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An Analytical Study Of Structure, Characterization, And Language In Selected Comedies By Philip Barry

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An Analytical Study Of Structure, Characterization, And Language In Selected Comedies By Philip Barry

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Content This dissertation has been
microfilmed exactly as received
66— 10,532
BOSTON, L e slie P aul, 1929-
AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF STRUCTURE,
CHARACTERIZATION, AND LANGUAGE IN
SELECTED COMEDIES BY PHILIP BARRY.
U n iversity o f Southern C alifornia, P h .D ., 1966
Speech— Theater
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF STRUCTURE, CHARACTERIZATION,
AND LANGUAGE IN SELECTED COMEDIES BY PHILIP BARRY
by
Leslie Paul Boston
A Dissertation presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communicat ion— Drama)
June 1966
UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 0 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
...........
under the direction of hia.....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H IL O S O P H Y
0pUesic .Dean
Date J.une+..19.6&...
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
J
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. THE PROBLEM............................. 1
II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ......... 17
III. PHILIP BARRY AND THE THEATER FOR
WHICH HE WROTE...................... 41
IV. STRUCTURE............................... 66
V. CHARACTERIZATION....................... 112
VI. LANGUAGE................................ 180
VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .......... 223
APPENDIX........................................ 234
BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................... 245
ii
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
Philip Barry was the author, adapter, or co-author
of twenty-one plays produced on Broadway between the years
1923 and 1951. Seventeen of the plays were written by
Barry alone, one was a collaboration, two were adaptations,
and one was revised after his death. The most successful
were the sophisticated comedies of Barry's sole authorship:
they had the longest runs; they received the greatest crit
ical acclaim; and on them rests Barry's reputation (shared
only with S. N. Behrman) as the writer who established or
perfected high comedy or comedy of manners in this country.
Statement of the Problem
It is the purpose of this study to analyze Philip
Barry's most successful and representative comedies to de
termine what made him a significant writer of comedy.
Three aspects which require analysis are: (1) structure—
to discover how Barry built his plays and of what he built
them; (2) characterization— to find how characterization
was accomplished and what gave his characters their partic
ular appeal; and (3) language— to identify the techniques
that made the dialog effective and made language Barry's
special attraction. It is further the purpose of this
study to examine the plays for recurring patterns of struc
ture, characterization, and language which may be marked as
belonging essentially to Barry's comedy, and to extract
those essences which may be worthy of further study as a
part of American social and theatrical history.
To guide the analysis, the following questions were
established:
Structure
1. Are the themes appropriate to the comedy of
manners and developed with unity and clarity?
2. Does the beginning of the action create inter
est, provide proper exposition, and initiate
forward movement of the action?
3. Does the forward movement of the action inten-
t
sify interest through a series of well-pre-
pared-for complications and crises which lead
to a definite point of climax?
Is the ending of the action appropriate and ef
fective?
Are the act and scene divisions determined by a
clear, natural, and necessary time sequence?
Characterization
Is each character appropriate for the comedy of
manners?
Is each character clearly presented, effective
ly established, and fully developed?
Is each principal character consistent with
himself, his situation, his social and econom
ic level, and the action of the play?
Language
Is the language clear and appropriate to the
character, the situation, and the comedy of
manners?
Are there any language uses, techniques, or
constructions peculiar to the author?
Are such aspects of language vital and integral
parts of character and action?
What is the total effect of the language?
This study is an attempt to answer those questions
through examination of the scripts of Barry's plays and
through consideration of commentary on the plays.
Importance of the Study
Although Barry was a successful playwright; al
though he is often mentioned as the one who brought the
American comedy of manners to its highest development; al
though he was a successful playwright at the time when
American drama was becoming fully American and truly drama;
although he attracted one group of admirers of his comedies
and another smaller group of admirers of his serious plays;
and although there is strong disagreement between the
groups, Barry is usually given brief reference. Only one
book devoted to Barry has been published, and its author,
Joseph Patrick Roppolo, stated in his preface:
I only hope that this study will strip away a few of
the labels applied to Philip Barry and that some of the
easy generalizations about Barry and the plays will be
subjected to re-examination. Much work remains to be
done. I hope sincerely that it will be done.l
After a summary of Barry's life and works, Roppolo con
cluded:
^ - Philip Barry (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc.,
1965), p. 9.
5
The concensus [sic] now is that Barry is a significant
figure in the history and the literature of the Ameri
can theater. It is very possible that he will rank
among the first ten American dramatists of the twenti
eth century. It is certain that he is entertaining,
thought-provoking, delightful, and unique.2
In general works and in several articles, John Gass-
ner has written more, and more often, about Barry than have
other commentators. Noting the dearth of studies of Bar
ry's place in the American theater and the deprecatory ap
praisals made by some critics, Gassner has said: "The
plain fact is that Philip Barry won an honorable place in
American theatrical history both as a cultivated writer of
high comedy and as an experimentalist, 1 1 and according to
Gassner, it was "in the area of high comedy, comedy of man-
3
ners and private values, that Barry truly excelled. . . . "
Gassner was not alone in that estimate; many thea
ter historians, scholars, and critics accorded Barry a high
and special place.
Glenn Hughes, for example, wrote that Barry's first
play
2Ibid., p. 125.
"Philip Barry— A Civilized Dramatist," Theatre
Arts. XXXV (December, 1951), 49,88; also in The Theatre in
Our Times (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954),
pp. 322,24.
6
revealed unmistakably to both critics and public a tal
ent of the first order in the field of polite comedy,
and the promise which it gave of a genuine American
comedy of manners has been amply fulfilled.4
Kenneth Macgowan included Holiday in his selection
of Famous American Plays of the 1920's. and, comparing that
work with other Barry plays, noted:
. . . Holiday shows all the essential skills of this ,
deft writer of upper class comedy. Some critics have
objected to his concentration on the "ever-so-rich and
ever-so-sophisticated," yet it is hard to quarrel with
a man who wrote of what he knew best, who recognized
the Achilles heel in high society, and who had the
style and the wit that could present and mercilessly
puncture the pretentions of the men and women who wor
shipped success and correctitude in the boom years.®
Burns Mantle, who was to write later that Barry's
star began to set with the failure of some of his serious
plays, found that the early comedies such as You and I and
Paris Bound established Barry as a successful playwright.
It might be added that this editor has unbounded
faith that this playwright will yet write his name
large in the American theatre. Which prophecy means
little because, as a matter of fact, he has done that
already.6
Arthur Hobson Quinn saw Barry as "one of the very
4A History of the American Theatre. 1700-1950
(New York: Samuel French, 1951), p. 392.
^ ( N e w York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1959), p. 18.
6American Playwrights of Today (New York: Dodd,
Mead and Company, 1929), p. 78.
strong reasons why I am hopeful of the future of the Ameri
can drama.
Richard Dana Skinner said of Barry: "I think he is
by all odds one of our three or four most important play
wrights . "8
Oliver M. Sayler reviewed Paris Bound for the Sat
urday Review of Literature and stated that the play "marks
the transition from promise to fulfillment" of what had
been expected of Barry as a writer of social comedy.9
Brooks Atkinson also found Paris Bound fulfilling
i
and gave it great praise, as, indeed, he did nearly every
Barry play that he reviewed. Atkinson called Paris Bound
a "thistledown comedy," said it was "for epicures,” and
concluded:
By personality and experience Mr. Barry is equipped
to achieve what many men desire— a comedy of manners,
rich in quality, true in temper and buoyant in its so
cial criticism.
^"The Real Hope for the American Theater," Scrib
ner 's Magazine, XCVII (January, 1935), 33.
80ur Changing Theatre (New York: Dial Press, Inc.,
1931), p. 174.
9"The Play of the Week," IV (January 14, 1928),
515.
18J. Brooks Atkinson, "The Play, Philip Barry and
Company," New York Times, December 28, 1927, p. 26.
John Mason Brown respected Barry for his willing
ness to experiment with forms other than the sophisticated
comedies that brought the greatest success and wherein
Barry's natural superiority was recognized for his being
"one of the few Americans who could write a comedy of man
ners without having to rent a tuxedo.
More recently, Whitney Balliet in a New Yorker ar
ticle entitled "Philip Barry, Cosmologist" held that nobody
remembers Barry's serious plays but that people do remember
Holiday and The Philadelphia Story, "which so easily and
memorably peeled off the impassive marble masks of the old-
time American millionaires."3 -2
Louis Broussard developed the thesis that Barry's
serious plays prepared the way for T. S. Eliot and Archi
bald MacLeish, and that Giraudoux and Anouilh made popular
the comedy of meaning introduced by Barry. Broussard's
statement that follows is typical of many writers' passing
reference to Barry.
In such plays as Paris Bound in 1927 and Holiday in
1928, Philip Barry established an American comedy of
manners wherein intellect, sophistication, and a
11"The American Barry," Saturday Review of Litera
ture. XXXII (December 24, 1949), 26.
12XXXVI (October 1, 1960), 128.
brilliance of style replaced the broad humor of the
earlier comedy.
After Barry's death, Lawrence Langner wrote: "With
his passing, the field of the American comedy of manners
has become almost uninhabited."^4
Many commentators, therefore, attribute signifi
cance to Barry for having brought the American comedy of
manners to its highest point and for having been its lead
ing practitioner.I5 For Barry to have been so recognized
indicates that his comedies are worthy of study and that it
would be of value for playwrights and students of the thea
ter to examine Barry's achievement as a practical lesson in
playwriting and as an important part of theater history.
^ American Drama: Contemporary Allegory from
Eugene O'Neill to Tennessee Williams (Norman, Oklahoma:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), p. 57.
^The Magic Curtain (New York: E. P. Dutton and
Company, 1951), p. 389.
Not all commentary has been as laudatory; indeed,
Barry evoked some severe criticism, which is indicated in
Chapter II. Unfavorable commentary was directed more often
to the serious plays— and to Barry for writing them— than
to the comedies, but there were enough detractors to estab
lish some controversy about the comedies. It is not the
purpose of this study to attempt to reconcile critical con
tradictions, but differences of opinion concerning tech
nique will be considered.
Limitation of the Study
It is the purpose of this study to analyze struc
ture, characterization, and language as treated by Barry in
his most representative and successful plays. Attention
will, therefore, be focused on the techniques recurring
throughout Barry's work that made the comedies significant.
Several plays may be removed from consideration. John
(1927) was a Biblical tragedy and a failure. Cock Robin
(1928), a melodrama, was written in collaboration with El
mer Rice as a joke. Bright Star (1935), another tragedy,
was also a failure. Spring Dance (1936), a farce, was only
revised by Barry. Here Come the Clowns (1938), an unsuc
cessful drama, did not deal with typical Barry people.
Liberty Jones (1941), an allegory, was a failure. Foolish
Notion (1945), a comedy-fantasy, was atypical and distin
guished only by Tallulah Bankhead's acting. My Name is
Aquillon (1949), another adaptation, was also a failure.
The remaining plays treat similar characters and
themes, and many employ a similar structure. All will be
considered insofar as they reveal Barry's comedy method and
technique. You and I (1923), the first professionally pro
duced play, was a successful comedy. The Youngest (1924)
was a moderately successful comedy. In a Garden (1925) was
11
unsuccessful but was built around a typical female as the
central character. White Wings (1926) illustrates a fanci
ful use of customary theme. Paris Bound (1927) and Holiday
(1928) were strong successes. Hotel Universe (1930) was
not a comedy but made use of typical characters and theme.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931) was Barry's most successful
drama, but the characters, situation, and dialog have many
parallels in the comedies. The Animal Kingdom (1932) was a
strong success. The Joyous Season (1934) failed but treat
ed a typical family. The Philadelphia Story (1939) was
Barry's most successful comedy. Without Love (1942) was
moderately successful. Second Threshold (1951), revised by
Robert E. Sherwood after Barry's death, does use a typical
Barry comedy theme.
Emphasis will be placed on the more successful
plays, particularly Paris Bound. Holiday, and The Phila
delphia Story. They are the most successful commercially
and critically; they include exemplary use of Barry's tech
nique; and the other plays can be more easily revealed, and
the total effect of Barry's work can be more readily estab
lished through the focus afforded thereby.
This study is limited to controlled observation of
the scripts and of critical commentary, for as Brander
12
Matthews observed, "What a dramatist meant to do— that is
something we may endlessly dispute. What he actually did—
that is something we can test and measure."^6
There is no attempt to discuss Barry's philosophy,
or to find the real Barry sought by some who could not ac
cept one man's writing more than one kind of play; The
themes used in the comedies are discussed only as necessary
for analysis of the comedies.
There is no attempt to establish Barry's place in
the American theater except insofar as understanding what
he accomplished in comedy may be helpful in tracing influ
ences, trends, and relative positions among playwrights.
Definitions of Terms
Limits of meaning were set for structure, charac
terization, language. and comedy of manners or high comedy.
Structure is interpreted to mean the arrangements
of the incidents of the action and to include both the
playwright's division of the play into acts and scenes and
the detailed ordering of the incidents (the French scenes,
arrivals and departures, action selected for on-stage
^ Playwrights on Playmakinq (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1923), p. xi.
13
development or off-stage occurrence, time sequences, tele
phone calls, and any other such arrangement) by which the
play is begun, carried forward, and ended.
I
Characterization is interpreted to mean the manner j
i
in which and the method by which the playwright reveals and |
develops the person and personality of the people who ap-
I
pear in the play; considered are the author's textual de-
i
scriptions, commentary about a given character by others in!
I
the play, and the revelations made by that character about j
himself through his speech and action. !
I
i
Language is interpreted to mean the choice of words j
and the combination of words as they reveal the author1s
styles; both contemporary idiom and special usages are con
sidered. I
Barry's plays are variously called comedies of
manners, comedies of ideas, comedies of meaning, high come- i
dy, social comedy, society comedy, or polite comedy. Some
commentators used the terms interchangeably; others at-
tempted to make definite distinctions; still others offered
definitions but stated that clear-cut applications could
not be made. From the definitions that were presented and
i
from the contexts in which the several terms appeared, it j
was possible to extract sufficient points of consensus to i
set workable limits.
Comedy of manners, or high comedy, is interpreted
to mean a play which presents an intellectual, dispassion-
. . ^
ate, and detached picture o£ society (1) through characters
who are more likely to be abstractions of qualities that
recur in each society than they are to be fully developed
individuals and (2) through behavior patterns— exaggerated
or ridiculed, but not replaced— that are observable in the
society; such characters are from the smart set, develop a
corresponding verbal smartness, perhaps at the expense of
naturalness, understand themselves as well as does the au
dience, have the freedom from material concerns that per
mits the pursuit of self-realization, and follow such pur
suits in constant good taste and good humor; their behavior
reflects the practiced urbanity of an established social
group, in which or against which the main characters move;
all these aspects combine at an increasing tempo to show
the audience a picture of itself that evokes thoughtful
laughter.
Some critics have held that there cannot be a true
American comedy of manners because the country has not had
an established order which could be reflected, and that
opinion is considered in Chapter III. There was, however,
15
significant agreement among critics that Barry portrayed a
definite, if limited, portion of American society; how well
he did it is the subject of this study.
Methods and Procedures
Detailed examination of the scripts in terms of the
definitions and the questions posed under Statement of the
Problem comprises the method.
The procedure followed for each play was as follows;
(1) reading of the script for theme and general impression;
(2) listing of structural units and testing the structure
against the questions about structure; (3) noting all means
used to characterize the principal persons and testing the
characterizations against the questions about character;
(4) selecting representative and non-representative dialog
and testing the language against the questions about lan
guage; (5) examining critical commentary and correlating it
with the preceding observations; and (6) stating general
conclusions arrived at about structure, characterization,
and language. After accomplishment of individual analyses,
the observations made about structure, characterization,
and language in the separate plays were combined to show
how Barry treated each aspect of his plays.
Preview of Remaining Chapters
Chapter II contains a review of the literature in
cluding works by and about Barry; critical response to
Barry and his plays is given greatest emphasis. Chapter
III, Philip Barry and the Theater for Which He Wrote, con
tains brief biographical and historical notes to provide
background for analysis of the plays. Chapter IV is a dis
cussion of structure, Chapter V, of characterization, and
Chapter VI, of language. Summary and conclusions are con
tained in Chapter VII.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Works by Barry
Although he wrote poetry, short stories, and one
novel, Philip Barry was primarily a playwright. Several of
his poems and stories appeared in the Yale Literary Review
between the years 1916 and 1919. "Meadow's End," a short
story, was published by Scribner's Magazine in November,
1922.1 pour years later, Barry used the idea of the story
for the play, In a Garden. Barry's 1938 novel, War in
Heaven,2 was converted the following year into a drama ti
tled Here Come the Clowns.
Nineteen of the twenty-one plays have been pub
lished in at least one edition. Publication data are given
in the Bibliography, and a chronology of Broadway produc
tions appears in the Appendix.
IlXII, 618-25. 2New York: Coward-McCann,
17
Works Devoted to Barry
As noted earlier, there is one published work de
voted to Barry. Roppolo's book is brief (104 pages of
text) and uncritical. Comments of one or two pages are
given to such subjects as "Techniques," "Language," "Sym
bolism," "Unity," "Motifs and Themes,” "Psychology," and
"Philosophy,” but the treatment is elliptical and lauda
tory; Barry is presented as all good, if not perfect. The
book is valuable, however, for its four-page chronology of
Barry's life and works, for biographical data given
throughout, and for part of the seventeen page bibliogra
phy, which lists Barry's original publications and a few
sources not readily available elsewhere. The listing of
critical works contains an imbalance of favorable commen
tary, and some of the general references seem of little use
for any study of Barry. Roppolo stated that "Barry is be
ing anthologized increasingly . . ."3 but in his listing of
Barry plays in anthologies, he included only four collec
tions published since Barry's death. Perhaps Barry is be
ing re-discovered; if so, Roppolo's work may be a conve
nient reference for biographical data.
^Roppolo, p. 125.
