This section contains 469 words (approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page) |
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The tremendous success of the play in the theater, strangely enough, seems to have discouraged serious dramatic criticism about the merits of the play as literature, to a large degree, perhaps, because its "literary merit" was never questioned. Most critics have been content merely to state a verdict. Joseph Wershba, for example, has said that for this play alone Connelly has "assured himself a lasting place in American drama . . ."; and this judgment has been rendered hundreds of times. The Green Pastures, which has been republished in at least thirty-three different anthologies in the past thirty-seven years, is the one play by Connelly that has never, except for minor cavils, been criticized for artistic "faults."
During the past twenty-five years, however, it has become the fashion to praise the play for what it was, not for what it is. John Gassner, for example, calls The Green Pastures, "a...
This section contains 469 words (approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page) |
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