SOURCE: "Tragedy Is Not Easy," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 152, No. 5, February 1, 1941, pp. 136-37.

Krutch is widely regarded as one of America's foremost literary and drama critics. A conservative and idealistic thinker, he was a consistent proponent of human dignity and the preeminence of literary art. In the following essay, he asserts that although The Cream in the Well "is good it is not quite good enough to meet the requirements of the most difficult and exacting of dramatic forms.'

Some ten years ago when Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs was a current production of the Theater Guild its author was commonly set down as a more than usually promising young playwright who had chosen to cultivate the "folk play" rather than any one of the other more popular genres. Broadway has not been especially hospitable to the folk play (vide Paul Green), and despite...