Geneva. 
Enlivening this foreground is an American song-and-dance men with the six scantily dressed in his
maidens
who, is ready to oblige his fellow tourists with the
troupe, liveliest enticements of a third-rate floor show. Span-the middle distance which this
ning separates gaudy carnival from the black behind at-
apocalypse it, and tempting to fuse the two of them into an integrated whole, is the diverting story of the past knowledge the American hoofer thinks he has had of a 
mysterious Russian lady who has also signed the hotel register. 
It is out of these sharply diverse materials Mr. 
Sherwood has built one of the most haphazard but en­
grossing of his dramatic pictures. That he has taken on a job which would have challenged the best efforts of Snug, the joiner, goes without saying. If an art­ist had attempted to create unity of mood in a single canvas by placing the gay details of one of Reginald Marsh’s impressions of a burlesque show before a back­ground by G-oya depicting the horrors of war, he could 
not have set himself a more difficult problem. That Mr. Sherwood manages to do as well as he does (which is very well indeed) in getting an arduous task done is the re­
sult of his ability 	to mix aphrodisiac with allegory, 
flesh with spirit, sunshine with 	comedy with
sermons, 
tragedy, and good showmanship with interesting think­ing. 

Idiot’s Delight may not rank among the best-carpen­
tered of his plays. In his building of it you may 
find he has not entirely boarded the long hall which 
connects his ballroom with his library, his bar with 
his chapel. Yet regardless of what structural defects 
find in his 	of the
the blueprint boys may building, or mild fogs which some of the weathermen may claim sur-
Sherwood is a dramatist who can
round 
his edifice, Mr, be counted upon to be an accomplished and generous host. He knows how to make his paying guests feel at home and 
to give them a good 	time. He is a stimulating talker at a conversation from
who is accomplished preventing becoming too solemn by enlivening it with a timely jest. His heart may be heavy but his tongue continues to be 
glib.l2 
The Commonweal argues somewhat differently, but makes the same point 
12 
Brown, Two on the Aisle, p. 166. 
"Idiot’s Delight" is not all of one piece. It is per-It is
haps even too shrewdly made for popular appeal. in its entirety neither comedy, melodrama, musical com­edy nor propaganda play. It is by turns all these, with the result that who it finds to
everyone sees something his liking. From a box-office standpoint this is all to the good, for Mr. Sherwood shows himself a master in all 
these branches-of the dramatic art; yet there are those who would have wished he had stuck a little closer to artistic unity. But even his
granted this weakness, 
sense 
of character, his mastery of pungent dialog, his imagination, and the passion of his hatred for war and all its works, makes "Idiot’s Delight" a worthy recipi­ent 
of the prize, 
Mrs, Edith J. R. Isaacs characteristically says very little, but a few 
of her words add a quality of feminine reasoning to this composite pic­
ture of the critical opinion: 
Robert Sherwood’s 
drama, Idiot’s Delight, with which Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne have come back 
to New York, although it is as close to the news as anyone could wish who clamors for contemporary comment in its most direct 
form, makes the news come all the way out to the theatre 
before the playwright swings into action with it. And even then leaving the facts of imminent war and its causes all their essential and degrading truth Mr. 
Sherwood picks and chooses among them, taking only what a playwright needs for the strict uses of his theatrical his drama’s his characters*
situation, action, motivation, in conflict. Over and around these facts he
singly and builds his play and, because he is an artist and has done his work well, he gives back to his audience, through his actors, pleasure of fine performance
the abundant theatre (which they paid box-office), plus the
is what for at the full shock of the news ’seen through a temperament*,l4 
Joseph Wood Krutch continues the discussion; 
Despite all the gags Mr, Sherwood to
manages frequently 
13 "The Pulitzer Prize Play," Commonweal. XXIV, May 22, 1936, p. 104. 14 Edith J. R. Isaacs, "Broadway in Review," Theatre Arts Monthly. 
340.
XX, May, 1936, p. 
treat his serious theme with no little effectiveness..,. When ell has been said and done, there is no doubt about the fact that despite all the comic interludes the sense of the folly and the horror of war has been conveyed about 
as effectively as it has ever been conveyed upon the stage. 
what-
I can say only that I am at least pretty sure that ever the result a great many more people will expose themselves to "Idiot's Delight" than usually expose them­selves to treatments of similar subjects by our more un­compromising dramatists.ls 
And finally Time uses its peculiarly terse style of writing to a great 
advantage in concluding the critical picture: 
Mr. Sherwood's views on world politics approximate those of a great body of contemporary writing men who habitually seek from their hearts instead of their heads 
the answers to pregnant questions arising outside their profession. As stated in the postscript, the lesson con­tained in IDIOT'S DELIGHT is that to imi­
"by refusing tate the Fascists 
in their... hysterical self-worship 
and psychopathic hatred of others, we may achieve the enjoyment of peaceful life on earth rather than degraded death in the cellar." Happily, the solemn depths of this 
shopworn text are instinctively bridged by Mr. Sherwood's great gift for high comedy, l6 
Closer observation of the play will bring to light the fact of 
the technical problem within the writing of Idiot's Delight. For now 
we must conclude that the critics have provided us with three major 
points. Idiot's Delight is in the same category with The Petrified 
Forest. Robert Sherwood's argument is inconclusive. And the play 
embodies an example of the union of two diverse elements: a broad-
comedy style with a high-tragedy theme. And now we look closely at 
15 
Krutch, "Idiot’s Delight,” p. 490. 
16 