19
There are several unpublished master's theses and
doctoral dissertations devoted to Barry. Sterling P. Kin
caid, Jr. completed a thesis in 19344 that is of some value
because the author interviewed Barry, but a major portion
of Barry’s work appeared after 1934, and, since Kincaid
feels that John came closest to Barry's ideals and princi
ples, the emphasis is not applicable to a study of comedy.
Gerald Hamm's work titled "The Drama of Philip
B a r r y " 5 is a chronological survey and provides no real
critical analysis of the comedies. Hamm did interview
Barry, and his study was drawn upon quite heavily by
Roppolo.
C. Eugene Osborne's dissertation was an analysis of
seventeen of Barry's plays.® There are no definitions of
terms, and all plays were discussed in chapters entitled
"Plot and Structure," "Characterization," "Dialogue,"
4"A Dramaturgic Analysis of the Plays of Philip
Barry with Some Considerations of the Psychological Aspects
of His Characters" (unpublished Master's thesis, Department
of English, University of Southern California, 1934).
5(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in American Civi
lization, University of Pennsylvania, 1948).
6"A Critical Analysis of the Plays of Philip Barry"
(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Denver,
1954).
20
"Setting," "Theme," "Symbolism," and "The Nature of Barry's
Work." Such an approach permits only brief comment under
each heading. In the last-named chapter, Osborne attempted
to measure Barry's plays against several quoted definitions
of comedy of manners, but the noted discrepancies were made
to serve no purpose. Osborne's work is further weakened by
his stating that something is apparent which he does not
demonstrate is apparent; for example:
Barry's attempt to show limited universality in
characterization is apparent. That this quality was
successful in popular appeal in the majority of charac
ters is also evident.
It is apparent that Barry approached his theme in
each play by the natural and logical process of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis. The word synthesis is used
here in the sense of combining.. With thesis and anti
thesis introduced, the opposing attitudes are worked
out through the action of the play. The denouement
marks the synthesis.7
One may guess at the meaning of "limited universality," but
one cannot assess what Barry's attempt was without a state
ment from Barry. One may make some approximate ex post
facto application of "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis" to
Barry's plays, but it is doubtful that that is the way
Barry approached his plays.
Osborne's dissertation has some value for the
7Ibid., pp. 98, 147.
21
appended list of plays and record of performances and per
haps for tabulations such as the number of marriages and
divorces or the number of women who propose marriage in the
plays. The study was included in Roppolo's bibliography,
without annotation, and the only reference to Osborne in
the text is a note in which Osborne is charged with perpet
uating an error made by Burns Mantle.8
One dissertation was developed as an attempt to es
tablish responsibility as the dominant theme in all of
Barry's work,9 which concentration lies largely outside the
province of the present study*
A study of American social comedy included signifi
cant and complimentary commentary concerning Barry's place
in American comedy and was useful for background material.
The lack of definitions and an awkward subject arrangement
lessened that usefulness.
8Roppolo, p. 127.
9David Mays, "The Theme of Responsibility in the
Plays of Philip Barry" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Tulane University, 1963).
John Geoffrey Hartman, "The Development of Ameri
can Social Comedy from 1787 to 1936" (unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation in English, University of Pennsylvania, 1939).
Survey of Critical Commentary
Critical commentary about Barry has been curious
and contradictory: there may be found unqualified praise,
unredeemed condemnation, and complete indifference— often
by the same person. John Mason Brown, Francis Fergusson,
John Gassner, George Jean Nathan, and Stark Young wrote
about Barry on one or more occasions and seemed at other
times to dismiss him altogether. Eric Bentley and Harold
Clurman generally ignored Barry.
Many works seemed to hold promise of recognition of
Barry but gave little or no space to him. Thomas H. Dick
inson's Playwrights of the New American Theater, for exam
ple, was published in 1925,^ two years after Barry at
tracted attention as a new writer of comedy, but there was
no mention of Barry although Dickinson offered reasons that
the new theater lacked high comedy or comedy of manners.
Perhaps Dickinson's book had been written before
Barry's first play was produced, but Barry had been often
produced when Clayton Hamilton omitted Barry from a 1939
discussion of high comedy or comedy of manners.-1 -2
^(New York: The Macmillan Company).
3,2The Theory of the Theatre and Other Principles of
Dramatic Criticism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1939).
23
Joseph Mersand, who later included a Barry play in an an
thology, mentioned Barry's name once with a group of play
wrights in The American Drama. 1930-1940.13 The Variety
editor's story of American theater*4 mentioned The Phila
delphia Story twice and made no other reference to Barry or
his plays. Milton Marx's The Enjoyment of Drama*6 con
tained one passing reference to Barry.
Among more recent books, one given to irony*6 omit
ted Barry, and another about loneliness mentioned only To
morrow and Tomorrow in a chapter entitled "The Failure of a
Love Affair," in which, in effect, the affair in that play
1 7
was judged a success. A study of political commitment in
drama of the 1930's mentioned Barry only as representative
of the ordered world against which other writers
*6(New York: The Modern Chapbooks, 1941).
*4Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Jr., Show Biz from
Vaude to Video (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951).
15(2d ed.; New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961).
*6Robert Boies Sharpe, Irony in the Drama (Chapel
Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1960).
*7Winifred L. Dusenbury, The Theme of Loneliness in
Modern American Drama (Gainesville, Florida: University of
Florida Press, 1960).
24
worked.Although those and other works might have been
expected to give a fuller treatment of Barry and did not,
there were those which did. Below is a summary of some of
the more important commentary, listed by author and with
the more extensive coverages given first.
John Gassner wrote often of Barry, included four
Barry plays in anthologies, excluded Barry plays from other
anthologies, spoke approvingly and reprovingly of Barry,
and was one of those who expected greater things than he
found in Barry.
Gassner wrote twice of Barry in 1951 for Theatre
Arts, the discussions appearing later in Theatre at the
Crossroads19 and The Theatre in Our Times.20 Gassner also
included a section on "Philip Barry's Comedy of Manners" in
^Gerald Rabkin, Drama and Commitment— Politics in
The American Theater of the Thirties (Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 84.
19"Entropy in the Drama," Theatre Arts XXXV (Sep
tember, 1951) 16-17, 73 was basis for discussion of Second
Threshold in Theatre at the Crossroads: Plays and Play
wrights of the Mid-Century American Stage (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1960), pp. 131-32.
"Philip Barry— A Civilized Dramatist," Theatre
Arts XXXV (December, 1951) 48-49, 88-89 was reprinted in
The Theatre in Our Times, A Survey of the Men, Materials
and Movements in the Modern Theatre (New York: Crown Pub
lishers, Inc., 1954), pp. 322-28.
25
Masters of the Drama.21 But Barry's name did not appear in
Gassner's list of "every young serious writer of any power
— Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, Sidney Kingsley, Lillian
Heilman, John Wexley, Albert Maltz, and William Saroyan."22
Marking Barry's success in comedy, however, Gassner
wrote: "With the death of Philip Barry in 1949, the Ameri
can theatre lost one of its most attractive writers," and
added that Barry had gone his way "to success in the dimin
ishing genre of American comedy of manners and to disap
pointment in most of his endeavors at writing symbolic mo
rality p l a y s . "23
Joseph Wood Krutch gave irregular attention to
Barry. Krutch's reviews of Barry's plays in The Nation
were partially re-written for a sixteen-page treatment of
Barry in The American Drama Since 1918.24 To an edition of
the book prepared before World War II, Krutch added a post
war chapter for the edition herein cited: that chapter
21
x(3d ed.; New York: Dover Publications, Inc.; Ran
dom House, Inc., 1954), pp. 668-70, et passim.
22Ibid., p. 665.
23Gassner, Theatre at the Crossroads, pp. 130-31.
24The American Drama Since 1918. An Informal His
tory (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1957), pp. 164-80,
et passim.
omitted reference to Barry even though Krutch had reviewed
additional plays. In Krutch's "Modernism" in Modern Drama.
Barry was not mentioned although other playwrights contem
porary with Barry were discussed.25
Krutch wrote in general terms of Barry as a suc
cessful writer of high comedy or comedy of manners, but the
commentary on particular plays does not mark any of them as
distinct successes. And, if Krutch gave Barry partial
credit for the comedies, he gave no credit for the serious
plays.
Eleanor Flexner, in one of the fullest treatments
available, constructed what has to be a strongly damaging
assessment of Barry. She carefully, precisely, and thor
oughly built her case, charging that Barry's plays have a
similarity of pattern; shallowness and confusion of themes;
limited range of characters; unreal, undeveloped characters
highly stylized, unnatural dialog, often clever for the
sake of cleverness; and a bankruptcy of ideas and values.25
25
"Modernism" in Modern Drama, A Definition and an
Estimate (Ithaca, New Yorks Cornell University Press,
1953).
25American Playwrights: 1918-1938; The Theatre Re
treats from Reality (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938),
pp. 249-71.
27
Roppolo's rebuttal27 did no harm to that argument.
George Jean Nathan was perhaps Barry's severest
critic; seldom did he find that Barry had done something
good. In 1931 Nathan included Barry among some "play
wrights who are being eulogized out of proportion to their
actual worth."2® Of Barry's serious efforts, Nathan wrote
that Barry "unconsciously mistakes his own philosophical
vagueness for vagueness in the philosophies themselves."2®
The comedies were not much better received; for example,
even though he found "some true and gleaming bits of high
comedy" in The Philadelphia Story, he termed it a "shuf
fling and uncertain job of playmaking.
Brooks Atkinson in his New York Times reviews was
as kind to Barry as Nathan was severe, writing especially
high praise for Paris Bound and The Philadelphia Story.
"for comedy of manners is the thing he can write with
27Roppolo, pp. 94, 124.
^ Testament of a Critic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf),
p. 103.
2®"Trial and Error," Newsweek. XII (December 19,
1938), 25.
30"Susan Minus God," Newsweek XXII (April 10, 1939),
28-29.
28
complete dexterity."3* There were things that did not
please Atkinson, but he considered Barry "the most subtle
stylist in the American theatre,"32 "an artist with a
strong artistic morality,"33 "a writer of taste and tal
ent, "34 anstage."33
John Mason Brown gave varying attention to Barry.
In a 1930 work, Barry was the first playwright discussed; a
detailed, twelve-page treatment was generally complimentary,
Barry being regarded as a good writer of high comedy who
needed to avoid a tendency toward whimsy. In a 1938 pub
lication of edited first night reviews, Hotel Universe was
the only play discussed.3^ In a similar work that appeared
two years later, Here Come the Clowns and The Philadelphia
31"Barry to Hepburn to Guild," New York Times.
April 2, 1939, sec. 10, p. 1.
32
"Valuing Integrity," New York Times, January 24,
1932, sec. 8, p. 1.
33Ibid.
34"Barry to Hepburn to Guild." 35Ibid.
3^Upstaqe: The American Theatre in Performance.
(New York; W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1930), pp. 19-30.
37
Two on the Aisle: Ten Years of the American Thea
tre in Performance (New York; W. W. Norton and Company,
Inc., 1938), pp. 159-63.
Story were included to show the "two Philip Barrys," the
cosmic searcher for God and the writer of "perceptive tear
ful comedies.
Just after Barry's death, Brown, who had acted in a
college production of a Barry play when both were working
with George Pierce Baker, wrote a warm, personal appraisal
of the man and his plays, a work that would be most useful
in a biographical study of Barry.^ in a recent work, how
ever, Brown mentioned Barry only twice, the longer refer
ence, one sentence.^®
Burns Mantle's American Playwrights of Today (1929)
was cited under Importance of the Study. That work was re
vised in 1938 as Contemporary American Playwrights.4^ Re
ferences to Barry were generally favorable and, for the
most part, were biographical notes rather than critical
commentary. Mantle's attention to Barry may be indicated,
however, by noting that while Mantle was editing the Best
38
Broadway in Review (New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 1940) pp. 127-31? 165-69.
39"The American Barry," Saturday Review of Litera-
ture, XXXII (December 24, 1949), 24-27.
^Dramatis Personae: A Retrospective Show (New York
The Viking Press, 1963), p. 11.
41
(New York: Dodd, Mead and Company).
30
Plays of the Year series, he included nine of Barry's plays,
seven of which were comedies. (Those and other condensa
tions are included in the bibliography.)
Lawrence Langner, moving force in the Theatre Guild,
was consequently closely associated with Barry. In The
Magic Curtain, cited under Importance of Study, Langner de
scribed working with Barry on several plays, providing some
interesting biographical notes. Langner later reinforced
his estimate that Barry's kind of drawing-room comedy was
disappearing and that The Philadelphia Story would remain
as one of the best examples of such comedy.42
Barrett H. Clark, in two generally objective works,
provided a good historical perspective for Barry and his
plays and offered insightful summary assessments. In the
earlier work, An Hour of American Drama. Clark saw Barry's
beginning as a clever writer of nice, smart comedy in You
and I. but quickly moving to something much more subtle and
much better:
In a Garden ran for only a few weeks, but Mr. Barry
had set a difficult standard for himself by writing the
most sophisticated high comedy that ever came from a
42The Play's the Thing (New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1960), p. 180.
native-born American.43
In the later work, written with George Freedley,
Clark again discussed individual plays and termed Barry and
Behrman proof that "good writing and satire such as had
been considered the distinguishing marks of European au
thors could also be found in native comedies.1,44
Euphemia Van Rennselaer Wyatt wrote ten reviews of
Barry plays for Catholic World; those reviews gave such
surface treatment to elements of drama and such parochial
emphasis to morals and ethics that they were of little val
ue for this study. It was suggested, for example, that in
Tomorrow and Tomorrow Eve Redman might have adopted a much-
wanted child rather than having a child after an affair
with a visiting lecturer.46 The response to The Animal
Kingdom was that "Philip Barry seems to advance faster in
the study of dramatic technique than of ethics."46
43(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1930),
p. 103.
A A
A History of Modern Drama (New York: D. Appleton-
Century Company, Inc., 1947), p. 716.
46"The Drama: Tomorrow and Tomorrow," Catholic
World. CXXXII (March, 1931), 717-18.
"The Drama: The Animal Kingdom," Catholic World.
CXXXIV (March, 1932), 714-15.
32
Stark Young, in his reviews for New Republic,
found an increase in quality in the early comedies but was
disappointed with later plays.
Richard Dana Skinner reviewed several Barry plays
for Commonweal, and some of those reviews were used in
Skinner's 1931 book cited under Importance of the Study.
Skinner credited Barry with being both a good comic play
wright and a good serious playwright but felt that Barry's
skill often glossed over some unworthy plays.
Grenville Vernon also reviewed plays for Common
weal. demonstrating what a wide range of response was
evoked by Barry. In 1935, Vernon considered Barry's plays
"stultified," failing "because of a lack of sincerity."4?
The next year he charged that a fine talent was "gradually
drying up" because the dialog was "becoming more 'liter
ary, ' farther divorced from life."48 Then, by contrast,
came the following appraisal:
Mr. Barry is neither of the blood and bones, nor
the tea and saucer school; he is something, when he is
at his best, very much finer, something at once more
imaginative and more subtle— a dramatist of the soul,
4^"Bright Star," Commonweal, XXIII (November 11,
1935), 19.
AQ
"Spring Dance," Commonweal. XXIV (September 18,
1936), 487.
33
a mystic who yet comes to grips with life. He is this
in "Here Come the Clowns."49
Carl Carmer, who spelled Philip with two l's. was
the first of four critics who wrote about Barry for Theatre
Arts Monthly. Carmer considered eight of Barry's plays,
found some strengths and many more weaknesses, and asked
^ why Barry had not written a play both popular and important.
He noted that Barry had had the best of training— academic,
theoretic, and professional— that Barry might yet write a
great play, and summarized:
His chief need at present, if I may be allowed a modest
opinion, is to put aside his facile fooling and acquire
an overwhelming purpose, a burning sincerity in his
theme. There is none of his plays which does not seem
to me to be saying: "Here is a great idea for a playj"
instead of "Here is a great ideaj"5®
John Hutchens, in two reviews for Theatre Arts
Monthly, revealed opposing responses to Barry plays.
Hutchens found Tomorrow and Tomorrow disappointing because
it did not extend Barry's range.51 The next season, how
ever, Hutchens wrote that Barry's latest play, The Animal
49"Here Come the Clowns," Commonweal. XXIX (Decem
ber 23, 1938), 244.
50"Phillip Barry," Theatre Arts Monthly. XIII (No
vember, 1929), 819-26.
51"Playwrights' Parade: Broadway in Review," Thea
tre Arts Monthly. XV (March, 1931), 185-86.
34
Kingdom, "finds his serious work grown happily mature and
his old gift for comedy, expert as ever, relegated to a
strong supporting role"; indeed, there were few reserva
tions about any aspect of the play.52
Edith J. R. Isaacs reviewed for Theatre Arts Month
ly two of Barry's plays— neither to be emphasized in this
study. Joyous Season was considered a failure in spite of
good material and a good production, because of two-dimen
sional characters and "a lack of technical facility."53
Bright Star prompted the observation that Barry was
too far from the theater (a program note stated that Barry
divided his time between two homes: Mount Kisco, New York
and Cannes, France) and that he needed closer contact:
Even the plays which showed his talent most clearly
showed it as a gift for dialogue and for divining the
motives and the manners of people within a limited so
cial range. It was never a boldly original, or com
plete, theatre talent. It should be fed, heavily fed,
on close theatre association in order not to die of
malnutrition. Cannes and Mount Kisco will never make a
playwright out of Mr. Barry. All of which is too
52"Looking Up: Broadway in Review," Theatre Arts
Monthly. XVI (March, 1932), 187-88.
53"Theatre Magic: Broadway in Review," Theatre Arts
Monthly. XVIII (April, 1934), 244.
"See America First: Braodway in Review," Theatre
Arts Monthly, XIX (December, 1935), 900.
