Paul Green was born on a farm near Lillington, North Carolina. After graduation from Buies Creek Academy in 1914 he served as principal of the country school at Olive Branch, until he earned enough money to enter the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1917, at the end of his freshman year, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and shortly thereafter went overseas. Before embarking, he had published at his own expense, Trifles of Thought (1917), a slim collection of poems. He returned to the university following the war and, after graduation in 1921, married Elizabeth Lay, another promising dramatist in the Carolina Playmakers, in 1922. He studied philosophy in the graduate school of Cornell University during 1922-1923 and returned to teach philosophy at Chapel Hill from 1923-1939. He then moved to the drama department where he taught from 1939 to 1944. He returned to the Chapel Hill campus as a visiting...