SOURCE: Lynn Riggs: Southwest Playwright, Steck-Vaughn Company, 1970, 44 p.

Erhard is a prolific American playwright, educator, and critic. In the following excerpt from his critical biography of Riggs, he surveys Riggs's career as a playwright.

Knives from Syria was staged successfully by the Santa Fe Players in 1925 and became [Riggs's] first published play in 1927. A slim one-act comedy with a deus-ex-machina ending, Knives from Syria was nevertheless important as a preparatory work. In the play Mrs. Buster, a widow, says her daughter (Rhodie, 18) must marry the hired man (Charley, 33). But Rhodie wants to marry an itinerant Syrian peddler. Charley, breathless, comes in one night and says someone has tried to kill him; tension builds as Charley goes off in the dark to seek his assailant. The peddler arrives, acts mysteriously, and shows off his collection of Syrian knives, "good for cutting the throats of men." Mrs. Buster, terrified, permits...