38.
"New Play in Manhattan,” p. 
this play. 
Idiot f s Delight opens in a key that is peculiar to it, of ell of 
Sherwood’s plays. Remembering the opening scenes of The Road to Rome. 
those
Reunion in Vienna, and The Petrified Porest. and comparing scenes 
with the one that the opening curtain of Idiot’s Delight reveals, it is 
not difficult to sense immediately the kind of play that is to follow 
it. Idiot’s Delight is the fastest-paced play that Robert Sherwood has 
ever written, and its tempo is set from the beginning. Moreover, Idiot’s 
Delight Is in a sense a dramatization of the war of nerves that pre­
ceded the present European chaos. Such a dramatization is not a sim­
ple one, but certainly Robert Sherwood’s facility in the use of theat­
rical hokum and sharp dialogue is a great asset in a dramatic problem 
of this kind. And Sherwood did not approach this problem with a view 
toward the use of the restraint and quietness that he had mastered so 
well in The Petrified Forest. In Sherwood’s mind the eve of the next 
World War was best represented by a gaudy, frantic picture. Seeing it 
his use of a carnival barker and a fake Russian mistress as his
thus, 
does not seem so out the
chief protagonists of question with message he 
was to put into the mouths of those people. 
But several of the more querulous critics have pointed out that 
the characters of Irene and Harry Van are not of sufficient stature to 
pronounce successfully the important sentiments proposed by Robert Sher­
wood in the play Idiot’s Delight.l7 There is certainly justification 
17 See Grenville Vernon, Commonweal, XXIII, April 10, 1936, p. 564; Theatre
Ashley Dukes, ’’The English Scene,” Arts Monthly. XXII, June, 1938, p. 410. 
for such e but the fault lies not in the conception of the char-
point, 
acters but of them. The
in the playwright ’s handling playwriting 
philosophy behind the creation of these two gaudy characters repre­
sents a vivid imagination and a remarkably revolutionary treatment 
of an allegorical theme. As a piece of artistic symbolism Idiot*s De­
light might well be the most cleverly conceived of all of Sherwood’s 
plays. But Robert Sherwood allowed his symbols to run away with them­
selves. The very turn of mind that allowed for the conception of such 
a treatment as Robert Sherwood planned prevented its full artistic suc­
cess, Harry Van is too realistically drawn. The symbol that Sherwood 
had intended for him becomes little more then an over-sized golden 
Jacket that he takes off and puts on at will. Irene, too, does not 
fit easily into what she represents, but finds too much time to be 
what she is. Robert Sherwood knew his knew
merely types, precisely 
how to create such characters; and because he knew so well how to draw 
vivid characterizations of this gaudy variety, he permitted himself to 
too involved in the situations that they seemed It
become to suggest. 
not the fact that Robert Sherwood chose the characters
is, then, wrong 
it is that he did not allow them to
to represent the little people; 
too minute detail to individualize
represent, but permitted them and 
themselves. When the audience be-
make them too much a picture v/ithin 
came too much interested in Irene for the hoax she was, they could not 
the Sherwood had for her to
listen properly to important things Robert 
say. 
the sensitivity for details of characterization that
Writing with 
he had carefully encouraged in the preceding ten years of writing for 
the theater, Sherwood sketched Irene into his first act with bold, 
telling 	strokes. She was obviously intended, from the first, to speak 
the lines that Sherwood into her mouth in the second and third
put 
acts. the most 	in the play are spoken by
Indeed, 	powerful speeches 
Irene, and it was not false reasoning to suppose that she was the one 
character in the play to whom the audience would listen with the great­
est interest. And Sherwood cannot be accused of repeating the experi­
ences of The Road to Rome: he did not change the course his character 
was to take in the middle of his play. But in this play he permits 
Irene to talk too much nonsense before she delivers his sermon of the 
evening. It is a shock to an audience, who has heard in the immedi­
ately preceding scene the obvious, but amusing, lies of Irene’s escape 
from Russia, to hear from the same lips such speeches as the following: 
IREHE (looking upward. sympathetically) Yes that’s quite true. We don’t do half enough 
justice 	to Him. Poor, lonely old soul. Sitting up in with nothing to do, hut play solitaire.
heaven, Poor, dear God, Playing Idiot’s Delight. The game that never 
means anything, and never ends. 
IRENE 
Well, I made several escapes, I am always making es-
Achilla. When I am 	and
capes, 	worrying about you, your 
career. I have to run away from the terror of my own 
thoughts. So I amuse myself by studying the faces of 
the people I see. Just ordinary, casual, dull people. (She is speaking in tone that is sweetly sadistic.)
_a That young English couple, for instance, I was watch-them close
ing during dinner, sitting there, together, holding hands, and rubbing their knees together under the table. And I saw him in his nice, smart, British 
a
uniform, shooting little pistol at a huge tank. And tank rolls him. And
the over his fine strong body, that full of the
was so 	capacity for ecstasy, is a mess of 
mashed flesh 	a smear of purple blood
and bones 
124 
like a stepped-on snail. But "before the moment of death, he consoles himself by thinking, "Thank God she is safe I She is bearing the child I gave her, and he will live to see a better world," (She walks behind WEBER and leans over his shoulder.) But I know where she is. She is ly­
ing in a cellar that has been wrecked by an air raid, and her firm breasts are all mixed with the bowels
young up of a dismembered policeman, and the embryo from her womb is splattered against the face of a dead bishop. That is 
the  kind  of thought  with which  I amuse  myself,  Achille,  
And  it  makes  me  so  proud  to  think  that  I am  so  close  to  
who  make 

you all this possible. 
Irene has become tedious with and this one loses its im­
her stories, 
pact because it appears as only one of the several fanciful tales she 
is to tell. If she were to be no more than a phony Russian with tal­
included
ent for story-telling, it might perhaps be permissible to have 
this gruesome story in her repertoire, But Robert Sherwood does not 
intend this story to be one of many; it is the story that she is to 
tell on the stage. The other stories are but a piece within a char­
acterization. All Robert Sherwood needed to tell us of Irene before 
this moment was told in the first act. We were interested in this mys­
terious woman, and we were sufficiently aware of her phoniness not to 
be surprised at the later developments in her character. But as the 
play stands, Irene’s important story does.not get its proper emphasis 
achieve its intended significance.
nor 
does not suffer the same fate as Irene. His character-
Harry Van 
and for the most serves his
ization is kept in line, part he purpose 
and with interest. Although the characterization itself is morewell 
he does not
successfully achieved, completely fit the pattern prescribed 
18 Robert Sherwood, Idiot*s Delight. New York, 1936, Act 11, Scene 11, p. 103. 
the audi­
for him as a symbol. He too successfully sells himself to 
ence as a carnival barker concerned with renewing an old acquaintance 
to 
remain in the audience’s a symbol of the little man asking the 
eye 
frantic an
see
question "Why?” and finding no answer. Here, again, we 
instance of Sherwood’s excessive degfee of talent for individualizing 
his characters by use of strikingly effective theatrical detail. For 
he is the
Harry is too well drawn; is not, as case with Irene, over­
drawn. The false moments in his characterization stand out clearly as 
insertions on the part of Sherwood in remembrance of his thesis. In 
the first act, for instance, Harry’s entrance is completely character­
istic, but he soon says of the Italian people: 
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe like
that people that would take on the job of licking the world. They’re too romantic. 
As played by Alfred Lunt, perhaps Harry Van might speak this line, but 
in print it stands out as inconsistent. And yet in a moment of greater 
consequence Sherwood does not repeat his error, but writes with masterly 
strokes two of the most important speeches in the play. They stand out 
in contrast to the long speeches of Irene. They are emphatic, and Harry 
Van has not talked too much of nothing before he says them. 
HARRY I know feel, Doctor. Back in
just how you 1918, I was a shill with a carnival show, and I was doing fine. The 
boss thought very highly of me. He offered to give me a 
piece of the show, and I had a chance to get somewhere. 
And then what do you think happened? Along comes the United States Government and they drafted me I You’re in 
the army nowl They slapped me into a uniform and for three 
19 
Sherwood, Idiot’s Delight. Act I, p. 28, 
whole months before the Armistice, I was parading up and 
down guarding the Ashokan Reservoir, They were afraid your people might poison it. I’ve always figured that that little interruption ruined my career. But I’ve re­
mained an Doctor.
optimist, 
DOCTOR 
You can afford to. 

HARRY I’ve remained an optimist because I’m essentially a student of human nature. You dissect and rats
corpses and similar unpleasant things. Well, it has been my job to dissect suckers I I’ve probed into the souls of some of the Cod damnedest specimens. And what have I found? Now, don’t sneer at me, Doctor but above ev­erything else I’ve found Faith. Faith in peace on earth and good will to men and faith that "Mima," "Mima" the three All
three-legged girl, really has got legs. my life, Doctor, I’ve been selling phoney goods to peo­ple of meagre intelligence and great faith. You’d think 
that would make me contemptuous of the human race, would-
n’t you? But on the contrary it has given me Faith, It has made me sure that no matter how much the meek may be bulldozed or gypped they will eventually in­
herit the earth. 
And it is within this last speech that Sherwood creates his best mo­
ment within the play. We know now that within this speech Sherwood 
than other moment to
came more closely in any pronouncing the real 
philosophy of the play because Sherwood has told us so himself five 
later. But what is more important is that within this
years speech 
is evidence of the kind of play that Idiot’s Delight might have been. 
of
Here is an example the force and penetrating significance that 
could be made of the color and manner of conception that Sherwood 
chose for his play. Had the whole play been written as well this
as 
then would have
one speech, truly it been a fine play. 
20 Sherwood, Idioms Deligtit. Act I, p. 60, 21 See Sherwood, "Preface." There Shall Be No Night, p. 
xxii. 
Robert Sherwood is not artist who will look
the hypersensitive 
back forty years from now at Idiot's Delight with any feeling of re­
morse or shame He will smile and remember how
for its weaker points. 
dissatisfied he must have been. 
CHAPTER VI 
When Robert Sherwood finished writing the rollicking Reunion in 
Vienne, with its despairing preface, he wrote five plays; four went 
directly into a bureau and the fifth, entitled Acropolis, 
was produced unsuccessfully in London. But Sherwood says of that 
play that it was, by all odds, his best play and the most positive 
p
affirmation of his own faith. We may conclude, then, that Acropolis 
was a serious endeavor on the part of Robert Sherwood to write a 
se-
Its existence is concrete evidence of the fact that Sher­
rious play. 
wood had within him an urge to write of important themes in a digni­
fied manner. But he forestalled that urge and wrote what he must have 
considered a compromise, The Petrified Forest, and, even more Id-
so. 
iot * s Delight. Now, Sherwood is not of the kind who would consciously 
he is too unpretentious for that.
plan his career; His metamorphosis 
is as much a surprise to him as to anyone else, and so it is no doubt 
unlikely that he said to himself, after the gaudy success of Idiot T s 
Delight. "Now I will write a dignified play about Lincoln." It is 
more logical to believe that he had long been an admirer of Abraham 
Lincoln, that he was growing more and more in earnest about his love 
of his country and about his fear for the European situation. And the 
play was not written impetuously. Indeed, Raymond Massey tells us 
to
that he had suggested Sherwood four years previous to the writing 
of Abe Lincoln in Illinois that he write a play about 
young Lincoln, 
1 
Sherwood, "Preface," There Shall Be No Night, xix.