35
Rosamond Gilder, who continued the Theatre Arts
reviews, found little to praise in Barry's plays. The
chief result of Without Love, for example, was said to be
"to provide yet another actress with a frame for her par
ticular talents"; "Mr. Barry shows himself once again more
adept in the delineation of a certain rather limited type
of individual than in the presentation of abstract is
sues. "55
Francis Fergusson had reviewed Barry's plays but
found no occasion to consider Barry in either of two seri
ous studies that include sections on the modern theater:
The Idea of a Theater*^ and The Human Image in Dramatic
Literature.57
Fergusson wrote a serious review of Tomorrow and
Tomorrow; he was encouraged to see Barry and others find
drama in themes that they did not invent but regretted that
they were not able to utilize the work of a Joyce, Eliot,
or Pound, "writers who have really worked out some sort of
55
"Old Indestructable: Broadway in Review," Theatre
Arts Monthly, XXVII (January, 1943).
56(Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company,
Inc., 1949).
57(Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company,
Inc., 1957).
36
relation to the great p a s t . “5®
Fergusson was more satirical than serious when, the
following year, he dismissed The Animal Kingdom in a review
which began with the observation that "Mr. Philip Barry has
the one indispensable qualification for the playwright and
the advertising man, an understanding of his audience."5®
Alan Downer considered Langdon Mitchell's The New
York Idea (1906) "unchallenged as high comedy until the
plays of Philip Barry and S. N. Behrman began to appear in
the twenties."®® Downer generally preferred the more seri
ous plays and placed Barry somewhat higher as a dramatist
than did many others.
Edmond M. Gagey, in Revolution in American Drama,
was one of those who placed Barry in a special position:
"As for high comedy, practically nonexistent before 1917,
it found worthy practitioners at last in Philip Barry and
S. N. Behrman," and later added that a "development from
domestic comedy and the marital problem play to high comedy
5®"Wanted: Themes for Ambitious American Play
wrights," Bookman, LXXIII (March, 1931), 72-73.
59"Comedies, Satirical and Sweet," Bookman, LXXIV
(January, 1932), 562-63.
®°Fifty Years of American Drama, 1900-1950 (Chica
go: Henry Regnery Company, 1951).
37
appears in the work of Philip Barry. . . . Gagey found
improvement from the earlier to the later comedies with The
Philadelphia Story the best of them.
Louis Broussard, cited under Importance of the
Study for crediting Barry with establishing an American
comedy of manners, wrote that "not too much importance is
attached to Philip Barry anymore. His fame went when he
stopped writing popular comedies."®2 But Broussard found
an importance attached to Barry not recognized by others.
Broussard noted the moralizing tendency in Barry's plays—
in the comedies and in the other works— that was often dis
cussed in terms of the comic and serious sides of Barry,
and, while noting comments made by Krutch and Gassner,
- x *
Broussard continued:
In combining a serious motif with a setting and charac
terization ostensibly gay and high-fashioned, Barry may
have attempted a union of elements irreconcilable even
in an artist more expert. Nevertheless, he introduced
to American playwriting the comedy of meaning, which,
if written by a Giraudoux or an Anouilh, has since
achieved wide popularity. . . . Twenty years later
T. S. Eliot provided Broadway with comedies similar in
style and in purpose, no better in realization than Ho
tel Universe, but considerably more popular, perhaps
because they were written by a man already famous as a
®^(New York: Columbia University Press, 1947),
pp. 175, 196.
Broussard, p. 57.
38
poet, perhaps because by that time the audience was
more receptive to such vehicles.63
Broussard traced Barry's bequeathing to Eliot a
format, a "continuity of experience, " the ut?e of martydom
as a dramatic subject, a form of modern liturgical dialog,
a modern precedent for use of ancient myths, and use of
spiritual answers as resolution for dramatic problems.
Further, Broussard saw Here Come the Clowns as a precedent
for J.B.. and contended that Barry had pioneeded a genre
for "consideration of man in his time,” an optimistic ap
proach to man's dilemma that has him resolve that which he
can and accept, Job-like, that which he cannot. Broussard
set Barry's optimism against the negativism of O'Neill and
Sherwood and saw that optimism continued by Eliot, Maclieish,
and Wilder.64
A comparative study, or a tracing of influences, is
outside the limits of the present study, but Broussard made
his points strongly enough not only to add importance to
Barry but also to suggest that such a study is possible.
Other magazine and newspaper reviews were available;
some were cited under Importance of the Study and others
63Ibid., pp. 58-59.
64Ibid., pp. 66-68, 125-129, et passim.
39
will be incorporated in analyses of the plays. The points
expressed therein were similar to those already cited.
Several other books were found to have brief or
limited references to Barry that were of some value. A
History of the American Theatre. 1700-1950, By Glenn Hughes
marked Barry's "natural field— sophisticated and witty com
edy with a serious underlying theme,” and provided good
background material.65 Among many works that considered
Barry a success and awarded him a special place in comedy
were the followings Today in American Drama by Frank Hur-
burt O'Hara,66 Modern American Drama and Stage by Boyd Mar
tin, 6^ Curtain Time. The Story of the American Theater by
Lloyd Morris,6® and Trends in Twentieth Century Drama, A
Survey Since Ibsen and Shaw by Frederick Lumley.69
Wisner Payne Kinne's George Pierce Baker and the
American Theatre provided interesting background material
about Barry and his playwrighting teacher and included
^ (New Yorks Samuel French, 1951), p. 393.
^^(Chicagos The University of Chicago Press, 1939).
67(Londons The Pilot press, 1943).
®®(New Yorks Random House, 1953).
69(Londons Barrie and Rockliff, 1956).
7 0
Professor Baker's foreword to You and I.
Although not of direct value for the present study,
there were works that employed some specialized approach
such as Freud on Broadway: A History of Psychoanalysis and
The American Drama by W. David Sievers who included a chap
ter entitled "The Psychodramas of Philip Barry.
70(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954).
7^(New York: Hermitage House, 1955), pp. 187-211.
CHAPTER III
PHILIP BARRY AND THE THEATER FOR WHICH HE WROTE
Philip Barry was placed in a definite tradition in
American theater by some writers; other writers either de
nied such tradition or denied Barry a place in it. The
present study does not encompass history, and such contro
versy will not be entered here, but some background commen
tary is offered in this chapter concerning Barry's life,
the theater during the time he wrote, and the comedy of
manners in America.
Biography
The most nearly complete account of Barry's life is
Joseph Patrick Roppolo's Philip Barry, cited in Chapter I.
A generally laudatory work, it nevertheless includes the
available sources of information. Only enough details of
Barry's personal life will be given here to provide some
background and to fill in the record of his professional
life.
41
42
Barry was born June 18, 1896 in Rochester, New York
and attended Roman Catholic schools there. Drama critics
found frequent occasion to mention Barry's Catholicism when
discussing his plays. He graduated high school in 1913 and
was admitted to Yale conditionally after failing to pass
entrance examinations. He was rejected for military ser
vice in World War I because of poor eyesight but did work
for the Department of State in 1918 and 1919. In 1919,
Barry returned to Yale and received his Bachelor of Arts
’
degree.
As a child, he had begun writing stories and plays,
and he continued his writing at Yale. After graduation, he
enrolled at Harvard to study playwriting with George Pierce
Baker. During the year he wrote one three-act play, A
Punch for Judy, a clever comedy in which the right man
teaches the girl a lesson for her starting away with the
wrong man. Barry was employed by an advertising firm but
continued to work with Professor Baker on the play, which
the Harvard Workshop produced after professional production
was narrowly missed. Returning to Harvard in 1921, Barry
completed two plays. One of them, You and I. won the Hern
don Prize and professional production. From that point
forward, Barry was a professional playwright, with new
42 aj
plays appearing almost yearly. A record of production is
included in the Appendix.
Barry not only had the income from stage produc
tions of his plays but also receipts from the sale of mo
tion picture rights to several of the plays. He was thus
enabled to maintain homes in Mount Kisco, New York and
Cannes, France between which he and his family divided
their time, remaining largely out of public attention.
Running throughout the critical commentary— and on
ly partially indicated in chapter II— are two appraisals of
Barry, the man. In the first, he was considered civilized,
and a gentleman. In the second, and more frequent, ap
praisal, the dichotomy of his work led to discussions of
"the two Barrys." A challenging biographical study could
be made on that point alone; for the present study the con
tradictions must be left unreconciled, but one statement by
Robert Sherwood, long-time friend of Barry, is included
here to indicate, in a way different from other comments,
the nature of the dichotomy and a suggestion of synthesis.
In the preface to his revision of Barry's Second Threshold.
Sherwood wrote that the play moved and excited him:
For I felt that he had at last begun to achieve the re
alization, or the synthesis, of his apparently but not
actually discordant qualities: his Irish, impish sense
43
of comedy, and his profound, and also Irish, sense of
the ultimate sadness of life on earth, the "endless as
sault" of evil upon good. I think that the most obvi
ous mark of his self-imposed limitations had been his
fear that he must keep these two senses in airtight
compartments, that he had said to himself, as he start
ed a play, "Now I'll write a comedy (or potboiler)," or
"Now I'll write a serious play (or valiant failure)"?
and the comedies were far bigger than potboilers, and
the serious plays were far bigger than failures. In
Second Threshold, it seems to me, he began to reveal
the mature discovery that life is indivisible. . . .
The revealing of this discovery in Second Threshold
makes his sudden death all the graver a loss to Ameri
can letters.1
Barry died suddenly of a heart attack on December 3,
1949, the day after he had submitted a draft of Second
Threshold to the Theatre Guild.
The Theater for Which Philip Barry Wrote
During the first two decades of the twentieth cen
tury, there was no definite movement or spirit in the Amer
ican theater. The progress that was made was that of the
craftsman improving his craft. Theater in the first decade
offered the active, popular, sensational entertainment of
show business, but there was no art, no drama. Road compa
nies and stock companies were still popular, but both had
sharply declined by 1920. The bedroom farce was popular,
^(New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1951),
pp. x-xi.
44
but the established tradition was the clean romance, and
there were some native comedies.
The revolution in manners and morals in America was
not evident in the theater, and American plays were not
American literature. Serious European playwrights got more
attention during the second decade, and the influence of
the realists grew stronger.
Significant to a study of Barry, the university
theater was established in that period. George Pierce
Baker began his work at Harvard in 1905, and it was he who
got Barry his first hearing. Wisner Payne Kinne's study,
cited in Chapter II, is a warmly interesting account of
Baker's work. The list of Baker's students who became rec
ognized figures in theater is long; among the playwrights
were Edward Sheldon, Eugene O'Neill, S. N. Behrman, Sidney
Howard, Robert Sherwood, and Philip Barry.
The Washington Square Players, organized in 1916,
placed a newer, more serious emphasis on play production.
From that group, with Lawrence Langner and Theresa Helburn
as the driving force, came the Theatre Guild in 1919. At
first, they presented primarily foreign plays, but they did
produce original native works, including several of Barry's
plays, their association beginning in 1929. (The Guild had
45
turned down You and I.) The Guild's subscription operation,
insuring runs of at least four or five weeks, was a vital
contribution.
Also organized in 1915 were the Provincetown Play
ers who called their playhouse the Playwright's Theater and
who dedicated themselves to production of original American
plays. It was with that group that Eugene O'Neill gained
attention.
Then in the 1920's, a new kind of theater developed.
Barrett H. Clark wrote:
Within ten years the American drama has come into its
own. What was a hope, an aim, a dream for more than a
generation is now largely a fact. What has happened
with fiction, science, commerce and industry, has hap
pened with drama, only most of us don't know it yet.3
Looking back from the perspective of 1947, Clark
stated that in 1920 "it began to dawn upon us that we were
already in the midst of what could be properly termed a
movement of some kind," and there soon emerged new writers,
Barry among them, who became regularly producing, serious
playwrights.3
John Gassner described the advent as follows:
2
An Hour of American Drama, p. 14.
3
A History of Modern Drama, p. 691.
46
O'Neill was not a lone star in the firmament, al
though no other American playwright approached his mag
nitude. Spangled with a number of less luminous suns
and a host of satellites, the theatre of the twenties
and the thirties seemed a veritable galaxy. The effect
of this splendid display cannot be described in any
thing short of a book devoted solely to it.
The causes of this sudden blaze in the American
theatre were those operative in O'Neill's case supple
mented by other factors that fired different tempera
ments. Inhibitions were removed to a great extent; the
genteel tradition dwindled; censorship practically van
ished in New York . . . and the comparative relaxation
of conventions that resulted from the prosperity and
cosmopolitanism of the twenties encouraged dramatists
to write as they pleased. This situation prevailed
even in the depressed thirties, owing to the, example of
the previous decade and to the tradition of political
democracy which has made the American theatre of the
past decade the freest in the world; nowhere else has
it been possible to perform such incendiary drama as
here or to travesty the ruler of the state as freely.4
Many other writers spoke of the new mood, the new
quality, the new purpose, the new range, or the new vigor
of the theater. Alan Downer wrote of the new realism:
After the American theater tardily recognized the
spirit of realism which inspired the new drama of Eu
rope, it matured and expanded rapidly. In the twenties
it was regularly surpassing in quality and seriousness
those theaters that had been its mentors. During the
years from 1920 to 1950 there were few playwrights from
abroad to contest the superiority of such Americans as
O'Neill, Barry, Howard, and Sherwood in the drama of
realism.^
4Masters of the Drama, p. 663.
^Fiftv Years of American Drama, p. 92.
47
The new playwrights who wanted to create dramatic
literature were helped by radio and motion pictures which
were beginning to satisfy public demand for pure entertain
ment. The prosperity of the 1920's made the theater pros
perous; by the middle of the decade there were as many as
sixty theaters running simultaneously in New York. Better
staging, more informed criticism, and greater national
self-confidence increased the quality of drama and made
possible experimentation.
It was, then, an active and exciting decade in
which Barry became a part of American theater. And Barry
was active; seven of his plays and his one collaboration
were produced on Broadway in the 1920's. They were not the
popular fast-action comedies such as those of Kaufman and
Connelly, nor were they the searching dramas of O'Neill or
Howard. Barry's characters and themes were not drawn from
the broad spectrum of society as were those of other writ
ers; instead he drew, to great advantage, upon that small
portion of society which had accumulated great wealth.
Problems of marriage and career that confronted the chil
dren of wealthy parents gave rise to conflicts within in
dividuals, conflicts among members of each generation, and
conflicts between generations in the four most successful
48
plays: You and 1 (1923), The Youngest (1924), Paris Bound
(1927), and Holiday (1928).
Barry's collaboration with Elmer Rice, Cock Robin
(1928), was a moderately successful melodrama, written to
prove that potboilers succeed and serious efforts fail.
Both men had had recent failures: Barry's were In a Garden
(1925), a psychoanalytic comedy; White Wings (1926), a fan
tasy conflict between the old order of the horse and the
new order of the automobile; and John (1927), a tragedy
about John the Baptist.
In the 1930's Broadway theater floundered. The
Group Theatre, and other similar organizations, arose to
produce plays of social criticism and to develop a clien
tele for those plays. Many playwrights grew bitter and an
gry, expressing themselves through militant protest plays
against the system. Barry wrote no such plays; indeed, one
might read Barry's plays without being made aware that
there was a depression. During that decade he continued to
write comedies about the well-to-do (some of the characters
struggled, but they were the artists, writers, and musi
cians who must always struggle) and to search for spiritual
meaning in other plays. Although there was no money avail
able for experimentation, Barry's reputation was such that
49
he found producers for all his plays.
Again, Barry was represented on Broadway eight
times during the decade. There were two successful come
dies, The Animal Kingdom (1932) and The Philadelphia Story
(1939); another comedy, The Joyous Season (1934), was a
failure. Two dramas were peopled by essentially the same
characters but placed in different settings: Hotel Universe
(1930) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931). Hotel Universe
and Here Come the Clowns (1938), a drama, involving show
people and set in a speakeasy, were unsuccessful at the box
office but stirred critical excitement and drew extreme
praise and censure. Bright Star (1935), a tragedy, and
Spring Dance (1936), an adapted farce, were decided fail
ures .
The Philadelphia Story, Barry's greatest commercial
success, ended the 1930's, and the threat of war in Europe
turned attention away from the wealthy set and their prob
lems. The war brought different attitudes and different
emphases to Broadway. The war also brought higher produc
tion costs and a greater number of people to New York; the
results were long runs and ticket speculation, closing off
the opportunity known to playwrights in the 1920's and
1930's.
50
Barry was aware of the rise of Naziism, which he
portrayed in Liberty Jones (1941), an unsuccessful allegory,
and he wrote a moderately successful comedy, Without Love
(1942), in part a comedy of manners, that had to do with
Ireland's involvement in the war. Foolish Notion (1945), a
comedy-fantasy, showed the imagined and real return of a
man missing in action; the play's moderate success was at
tributed by most reviewers to Barry's reputation and to
Talullah Bankhead's acting. There was another adaptation
that failed, My Name Is Aguillon (1949).
The theater of the 1940's was not Barry's theater.
Second Threshold was completed by Robert Sherwood
after Barry's death and was produced in 1951; many critics
felt that the play was a second threshold for Barry, that
it marked the merging of the serious and comic.
Philip Barry and the Comedy of Manners
Barry falls into no readily definable tradition of
American comedy of manners, for no such tradition exists;
indeed, Barrett Clark advises against looking:
It is my belief that some confusion has been added
to the records of our native playwriting--as indeed to
all literary history— by a too easy assumption that it
follows some more or less logical course of evolution,
or that such a course can be logically traced. It may
be justly said that Royall Tyler wrote an inept comedy
51
of manners in 1787, that Anna Cora Mowatt wrote another
and perhaps a better one sixty years later, and that
S. N. Behrman, eighty years after that, brought the
form to a very high point of development. . . . But
there is little if any evidence to show that each of
these three writers forms a link in any evolutionary
process.6
The bedroom farce and the clean comedies mentioned
in the last section preceded Barry, but there is little to
suggest that they were his models. Gagey (Revolution in
the Drama) and Krutch (American Drama Since 1918) and
others trace the chronology that makes Barry a part of the
movement from domestic comedy to high comedy. Satire— such
as that by Kaufmann and Connelly— and serious drama— such
as that of O'Neill and Rice— took different directions, but
high comedy treated the new attitudes toward marriage, sex,
and success with greater intellectuality of approach, de
tachment of tone, and brilliance of style.
