| Scholarship in modern American drama usually confines itself to studies of individual plays and authors or to examinations of American drama's thematic kinships with modern European drama. But by 1970 American drama had matured sufficiently to merit study of its own thematic content. Perhaps the most prevalent theme we find in American drama is the theme of work. From 1920 to 1970 American playwrights explored Americans and their work from a variety of perspectives, and found it to be a powerful and complex force in the political, economic, moral, and spiritual lives of modern Americans.; Modern American drama inherits its interest in work themes from two nineteenth-century sources: European playwrights, such as Chekhov, Hauptmann, and Gorki; and American melodrama. From Chekhov, American drama inherits the insight that a man's work affects his spirit and his sense of self-identity as well as his economic wellbeing. From Hauptman and Gorki comes the inspiration for radical American labor plays of the 1930's. However, American melodrama introduces the protestant work ethic to American drama, and leaves on that drama an enduring conservative influence.; The first major modern American playwright to explore work as a theme was Elmer Rice. His The Adding Machine brought to American drama the German Expressionists' fear of industrial machinery. His We, the People was the first radical labor drama to enlist serious social comment in the service of left-wing propaganda. Rice's pro-labor sympathies were shared by many other playwrights of the 1920's and 1930's, such as John Howard Lawson and Clifford Odets. But the persistent conservativism of the work ethic gave rise to moderate plays, such as those by George Brewer and Sophie Treadwell.; During the early 1940's, the American dramatist's concern with World War II uncovered a disparity between American's desire for heroic lives and their inability to fulfill that desire in a world of peacetime, white-collar conformity. Plays like Heggen and Logan's Mr. Roberts and Sherwood's The Rugged Path delineated the distance between the greatness of Americans at war and the plainness of Americans at work.; In The Glass Menagerie, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller brought to fruition the drama of the American working man. Both men perceived the dilemma of the American middle class, trapped between its belief in the value of daily work and its frustration over the meaninglessness of daily routine. This complex explorations of this dilemma fulfilled the promise of Rice's plays and made of American drama a worthy heir to the social drama of Chekhov.; The considerable influence of Williams and Miller waned in the 1960's, when American dramatists were more concerned with radicals than with the middle class. Nevertheless many black playwrights explored the paradox of black people believing in the work ethic while living in a society that is hostile to black advancement. Also, Neil Simon and Edward Albee perceived middle class affluence as symptomatic of the chaos in values that marked the politics and the drama of the decade.; Although the American dramatist's vision of work in modern America is too complex to stand as an ideological pronouncement, it does make a profound statement about our society. It traces our rising expectations with our rising prosperity. It reveals to us the tempering effect that the work ethic has on our most uncompromising liberal philosophies. And it reveals to us that American drama in and of itself can stand as a significant body of literature. |
