[Athol Fugard's Master Harold … and the boys] like this South African playwright's other works, is distinguished more by his majestic spirit than by his artistic gifts. Fugard is not a dramatist of the first rank in a class with Beckett, Brecht, or even the late O'Neill—he makes no deep metaphysical probes, he fashions no striking poetic images, he doesn't change our way of looking at the world. His theatrical impulses are similar to those of Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Miller, Arnold Wesker—writers who put their craft at the service of an idea. Like them, Fugard is more interested in identifying social injustices and inequities than in transforming consciousness, which is to say that he is less a visionary poet than a man of great liberal conscience. Fugard's conscience, however, is a judicious instrument—scrupulous without being paralyzed, partial without being simplified. He avoids self-righteousness—the customary pitfall...