SOURCE: Buchanan, Randall J. “A Playwright's Progress.” North Dakota Quarterly 38, no. 1 (winter 1970): 60-73.

In the following essay, Buchanan accounts for Anderson's success with the form of verse tragedy on the American stage.

In the American theater in the first half of the twentieth century one playwright in the number of plays written and produced, stands out from the group. That man is Maxwell Anderson, who wrote approximately forty plays and radio scripts that include such varied forms as musical comedy, domestic comedy, historical drama, fantasy, and poetic tragedy. In volume of work alone Anderson stands above most of his contemporaries, and in variety both of subject matter and dramatic form he has few if any peers. Anderson was one of the most successful writers of tragedy that the American stage has produced thus far, and he was the first American playwright to make verse popular on the stage...