p. 
2 

See ibid., p. xix. 
and made the
that it was two and a half years later that Sherwood 
rz 
first outline, and that the actual writing took only three weeks. 
eve
Yet it is very interesting that Sherwood left the Alps on the of 
the 
next World War, the phony Russian harlot and her brassy lover, 
with whom he had had so much and moved quickly to Mentor
success, 
Graham’s cabin near New began a serious
Salem, Illinois, and play of 
twelve scenes about the American idol Abraham Lincoln. It was to the 
casual observer a great and unexpected transition. To us who have 
watched his career thus far, it was a logical one. 
Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a puzzling play. The author’s over­
whelming sincerity of purpose and reverence for his theme shine through 
the writing to such an extent that the play cannot be dismissed as either 
good or bad, successful or unsuccessful. A piece of creation so hon­
estly contrived and earnestly presented by a playwright of Robert Sher­
wood’s stature is necessarily a play worthy of careful observation. But 
Abe Lincoln in Illinois has faults that preclude its being the great 
American play that it might have been. 
Of all the critics (and there were several) who voiced the crit­
icism that Robert Sherwood's play was not a play within itself, John 
Mason Brown was the most vociferous and of those
accuser; defending 
Sherwood’s play as a great play, Brooks Atkinson was the most effus­
ive and intent. 
John Mason Brown makes his point clearly, and so without further 
offer
comment we the major arguments proposed by him: 
3, 
See Theodore "Abe Lincoln
Strauss, of 45th St.," New York Times. 
* 
October 30, 1938, sect. IZ, p, 1, col, 5. 
names Robert Emmett Sherwood as author
The program the of Abe Lincoln in Illinois. So he is, but he does not work without collaborators whose aid at times far
proves more potent than any contribution he has to make. One collaborators the
of these is foreknowledge we bring with 
us, as members of an American audience, of Lincoln, the man and the martyr. This endows us with a wisdom no char­
acters on the stage can claim. By permitting us to meas­ure whet was by the tragedy of what was to be it adds a 
. 
certain weight to the leanest of lean lines and grants an undeniable pathos to the sketchiest of undeveloped scenes. 
Another of Mr, Sherwood’s collaborators is Mr. Lincoln himself..,. 
scene Sherwood's
The best in Mr, play is ghost-written by a ghost who haunts all Americans and is the chiefest of our dream. This scene is the in which
glory episode to
Mr. Massey faces Douglas on a public platform speak 
some of the free words Lincoln himself delivered
fine, during the course of these historic debates.... 
Timely, reverent, and ultimately impressive as it be­
comes, Mr, Sherwood's play is not so much written as it 
is assembled in the best manner of Detroit, though not 
on the belt. Among the virtues it can claim is that of 
an
serving its public as echo cave. It is capable of giv­ing back to those who sit before it the cries of anguish or hope they may bring to it. Prom the dark confusion of audiences can in these dark days derive a cer­
its hero, 
tain consolation. To a people at present confused it is 
doubtless comforting to realize so great a man as Lincoln 
was once as confused as they are. 
Mr. Lincoln is not the only historical figure Mr, Sher*­wood has relied upon as e collaborator. There is another 
person, seen or unseen, who always makes his ugly contri­
bution to plays about the Emancipator, His name is John 
Wilkes Booth, Our constant awareness that history holds his horse in the alley behind Ford’s theatre distends with 
tragic meaning, for ell of us who love Lincoln, any ref­
erences to his future which the martyred President may utter in plays or books about him. Let an on-stage Lin­coln, after his election, say in effect, ’’l’m going to and I don’t think I’ll be
Washington, quite happy there,” 
because of the knowledge

and, we bring to them, these 
words take a that would not otherwise be
on pathos theirs. Ask John Jones to the same and
say speech it emerges as a sentence which, merely as a sentence, would by no means pulverize us emotionally or tempt us to rank it with ’’Good sweet and
night, prince, flights of angels sing thee to 
thy rest,” We here ell of us heard of too many people -who have gone to Washington and not been quite happy there to be surprised by such a statement. Put the same simple 
confession of an destination into the mouth of
unheavenly an on-stage Lincoln and the result is, I repeat, different, wonderfully different not because of what a dramatist has written but because of the way in which history has done his playwriting for him. 
Such an episode of Mr. Lincoln’s writing in Mr, Sher­wood’s play as the Lincoln-Douglas debate is not enough 
to carry the script’s twelve episodes. No matter how 
timely or exciting this single scene may be, Mr. Sher­wood’s inescapable job as a dramatist is to write for Lincoln rather than to have Lincoln write for him. At doing this Mr, Sherwood fails, and fails signally, until 
he reaches the two moving episodes in his final act which 
find Lincoln expressing long-smothered of Mary
his hatred 
Todd on the very night of his election, and delivering, 
as a tragic figure whose shoulders are
great, gaunt, draped in a shawl, a melancholy farewell to his Spring­field friends from the back platform of the Presidential 
train which was to carry him to the burdens and the trag­
edy the Capital had in store for him. 
Before these concluding scenes are reached Mr, Sher­
wood writes reverently but without awakening much inter­est. His subject is the young Lincoln, the tormented mys­
tic of the early days, the raw, unambitious rail-splitter who courted Ann Rutledge. It is the emerging Lincoln, whose friends feared for his sanity when on his wedding 
day he is said to have dodged marrying the ambitious Mary Todd, and who after his subsequent marriage to her suffered from her nagging and her lack of mental balance, Mr. Sher­wood follows Abe from the 1830*s in New Salem to that day thirty-one years later when as the newly elected President 
he set out from Springfield to fulfill his historic mission in Washington.... 
Unfortunately Mr. Sherwood leaves out most of his il­lustrative action. He functions like a man who is giving an illustrated lecture and has left his lantern slides at 
home.... His intermissions are his most active interludes. that are led
It is during them we to believe his characters have their most interesting say. Certainly it is during them that all their growing is done. 
For example, Mr. Sherwood does not us for Lin-
prepare 
coln’s greatness. His greatness overtakes him during an 
intermission, Abe is an and

unhappy, mystical, shiftless 
fellow in the earlier episodes. Although he is fearless 