Nothing less than a full study— perhaps several
studies— could identify the comedic traditions, compare
them, and trace influences therein that led up to and away
from Barry. The difficulty of separating farce from senti
mental comedy from comedy of manners from high comedy be
comes evident when— by any set of definitions— all four can
6A History of Modern Drama, p. 642.
52
be found in a single successful play. (The Osborne disser
tation cited in Chapter II illustrates the entrapment of
terminology; several definitions were quoted and Barry's
plays placed against each one, but nothing was gained ex
cept the observation that some fit and some do not.)
Concerning direct influence on Barry, more commen
tary can be found about the serious plays than about the
comedies.
Roppolo, tracing Barry's education wrote:
He read Schnitzler, Barrie, Hauptmann, and Ibsen as his
interest in playwriting increased, and they became his
models; but, of all the modern plays he saw or read,
Peer Gynt impressed him most. He admired the technical
proficiency of Fitch, Pinero, and Henry Arthur Jones;
but he found all three of them "dramatically false."
And he read— or continued to read— with growing enthu
siasm the works of Dowson, Wilde, Yeats, and Francis
Ledwidge.?
Again, however, that is not an observed influence
on Barry's writing.
Certainly, very few critics compared Barry with
earlier playwrights. Clark was convinced that Charles Rand
Kennedy's plays pioneered the way for John and that Eleanor
Gates's fantasy The Poor Little Rich Girl (1913) prepared
the way for White Wings; in comedy, Clark thought that
7
Roppolo, pp. 24-25.
53
Clare Kuiraner, with Good Gracious. Annabelle (1916), and
Jesse Lynch Williams with Why Marry? (1917), prepared the
way for Barry and others, but he suggested no direct influ
ence.8
Broussard found precedents for Hotel Universe and
Here Come the Clowns in the work of Molnar, Schnitzler,
Barrie, Ibsen, and Gorky, but here was no connection dis
cussed in terms of Barry's comedies.8
Even in work devoted to the development of social
comedy in this country, John Hartman did not place Barry in
a definite sequence. Some forty playwrights were consid
ered, and it was contended that Clyde Fitch, after long
preparation for him, established social comedy in Amer
ica. 1° Fitch and Barry did use New York society and simi
lar themes and are frequently mentioned in the same discus
sions, but neither Hartman nor other writers suggest any
stronger connection than that made by Roppolo above, that
Barry admired Fitch's proficiency but found him false.
8A History of Modern Drama, pp. 666, 679, 681.
^American Drama, p. 61.
^■®"The Development of American Social Comedy from
1787 to 1936," (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in English,
University of Pennsylvania, 1939), p. 29.
54
Many of the dharacters in Rachel Crothers's plays
could have been in Barry's plays, and two of her play ti
tles were used in titling reviews of two Barry plays ("Nice
People" by Joseph Wood Krutch for his review of The Animal
Kingdom and "Susan Minus God" by George Jean Nathan for his
review of The Philadelphia Story), but no particular point
of comparison was made. Krutch considered the work of
Rachel Crothers more nearly problem plays than comedies.
%
Philip Barry and Mr. Behrman represent, on the
other hand, an evolution in the direction of a more ab
stract high comedy and both are more cosmopolitan in
their outlook. Though neither is lacking in fundamen
tal originality both probably owe more than Miss
Crothers, not only to English comic writers, but also
to such continentals as Ferenc Molnar and Arthur
Schnitzler. H
John Gassner also felt that Rachel Crothers moved
away from comedy of manners and toward problem plays, and
Gassner also placed Barry outside the American tradition:
If any comic tradition is assignable to the respec
tive theatres of America and England, it may be said
that American humor has tended to be Jonsonian whereas
modern English humor has a kinship to the style of Con
greve and more generally, Sheridan. Philip Barry,
S. N. Behrman, and Robert Sherwood, it is true, may be
cited as major exceptions to this rule.^2
Alari' Downer made a similar assessment:
13~The American Drama Since 1918. pp. 163-64.
• * ~ 2The Theatre in Our Times, p. 284.
55
The comedy of manners with a few exceptions has never
been typical of American playwriting. The New York
Idea stands apart, and some of the lighter works of
Philip Barry (Paris Bound. Holiday, The Animal Kingdom)
and S. N. Behrman (The Second Man. Biography), but the
manners these plays reflect are neither American nor
universal. They are the conventional manners of high
comedy. The situations are remodelled from century-old
stock and the characters would be reasonably comfort
able in a Restoration chocolate house, Parisian salon,
13
or an Edwardian garden party.
From Krutch, it may be added that
Such plays are frequently called "comedies of man
ners" but in many, perhaps most, instances, the term is
a misnomer for it suggests that they are concerned pri
marily with the superficialities of human behavior
while the reverse is very commonly true. The ladies
and gentlemen who people them do, to be sure, usually
behave according to the laws decreed by the best soci
ety of the moment but they also tend to become abstrac
tions and to act out stories which repeat eternal
themes.^
In or outside the American tradition, society come
dy is always the same and always different. It is always
the same in that it treats the private values of a small
social group at a given time in history. The mode of love,
the giving and taking of mates, and the selecting of pur
suits that occupy the members' lives evolve into a code of
behavior, and the play demonstrates the foibles and follies
of that behavior. The public values of public figures— the
1 ^
XJFifty Years of American Drama, p. 113.
14The American Drama Since 1918. pp. 160-61.
56
kingly ethics of politics, war, and religion that are the
stuff of tragedy— do not guide comedies. Society comedy is
always different in that the code evolved by any group is a
unique application of eternal laws: the operative forces of
Restoration England dictate different ground rules govern
ing adultery, for example, from those of 1920 United States.
Whatever is argued to be the first, or best, comedy
of manners— a play by Menander, Moliere, Etherege, or Con
greve— it and all other contenders have in common the plac
ing of a portion of contemporary society on stage, just as
Barry put a portion of his society on stage. The charac
ters and situations recur in society after society but with
the differences of the times. The love-sick youth, the
braggart soldier, the parasite, the scheming servant, and
the miserly old man acted out their desires in the plays of
Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, and Terence, and moved, in
different lines of development, to the commedia dell'arte
and to the two outstanding stages for comedy of manners,
the theater of Moliere and of Restoration England.
Moliere's comedy of manners— or of morals, as some
insist— had central characters, each with a fixed idea, an
obsession, which gave the play its title. Any excess of
character— ambition, pride, infidelity, doubt,
57
affectation— could be the subject of a corrective comedy
set against the society of the day. The young lovers were
free to marry or the household to return to normal after
the obsession— the Jonsonian humor— had been broken.
Restoration comedy of manners— or of immorality, as
some insist— was set against the high society of London and
turned on the supercilious behavior of stock characters:
the faithless wife, the deceived husband, the dashing young
rake, the witty young heroine. There were no happy mar
riages. The faithless wife and the young rake became lov
ers not in a search for happiness, however, but as a matter
of convention; the affair was called for by a complex code
of selfish behavior, epigramatically expressed in scenes of
diversionary repartee.
Claims and denials of French influence on Restora
tion theater have been made, parallels have been drawn, and
differences noted in works devoted to those periods.
Traces of both may be found in*Barry's comedies. Some of
his characters show a definite humor— obsession with wealth,
position, or propriety— as did Moliere's people, but Bar
ry's plays are closer to the more realistic Restoration
comedy. The similarity may be noted in the following
statement, which is as applicable for a study of Barry's
plays as it is for Norman N. Holland's study of Restoration
comedy in which it appearsi "The eleven comedies with which
this book deals are about the conflict between 'manners'
(i.e., social conventions) and anti-social 'natural* de
sires."15 Holland considers that conflict a theme running
throughout Restoration life and peculiar to the Restoration,
that earlier man felt no conflict between appearance and
nature and later man habitually assumed the conflict so
that twentieth century man is almost unconscious of it.
Barry's characters, however, as sophisticated as they may
be, are caught up in that very conflict. They are among
the few in their society who are so freed from material
concern and so expected to observe convention that the con
flict pushes its way into consciousness, and they face that
conflict in realistic but detached terms of the 1920's.
If Barry's themes are less abstract than Moliere's,
they are, however, as moral. A few critics thought that
Barry advocated adultery in Paris Bound, The Animal Kingdom,
and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, but their number was exceeded by
critics who saw those plays as dramatic defenses of the
^ The First Modern Comedies; the Significance of
Ethereqe, Wycherly and Congreve (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 4.
59
Roman Catholic Church's placing the sacrament of marriage
above all individual acts.
Barry did let his comedy characters go unpunished,
which is the offense for which the Restoration comedies
earned the opprobrium of Jeremy Collier, Macaulay, and all
those who reject Restoration comedy as immoral or evil.
But comedy has ever needed defending since the Aristotelian
pronouncement that comedy represents men as worse than they
are. John Palmer, first among modern writers, and Holland,
one of the most recent, are but two among many who have de
fended the worth of Restoration comedy— and indeed of all
comedy. Such men object to calling the comedies immoral
because they show a truth for that time, a truth that has
meaning which can be expressed in a play. The truth of
Restoration comedy is indecent, but the behavior of people
was indecent, and such behavior was, and is, sometimes re
warded and not always punished. So it is with Barry's
plays: there is no particular indecency but there are de
ceit, selfishness, and unconcern for others; ambition, op
portunism, and pride that ai^ not purged from the charac
ters in climactic revelation. Much of the critical dissat
isfactions with Barry stemmed from his supplying comedy
endings for his comedies. While Barry's comedy technique
60
was admired, he was asked to write drama instead.
Brooks Atkinson, sometime apologist for Barry's
plays, noted that attitude in his review of The Philadel
phia Story:
Why should comedy of manners be held in low esteem?
Curiously enough, it is. Students of world polity look
down upon it from a dizzy height and many people who
really enjoy it feel apologetic about their delight.^6
The continuing popularity of comedy in spite of the
low esteem in which it has been held attests to its
strength— whether in the Restoration period or in the pres
ent. Comedy does, however, belong to a period and not to
all time, as does tragedy. We may understand and enjoy
Restoration comedy today, but the conditions that produced
it existed only then. And so does Barry belong to a period.
Barry's professional career extended from 1923 to
his death in 1949, but the comedies— even those that ap
peared later— are primarily of the 1920's. "The decade of
the twenties," in the terse description of Nevins and Com-
1 7
mager, "was dull, bourgeois, and ruthless."*•' The rowdi-
ness of the roaring twenties, the hopelessness and
16"Barry to Hepburn to Guild," New York Times,
April 2, 1939, Sec. 10. p. 1.
^ A Short History of the United States (New York:
The Modern Library, 1942), p. 462.
61
decadence of the lost generation, and the daring exploits
of a few attracted great attention, but the middle-class
materialism of Babbitt and Main Street was the prevailing
philosophy that made the period "dull, bourgeois, and ruth
less." It was a time of conformity to the national objec
tive of making and spending money. The idealism of Presi
dent Wilson was replaced by the business mindedness of Har
ding and Coolidge. The society that was built on and gov
erned by business and money venerated those who had had
wealth and position long enough to become accustomed to
them. It was among them— not among the Babbitts— that Bar
ry found his characters.
Barry then wrote what the Restoration period called
"genteel comedy," or "comedy of the upper classes."^® The
people shown were in the vanguard of society, setting fash
ions in clothes and protocol of parties, entertainment,
weddings, travel, and even establishing new attitudes con
cerning such matters as divorce and acceptance of women's
smoking. They were conscious of their position: some
strived to maintain it; others fought against it because
they were bored with, trapped by, or sensitive to the
18Holland, p. 12.
62
routine, demands, and practices of a business controlled
society.
The nature of Barry's comedies did not change after
the stock market crash of 1929. His best comedies of the
1930's still involved people with inherited wealth and so
cial position. Although such people no longer set fashions
outside their own circles, the conventions and traditions
of that society were not broken by the depression and recur
most definitely, after recovery, in The Philadelphia Story
(1939).
Barry did not find— even in the non-comic plays—
themes that came directly out of the mood of the 1930's or
from the masses of the 1920'^s or 1930's. It was noted in
the last section that one could read Barry's plays without
learning that there was a depression; there were many such
issues of the two decades of which there is no evidence in
Barry's plays: prohibition (although there was drinking in
the plays), post-World War I isolationism (Barry's charac
ters continued to face to Europe), the foment of farm and
labor activities, the national concern with radicalism and
the deportation of foreigners, the New Deal, and certainly
not the NRA or CCC.
In short, Barry's plays do not indicate all the
63
period but are very much of the period. And that is what
makes them traditional comedies of manners: they employ a
particular social group to act out an eternal theme. A re
view of a 1965 production of The Philadelphia Story was ti
tled "'Philadelphia Story1 Same" and sub-titled "But Times
C h a n g e . There is nothing peculiar to the 1920's or
1930's about a woman's timely discovery that she is about
to marry an unbending snob, but there is something peculiar
to the time about the way that Barry told the story, and
the play did not satisfy the reviewer.
There are those— Edmund Wilson, Thomas H. Dickinson,
Clayton Hamilton— who contend that America can have no com
edy of manners because we have no established upper class
with fixed standards, but for a segment of society to re
main much the same through boom and crash suggests a cer
tain stability. We do not have royalty and titles, but we
most definitely have an upper economic class and if there
is a lack of fixed standards, John Gassner suggests ”a
suitable compromise was effected when Philip Barry found in
the frustrations and petty rebellions of the children of
i9Margaret Harford, Los Angeles Times, April 27,
1965, part IV, p. 10.
well-to-do a fertile theme."2®
That fertile theme is necessarily a limited one,
for, as Hartman notes in the opening statement of his study
"Social comedy, or the comedy of manners, because of its
strict limitations and requirements, appears in America
less frequently than any other form of drama."2^ But the
general contention of the work is that comedy of manners
deals with social conventions and that we have developed
such conventions-that can be reflected in plays.
That is what Barry accomplished in his plays. He
held the mirror up to a segment of a society in a particu
lar time. His society comedies made him so popular that in
many historical as well as dramatic references to the
1920's and 1930's, he is the second-listed playwright. The
onset of the second World War did change the order of Bar
ry's society, and in today's affluent society the many en
joy privileges formerly restricted to the few. In the
genre in which he worked, Barry's fame had to be temporal,
but what earned him that fame in American comedies of man
ners makes an interesting and worthy study.
2®Masters of the Drama, p. 669.
21Hartman, p. 1.
65
How Barry built his comedies, what people he put in
them, and what he had those people say are the subjects of
the next three chapters.
CHAPTER IV
STRUCTURE
Philip Barry studied playwriting with George Pierce
Baker, whose pragmatic approach to structure is evident in
Barry's plays. Structure is made to serve character and,
in some instances, dialog by establishing situations in
which the characters and their bright conversations could
be displayed. Although it might then seem that the plays
are unstructured, such is not the case; the comedies follow
a basic pattern of movement that has persisted for centu
ries, for, as expressed by Susanne K. Langer, the rhythm of
comedy is the very rhythm of life.
There it is, in a nutshell: the contest of men and
women— the most universal contest, humanized, in fact
civilized, yet still the primitive joyful challenge,
the self-preservation and self-assertion whose progress
is the comic rhythm.
And more pertinent to the present study:
The embarrassments, perplexities and mounting panic
which characterize that favorite genre, comedy of man
ners, may still reflect the toils of ritual and taboo
66
67
that complicated the caveman's existence.^-
Of that rhythm there may be infinitely variable ex
pressions, but even the variations are built by pattern.
Northrop Frye made a similar point when he observed that
"Dramatic comedy . . . has been remarkably tenacious of its
structural principles and character types," and, after not
ing parallels between the earliest known and current come
dy, continued:
The plot structure of Greek New Comedy, as trans
mitted by Plautus and Terence, in itself less a form
than a formula, has become the basis for most comedy,
especially in its more highly conventionalized dramatic
form, down to our own day. It will be most convenient
to work out the theory of comic construction from dra
ma. . . . What normally happens is that a young man
wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by
some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the
end of the play some twist in the plot enables the hero
to have his will.2
*
In that "simple pattern," Frye finds "several com
plex elements," which can be applied to the plays of Menan
der, Moliere, Congreve, or Barry. A fifteen-point list was
made from those elements and compared with Barry's plays,
and, while it would only be an exercise in pedantry to
^Feeling and Form, A Theory of Art (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), pp. 346, 349.
2Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 163.
include such a point-by-point comparison here, it is inter
esting to note that application of nearly all points can be
made to nearly all the comedies. Frye's elements are drawn
from (1) the nature of the opposition, the parental figure
with prestige and power, whose "humor" controls the society,
and on whom the main interest of the play may fall; (2) the
action of the play, which turns on the struggle by which
the hero achieves his desire; (3) the ending of the play,
which is arbitrarily imposed at the expense of consistency
of character so that everyone is included in the happy end
ing, and no one suffers inevitable punishment, as in trage
dy; (4) the new society that emerges at the end of the play,
marked by some ritual, usually a wedding, and promising a
return to natural order wherein the hero will be happy and,
as the audience must believe, a more interesting person
than his incomplete development in the play shows.
Those points, applied to Barry's plays, must be ex
pressed in terms of Barry's society as it was discussed in
the preceding chapter. A rather definite formula, or
rhythm, is found in the comedies. At the heart of each
play there is a courtship or marriage in trouble, which
provides a theme appropriate to the comedy of manners. One
dimension of the difficulty is the struggle by one or both
69
partners against the regimented demands of America's boom
ing business— built by hard work and with a reverence for
riches— and the regulated requirements of business-oriented
society. The opposition is provided by those who uphold
and defend that regimen. A few characters are caught be
tween the two camps, but, for the most part, characters are
either dedicated to defending an ordered way of life or ob
sessed with breaking that order to be free to live unsti
fled, creative lives in which they search for purpose in
personal terms rather than in society's terms.
