[In The Old Glory] Lowell is trying to capture the ironies, cruelties and inconclusiveness on which America was built: in Endecott, the ambiguities are chiefly religious; in Molineux, political; in Cereno, racial. Beyond that, though, he is concerned with essential human nature, which he sees as paradoxical, untrustworthy, and above all, tenebrose. But, regrettably, there are three obstacles he cannot quite negotiate: the limitations of the one-acter, the demands of dramatic form, the problem of stage poetry.

Endecott, for example, is an interesting figure who manages to arouse our sympathetic curiosity, but only at the expense of swallowing up most of the playlet: his psyche exacts much more attention from us than do the perfunctory characters and negligible events of the play. In Cereno, attempts at writing some sequences in the manner of Genet, Beckett or Kafka rub uneasily against patches of realism and even a Hollywood, shoot-'em-up...