and good, and intermittently witty, he is no more than that. Yet suddenly this same small-town boy is pre­sented by Mr. Sherwood as a national figure, equal 
to 
the greatness shown in his debates with Douglas. The result of such uncertain writing is a drama singularly becalmed for most of its first two acts, A record 
so 
lacking in tangible proofs of Lincoln’s incipient qual­ities is bound to resemble a portrait of the Great Pro­tector that makes the mistake of being all wart and no 
Cromwell,.,. 
Let it be quickly stated Mr. Massey joins hands with 
Lincoln and with history as one of Mr. Sherwood’s most 
dependable collaborators. It is he who rises above the 
an
ineptness of otherwise inept production and grants cohesion to a script more reverent in its spirit than distinguished in its writing, 4 
To these arguments Brooks Atkinson offers opposition. In the 
search for a final answer, Mr. Atkinson’s argument is presented im­
mediately; for the reader must first understand these two opposing 
reactions to Sherwood’s play before he can see clearly the merits of 
each and of the play itself. 
Mr. Sherwood has written his finest play, ”Abe Lincoln in Illinois.” In the breadth and depth of its under­
... 
standing it is far above the general level of commercial theatre; one hesitates to tarnish it with the familiar 
adjectives that announce a box-office success. Tor Mr. 
Sherwood has looked down with compassion into the lonely blackness of Lincoln's heart and seen some of the fate­ful things that lived there. As a craftsman he has had the humility to tell the story quietly. As a contemporary 
American he has had the candor to see that much of it 
ap­plies to us today, end he has courageously said so. With Raymond Massey giving an exalted performance as the lanky 
"Abe in Illinois” is an
man of destiny, Lincoln inspired play inspired by the sorrowful grandeur of the man it 
portrays. 
The facts of Lincoln’s life in Illinois are 
good enough 
for Mr. Sherwood,,,. 
4 
John Mason Brown, Broadway in Review. New York, 1940, p. 147. 
133 
Sometimes Mr. Sherwood has genially tossed a brand of 
hokum into his plays to set them to blazing on the stage. 
But he is writing scrupulously this time, looking the facts squarely in the face and recording them in deadly 
earnest. Full of admiration for his chief character, he is also with love for the
overflowing principles that Lin­coln reluctantly accepted from destiny and made his own. They are Mr. Sherwood’s and also and "Abe Lin-
now, ours; coln in Illinois" is a noble testament of our spiritual faith.,.. 
For "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" is a drama of great pith and moment, and this reviewer’s only anxiety is that he may it vigorously enough.^
not herald 
Through the life and spoken thoughts of Lincoln Mr. Sher­
wood has been able to express his own high-minded con­victions with a deeper emotional force than ever before. 
Here, among many pungent and homely things, are some of the charitable principles we need for personal guidance today.... 
Mr. Sherwood is a realist and disposed to speak bluntly; 
he does not let his wits woolgather and his "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" is no idyll or song of devotion. But by close adherence to the facts it is still the improbable tale of 
a raw youth out of the wilderness who was limp inside from melancholy and constitutionally unable to make a decision without ambition and practically without self-respect.... 
human
Mr. Sherwood is too a playwright to assume the sol­
emn manner. Beginning in our theatre a little more than a decade ago as a humorist, he still relishes the dry phrase. His sense of humor gives him a sense of propor­
tion. a tolerant he enjoys the
Having mind, stiff-jointed oldsters who think that the world has to the and
gone dogs also the hot-headed youngsters who think that virtue is just beginning. Most of all, he loves the character of 
Lincoln, and in this long, plainly written drama he has told honestly the savory story of those early days amid 
the familiar men of the prairie,^
and women 
To me "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" is one of the genuinely 
5 Brooks Atkinson, "Raymond Massey Appearing in Robert E. Sherwood*s 
*Abe Lincoln in Illinois,*" New York Times, October 17, 1938, p, 12, 
col. 2. 6 Brooks Atkinson, "Lincoln’s Prairie Years," New York Times, Oc­tober 23, 1938, sect, IX, p, 1, col, 1. 
134 
ob­jections urged against it affects my love for it. say 
fine plays on the modern theatre’s shelf. None of the 
To that it is not a some of the academicians is 
as
play, do, 
only technical objection. It is a story told on a stage: 
ergo,  it is  a  play.  To  say  that the  best  lines  ere  Lin­ 
coln's  and  not Sherwood’s  seems  to me  a  microscopic  ob­ 
jection.  Out  of  all the  mass  of Lincolnians,  which  has  
been  available  for about  eighty years,  Mr.  Sherwood  has  

discovered exalted 
thoughts that flow naturally into his portrait of great men
one of the world’s and that illumin­ate and clarify men’s minds at this troubled moment in his­tory. It is very much to Mr. Sherwood’s credit that he has assimilated the character of Lincoln so thoroughly and 
had the wisdom to distinguish the immortal parts of it from the transitory, What was Mr. Sherwood to do rewrite Lincoln? No, this objection puts playwriting on a purely basis
sportsmanship with the implication that it is not 
cricket to use lines not invented by the author for the 
occasion. 
One of my colleagues complains that ”Abe Lincoln In Illinois” has no unity. Well, there is the character of Lincoln towering over every scene in the play: that supplies a unity of sorts. And ever since the 
play opened last Autumn some playgoers have said: ”I’d like to know whet think of the if and one else
you play you every were not so deeply absorbed in the national legend of Lincoln.” Put that down as the most egregious comment of all, For the fundamental fact about ”Abe Lincoln in Illinois” is that it is a play about Lincoln. He is the 
subject of the play. He appears in it. Many of the most familiar epi­sodes in his life turn up in the of scenes. Many
sequence of his private and public thoughts appear in the dialogue. To consider ”Abe Lincoln in Illinois” apart from Lincoln 
and the Lincoln legend is a futile occupation for arid minds. Ladies and gentlemen, ”Abe Lincoln in Illinois” 
is a play about Lincoln nothing more, nothing less. Let’s mix a little common sense with intellect and es­
thetics. 
In judging a work of art, the choice of subject is the first fact of importance. Everything else derives from that, Mr, Sherwood has chosen one of the most glo­rious subjects to be found in the common domain of play-Let us not quibble about the credit to which
writing, 
17 
he is entitled for selecting a good theme. 
7  
Brooks  Atkinson,  "Critics Lay  an  Egg," New York Times.  April 23,  
1939,  sect.  10,  p.  1,  col.  1,  

135 
These two eminent critics have seized the important arguments 
concerning Abe Lincoln in Illinois as a piece of writing and have pre­
sented their points soundly and with interest. We have within their 
the But before we
arguments discussions important to our study. pro­
ceed to voice opinions, let us first return to a device we have come 
to rely upon: the recognition of the author’s need for supplementing 
the printed version of his play with more explicit discussion. We re­
member that Sherwood wrote detailed and excellent prefaces for The Road 
to Rome. The Queen’s Husband. Waterloo Bridge. This Is New York. Re­
union that he did not write a for The Petrified For-
in Vienna, preface 
est and Idiot’s Delight. For the printed edition of Abe Lincoln in Il­
linois he has written a 
sixty-one-page analysis of his play, calling 
it "The Substance of ’Abe Lincoln in Illinois.’” 
The of these is to state
purpose supplementary notes the principal sources from which the material of this play and the conception of its various characters are derived; to attempt to tell what is the historical ba­sis for each of the twelve scenes, and wherein and why I have departed from the recorded facts; to indicate the events which occurred between and also to
scenes; give me an excuse for adding some information which I 
to
was unable, for one reason or another, incorporate 
in the play’s structure.B 
This would seem to be evidence to sustain Brown’s and that it
argument, 
is. Sherwood himself has established the validity of the criticism. 
final.
But Brown’s answer is not Atkinson, too, is right; and his proof 
but in the play itself. We
is found not in the notes, shall investigate 
Brown’s argu^eE-t first. 
B 
Robert Sherwood, "The Substance of 'Abe Lincoln 