In every Barry comedy there is a force— most often
brought by an outsider— that directly or indirectly precip
itates an action on the part of the pivotal character; that
action leads to an arbitrary happy ending in which— on the
surface— no one is hurt, and in which the right man and the
right woman have every promise of happiness after a wedding
or a re-establishment of an earlier marriage.
The pattern and its variations may be readily noted.
In You and I (1923), the formula is applied to an
extended analogy between generations. Maitland White op
poses the business in which he is trapped but by which he
is enabled to live well. He had wanted to paint but an
early marriage forced him into business, and his wife is
aware that he longs after art. Their son, Ricky, has
planned to go abroad to study architecture, but at the be
ginning of the first act is smitten with love, and— faced
with the choice his father faced, and with his father's ad
vice to choose architecture— Ricky chooses marriage. Freed
from the necessity of supporting Ricky in Europe, Maitland
decides to make a belated attempt to paint when an outsider,
one who has followed art instead of family, visits Maitland
after a twenty-year absence. Through a series of contrived
actions, Maitland finds a way to combine art and business,
and Ricky is enabled to combine architecture and marriage.
In The Youngest (1924), Richard Winslow wants to be
a writer, but his older brothers, father surrogates, insist
that he follow in the family business, conform to their so
ciety, and date the girl the family has selected. The out
side force is a girl— desired by the older brothers— who
forces Richard to fight. He finds his weapon in a New York
inheritance law that gives him control of the family assets
(an incident from Barry's life), and after using the weapon
to get his freedom and the girl, he agrees to let the
brothers control the business.
In the 1925 play, In a Garden. Lissa Terry's mar
riage is stifling her and she seeks a way to renew it. Her
71
husband, twelve years her senior, controls their life with
his obsessive belief that everything— including Lissa— is
sequentially predictable. The outside force is the appear
ance of a man Lissa had formerly found exciting, a man who
would like to take Lissa for his own. The husband attempts
to learn how strong that old attachment is through a con
trolled experiment, which causes Lissa to go away alone,
choosing neither man. Although there is no wedding at the
end, there is a new freedom: Lissa is freed from her con
trolled life and can search in her own terms, and her hus
band is freed from his obsession that he can predict and
control people's actions.
White Wings (1926), first called a fantasy and
later listed as a comedy, is not a society comedy, but the
formula is evidenced when Archie Inch bows to family tradi
tion and the old order (loyalty to the horse), which causes
him to lose Mary Todd, for whom he would have to turn to
the new order (the automobile) . When Mary rids the town of
its last horse, Archie is freed from a deathbed promise and,
in a moment, learns to love the automobile.
Paris Bound (1927) was the most nearly original
variation. Jim and Mary Hutton's marriage is threatened by
Jim's committing adultery. Mary has been one of those with
72
new ideas about marriage; she opposes, theoretically, her
society's rigid code of marital conduct. (Business is not
directly the controlling order.) Her response to Jim's
adultery— one outside force— is to call for divorce accord
ing to the code until she discovers that she can feel a
physical attraction for another man~another outside
force— without its affecting her love for Jim. A wedding
anniversary party is the ritual that marks the new life and
supplants serious discussion of the state of the marriage.
Holiday (1928) follows the formula completely.
Johnny Case wants to marry Julia Seton. Johnny does not
want to take a place in big business, but Julia and her fa
ther insist that that is the best of all pursuits. Julia's
sister, Linda, understands Johnny's yearning to take a long
holiday while he is young to find himself. The longing to
be free prompts Johnny to break from ordered society: Linda
follows, and there is every promise that they will find
happiness together.
Hotel Universe (1930), a drama, does not follow the
comedy formula, but it does follow a number of people who
are taking the extended holiday that Johnny Case wanted,
and the people do not find happiness thereby. Through an
outside force, a role-playing bit of psychoanalysis, each
73
person rids himself of a psychological block and sees prom
ise of personal fulfillment.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931) is a drama set in a
small college town in Indiana, but the people and the theme
belong to high comedy. Eve Redman is caught in a stifling
and unfulfilling marriage to a devoted but insensitive and
unimaginative husband, a successful businessman and horse
man who sees everything in terms of business and sport.
The outside force is a visiting lecturer who has an affair
of the spirit and of the flesh with Eve. The child that
follows fills the void in Eve's childless marriage, and,
even after the lecturer has— eight years later— used his
psychology to save the child's life, Eve sees her place as
with her husband who needs her. Again, marriage supersedes
adultery.
The Animal Kingdom (1932) follows the formula, with
the twist that Tom Collier is given a mistress (honest and
open and possessed of all wifely virtues) and a wife (self
ish and scheming and accustomed to using sex to win her
way). Tom's wealthy father wants Tom to demonstrate proper
manners in the accepted ways of business and society, which
manners and ways are to Tom unethical and parasitic. The
father is highly pleased when Tom drops the mistress to
74
take the wife, and the wife works to pull Tom away from all
his former, unacceptable friends and away from his hard-
headed, low-income artistic standards of business. Tom
goes part way toward surrendering to the business and so
cial control of his wife and his father before he recovers
his integrity and leaves the wife who sells herself for the
mistress who gives herself.
The Joyous Season (1934) focuses on the outside
force, which diffuses and weakens the structure. Almost
the entire Farley family has become obsessed with attaining
business and social status, destroying the old family zest
for warmth and naturalness in the process. As in The Youn
gest. a group of brothers are managing the family business
with rigid controls, and their control is checked through
an inheritance provision. The outside force is one of the
sisters (a Mother Superior as was Barry's sister) who re
turns after a long absence, and who may take any of the
family property she wishes. With that as a lever, the peo
ple are moved to introspection and retrospection, and there
is promise of a happier and better life for all the family
as a result of miraculous transformations: the marriages
that were weak are strengthened, and the marriage that
snobbishness had blocked will occur.
75
The Philadelphia Story (1939) focuses on the block
ing character, Tracy Lord, who defends the ordered way of
life more strongly than do her parents, and she is planning
to marry a man who is even more concerned with appearance.
Tracy's first husband would like to see her break her icy
superiority— if not for him, for some one else. A magazine
reporter sent to cover the wedding arouses the woman in
Tracy, which drives away the husband-to-be, and the new
Tracy re-marries her first husband, who is the right man.
Without Love (1942), with its double plot, did not
follow the formula as closely as did the other comedies.
There is a marriage of convenience that becomes a marriage
of love between two people who had both resolved to remain
apart from marital involvement. It could be said that the
man is the outside force that breaks the woman's observance
of tradition, but for both of them the outside force is the
other plot, the man's attempt to involve Ireland in the war.
The play ended with the promise of a good marriage but
without Ireland committed to war.
Second Threshold (1951) follows traditional struc
ture by focusing on the blocking character. Josiah Bolton,
a retired diplomat, is obsessed with his own uselessness,
which has caused an estrangement between him and his
76
daughter, Miranda. Miranda has developed an attachment
with a man her father's age and plans to marry him. Toby
Wells, a young doctor and friend of the family, causes Mi
randa to see that she must help her father. The outside
force is Thankful Mather, a Bennington freshman, who, as a
house guest, brings in the right note of freshness to break
Josiah's despondency. Her father restored, Miranda real
izes that she does not want to marry the older man, but
does want to marry Toby, and the end of the play promises a
threshold or second threshold to happiness and purposeful
ness.
Thus, in broad outlines, may be seen the consisten
cy of the comedies. Barry, himself, was reported to have
said: "Strangely enough, I have written the same play over
again and again, as you must have discovered already.
The themes, the people, and the actions remain much the
same; the emphasis and the details are changed. In terms
of the questions concerning structure posed in Chapter I,
the themes are appropriate to the comedy of manners, and
they are developed through simplified and unified plot
^Sterling P. Kincaid, Jr., "A Dramaturgic Analysis
of the Plays of Philip Barry" (unpublished Master's thesis,
University of Southern California, 1934), p. 347.
77
structure.
Unity is achieved through singleness of purpose;
each play shows one thing. Even in You and I. wherein em
phasis is divided between father and son, there is unity
because the son parallels the father. There is a certain
diffusion of plot in The Youngest and The Joyous Season
(and in Hotel Universe) because several persons and their
problems must be affected by the central action. The one
notable exception, Without Love, carries two distinct
plots— the love story and the war story— either of which
could be emphasized and neither of which is necessarily re
lated to the other. The dissatisfaction of the critics
with the play's lack of balance was most pointedly ex
pressed by Joseph Wood Krutch, who charged that using the
war as an excuse to get two people to bed borders on bad
4
taste.
Barry generally used a conventional three-act
structure for the comedies, with a few scene divisions,
which practice aided unity. He did use other forms; John
is a five-act tragedy; Liberty Jones is a two-act allegory;
Hotel Universe is a one-act, full-length drama; White Wings
4"A Vehicle for Miss Hepburn," Nation. CLV (Novem
ber 21, 1942), 553-54.
78
first was divided into four acts and later into three acts
with four scenes; Foolish Notion had separate scenes to
show how different characters imagine a coming event; Sec
ond Threshold as revised appeared in two acts of two scenes
each, but as Robert Sherwood stated in the preface to the
printed version, Barry's notes contained more than thirty
titles (other plays also had many title changes), all thir-
C
ty accompanied by the words, "A Comedy in Three Acts."
Action was usually confined to a limited period of
time, in a few instances to twenty-four hours. In You and
I. and Paris Bound, the first and second acts are separated
by a much greater time span than are the second and third
acts. The Animal Kingdom, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and With
out Love, with six, nine, and seven scenes follow no tele
scoping pattern, but the time sequences are clear. In a
number of plays, passing time is marked— while characters
wait for an hour of arrival or departure, advent or conclu
sion— and attenuated to heighten suspense.
Acts and scenes most often begin with an action: an
entrance, someone writing or playing a piano, a servant at
work; seldom does the curtain rise on a conversation in
^(New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1951)
p. x.
progress. The central character is usually on stage at the
opening, or is brought on soon thereafter. First acts be
gin at a point just before separate lines converge, which
reduces the amount of exposition necessary and quickly es
tablishes the conflict. The controversies are shown at the
outset, and through them the exposition is supplied; no
scenes are given over to exposition. First acts are crowd
ed with coincidences, which would strain belief except that
all the events might occur at some time, if not all at the
same time. In You and I. for example, Ricky, prompted by
one kiss, proposes marriage to a girl he has known for
twelve years, immediately decides to throw over his plans
for study and take a job offered by the president of his
father's company, who is having dinner with them that night,
and while everyone except Ricky's father is dressing for
dinner, Maitland entertains a man who just dropped in for
the first time in twenty years. In The Animal Kingdom, Tom
has arranged for his father to meet his fiance'e on the
night he receives a radiogram from his former mistress an
nouncing her return from Europe. Paris Bound begins with
the confusion of wedding reception and departure. Holiday
and The Philadelphia Story begin with plans for a wedding,
with friends, relatives, and strangers appearing.
80
Second acts are much less frenetic and seem not to
build so much as to continue, allowing the minor complica
tions time to lead to crises. In You and I. Ricky goes
along working for the day that he will wed, but continues
dreaming about architecture until his fiancee breaks the
engagement; his father goes along painting until he chances
to check his financial status and learns he is in trouble.
In The Animal Kingdom, Tom continues to adore and remain
with his wife, ignoring the mounting evidence that they are
not well-matched and that he and the other girl are. In
Paris Bound, the Huttons' marriage continues without wrin
kle until Mary is given cause to believe Jim has committed
adultery. In Holiday, Johnny and Julia continue to plan
their wedding, ignoring the differences between them until
Johnny rejects the job that would make Julia happy. In The
Philadelphia Story. Tracy's wedding plans wait while she
talks to her former husband and the magazine reporter to
learn what an image she has.
Third acts take the characters and their crises up
to the point of climax where, true to comedy formula, and
as indicated in that discussion above, happy endings are
imposed. No one suffers punishment, and those who suffer
loss lose only what they would not enjoy possessing. The
endings are appropriate for comedy, although there were
valid objections to some especially weak and unworthy con
trivances. Many raised invalid objections, however, when
they called for the heightened confrontations, deeper ex
plorations, and stronger re'solutions that are obligatory in
drama or tragedy.
Thus far in this chapter, the generally consistent
formula for structuring the comedies has been described,
and the mechanics of implementation have been noted; at
this point the method and techniques can be revealed more
clearly through examination in greater detail of the three
most successful comedies— Paris Bound, Holiday, and The
Philadelphia Story— after which a few of the lessee devices
that characterize Barry's plays may be identified.
Paris Bound opened at the Music Box Theater in New
York, December 27, 1927, and ran for 234 performances. It
followed three successive failures— In a Garden (1925),
White Wings (1926), and John (1927, and many critics saw a
post hoc relationship between the failures and the return
to the comedy of manners form of the first two successes.
While Barry probably did resent the failures, Paris Bound
is more than a reaction; it was being written at the same
time that John was in preparation, and it is, for Barry, a
82
searching look at marriage, a subject about which he was
seriously concerned.
The treatment of the effect of a casual act of
adultery on a marriage provided Barry with his most nearly
original construction. The first of three acts occurs im
mediately after the wedding of Jim and Mary Hutton. While
the reception goes on below, preparations are being made
for departure on the wedding trip, and through the upstairs
sitting room passes a parade of family and friends to pro
vide exposition and preparation. Mary's parents had both
died when Mary was a child, and Mary was reared by an aunt
who never appears in the play. That permits parental em
phasis to be focused on Jim's parents, who were divorced
because Mr. Hutton had committed adultery. Bringing the
former husband and wife together for the first time in fif
teen years for their son's wedding is an especially in
spired and efficient way of introducing exposition. Their
son's marriage leads them to discuss their own marriage: Mr.
Hutton insists that his following a physical impulse in no
way affected the beautiful bond of marriage, which estab
lishes a province shared only by husband and wife; the for
mer Mrs. Hutton (now Mrs. White) argues that his act of
adultery broke that bond and let someone else into their
83
province. Jim enters the discussion and thinks that it was
rather narrow of his mother to end the marriage.
When Jim and Mary are alone, Mary tells Jim, "I've
got a lot of bum theories about marriage. You've never
heard them" (1.38).® Although the nation's divorce rate
indicates that many couples do not consider such questions
before marriage, and although Barry's characters do not en
gage in deeply personal discussion, the line is quite weak
ly motivated, and the scene quite weak. It seems that a
playwright of Barry's skill would have found a more plausi
ble way to introduce Mary's ideas; when the alternatives
are considered, however, it becomes clear that the con
struction is decidedly superior to inclusion of a scene set
prior to the wedding, or to exposing those ideas in a later
scene. Mary does not "believe much in monopolies" (1.38);
in short, she holds the opinions expressed by Mr. Hutton,
from whom she has, in part, taken them.
Mary has an immediate opportunity to test her theo
ry because one of the bridesmaids, Noel Farley, had wanted
Jim and is now making a spectacle at the reception; she
g
Act and page numbers for all plays refer to Samuel
French's standard acting editions except for Second Thresh
old. published in one edition by Harper and Brothers.
84
will listen to no one else, so Mary insists that Jim see
her. Fanny Shippan, another bridesmaid, and Nora Cope,
matron-of-honor, who have charged each other with not let
ting Mary and Jim know what is happening, are the ones who
inform Mary and Jim of what is happening.
From the singly, complication of insisting that Noel
be brought in, and from the simple revelation that she is
aware that there was talk about Jim and Noel, Mary moves
into an expansion of her generous theories about marriage:
knowing that Noel is in love with Jim, she wonders whether
Jim loves Noel, which she could understand and would not
mind, for it need not interfere with her or with her and
Jim; "Jim has the right to know as many women as he wants
to" (1.50-51). In response, Nora expresses the point of
view that Mary will take in Act II: Nora tells Mary that
wives get a "sense of ownership" about husbands very soon
after marriage and that Mary is in for a "fine about-face."
Nora asks about Mary's "right to know a few men," and when
Mary answers: "But of course.'" Nora looks for a moment and
remarks: "Another once-loving pair bound for Paris," which
is where that set goes for its divorces (1.50-52). Mary
holds to her theory that hers is the way to avoid divorce.
The scene thus introduces complication and
85
preparation most effectively. There is strong anticipation
for the appearance of Noel in the next scene, and there are
wonderment and concern because beliefs such as Mary has ex
pressed must be tested.
Jim does see Noel, who insists that part of Jim be
longs to her— not Mary's part— and that since nothing has
ever happened between her and Jim that some day something
will happen to permit her to claim her part of Jim.
After Noel leaves, Mary re-joins Jim and reiterates
her obsession that their marriage not fail. They pledge
that whatever happens, they will never quit each other. A
departure signal is heard; Jim takes Mary's hand and leads
her off-stage— a piece of business that is used to end each
act.
The complexity of Act I is not fully indicated here,
but it follows the general pattern of careful and complete
preparation in Barry's first acts. A series of questions
reminiscent of the radio serial immediately suggests itself:
Will Jim and Mary profit from the example of Jim's parents?
Does Mary truly believe the opinions expressed? What will
she do when another woman looks at Jim, or Jim at another
woman? Will Noel claim her part of Jim? What will be
Jim's response to Noel?
8 6
If Mary does hold the beliefs expressed, then there
is no problem, and no play: Mary will bless Jim for keeping
their marriage fresh through his contacts with another wom
an; Noel may claim her part of Jim for as long as she wants;
and Jim can have the pleasure of creating happiness for two
women. One of the conventions accepted by playgoers, how
ever, is that there will be complications, and it is a mark
of Barry's skill that he can use that convention to cause
the audience to ask the questions just listed, to antici
pate trouble and be eager to learn what form it will take
and how it will be dealt with.
