Maxwell Anderson

Introduction This book might have been called The American Drama Comes of Age. Perhaps these plays aren't as famous as they once were. I would be the last to say that they're the best of their decade. But they are—to borrow an apt adjective from other anthologies—representative. They carry...

PREFACE This anthology is the latest volume of a series that represents the modern American theatre up to the mid-century mark, the season of 1950-51. Along with three previously published volumes, this book should furnish the reader with a chronicle since 1916 and with representative plays. The...

MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA The movement that produced the modern drama in Europe, England, and Ireland reached America last of all. In the forty years between the production of a DoWsHouse and Beyond the Horizon, the American theatre remained barren and provincial, the American playwrights weak and...