in Illinois,'" 
Abe Lincoln in Illinois, New York, 1939, p. 189. 
We hold no brief for the excellence of Robert Sherwood’s writing. 
When do
it exists, that excellence is apparent. And so we not argue 
with John Mason Brown and his point concerning Sherwood’s omission of 
illustrative action in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. We But to us
agree. 
who have tried to understand Sherwood, there is a rather simple expla­
nation that, however little it might bear on the play itself, cannot 
be ignored. We think we know why Sherwood omitted what Brown so lu­
cidly calls illustrative action. that Sherwood
It is not, certainly, 
was unable to write that action; it was simply that he was afraid to 
write it. We have seen how well Robert Sherwood can present action 
We know that Sherwood has
that is theatrically significant. by now a 
fertile imagination and never lacks idea. But with all this it has been 
apparent that his tendency is to color his action highly and make of it 
a broad melodramatic sort that would have been entirely out of keeping 
with the kind of play he was writing in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. There 
is no suggestion here that broad, melodramatic action cannot be a part 
of a dignified play, but the point is that Sherwood is no Shakespeare 
and has as yet been unable to emanate the master’s genius in the use of 
indeed, has been Sherwood’s most serious
hokum in high tragedy. Here, 
flaw. He has shown us in the past, and proves conclusively in Abe Lln­
must write in either one of two melo­
coln in Illinois, that he ways: 
strokes and
dramatically with brilliant of comedy theatrics, or dully 
with earnestness and dignity and great lack of theatrical effect. 
But, to get to Brown’s point (and it, of all of Brown’s points, 
John Mason ”His
the most significant for this study). Says Brown,
is 
most active interludes.” Says Robert
intermissions are the Sherwood, 
137 
"The of these notes is*., to indicate the events 
purpose supplementary 
which occurred between scenes.” And there it is, Sherwood writes 
his play in his supplementary notes. The play, compared to the sup­
plementary notes, is but a reverent hat-tipping to a great and excit­
ing subject, while the notes reveal a playwright who had too much to 
write about and too much to write it with. Sherwood was actually 
awed to the point that he became too tasteful. Scene I, when read 
and thus not given the fire that Raymond Massey’s performance must 
have given it, is nothing but dull. True, there is about it an air 
of solemn and great things to come, but that is not enough to hold a 
the
scene even so short as this on stage. 
Scene in which Sherwood introduces such characters
11, important 
as Bowling Greene, Ninian Edwards, and Ann Rutledge, and with them 
the scene of Lincoln’s first decision to and the
enter politics only 
scene between Ann and Lincoln, is little more than an outline that 
Sherwood forces to a great purpose. Granted that Sherwood was unable 
to devote too much time to this moment in Lincoln’s it is not
career, 
the content that is It is the
the length of the scene or disturbing. 
fact that the scene needs the hokum, of which Sherwood is a master, 
to it a spirit and interest that it lacks. We wonder, for in-
give 
stance, why Sherwood treated the character of Mattling, whom he de­
"is introduced solely to show that Lincoln knew men who had
clares 
so when he to
fought in the Revolution," sketchily was able provide 
such magnificent characterizations with the same sort of character in 
9 
"The Substance of 'Abe Lincoln
Sherwood, in Illinois,’" p. 203, 
138 
Old Krug of Reunion in Vienna and Gramp in The Petrified Forest. Sher­
wood might well answer that there was not time so to develop Ben Matt­
charac­
ling, but we reply that there was time to provide at least one 
terization of the timber of such characters as Krug and Gramp, And what­
ever the excuse, there is no adequate explanation for the failure on the 
part of such a playwright as Robert Sherwood to make the most of his aux­
iliary characters. The fact that he did not is a glaring fault through­
out the play, and the play suffers for it. Sherwood was not unaware of 
his deficiency. He said, "These other characters had to be used, for 
dramatic purposes, not as people important in themselves but as sources 
for the of
of light, each one being present only purpose easting a beam 
to illumine some one of the innumerable facets of Lincoln’s spirit. 
And here is a most revealing comment on his conception of the play he 
was writing. It is amazing that Robert Sherwood did not realize that 
his play of Lincoln would not have been less a portrait if he had sur­
rounded Lincoln with characters of the sort that would not only have 
"thrown a beam” but would have augmented the character of Lincoln, and 
thus the play of Lincoln, by supplying it with that richness of detail, 
audience
that brilliance of color, saying to the in more ways than one, 
"Here is Lincoln, here is Lincoln’s environment, there is a play of 
Lincoln.” Could this have been what John Mason Brown meant when he 
said that Sherwood functioned "like a man who is giving an illustrated 
11 
lecture and has left his lantern slides at home"? If not all, it is 

10 
"The Substance of ’Abe Lincoln
Sherwood, in Illinois,”’ p, 197. 
11 
See p. 131, supra. 
139 
slide
certainly a part of Brown’s point. We suggest that the only 
Sherwood 
brought was a black and white profile of Lincoln, and a two-
and-a-half-hour traffic on the needs much than
stage more one picture. 
The scenes themselves end the handling of each of them are not all 
that is John Mason Brown’s statement the
implied by concerning import­
ance of the intermissions. There is the even greater consideration of 
the actual subject matter dealt with in the scenes and that which is 
left to take place while the curtain is down. The most forceful il­
lustration of the point in question is the action that Sherwood leaves 
untold between Scenes VII and VIII of Act 11, It is here that Sherwood 
asks his audience to realize that the procrastinating, frightened Abe 
Lincoln has resolved himself into action of the determined sort that 
would lead him eventually to the White House and the helm of the na­
tion through the near-disaster of the Civil War. The purpose of 
Scene VII is obvious: it is a little incident in Lincoln’s life that 
came at just the right moment to awaken him to his destiny. Says Sher­
wood of this scene: 
Of all the twelve this one is the most com-and the one which the 
scenes, 
pletely fictitious, presented great­est 
difficulty in the writing. It requires explanation. 
It is obvious that, in the course of his life, Lin­coln underwent an astonishing metamorphosis, from a man of doubt and indecision even of indifference to a man of passionate conviction and decisive action. This metamorphosis was not accomplished in one stroke, by one 
of God. It so
magnificent act was slow and gradual that was not visible to
its progress any one, even (in all likelihood) to Lincoln himself. What caused it?... 
When he did go forward, it was entirely under his own steam. But what were the deep fires of wrath that steam?
produced that 
140 
In this seventh scene, I had to try to suggest the an­swer to that question.l2 
And we pause to wonder at Sherwood's saying that this scene presented 
the greatest difficulty in writing. Why should it have been difficult 
for a playwright of Robert Sherwood’s imagination to write such a scene? 
Obviously he realized its importance and its possibilities, and here he 
must have stopped. The possibilities frightened him, and he curbed him­
self so carefully that the scene became finally only a hint of what it 
might have been. The conception behind it was right; but its develop­
ment was on so small a scale that it lacks 
that heartbreaking poignancy 
that Sherwood could so it. With the
easily have given following two 
asks his audience the
speeches, Sherwood to grasp full significance 
of the change that has come into his chief character’s history and of­
fers no more than these words from Lincoln’s mouth to 
verify it: 
You mustn’t be scared, Seth, I know I’m a poor one to be telling you that but I’ve been scared all my life. But seeing you now and thinking of the big thing set out to do it’s made me
you’ve well, feel pretty small. It’s made me feel that I’ve got to do something, to and in the United States of
too, keep you your kind America. You mustn’t quit, Sethi Don’t let anything5 
beat you don’t you ever give upl^ 
Oh the I ask to look
God, father of all living, you 
with gentle mercy upon this little boy who ly­
is here, sick in this covered
ing wagon. His people ere travel-
ling far, to seek a new home in the wilderness, to do 
your work, God, to make this earth a good place for your children to live 
in. They can see clearly where they’re going, and they’re not afraid to face all the perils that lie along the way. I humbly beg you not to take their 
12 
220. 13 
Sherwood, "The Substance of 'Abe Lincoln in Illinois/" p. 
Abe Lincoln
Sherwood, in Illinois. Act 11, Scene VII, p. 121, 
141 
child from them. Grant him the freedom of life. Do not condemn him to the imprisonment of death. Do not deny him Let him know
his birthright. the sight of great and
plains high mountains, of green valleys and wide rivers. For this little boy and these
is an American, things belong to him, and he to them. Spare him, that he too strive for the ideal for which his fathers
may have him
labored, so faithfully and for so long. Spare and fathers*
give him his strength give us all strength. Oh God, to do the work that is before us. I ask you this Jesus who died
favor, in the name of your son, Christ, 
upon the Cross to set men free. Amen, J 4 