Act II occurs six years after Act I and is set in
the upstairs music room of Jim's and Mary's town house. In
Act I there are several references that indicate Mary's
strong interest in music, for which she will have a special
music room, contrasted with Jim's lack of musical aptitude
and interest. At curtain's rise, Mary is discovered with
Richard Parish, a young composer who obviously can share an
interest in music. Seldom does Barry begin later acts with
a character not already introduced, but in this instance he
accomplishes several things thereby. Mary's interest in
music— if not in a musician— is shown and opportunity is
provided to reveal— rather transparently— what has happened
in the six years between Acts I and II. Jim makes an annu
al business trip to Europe, on which he will leave soon.
The births of two children and family illnesses have pre
vented Mary's joining Jim on four of those trips, none of
which explanation is necessary because she adds: "But I've
got some crazy notion that married people need holidays
from each other, so I'm making a firm stand" (11.73). The
two children are in the country, and do not appear in the
play. Barry, for the most part, presented no children in
his plays although there are references to children; the
one notable exception is eight-year-old Christian Redman
in Tomorrow and Tomorrow who does little more than cross
the stage twice. In Paris Bound, Barry accomplishes sever
al things with his handling of the children. First, the
marriage will seem stronger to most observers. Second, the
children are subjects of discussion and objects of action.
Third, leaving the children in the country.not only elimi
nates the necessity for children on stage, but also moti
vates an important telephone call, provides Mary with an
excuse to avoid a luncheon, gives Jim and Mary a focal
point and a place to go at the end of the play, and reminds'
the audience that Jim and Mary are people who have servants
to care for children.
88
The marriage is working very well, and Mary re
states her beliefs about marriage to Richard; she concedes
that Jim might fall in love with someone else and adds: "My
one fear in the world is that he wouldn't quite understand
how little it meant to me" (11,74).
That clear and definite statement is preparation
for the scene— about twenty minutes away— wherein Mary is
led to believe that Jim and Noel have been together in Eu
rope; the immediacy of the two scenes creates high suspense
in anticipation of Mary's reaction. Fanny, just returned
from a long stay in Europe, tells Mary that someone— known
by Jim but not by Mary— saw Jim and Mary acting very much
like newlyweds. Mary shows nothing while Fanny is there.
Jim is out of the room, but Jim's father is there and after
Fanny leaves cautions Mary against jumping to conclusions.
Mary calls the Farley residence and learns that Noel is
living in the town where Jim was reportedly seen. Mr. Hut
ton tries to convince her that there is no foundation for
concluding that Jim and Noel were together, but Mary needs
no further evidence; she knows it is true because she can
feel it in her bones. Mr. Hutton asks: "— And suppose it
were— then what?" Mary responds: "Then it's not me he
wants. He wants her" (11.109).
89
That response is, of course, a direct contradiction
of all that Mary has said she believes about marriage; it
is the response that Helen and Nora had predicted six years
earlier. Some critics felt that such a reaction is quite
natural for any woman and therefore something more than a
device to keep the play going, but other critic's consid
ered Mary's reversal arbitrarily imposed. Mr. Hutton's ar
guments— the same ones that both he and Mary expressed ear
lier— make no impression on Mary.
Mary agrees to say nothing until Jim returns? thus
suspense is carried across the interact to Act III, which
begins just prior to Jim's arrival. Mr. Hutton has come in
response to Mary's request. She tells him that she has
found out definitely that Jim and Noel were together, al-
though she does not give her source, and declares; "I'm
going to divorce him, Father" (III.127). They argue the
case at length, Mr. Hutton reminding her of her former be
liefs and of how much more she and Jim have had than most
marriages ever yield. Mary rejects, as a woman, her the
ories and indulges in a kind of feminine semantics to say:
"He went from me to her. He chose her over me" (III.131).
Each re-states his argument in several ways, but, through
anger and despair, their positions remain the same; neither
90
can find an appeal which will alter the other's analysis.
After Mr. Hutton leaves, and the audience is left
wondering how Mary will tell Jim that she wishes a divorce,
Richard arrives, bringing complication and crisis when he
tells Mary that he loves and wants her. She dismisses the
idea and resists his assertion that she also wants him.
When, at last, Richard draws her to him and they kiss, she
thinks that that cannot be happening to her. She asks him
to go, and his response is a restatement of what Noel told
Jim in Act I, that the mutual attraction will continue un
til the two are brought together, after which it will, and
must, be finished. She cannot understand how she can love
Jim and feel physical attraction for Richard, and his re
sponse is a restatement of Mr. Hutton's contention that the
province of marriage is not affected by what happens out
side it. They are interrupted by Fanny and the Copes, and
Jim arrives while they are all there. When Jim and Mary
are alone, Mary starts several times to tell Jim something
but he will not listen; even when she cannot say that she
loves him and makes her final attempt to get him to listen,
he says:
Stop it.' (Then.) Look here, darling— I don't ever
want to hear any bad news about us, do you understand?
(She nods, dumbly.)— There's nothing can ever affect us.
91
you know— nothing in this world— Is there? (III.176)
After a pause, she answers: "No. I expect there's
not" (III.177). Thus, the climax is reached and passed as
they become excited about a sixth anniversary party and
give way to Jim's impulse to drive to the country to see
the children even though they will arrive two hours before
the children are awake. True to the comedy of manners,
deep personal exploration is avoided in order to illustrate
a principle, even if the characters are inconsistent.
The structure, then, is quite well-unified. The
first act shows a wedding and prepares for trouble on the
husband's part. The second act, set at a crucial time af
ter there has been opportunity for that trouble to develop,
shows what has been prepared for, indicates the conflict
produced thereby, and prepares further for trouble on the
wife's part. The third act, set at a crucial time after
the second act, shows what the second act has prepared for
and resolves the conflict in terms of the several arguments
advanced throughout the play. The anniversary party will
serve as the ceremony which will begin the new life, for
they have successfully passed the test. The structure is
furthered tightened by making Mary the only variable in the
play. The positions held by the others do not change;
92
Mary departs her position and returns to it with greater
strength and understanding, and the moral is drawn that the
sacrament of marriage is something greater than any act of
either partner.
The play was highly regarded by Brooks Atkinson,
Oliver M. Sayler, John Gassner, Barrett Clark, and Stark
Young. Atkinson called it "a light, fluffy comedy of man
ners, full of admirable values," a play "for epicures."7
Sayler wrote that Paris Bound "marks the transition from
promise to fulfillment," and went into some detail concern
ing the casual mastery of plot development, praising espe
cially the ending, which he called "a rare but convincing
and efficacious combination of accident and common sense."8
Stark Young was just as pleased with the play and with the
ending, stating that Paris Bound "more than any comedy in
English that I can think of in years, resolves its final
comic surprise, its conclusion, with genuine invention and
tenderness."8 John Gassner thought it "one of the few
7"The Play, Philip Barry and Company," New York
Times, December 28, 1927, p. 26.
®"The Play of the Week," Saturday Review of Litera
ture IV (January 14, 1928), 515-16.
^"Dilations." New Republic. LIII (January, 1925),
273.
93
domestic comedies of our stage that possessed a truly orig
inal idea,"10 and Joseph Wood Krutch found Barry's point of
view "the only one from which true comedy . . . can be
written because it is the only one which makes possible
that triumph of the critical faculties over emotional im
pulses. . . .h11
There were those whom Paris Bound did not satisfy.
Francis R. Bellamy wrote: "In the light of the discussion
of marriage which is going on all over the world today, Mr.
Barry's play is absurd."12 Bellamy thought the happy end
ing false and that ignoring what has happened excludes the
possibility that Jim and Mary can build a marriage based on
spiritual truth. Richard Dana Skinner, in a mixed review,
felt that the play advocated the right action for the wrong
reason, that in Barry's attempt to show that adultery is
"not the only sin against married happiness, he practically
flops over to the other side by permitting the inference
that it is no offense at all,” the husband's showing no
10The Theatre in Our Times, p. 324.
11"A School for Wives," Nation, CXXVI (January 18,
1928), 75.
12"Lights Down, A Review of the Stage," Outlook,
CXLVIII (January 25, 1928), 147.
94
remorse particularly seeming to condone adultery.13
The sum of the critical response, however, was that
Paris Bound was a decided success as a comedy of manners
and that it brightly argues the Church's position on mar
riage.
From that variation on comedy formula, Barry next
wrote one of his most popular comedies, one that followed
formula point by point. Holiday opened November 26, 1928,
at the Plymouth Theater in New York and ran for 229 perfor
mances. In the play, a young man, Johnny Case, wants a
young woman, Julia Seton, and meets opposition from her fa
ther, Edward Seton, head of a wealthy banking family and
very much in charge of the society in which he moves. In
the first act, Johnny meets the family, including Linda Se
ton, Julia's younger sister, who is bored and unhappy among
the idle rich. In the second act, Johnny proves his busi
ness acumen, much in the manner of Grandfather Seton, who
made the first family fortune, and the engagement is an
nounced. Complication is provided when Johnny announces
that with his newly acquired money he wants to quit busi
ness and take an extended holiday while he is young enough
^~30ur Changing Theatre, pp. 35, 113-119.
to enjoy it to find out who he is and to formulate plans
for the rest of his life. Julia and her father cannot un
derstand that, but Linda can. The third act begins with
the revelation that Johnny has disappeared; he returns,
having been away alone, thinking, and has decided to yield
to Julia's entreaty to go into business. Just as it seems
that big business has captured another free spirit, Johnny
rebels at the ordered plan being laid out for him by Mr.
Seton. Johnny leaves, and as soon as Linda makes certain
that Julia wants her place in society more than she wanted
Johnny, Linda goes after Johnny, with every promise that
they will find love and happiness together.
The play is more simply and more tightly structured
than Paris Bound. No more than two weeks elapses between
acts. All persons concerned are brought together in the
first act for Sunday luncheon, and the action occurs as
they wait for everyone to arrive. in Act II, they are
brought together for a New Year's Eve party at which the
engagement is to be announced, but the action occurs in a
play room where Linda had planned a small supper before her
father took over. Act III is set on what was to have been
the wedding day, and all members of the family are at home,
waiting to hear from Johnny. The mechanics of each act are
96
very simple; the action is always moving toward a specific
time; in Act I, toward luncheon; in Act II, toward midnight;
in Act III, toward departure time for a ship to Europe on
which Johnny and some friends have booked passage. In the
second and third acts, suspense is heightened, and time is
stretched as the hour nears.
Holiday is interesting more for what it gets away
with than for what it accomplishes. Barry's characters and
language always received more attention than did his plots,
and there is no better case in point than Holiday. It is
as a Time writer scoring Barry's "hits, runs, and errors"
put it;
That Mr. Barry's score is so high is largely be
cause of his peerless tragi-comic technique. It came
with plenty of hard work, is unequalled among his con
temporaries. It also came from a sort of dramatic
fearlessness. He is not afraid to make his characters
say or do anything. Lines at which many a playwright
would blush and discard, Mr. Barry twists off with lyr
ic brilliance. Through his sparkling glasses, the
world about him appears or is made to appear subtly un
real, fantastic, wistful.^-4
It is so with Holiday. In the opening scene,
Johnny calls on Julia; their conversation supplies exposi
tion to establish that they met at a ski lodge at Lake
14"Angel Like Lindbergh," Time. XIX (January 25,
1932), 36.
Placid, that Johnny had proposed marriage ten days after
they met, and that this is the first time that they have
seen each other since returning to town. Johnny is sur
prised to learn that Julia is wealthy but is glad that she
is because he "had very definite plans for the next few
years, and at first a wife looked like quite a complication"
(I.10). Julia thinks that his expressed concern about not
having enough money for two is of no moment because he is
going to make millions. Johnny protests that he is not,
introducing the first complication of the play, which is
dropped without further comment.
Even in the opening few pages, one must wonder at
their having got together at all. When Johnny asks Julia
why she did not join him for breakfast on the train during
the return trip, she answers: "Miss Talcott would have
swooned away. She's the world's worriedest chaperon as it
is" (1.9). If Miss Talcott guards her charge that closely,
and if Julia is so controlled by Miss Talcott and propriety
that she would not breakfast with the man to whom she is
engaged, it seems unlikely that they would have talked at
all.. Conversely, unless Miss Talcott had left Julia com
pletely alone at Lake Placid, Johnny would have seen the
chaperon and should have realized that Julia was not a
98
working girl, even if he had no other indication.
Then, if they did talk, one must wonder what they
said that led to an engagement, for their conversation re
peatedly turns in opposite directions. The second compli
cation arises soon after the first, and the pattern contin
ues throughout the play, a kiss diverting each potential,
difference.
Eleanor Flexner termed that a "piece of hokum," af
ter observing:
The cause of the misunderstanding between Johnny Case
and Julia Seton would ordinarily become apparent in
their first serious talk after their engagement. In
stead, at the playwright's direction, they talk around
it until the moment Barry wishes to precipitate a show
down.
That is one of the character inconsistencies found
in comedy. Johnny must be a free and sensitive spirit— as
is Linda— to recognize the necessity of escaping the regi
men of big business, but he must have a blind spot that
prevents his seeing that Julia likes the regimen he wants
to escape. A parallel is found in The Animal Kingdom: if
Tom is as sensitive as he is presented, he would never have
abandoned the right girl to marry the wrong girl— even to
gratify animal desire.
l5American Playwrights, 1918-1938, p. 256.
99
In Holiday, since it is necessary to have Johnny
and Linda on-stage together, they are kept there on the
weakest of pretexts. When Julia goes to talk with her fa
ther and wants someone with her, she asks her weak-willed
brother Ned, who will be of no help, instead of her strong
sister, who has already expressed strong enthusiasm for the
wedding— and certainly Julia, who travels with a chaperon,
would obey propriety and leave the two men— but taking Ned
leaves Linda and Johnny on-stage together. When Mr. Seton
0
is about to interview Johnny, he has Linda stay for the in
terview although it has already been revealed that Mr. Se
ton is concerned about Linda's strange thinking, and it has
been made obvious that the brother yields to his father,
which would make him a concurring witness and keep the in
terview among men; but, again, Linda is kept on-stage with
(and to admire) Johnny.
When Johnny and Linda are alone, Johnny tells Linda
of his desire to stop working while he is young, which wish
he does not mention to his prospective wife until nearly
two full acts later. Johnny also tells Linda of Nick and
Susan Potter— his ideal couple— rand they are Linda's favor
ites too. (Barry characters often have some prior associa
tion with people met or mentioned on-stage. Ned, for
1 0 0
example, remembers that Johnny put him to bed when he got
drunk at a football game, although Johnny is presented as
one who has never taken any time off from work.) in the
third act the Potters speak of Linda's and Johnny's suit
ability for each other, but there is never any explanation
for their not having met, much less explanation for the
,4t
Potters' not having thought of introducing them. Of course,
Johnny tells Nick of his plans before he tells Julia, and
even with Nick's warning not to "try any enlightened living
stuff on this family" (11.48), Johnny still thinks Julia
will understand.
In the first act, after several references to the
family's use of stairs and an elevator, Barry's fearless-
m
ness is made most evident when he has Julia send Johnny,
alone, to find Ned's room in an unfamiliar house of five
floors, with the additional assignment of evading Mr. Seton
on the way. Further, Johnny is to return later and be in
troduced a second time by one of the two men servants who
got him to the third floor sitting room in relays the first
time.
Some critics objected to such artificiality of ac
tion, but others thought the theme naturally and plausibly
developed. John Gassner considered Holiday Barry's
"loveliest comedy . . . signalizing the revolt of youth
against the materialistic values rampant during the stock-
market boom."I® Richard Dana Skinner began his review with
"Salutations for the one well-nigh perfect play of this un
happy season, 1 1 complimented Barry for controlling nonsense
and fantasy as he had not in other plays and for making
whimsicality serve dramatic purpose, and concluded: "In
17
brief, Holiday is a masterpiece."
Whitney Balliet expressed the belief that Barry's
reputation would rest on comedies such as Holiday and The
Philadelphia Story, "which so easily and memorably peeled
off the impassive marble masks of the old-time American
millionaires."!8 Glenn Hughes considered the character
that did the peeling when he wrote of Barry: "In this dra
matic tale of the bored, rich, sophisticated American girl
who finds happiness, he discovered the ideal vehicle for
his combination of brittle wit and warm human understand-
16
The Theatre in Our Times, p. 325.
I7"Holiday," Commonweal, IX (February 6, 1929), 405
18"Philip Barry, Cosmologist," The New Yorker,
XXXVI (October 1, 1960), 128.
19A History of the American Theatre, p. 393.
1 0 2
Stark Young thought Holiday was a "definite, if
somewhat elusive" advance because, although there is "less
thematic accentuation," the "theme is more implicit in the
characters," so that the interaction of the characters pro
vides "the main progress of the story; the manipulations
and variants on the comic surprise toward the end are pa
tent and delightful, entertaining as plot and pleasing as
stagecraft."20
Barrett Clark did not think the theme implicit in
the characters: "The idea . . . dominates the people, who
are nicely ticketed by the writer, instead of being left to
21
work out their own destinies." Clark did find the play
written with charm, humor, and skill, just as Joseph Wood
Krutch thought the play witty and humane but with a plot so
simple that it made the theme fatuous.22
Other critics expressed similar opinions; most of
those who found Holiday inferior to Paris Bound thought di
vorce a better theme than business, but as Eleanor Flexner
wrote of Barry: "Most frequently his antagonist is
"Two New Pieces," New Republic, LVII (December 12,
1928), 96-97.
2^An Hour of American Drama, p. 113.
22The American Drama Since 1918, p. 167.
103
'business' and everything it stands for: its goal, way of
life, its hostility to originality and individuality."2- *
Barry was able to include divorce and business in
The Philadelphia Story, which opened at the Shubert Theater
in New York, March 28, 1939. It was Barry's most success
ful play at the box office (417 performances), although in
retrospect many critics felt it an inferior revision of
Paris Bound or Holiday. John Gassner and Barrett Clark did
little more than list it. John Mason Brown wrote that Bar
ry "tossed off The Philadelphia Story, that play, so pleas
ant at times, but so unimportant throughout, which can
boast as its truest and most commanding virtue the fact
that it brings Katherine Hepburn triumphantly back to our
stage."24 Brown was reminded of Paris Bound which he
thought a superior play, but even though he found The Phil
adelphia Story sometimes aimless, he saw evidence of "Mr.
