Abstract

Drama

It was the simple faith of the old-fashioned playwright that life proposed no problems not completely solvable by those who were willing in purity of heart "to do the right thing," and it was the dominant thesis of the realistic drama which swept down from the North to revolutionize ethical thought that life's favorite game was, on the contrary, the devising of dilemmas from which neither good-will nor intelligence provided any possible escape. In the play "They Knew What They Wanted," by Sidney Howard three simple people face a problem apparently too difficult for their quite uncultivated intelligences and yet succeed, in a measure, in solving it by virtue of a native intelligence strong enough to make them see how, by giving up much, they can still salvage something from the wreck which circumstance has brought about.