In Scene VIII the following dialogue is all that occurs concerning the 
new Abraham Lincoln: 
ABE 
On the prairie, I met an old friend of mine who was moving West, with his wife and child, in a covered wagon. He asked me to go with him, and I was strongly tempted to do so. (There is greet sadness in his tone but he 
seems to collect himself, and turns to her again, speak­ing with jq sort of resignation.) But then I knew that not my direction. The I must the
was way go is way you wanted me to
have always go. 
MARY And you will promise that never again will you falter, or turn to run sway? 
ABE vd.ll have me I shall de-
I promise, Mary if you vote myself for the rest of my days to trying to do is as God me to see what is
what right gives power 
right, 

That is all. The rest is left to the audience f s foreknowledge and im­
agination. The biggest scene in the play is unwritten. In his effort 
avoid too obvious Sherwood becomes too subtle. John Ma-
to 
theatrics, 
son Brown brands it as “uncertain writing.” Although this instance is 
14 Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Act Scene 121.
Sherwood, 11, VII, p, 15 Ibid.. Act 11, Scene VIII, p. 127. 
the
only one of several such in the play, it is, as has been said, 
most glaring and important one. For had the second act included a 
scene in which the audience was allowed to see vividly the transition 
in Lincoln’s character,.the whole play would have taken on a brilliance 
and excitement that might well have made of it a truly exciting piece 
of writing. 
Of Brown’s point concerning the omnipresence of John Wilkes Booth’s 
horse in the alley behind Ford’s there is little to add. He
Theater, 
to
developed his point sufficiently. other arguments, seem
His too, 
explain themselves. We turn now to Brooks Atkinson. 
It is not an effort to belittle that prompts us to remind the 
reader of a point made earlier in this study concerning Brooks Atkin­
son’s tendency to ignore a play’s technical demerits if the play’s 
thesis and manner of conception are of the sort that pleases' him. It 
is simply that at times Brooks Atkinson is swept away from what are his 
usual acute critical faculties. His reviews of Abe Lincoln in Illinois 
are at times examples of this over-enthusiasm, but on the whole Brooks 
and In
Atkinson is being honest is arguing soundly. fact, his genuine 
for the has forced him to discover in it of the
appreciation play many 
and he has recorded his discoveries
play’s true merits, brilliantly. 
The serious student cannot deny that Abe Lincoln in Illinois is ”in 
of far above
breadth and depth its understanding... the general level 
of commercial theatre,” that Abe Lincoln in Illinois is "a drama of 
moment,” or that Sherwood
great pith and ”is writing scrupulously... 
the facts squarely in the face and recording them
looking in deadly 
earnest.”16 These things are true. But Atkinson fails to 
recognize 
16 
See pp. 132 ff, supra. 
143 

the fact is
that they do not necessarily argue that the play as great 
as he would have us believe. And we would be the first to agree that 
"Mr. Sherwood is too human a playwright to assume the solemn manner." 
Indeed, that is one of the favorite points of this study. And hereto­
fore we have agreed with relish with Atkinson when he says that Sher­
-17 wood’s "sense of humor gives him a sense of proportion," In regard 
to this play we do not concur altogether. And we ask Atkinson just 
where in Abe Lincoln in Illinois does Sherwood tell "honestly the sa­
amid familiar men of the
vory story of those early days the and women 
prairie."l® Most of all, we ask wherein is this story savory? 
Only when Atkinson is arguing with the critics concerning the 
merits of Abe Lincoln in Illinois does he make points that provoke 
real argument. His saying that "it is a story told on a stage: ergo, 
19 
it is a play" is as stupid a bit of refutation as we have encoun­
tered. We would not be more surprised if he had argued that it is 
lines spoken by actors behind a proscenium arch: ergo, it is a play. 
The critics’ objection that the play is not a play was based upon the 
disconnected and
fact that the play is in twelve scenes, tells no spe­
cific story embodying the conventional plot structure. That Atkinson 
to the
should dismiss this objection with such an argument is, say 
least, annoying. There is much better proof within the play itself 
at Atkinson’s disposal than the fact that it was put on the stage. In-
technical structure of this play is rather good, in so far
deed, the 
17 
See p. 153, supra. 
18 
See p. 133, supra. 
19 
See p. 134, supra. 