Barry's surety as a comic dramatist," and of "what a gay
and intuitive mind is his and how polished can be his gift
for dialogue."25
^ A m e r i c a n Playwrights. 1918-1938, p. 249.
24
Broadway in Review, pp. 127-28.
25Ibid., p. 128.
Charles Angoff considered the play artificial, lit
tle more than a revision of Holiday, and wrote that The
Philadelphia Story brought back Katherine Hepburn and "the
realization that Mr. Barry can write only one kind of play,
a s l i c k y ."26 it was George Jean Nathan, however, who re
duced The Philadelphia Story to "a shuffling and uncertain
job of playmaking, suggesting a series of card tricks,” al
though he did find "some true and gleaming bits of high
comedy writing . . . of a maturity that the author hasn't
hitherto revealed."27
Brooks Atkinson's review was a defense of comedy
and a compliment to Barry for doing what had to be done
cheerfully "after the amusing fashion of a comedy of man
ners. "28
Significantly, Joseph Wood Krutch felt that Barry
seemed to be fulfilling his promise; he thought that the
play had a flavor of its own in its struggle "to illustrate
26"Drama: Veteran Performers Please . . . Seasoned
Playwrights Disappoint," The North American Review, CCXLVII
(June, 1939), 336.
27"susan Minus God," Newsweek. XIII (April 10,
1939), 28.
"Barry to Hepburn to Guild," New York Times.
April 2, 1939, Sec. 10. p. 1.
105
in terms of character and situation what is meant by such
words, at once cold and elusive, as refinement and integri
ty and decency of soul."2^
The play, despite a quite frenetic pace, is a rath
er simple set of substitutions in the formula. C. K. Dex
ter Haven, the young man who wants and gets the young woman,
has won and lost her before the play begins and is a secon
dary character in the play. The young woman, Tracy Lord,
who must get past the opposition to self-recognition and
recognition that Dexter is the right man, is herself the
opposition. Her superiority has made her disdainful of
Dexter and of her own father who, although wealthy, is a
natural man. She plans to marry a man, George Kittredge,
who is an uncompromising and priggish father surrogate, one
whose industry has brought him from poverty to wealth, but
who is more snobbish than anyone from the Philadelphia Main
Line into which he is marrying. The complication is pro
vided by two magazine reporters who have been let in to
cover the wedding in exchange for the magazine editor's
squelching a story about Tracy's father and his mistress.
The outsider, the magazine writer, awakens the natural
29"Miss Hepburn Pays Up," Nation, CXLVIII (April 8,
1939), 410-11.
106
woman in Tracy; they recognize, however, that they are not
for each other, and the planned wedding goes forward with
Dexter stepping in as groom, replacing George, whom an of
fended sense of propriety has driven away.
The structure of the play is quite tight, the ac
tion covering only twenty-four hours. The first act occurs
late Friday morning. Tracy, her mother, and younger sister
are working on wedding details. Sandy, a brother, tells
them that reporters are there. The younger sister tele
phones Dexter to come for lunch. Uncle Willie Tracy ar
rives for lunch because his wife is busy getting her house
ready for a party that night. George, the bridegroom, ar
rives for lunch. Mr. Lord, whom Tracy wanted to stay away
because of his affair, arrives for the wedding, and the act
ends as everyone, all at odds, pairs off for luncheon.
Act II is divided into two scenes, one before the
party and one after. The first scene permits Tracy, in a
series of conversations, to gain some appraisal of herself,
the commentary by others falling into a pattern to indicate
that she is a prudish, superior, married maiden. The sec
ond scene occurs at 5:30 a.m. Saturday. Tracy, for the
second time in her life, has had too much to drink; she has
provoked George at the party but continues to enjoy herself
107
in a scene with Mike, the magazine reporter, with whom she
goes swimming nude. She passes out as soon as she enters
the water, and Mike carries her on-stage just after George
has appeared to apologize to Tracy.
Act III occurs late Saturday morning; people have
already arrived for the wedding. Tracy does not remember
what happened the night before, and while all that is being
straightened out, George announces that he cannot marry
Tracy. After Tracy declines Mike's offer to become the
groom, Dexter takes over, and the play ends as the wedding
begins.
Like Holiday, it is a tribute to Barry's skill and
fearlessness that he can accomplish what he does. That
skill is seen in a number of minor devices found throughout
that characterize Barry's Work. In The Philadelphia Story,
to cover the father's absence from the wedding, Sandy's
wife, who must remain in a New York maternity hospital,
will send a telegram of regrets from the father, and the
mother must be caught without her glasses and ask the but
ler to read it aloud so that the magazine team will hear.
Although the father arrives before the telegram does, and
although there is opportunity to intercept the telegram,
the mother has it read anyway; besides the father's
108
apologies, the telegram includes a comment on the baby's
health.
In You and I. to get Maitland's painting looked at
by critics without Maitland's knowing, there is convenient
ly a party nearby attended by several art critics, at the
very time that Maitland takes a train to town after normal
business hours to accomplish what could have been done with
one telephone call to his broker.
And in both the plays just named, an even older
comedy trick is employed. Tracy, in spite of the telegram
arrangement, introduces her Uncle Willie as her father,
surprising all the members of the family thereby and making
necessary the introduction of the father as the uncle— the
deception being kept up for a full act. Another case of
mistaken identity provided a bright scene in You and I when
a friend of the family mistakes the maid— who is serving as
an artist's model— for a lady of fashion. Use of the maid
as a model is a contrivance based on Maitland's electing to
paint portraits, which places him outside the mainstream of
art of the period.
Barry's use of servants in general was economical
and arbitrary. Most of the households depicted have a full
staff of servants— butler, maids, serving men, cooks,
109
chauffers, and gardners— but seldom are there more than two
servants in a play. The remainder are referred to often
enough to establish that the family is accustomed to many
servants. Doorbells and telephones are answered by princi
pal characters as often as by servants. The inconsistency
is usually— but not always— neatly covered by dialog.
Just as many servants never appear, many other
characters, who might be expected to appear do not. In You
and I, Matey's employer, Mr. Warren, appears twice, once
apparently for the week-end; he is alone on both occasions
although there is reference to "the Warrens." in Paris
Bound, Mary's Aunt Grace, who has reared Mary never appears.
Jim's and Mary's children never appear. In Holiday,
friends of Linda's arrive for her party but do not appear
on-stage. In The Philadelphia Story. Uncle Willie's wife
never appears although Uncle Willie moves in and out
through the play.
As noted earlier, Barry's characters are repeatedly
made to know someone whose names are mentioned. In addi
tion to the examples from Holiday, in The Philadelphia Sto
ry. Tracy knows who the magazine people are; Mike knows
who George is; Dexter knows who George is. In The Animal
Kingdom, the mistress knows who the wife is. In You and I,
1 1 0
the Whites know all of the people who were at a party where
Maitland's painting was displayed, although apparently they
were not invited to the party. Seldom is any dramatic pur
pose served by such awareness, but the device is avoided in
Paris Bound when Mary must not know the person who saw Jim
in Europe.
One other characteristic of Barry's plays that
should be mentioned here but discussed under language is
the occasional passage of fantastic repartee, which is re
lated to, but not necessary to, the structure of the play.
In Paris Bound, for example, Fanny Shippan and Nora and
Peter Cope talk about Mary as if she were not present; the
audience is given some amusing irony, but the plot is not
advanced. Or, in Holiday, several pages of diversion are
given to Ned and Linda Seton's coaching Johnny Case for
meeting their father, but the scene does not advance the
plot.
In such instances, structure is subservient to dia
log. indeed, throughout the comedies, although they are
structured according to formula, structures are manipulated
to establish situations in which the special Barry charac
ters can be shown speaking special Barry dialog. Those
characters will be discussed in the next chapter and their
language in the one following.
CHAPTER V
CHARACTERIZATION
Philip Barry's play structure did not occasion much
comment, but his characters did. They delighted and'disap
pointed; they were praised and censored. To those satis
fied by comedy of manners, the characters hold up a mirror
to a segment of society; to those desiring deep drama, the
characters do not develop. The characters illustrate
themes rather than present personalities, and, like the
themes, they recur in identifiable patterns. In this chap
ter, the source and nature of the characters, the methods
of characterizing, and the character types, or patterns,
will be treated.
As has been indicated, Barry drew his comedy char
acters almost entirely from a definite and limited segment
of society. Alan Downer called them "the cultured, well-
1 1 2
113
behaved, quietly rich.Kenneth Macgowan classified them
as "ever-so-rich and ever-so-sophisticated." John Mason
Brown termed them "well-subsidized worldlings."3 Glenn
Hughes spoke of the Barry heroines as "the bored, rich, so
phisticated American girl who finds happiness."^ Edmond M.
Gagey, who considered "the manners of financial tycoons and
their assorted females" the subjects of American drawing
room comedy, wrote that The Philadelphia Story "shows
clearly" Barry's "predilection and sympathy for the leisure
classes, or what might be called American aristocracy."5
Barrett Clark made a similar assessment and praised Barry
for his accuracy of portrayal;
If Mr. Barry has not played around with the smart peo
ple he writes so suavely about, he is an even more fin
ished artist than I give him credit for being. Paris
Bound deals with sophisticated wealthy people; these
young men and women, dowagers and middle-aged men-aboutp-
town don't need to speak in well-rounded sentences and
be rude to servants; like the genuine nobility of Euro
pe, they play their roles without self-consciousness.6
difty Years of American Drama. 1900-1950, p. 148.
Famous American Plays of the 1920's, p. 18.
dramatis Personae. A Retrospective Show, p. 11.
^A History of the American Theatre, p. 393.
devolution in American Drama, p. 201.
6An Hour of American Drama, p. 109.
114
Carl Carmer also wrote of Barry's accuracy of por
trayal, finding in You and I characters distinctly from
American society, and discovering in Paris Bound— which
"pictured smart people as they and those who would be smart
like to picture themselves"— an accurate depicting of the
day's younger generation, "with its desperate frankness,
its heroic effort to control sentiment and to ridicule sen
timentality, its love of nonsense."7
Time included the observation that "Not only has
Playwright Barry concerned himself so far with writing
about only one group of characters— the domestic equivalent
of These Charming People— but these are the only kind which
attract him."8
John Gassner saw Barry's source and success in the
same place; Gassner thought Barry not unaware of the diffi
culty of adaptation in a world of change, but considered
him
more responsive as a playwright to changes of value
connected with the revolt of the young during the nine
teen-twenties than to major social upheavals and trans
formations. . . . His continued treatment of genteel
society kept him out of the stream of the Depression
7"Philip Barry," Theatre Arts Monthly, XIII (Novem
ber, 1929), 822-23.
®"Angel Like Lindbergh," XIX (January 25, 1932), 34.
115
period social drama to which virtually all other writ
ers of the generation . . . responded.
But the struggles that actually appealed to his refined
spirit were those that effected a change in manners,
which made him a writer of high comedy, and that in
volved personal values in private relations.^
John Mason Brown also noted that Barry's characters
belonged to a particular time:
When he started to write, life was far simpler than
it is now. How much simpler is made clear by the prob
lems which agitated the characters in his earlier plays.
They were concerned with what was then referred to as
"expressing themselves." Aside from the question of
divorce, the most agonizing decision some of them had
to make was whether they would go into business or fol
low Art (with a capital "A," naturally).^-®
Other writers thought that Barry created individ
uals, or used types; that he developed natural people, or
presented undeveloped, unnatural people. In a different
way, Richard Dana Skinner observed that just as Peter Arno
reveals his subject by distorting it, so does Barry know,
"in the same way, how to comment on character with mild
distortion and without trace of preachiness."H Joseph
Wood Krutch said something similar when he credited Barry
Q
^Masters of Drama, p. 88.
10"The American Barry," Saturday Review of Litera
ture. XXXII (December 24, 1949), 26.
^Our Changing Theatre, p. 113.
116
with generating "that atmosphere in which comedy lives,
breathes, and has its being," and said of the people in
that atmosphere:
They make us believe, almost if not quite, in the real
existence of that world of delicious suavity, of free
but decorous play of the intellect toward which sophis
ticated societies are always striving. Though that
world is never reached by any beings of flesh and blood,
it is the business of comedy to imagine it in order
that we may have an image of the ideal of civilized hu
man intercourse and, also, that we may find in this
world of idealized manners some compensation for the
crudities of the real one in which we live.12
There, perhaps, is the approach through which all
conflicting commentary— that which has gone before and that
which will follow— may be reconciled. Barry characters are
unreal, but they are abstracted from a reality which they
bring to mind. That reality is the United States of the
1920's; it is not omnipresent. Because the abstraction is
in terms of the 1920's, the characters seem more nearly
real than, say, Restoration comedy characters. Certainly,
character names do not indicate characteristics: there is
no Flutter, Flippant, Wilfull, Addleplot, Plyant, or Pinch-
wife. Each character in Barry's plays does, however, rep
resent a single trait, rather than a complex of traits.
That dominant trait is established to work out the theme;
12American Drama Since 1918, pp. 168-69.
117
if a character needs to be pulled two ways, he is given a
secondary trait, but each character serves a specific pur
pose in the plotting of the theme, and there is no charac
ter development, no character study as such.
Many of the compliments as well as the complaints
evoked by Barry's characters are invalid, the compliments
because the abstraction was successful enough as a symbol
to evoke the image of a whole person, the complaints be
cause the critic called for the characterization in depth
found in drama or tragedy. Turning to the plays emphasized
in this study, Richard Dana Skinner found in Holiday "a
perfection of characterization which convinces us that we
are dealing with individuals and not with age-old types.
Stark Young wrote that the theme in Holiday is "implicit in
the characters, and it derives from them," that "they ap
pear to be so much what they are that their action on one
another takes care of itself."^ Conversely, Barrett Clark
held that "the idea underlying Holiday . . . dominates the
people, who are nicely ticketed by the writer, instead of
13pur Changing Theatre, p. 115
"Two New Pieces," New Republic, LVII (December 12,
1928), 96.
118
being left to work out their own destinies."*-5 Of course,
the characters are "ticketed"; they must be in order to
reach their thematic destination. Johnny Case, in his at
tempt to avoid the clutches of big business, must be tempo
rarily caught in the clutches of a girl who would keep him
in big business; he must recognize what she is, he must es
cape, and he must be provided with a girl who will help him
escape. They cannot be left to work out their own desti
nies; one or more of them might take other courses of ac
tion. Clark complains that the writer has done what is
necessary. Skinner and Young, on the other hand, have in
dividualized the abstracted symbols of the idealistic young
man, the idealistic young woman, and the scheming young wo
man, and made them particular people.
Of Paris Bound. Brooks Atkinson wrote: "For this is
comedy that extols character above thesis," and added that
Barry "understands his characters and their motives."*-6
Stark Young found Paris Bound the "best example to be had
. . . of that really adequate creation on the stage of peo
ple such as most of know in life, a certain lovable and
15
An Hour of American Drama, p. 113.
^"The Play, Philip Barry and Company," New York
Times. December 28, 1927, p. 26.
119
alive society. . . ."^7 Carl Carmer was exasperated by the
"never-ending stock of second-hand speeches and atti
tudes. "1® Francis R. Bellamy charged that in Paris Bound
Barry's "characters do not add one cubit to their spiritual
stature during the entire course of the play, and, in fact,
seem decidedly to shrink," for Jim and Mary do not discuss
bases for building or re-building their marriage, but "pre
fer to dodge the issue.Again, the writer did what was
necessary. At a time when divorce was becoming fashionable
and new theories of love and marriage were being propound
ed, a young woman with new theories is given a husband and
opportunity to test her theories. She abandons them, tem
porarily, and re-adopts them when her husband acts accord
ing to the theory that she has only spoken. If Jim and
Mary face the issue, go through marriage counseling proce
dures, then Paris Bound becomes a problem play, a drama, a
tragedy, but not high comedy. Because the theme was cur
rent, because the question was one faced by every young
"Dilations," New Republic. LIII (January 25,
1928), 273.
lft
Carmer, p. 824.
"Lights Down, A Review of the Stage," Outlook.
CXLVIII (January 25, 1928), 147.
120
married couple, the abstraction could be individualized,
and the representation could seem a presentation; because
the characters are abstractions, they could seem superfi
cial.
Of The Philadelphia Story. Joseph Wood Krutch wrote
that the play "seems to me to do successfully what 'Holi
day, ' for example, failed to accomplish. Certain of its
characters are 'nice people' and certain are not. But for
once that vulgar phrase seems to have a real meaning."20
George Jean Nathan found the characters "familiar" and,
with minor exception, "largely out of a score of stage
drawing rooms."
It is Barry's sly trick, however, to conceal the
fundamental obviousness of these character stencils
from his average customer by treating them elliptically
and, further, by now and again causing them suddenly to
act in a manner foreign to their natures, which any
more honest, if duller, playwright would never per
mit . 21
Again, the writer has done what is necessary. It is to be
shown that Tracy Lord is fundamentally and potentially a
warm and natural woman in spite of her wealth and
20"Miss Hepburn Pays Up," Nation. CXLVIII (April 8,
1939), 411.
21"susan Minus God," Newsweek, XIII (April 10,
1939), 28.
121
priggishness, and that George Kittredge, despite his humble
beginning, is basically a snob and a prude. It is then
Barry's skill, and not a "sly trick," as Nathan charges
that causes the hard-to-please Mr. Krutch to find a "real
meaning" in the character distinctions. And if the charac
ters seem "elliptical," that is because they are abstrac
tions; if they seem inconsistent, that is only in keeping
with comedy methods.
