SOURCE: "Two Sophisticates," in The Nation, New York, Vol. CXVIII, No. 3075, June 11, 1924, pp. 685-86.

Krutch is widely regarded as one of America 's most respected literary and drama critics. Noteworthy among his works are The American Drama since 1918 (1939), in which he analyzed the most important dramas of the 1920s and 1930s, and the essay "Modernism" in Modern Drama (1953), in which he stressed the need for twentieth-century playwrights to infuse their works with traditional humanistic values. A conservative and idealistic thinker, he was a consistent proponent of human dignity and the preeminence of literary art. His literary criticism is characterized by such concerns: in The Modern Temper (1929) he argued that because scientific thought has denied human worth, tragedy has become obsolete, and in The Measure of Man (1954) he attacked modern culture for depriving humanity of the sense of individual responsibility necessary for making important decisions in an increasingly complex...