structure is
as the structure itself is concerned. The fact that the 
very weak at the climax prompts criticism, of course, of the basic 
structure
structure; but it nevertheless stands as a with a plan be­
hind it. That the play lacks unity is a valid criticism. Most plays 
of twelve scenes covering such a period of time do lack unity of a 
kind, And Atkinson is right in declaring that the unity of Abe Lin­
coln in Illinois is the result of the single, towering figure of Lin­
coln himself. Where Atkinson fails his responsibility as a critic is 
in his negligence to point out that little more has been asked of plays 
for Unity of a well-made play variety is becoming somewhat
years. 
passed and so Abe Lincoln in Illinois is not to be blamed for the lack 
of that. However, again Atkinson fails to grasp the full meaning of 
the opposition’s argument. The critics who excited Atkinson by declar­
do
ing the lack of unity within the play were doubt referring in part 
the play lacks the essential
to the fact that flow of events, action 
* 
of the kind that can carry an audience with it through twelve episodic 
scenes. And there is no argument for that. It is true. 
But it is to Brooks Atkinson alone that we turn for statement of 
that Sherwood has used Lincoln’s
the argument refuting the complaint 
own words in his play. When Atkinson calls this a "microscopic objec­
we concur. As far as it is possible to determine without 
all of Sherwood’s we feel that Sherwood has done a
searching sources, 
remarkable job of assembling the available Lincolnisms and turning them 
to excellent dramatic and patriotic use. Indeed, the scene of the 
in which Sherwood has
Lincoln-Douglas debates, rearranged speeches 20 
See p. 134, supra. 
145 
from almost all of Lincoln’s is the most excit­
important addresses, 
in the
ing scene play. And Atkinson cleverly answers the objectors 
when he asks, "What was Mr. Sherwood to do rewrite Lincoln?”^ 
If for no other reason, Sherwood’s direct use of his source material 
in Abe Lincoln in Illinois 
stamps this play as a bright promise for 
the future writing of Robert Sherwood. In another play Sherwood 
might be able to allow his own writing a larger part, and with so 
excellent a talent for selection of historical detail a great histor­
ical play might result. 
Abe Lincoln in Illinois stands as a threshold in
Finally, then, 
the career of Robert Sherwood, From here he in one of sev­
may go any 
eral directions. There is no predicting him or the course he is to 
take. 
21 
See p. 154, aupra. 
CHAPTER VII 
Simplicity is the keynote of Robert Sherwood’s character. Thus 
an intimate friend describes Simplicity is the outstanding merit 
of There Shall Be No Night. It is a play concerning the invasion of 
Finland, at the precise time the events were taking place. Robert 
Sherwood is an American with a profound love of his country and a con­
cern for the present European chaos. The war in Finland ended while 
the play was in rehearsal. Yet, There Shall Be No Night is a simple 
story, quietly told, with a passion that is not unleashed, that is not 
flagrant, that is not self-conscious. Having watched Sherwood 
grow, 
we know why it is possible and, what is more, why it was logical that 
Robert Sherwood should write such a 
play. 
But from the outset it is necessary that the point be made clear 
concerning the place of the play There Shall Be No Night in the study 
of the dramatic development of Robert Sherwood, It is Sherwood’s la-
his most But it is
test play. It is perhaps widely publicized play. 
let us the last play that Robert Sherwood will write. For
not, hope, 
it a toward
that reason, establishing as step any further development 
is tentative. We have seen Sherwood grow from the writing of the com-
The Road to Rome. We have noted his tendency in the six
edy past years 
of more social
to write plays consequence. Concerning the future dra­
of Robert Sherwood we must theorize.
matic development There Shall Be 
No Night might very likely be a cue for that theory. If it is, the 
American theater public might well look to Sherwood for several 
plays 
1 
"Old
See Behrmen, Monotonous, I," p. 53. 
147 
in the near future with obvious propaganda intent. If it is not, how-
the
ever, same public might expect more plays of the nature of Abe Lin­
coln in Illinois or The Petrified Forest. At this 
moment, though, 
There Shall Be No Night must be as of the and
regarded a play moment, 
its greeter merits must be discovered the student a few hence.
by years 
For the sake of the records, it seems advisable that a few sample 
reviews be offered as evidence of the critical attitude toward Sherwood 
and his play in 1940. It is obvious that the critics are treating Rob­
ert Sherwood with more deference than they did in 1926. 
Sherwood shows us the Velkonens of Dr.
in days peace. Valkonen, a psychiatrist, hopes for man’s sanity even in a tide of unreason. The American be-
rising wife, bom, lieves in life. Their son, although he is working on the Manherheim Line, believes that ideals still live in Rus­
sia and that the times still offer a chance for love and 
simple work. Then war sweeps over them, ingulfing them all. The physician, who is profoundly aware of the in­
sanity of war and of its futility, dies in a hopeless bat­tle outside Vipurii. The son is killed with his troop in 
the north. The woman lays a fire for fighting in the base­ment of their house in Helsinki and loads a rifle to use 
if the invaders come. 
This small plot is enriched by feeling and sympathy, that the Valkonens are vivid and moving on the stage
so 
But beyond them Sherwood 
as gallant, suffering humans. 
lets us glimpse the larger world. diplomat

A Nazi ad­
vances his, and the author’s, theory that in Finland the 
but for the German and that
Soviets were a paw wildcat, all the surface of the world
for the first time since a nation seeks dominance and the en-
has been explored of the world. Sherwood ar­
slavement Against this, Mr. all mankind must stand. 
gues directly and by implication, he is of this country’s refusal
Specifically, contemptuous to take a stand against What one of the characters, and again probably the author, feels to be the anti-Christ. 
And in all this Mr. Sherwood finds hope hope be-
to 
men are grimly standing arms, without thought
cause to confront this newest exemplification of the
of glory, 
hope that mankind be refined to human-
beast in man; may 
re­
set these most
ity by this latest conflagration, by whistles
cent pyromaniacs. Mr, Sherwood, it may be, 
in the dark. 

falters.
that
It is with this whistling the plajr 
When he seeks reassurance in the events he pictures, 
Mr, Sherwood slides into the tentative.... 
inten-
Mr. Sherwood has written beautifully and with 
sity. I wish he had thought longer, and more slowly. 
The theater can, after all, safely give the headlines 2 
a long head start, 
’’There Shall Be No Night” is not a tidy nor a consist­
eht play. Yet it is a play of stature, dignity and high emotion, thoughtful, eloquent and heartfelt, and it is brilliantly acted by the Lunts and an admirable 
cast. It has something of great contemporary import to say to what we call our civilisation, and it speaks from both the mind and the heart,'' 
His is that he discusses the
greatest strength pres­ent world with courage and imagination, with full reli­
ance on factual items for his dramatic effectiveness, 
but with the eloquence to make them deeply moving. 4 
Ihe familiar Brooks Atkinson remains, for the most part, one of Rob­
ert Sherwood’s most sympathetic reviewers. 
No
As a play ’’There Shall Be Night” is no masterpiece; it has a shiftless second act and less continuity of 
story than one likes to see. It does not hang together 
particularly we11.,.. 
He is chronicling the experiences of an eminent Fin­
nish scientist, Dr. Valkonen, who has just won the Nobel Prize for his study of the mind. He is married to an 
American woman; they have one son who is of military age. 
2 
"’There Shall Be

Richard Lockridge, No Night,* With the Lunts, at the Alvin," New York Sun. April 30, col. 1.
Opens 1940, p. 26, 3 Richard Watts, Jr., "The Theaters," New York Herald-Tribune. col. 1.
April 30, 1940, p. 16, 4 "Lunts
John Anderson, in Play Based on Finnish Invasion," New York Journal and American. April 30, 1940, p. 10, col. 1. 
Christian
An civilized with enormous
uncoinmonly person faith, Dr. Valkonen is optimistic in general and 
immune 
to the common He does not believe that the
hysterias. Russians believes that
will fight. Even if they did, he resistance would be reckless and stupid. But the war 
closes in about him. His son goes into the aimy. Faced with a practical situation he has hardly bothered to con-In last
template he plunges in with his countrymen. the act Mr, Sherwood gives him an opportunity to justify him­
self and to bring his faith up to the fighting front. For men who fight barbarism, not for glory, but humbly to the tradition of freedom, the world
preserve  carry  
one  step further,  he  says,  and  help  to  fulfill the  des­ 
tiny of civilization.  

The is a Moreover Mr. Sherwood
topic big one. plunged into it a few months ago when the story of the Finnish resistance was hot in his mind. Those are generally not the circumstances in which perfect works of art are cre­and "There Shall Be No Night" is no But
ated, exception. Mr, Sherwood has admirably created the atmosphere of a wholesome family, which is the basis of the play. Part of it is humorous; all of it is affectionate. The whole thing has the feeling of modern times. When the war be-Sherwood has more
gins Mr. difficulty in revealing char­acter from the inside rather than external
by circumstances, and the play loses the direction of the splendid first act. But the events are too poignantly true to be re­sisted by the usual cant of criticism. In the last act Mr, Sherwood twice pulls the whole thing together with statements of what on in the mind of an
magnificent goes confronted with the destruction of
enlightened man his 
aspirations. Although the Finnish campaign is now over, s 
Denmark and Norway are part of the same story. 
two
John Mason Brown has provided us remarkably pertinent essays 
There Shall Be No Night and its dubious literary merit. Brown raises
on 
that will no doubt be raised in the future when There Shall
the point 
observed Can
Be No Night is as a piece of writing. a play with such 
In
topical limitations be a really good play? the first Brown
essay 
the play, beginning his point.
reviews 
5 
"Robert E. Sherwood's

Brooks Atkinson, 'There Shall Be No Night' Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne Back to Town in a Drama About Fin-
Brings 
land's Resistance," New York Times. April 30, 1940, col. 3.

p. 24, 
The 
whole point, end often the theatrical effectiveness, of his play is derived from the in which it manages
way 
to 

make grease paint and the recent barkings of our ra­dios and
one the same thing.... 
In writing of the destruction by the Russians of a cultivated Finnish and in describing how a dis-
home, tinguished man of science, a Nobel Prize winner, loses 
his son, his charming New England wife, and his own life, after having been forced to abandon reason for a gun, Mr. 
Sherwood continues a familiar dramatic prac­
unquestionably tice of his. Intelligent and capable as he is, Mr. Sher­
wood has often been more of a journalist than a playwright in the creation of his dramatic emotions. He has depended 
as heavily on outside events to complete his writing for him as he has on music to furnish him with ready-made cli­
of undeniable effect-
maxes of debatable integrity, though 
iveness, for some of his bigger scenes,.,. 

If he is functioning as a propagandist, if he has turned sickening headlines into dialogue, and stated the 
tragedy 
of a nation in terms of a it cannot be over-
single family, stressed that, as a pamphleteer, he has succeeded, as no other dramatist heard from in this country has succeeded, 
in dealing with the topical alarms and abiding implica­tions of Europe’s fever chart,... 
If at times it is static, it is at least becalmed in 
the interest of good talk. If its ultimate optimism is 
to if it gets lost in the scenes between
hard swallow; 
its young lovers; if it suffers toward the end by the in­
troduction of too many new characters; if it indulges in 
such stale tricks as those employed in the episode during 
which the scientist tries to frighten his wife into leav­ing Finland; and if it does not hesitate to do its preach­
ing straight into a loud-speaker or in an abandoned class-There Shall Be No Night nonetheless proves absorbing
room. one of the season’s most
for by far the better portion of 
and moving evenings....

arresting 
No one can complain about the theatre’s being an escapist it conducts a class in current events at
institution when once as touching, intelligent, and compassionate as There 
Shall Be No Night. 6 
second essay was written in answer to Robert Sherwood’s state-
The 
for its use of
that criticism of his play journalistic material
ment 
6 
Brown, Broadway in Review, p, 155. 

7 
was "academic twaddle." Although the essay is vastly interesting, 
only a few of Brown’s this
to
arguments are pertinent study. 
As a man Mr. Sherwood is one of the most fear-
finest, less, and intelligent forces in the modem theatre. As 
a is some-
playwright he a vigorous, usually entertaining, times eloquent contributor, possessed of commendable ideals and 
often a no less commendable technical dexterity. When he has taken advantage of headlines or relied upon such 
public emotions as his audiences may have brought with 
them into the theatre to do their collaborative service 
he has been
in his playwriting, entirely within his rights. If in his work he has often used the passing moment as so 
much dramatic capital, he has no less often served the mo­ment well. Certainly the fact that There Shall Be No Night 
is a dramatization, written at white heat, of the invasion of Finland and the present-day plight of decent people ev­
erywhere has (as from the first I have rejoiced in trying to state) resulted in one of the most moving and effective 
examples of dramatic editorializing our stage has known.... 
This virtue of immediacy is, as I see it, not only the point of Mr. Sherwood’s most recent but
script, gives it distinguishing qualities which more than compensate for its technical 
shortcomings..,. 
Most plays worthy of the name and of respect are ex-direct or of the issues
pressions, indirect, (by protest or acceptance) of the age which contributed to their birth. 
Scores of dramas, much needed and much admired, have served 
their welcome journalistic purpose by saying intelligently 
and provocatively in dramatic form -what the forums, the 
coffeehouses, or the newspapers have been full of. They 
have had their day and more than justified themselves by the to 
come.
perhaps reshaping days 
But from the Greeks through Shakespeare right down to the which have remained
Mr. O’Neill, plays contemporary 
with audiences through time have not been those which 
events contem­
however eloquently, only of public
speak, 
with their writing....

porary 
is that 
to swear
sole and simple point it is possible
My eternal without underestimating the values of the
by the The main thing, for the theatre’s well-being,
topical. 
7 See Jack Gould, "The Broadway Stage Has its First War Play," sect. col. 2. 
New York Times, May 12, 1940, IX, p. 1, 
152 
Q 
is not to forget how seldom they are one. 
Again John Mason Brown has so that no further ex-
argued clearly 
planation need be furnished. Certainly Brown is qualified to speak 
thus, and his point is well taken. 
the the
Upon rereading writer has found it impossible to 
divorce it from the performance given it by the Lunts. The play is 
not a piece of writing, but an experience in the theater. It is there­
fore difficult, if not impossible, to argue with Brown. VUhat is more, 
John Mason Brown is no doubt right, but we cannot accept all of his 
implications. Granted that forty years from now There Shall 
Night will not move its audiences as it has moved the audiences of 
1940 and 1941, granted that There Shall Be No Night is technically 
as faulty a play as Robert Sherwood has written, it cannot be denied 
No
that moments in There Shall Be Night reveal writing of a quality 
that has never before appeared in Robert Sherwood’s It is of
plays. 
that this consideration not be ignored; for if to
great importance 
There Shall Be No Night can be attributed any hint of the future writ-
it is the fact that within at one
ing of Robert Sherwood, this play 
moment he has written more beautifully than he has ever written before. 
Out of his feeling for the subject, his honesty, his thinking has come 
It occurs at the end of the but taken out of its
this play,
speech. 
it retains a poetical quality that makes it not only the high
context, 
but the high moment of all of Sherwood’s
in this play, plays.
moment 
our own not to sum­
”In this time of grief it is easy 
8 
Brown, Broadway in Review, 162.
p. 
mon up the philosophy which has been formed from long 
study of of others. But I must do it,
the sufferings and you must help me,” You see he wanted to make me feel wiser. ”1 have often
that I’m stronger read the words which Pericles spoke over the bodies of the dead, in the dark hour when the light of Athe­the
nian democracy was being extinguished by Spartans. He told the mourning people that he could not give them any of the old words which tell how fair and noble it 
is to die in battle. Those empty words were old, even then, twenty-four centuries ago. But he urged them to find revival of the commonwealth which
in the memory they together had achieved; and he promised them that the story of their commonwealth would never die, but 
would live far woven into the fabric of
on, away, other men’s lives, I believe that these words can 
be said now of our own dead, and our own commonwealth. I have always believed in the mystic truth of the res­urrection. The great leaders of the mind and the spi­
rit Socrates, Christ, Lincoln were all done to death that the full measure of their contribution to 
be
human experience might never lost. Now the death of our son is only a fragment in the death of our coun­try, But Erik and the others who give their lives are 
to be 
also giving to mankind a symbol a little symbol, 
sure, but a clear one of man’s unconquerable as­piration to dignity and freedom and purity in the sight of God, When I made that radio speech” remember?
you ”1 quoted from St. Paul. I repeat those words to 
... 
you now, darling: ’We glory in tribulations; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, expe­here from
rience; and experience, hope,* There are men all different countries. Fine men. Those .Americans who at our house on New Year’s Day and that nice Po-
were 
lish officer, Major Eutkowski they are all here. They are for me so I must close this, with all
waiting now, 
9

love.”
my 
for Sherwood's future, we welcome it readily. But
If this he promise 
a single speech is not enough. It is, as we have said, only a hint. 
found in the full view of Robert Sherwood's
The greater promise is plays 
them.
in and
and his growth through 
9 
Be No

Sherwood, There Shall Night, p. 177. 
SHERWOOD’S FIRST ELEVEN PLAYS
HIERARCHY OF ROBERT 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
The Road to Rome 
,
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... 
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The Love Nest 
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Otis. Outlook. CL. ; ,
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9 lII*
—————— ¦¦!¦¦¦ » 
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1930. 
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Reunion in Vienna 
Comedians." New York Times. 
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Atkinson, 
November 29, 1931. 
1932.
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411. June-July, 1954. 
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Arthur. New York Herald-Tribune. November 1931.
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The Petrified Forest 
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Abe Lincoln in Illinois 
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CXXXV: 1684-1685. May 6, 1939. 


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