Barry uses several observable methods of character
izing in his comedies. First, he indicates position and
wealth by the setting and reinforces the appearance by dia
log— references to possessions, trips abroad, servants— and
by the servants themselves. The characters are made to ap
pear accustomed to position and privileges; they signal a
servant to pack a bag or set a few extra places for dinner,
or they call the man at the club to get unobtainable reser
vations, or they order one of several cars from the garage.
Second, a purposeful parental status is indicated.
Usually one parent is dead— sometimes both— or parents are
divorced. Both parents of Ricky White in You and I are
presented, but the emphasis of the play is as much on the
father as on the son. Ronny's parents do not appear but
are on the point of divorce. Both parents of Tracy Lord
122
appear in The Philadelphia Story, but the father is engaged
in an extra-marital affair, much to Tracy's disapproval— a
point to be discussed further. In The Youngest, only the
mother of the hero is living, and the parents of the hero
ine do not appear. In Paris Bound. Mary Hutton's parents
both died when she was an infant; that permits parental em
phasis to fall on Jim Hutton's parents, who are divorced
and whose cause for divorce is paralleled by Jim and Mary's.
In Holiday. Johnny Case's parents are dead, and Linda's and
Julia's mother— the one softening influence in their lives
— died while the girls were very young, permitting their
father's rigidity to be even more dominating. A similar
father is the only parent given Tom Collier in The Animal
Kingdom, heightening once again the conflict between busi
ness and artistic self-expression. Both of Tom's women are
apparently alone in the world. In Without Love, both the
hero and the heroine had been close to their fathers, nei
ther of whom is living. There is something of the father-
daughter relation implicit, however, in Without Love that
is part of The Philadelphia Story and nearly all of Second
Threshold. After Miranda Bolton's mother had died, Miranda
had assumed all the social responsibilities for her diplo
mat father and had become his intellectual companion, also.
1 2 3
A third method of characterization to be noted is
that Barry, establishes early in his plays the nature of the
characters and the direction that the nature will take.
The several contrivances noted in the preceding chapter
that kept Linda and Johnny on stage together in the first
act of Holiday readily establish that Linda is the good one,
even if the indications are not complete that Julia is the
bad one. Similarly, in The Animal Kingdom, there is some
indication in the first scene that Cecelia is not the right
one, and that indication is confirmed in the second scene
when Daisy, who is the right one, appears. Tracy Lord
first appears as a prig, but as soon as her even more prud
ish fiance appears, it is recognized that she is more wor
thy than the fate of marriage to him and must be rescued.
A fourth method of characterizing is found in the
occasions that are set up to permit persons to demonstrate
dominant traits. Dialog is, of course, the obvious means
for accomplishing such scenes, and dialog will be treated
for a few characters below, and for all of the plays in
Chapter VI. It may be noted here, however, that all prin
cipal characters and some secondary characters are placed
center stage for at least a short scene, which may or may
not advance the plot. In You and I. there is a good
124
balance of dominance between Ricky and his father and moth
er; and Ronny, as a pivotal character, demonstrates her
strength of will and her love for Ricky when she challenges
Maitland's decision to continue his painting instead of go
ing back to work for Ricky's benefit. Mr. Warren, Mait
land's employer, is given a few minutes to demonstrate the
prosaic nature of business. The Winslow brothers in The
Youngest, the Parley brothers in The Joyous Season, some
cousins of Linda Seton's in Holiday. Tom Collier's father
in The Animal Kingdom similarly illustrate how deadly the
life of business can be for the creative person. Mary Hut
ton in Paris Bound tells her husband of a few hours her
theories about marriage while the wedding trip waits.
Fanny Shippan has three scenes in which to show how clever
she is. Even Richard Parish, whose function in the play is
only to make Mary realize that she could feel a physical
attraction for a man other than her hsuband, has for sev
eral minutes at a crucial time in the third act the atten
tion of five people focused on him, one of them Jim who has
returned from Europe and for whom the others were waiting.
The number of times that Linda is placed in a focal posi
tion in the first act of Holiday has already been mentioned.
Linda's good friends, the Potters, whom Johnny also knows,
125
are given scenes of foolishness to show how much they enjoy
life. Tracy in The Philadelphia Story has a chance to dem
onstrate her superiority and her newly acquired compassion.
Her father has a chance to defend his affair; her first
husband has a chance to show his humor and his insight,
which qualities make him forgiving. The reporter and the
photographer get a chance to show that even without sophis
tication, they are quality people.
A fifth method of characterization is found in the
action, the forces that are set to work. Ricky White, who
is preparing to begin his architecture, has that desire
crossed by the wish to marry, and when he decides to marry,
that characterizes him very early in the play. Lissa Terry,
who hopes that her husband will break his deterministic
ritual but sees that he will not, is offered a way out by
another man; but her rejection of both men does not come
until late in the play, characterizing her— as she is
pulled between them— as one who has always been acted upon
and who has never acted. Mary and Jim Hutton begin their
marriage with a great promise of success, but the theories
expressed by Mary must be tested, and she is soon present
ed with opportunity to put her liberal theory into prac
tice; that she does not characterizes her as the selfish,
126
narrow-minded, possessive wife; that she drops that role
and returns to her theory characterizes her as the noble
person first shown. Johnny Case, an attractive young man,
is made more attractive to Julia because of his ability to
make money and is more attractive to Linda because he wants
to escape the business world, and the play shows his being
pulled between the two girls and what they represent.
Tracy Lord is shown to be unforgiving and intolerant of an
other's weakness by her remarks about her first husband and
about her father. She is given enough indignation— it is
added on; it does not grow out of her character— to deter
mine to cause the reporter trouble, for which she has no
time. Her first husband and her father are on hand, gener
ous and forgiving enough that reconciliation can be hers
for reaching out.
There is in each case an alternative, of course,
that is available to the character. Business could be cho
sen over art; divorce could be chosen over marriage; the
wrong partner could be chosen over the right one. The
choice is seldom in doubt, but one is always interested in
the way that the choice will be made.
Involved in the actions and alternatives, there is
frequently a retreat, a return to some place that was
127
important in the past. Ricky White, in You and I. retreats
to an upstairs playroom. Richard Winslow, in The Youngest,
wants to go back to the old house at Grand View. The plot
of In a Garden turns on setting up a garden scene where
Norrie Bliss and Lissa Terry had shared a few minutes many
years ago. Mary Hutton, in Paris Bound, has an upstairs
music room that is just for her. Linda Seton, in Holiday,
spends much time in the childhood playroom on the top floor.
All the characters in Hotel Universe go back to some point
in the past. A bank of laurel holds a special place in the
memory of Eve Redman in Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and that is
the place where she and Nicholas Hay have their brief af
fair. All of the Farleys in The Joyous Season are drawn
back to the old house at Good Ground. Miranda and Toby in
Second Childhood have a childhood summer at Christmas Cove
to recall.
The happy endings described in Chapter IV, although
part of the action, are, in effect, a sixth way of showing
— or avoiding the showing— of character because the final
action is imposed and not a part of character development.
Both Maitland and Ricky White achieve a compromise between
art and business or marriage; thus, the characters are in
complete, for the decisions do not arise out of the
128
characters. Richard Winslow has his way cleared to be a
writer and get the girl on his terms; his one show of
strength secures his position, and the brothers have what
they want as well. Jim and Mary Hutton re-establish their
happy marriage without ever stating that the marriage was
threatened. Johnny Case has the freedom he needs for his
happiness; Linda can follow him to find her happiness; and
Julia is left in the one world where she can find happiness.
Tom Collier will find happiness with his former mistress,
and the wife that he leaves has the money that she wants.
Tracy has promise of finding happiness with her former hus
band, and, although it cannot be said that her fiance is
happy, it is clear that he has avoided great unhappiness.
In none of those instances has there been any searching
struggle or decisive contest of wills that results in unre
deemed defeat; no true and complete development of charac
ter has been achieved, but in each case a theme has been
illustrated.
Two other standard methods of characterizing should
be noted here. First, revelation through comments by other
characters was made little use of by Barry. Perhaps that
in itself is a characteristic: the people do not show the
bad taste of talking about other people. There were
129
exceptions. Noel Farley is the subject of several discus
sions in Paris Bound. Ned Seton explains to Linda that
Julia is basically a dull girl, incapable of enlightened
living. In Second Threshold, it is necessary that Josiah
Bolton, who has reached the end of his hope and effort, be
the subject of a number of discussions about the state of
his health.
The other method of revealing character, the play
wright's textual description, was used inconsistently by
Barry. There were much longer directions in the first play
than in the others, and there was a general tendency for
progressive shortening, but some of the later plays had
longer descriptions than some of the middle plays. Exam
ples of Barry's descriptions will be included below to show
how Barry peopled his plays. As stated earlier, Barry most
often placed a young girl recently married or soon-to-be
married at the heart of his plays, and they will be treated
first. The young men with whom they were matched will be
discussed next, then their friends, and lastly their elders.
In many of the plays, women are the focal charac
ters, and in all of the comedies there is a girl who is a
pivotal character. All of them are young, slender, and at
tractive; all of them are intelligent, accomplished, and
130
socially poised. As such, they are much the same girl,
with some variations from girl to girl or play to play, the
chief difference being the value placed on positions and
possessions. So distinct is the Barry female that writers
were given to drawing composite sketches of her; one of the
more embellished is included here as an example. A writer
for Commonweal noted that Barry had written plays for "a
tall, boyishly flat young woman named Hope Williams," and
then for "a tall, boyishly flat young woman named Katherine
Hepburn," concluded that those two were Barry's ideal of
womanhood, and then offered the following description:
This ideal of Mr. Barry's is an American Diana in
platinum. Her breeding is irreproachable and her
wealth so entrenched that she can afford to disvalue
them. She is handsome rather than beautiful; forth
right rather than feminine; most at home atop a thor
oughbred hunter or leaning at a sharp angle, in dinner
pajamas, against an heirloom Steinway. Somewhere in
her near background is a psychic injury deriving from
parental or marital maladjustment which crusts her nat
urally romantic nature with a veneer of sophisticated
cynicism. Her true heart is ardent, militantly licit,
and whimsically fanciful.22
Some of those details may not apply to any given
character, but the total impression is generally correct,
even if that is not the way that Barry would have expressed
it. Barry did say in an interview:
22"Without Love," XXXVII (November 27, 1942), 144.
131
I admit that more so than any other living dramatist,
my plays have superior women characters and the plays
revolved about the women. I cannot explain any reason.
It is purely a matter of coincidence.^
Barry wrote descriptions of varying lengths in the stage
directions; the setting, action, and dialog, however, al
ways characterize adequately.
In You and I (1923), interest is focused on the
parallel between Maitland White and his son, Ricky, but
Maitland's wife, Nancy, and Ricky's fiancee, Ronny, are al
so analogous. Nancy had married Maitland, knowing that he
was setting aside art for marriage, and she has lived with
Maitland's sketches on scraps of paper as painful reminders
of his unfulfilled longing. When Ronny sees evidence of
Ricky's continuing and dominant interest in architecture,
she refuses to marry Ricky, which, aside from other points,
demonstrates the increasing independence of women. Veron
ica Duane is the first character to appear in the play, and
Barry describes her at length:
She is about nineteen, slim, of medium height, with
a decidedly pretty, high-bred face, lovely hair, lovely
hands, and a soft, low-pitched voice— whatever she may
be saying. Heredity, careful upbringing, education and
travel have combined to invest her with a poise far in
2 7
' ’Sterling P. Kincaid, Jr., "A Dramaturgic Analysis
of the Plays of Philip Barry," (unpublished Masters Thesis,
University of Southern California, 1934), p. 353.
1 3 2
advance of her years. .She has attained the impossible
— complete sophistication without the loss of bloom.
Her self-confidence is, you will be happy to know, free
from any taint of youthful cock-sureness.
RONNY (as she is fortunately called) was made to
wear clothes well, and she wears her present out-of-
doors ones superlatively so. There is something in the
ensemble— it may be a scarf, the marking of a sweater,
or the tongue of a shoe— that everyone will have next
summer: RONNY adopted it at Deauville last Spring.
(1.13)
Ronny is a pivotal character: her accepting Ricky
changes all the family plans, and her rejecting him changes
the course of action. She, herself, remains much the same
throughout the play: good and wholesome from beginning to
end.
In The Youngest (1924), there are two young girls
in the Winslow family— Augusta, twenty-eight, and Martha
(Muff), twenty-three— who are cut from the Barry pattern,
but it is their guest, Nancy Blake, who is the focal char
acter and the prototype of the Barry heroine.
NANCY is about twenty-one, slim, of medium height,
strikingly pretty, and altogether charming. . . . She
has been governessed, travelled and trained since she
was old enough to walk, and she has taken on the best
of it, and left the rest. (1.21)
The variant aspect is that Nancy has a theory about
human behavior, which causes her to wager that she can
transform poor, victimized Richard into a self-confident
1 3 3
man, and that is the action of the play. Nancy undergoes
no change in the play except to recognize that she wanted
to change Richard to prove her superiority and not to help
Richard.
Lissa Terry of In a Garden (1925) "is twenty-eight,
a shade above medium height, slim and youthful. In every
line of her one sees breeding and distinction— which serve,
in a measure, to temper the beauty of her face" (1.13).
Barry's description is shorter, but the qualities named are
the same. In the play, Lissa changes from one who has al
ways been acted upon to one who acts, and the true person
begins emerging at the end of the play.
The next play was White Wings (1926), a fantasy,
which treated street cleaners and had no wealthy, sophisti
cated people in it. Mary Todd, who is simply described as
"eighteen, gay, pretty, attractive" (1.4) fits the Barry
heroine mold about as well, however, as any of the others.
In Paris Bound (1927), the next comedy, character
descriptions are exceptionally brief, but the characteriza
tions are simple, direct, and precise. Context establishes
fairly distinct types, leaving an audience free to wonder
what they will do without having to puzzle over who they
are. The one character who does change— and that a
134
temporary change— is Mary Hutton, the bride. Since Paris
Bound marked a high point in Barry's career and is repre
sentative of his best comedy work, a fuller treatment of
characterization is appropriate.
A significant part of the context is established
before any dialog is spoken. The first act is set in an
upstairs sitting room, which indicates wealth. At rise, a
maid is discovered and from off-stage are heard the sounds
of a band, further evidence of wealth. Off-stage shouts
indicate a wedding, and almost as soon as that may be real
ized, Jim and Mary Hutton appear in wedding clothes to con
firm it. Barry's description of Mary is brief; he supplies
her age (twenty-two) and states that she "is lovely in her
wedding-dress" (1.3-4). Excitement and happiness are shown
in mutual expressions of adoration and expectancy. Thus,
within two minutes, the two major characters have been pre
sented in an obvious situation against a reasonably well-
established setting.
Within five minutes, Mary's characterization is al
most complete, and the context has been significantly
filled in. After Jim goes to his room, Mary's manners with
Julie, the maid, show that Mary is accustomed to having
servants; she has affection for and is considerate of Julie,
135
and both easily maintain the mistress-servant relationship.
Mary is shown to own sentiment as she is moved to tears by
wedding telegrams, and she is shown to be appreciative as
she tells Julie: "Everyone downstairs seemed to think you
made a good job of me" (1.7). Mary is also shown to be
somewhat playful, for when Julie responds: "You looked
beautiful," Mary counters: "Don't I still?" (1.7). All the
points just made are more definitely reflected in the fol
lowing few lines, which also establish that they are in
Mary's aunt's country house, that Mary's house in town will
be large, that each house requires more than one servant,
that those servants can be afforded, and that Mary is a mu
sician.
MARY. This morning Aunt Grace asked me if there
was anything in this house 1 wanted to take with me for
my house— and I said you.
JULIE. Ah, that was very kind.
MARY. We'll be back in two months. Would you like
to come to see me in town, in September?
JULIE. There's no one I'd as soon be with, Miss.
MARY. Then we'll call it settled, shall we? I've
got a room on the top floor there, for my music: I'll
want you to keep just it, and my room, and me. Is that
all right?
JULIE. Oh yes, Miss. Yes~anything— (1.7-8).
Thus, Mary is quickly characterized as young,
136
attractive, and well-positioned with some sensitivity,
charm, wit, kindness, grace, talent, and the poise and
self-confidence those qualities give. There is no need for
others to add anything, and they do no more than confirm
the viewer's first judgment.
Disagreement between Jim's parents about attitudes
toward marriage prepares for expression of two other as
pects of Mary's character: first, she subscribes to modern
marriage theories, and, second, she is concerned almost to
the point of obsession that she and Jim have a successful
marriage. Her liberal theories concerning other partners
were noted in the discussion of structure; she has pre
viously discussed the subject with Mr. Hutton and makes
known her opinion to Jim and to Nora Cope in separate
scenes of Act I and to Richard Parish in Act II. On three
occasions there arises the question of whether she will put
her theories into practice. First, in a scene in which
Mary does not appear, Jim and his mother disagree on the
point; obviously, the mother feels that Mary would not ac
cept her husband's having an affair with another woman
(1.28-29). Second, when Mary generously insists that Jim
see Noel Farley and calmly wonders whether Jim does not
love Noel at all, Nora challenges Mary's theories and
137
predicts (as noted under Strucutre) that Mary is in for a
"fine about-face" (1.50-52). Third, Richard's questions
about marriage, permit Mary to re-affirm that she would,
indeed, act according to her beliefs (11.72-74).
Mary's poise and self-control— befitting a person
of her station— are evidenced when Fanny Shippan unwitting
ly indicates that Jim has been seen with Noel: Mary neither
flinches nor wavers in Fanny's presence. After Fanny
leaves, however, Mary begins abandoning her beliefs and
moves to a complete reversal of her stated position. Al
though other characters suggested that such a reversal
would occur, there has been nothing in Mary's characteriza
tion, in her words or actions, that would prepare for it.
There are two defenses for the shift and for her deciding
later to divorce Jim. First, many people endorse abstract
ideas that are forgotten when close personal circumstances
obtain, and our society is quite conditioned to accept— in
deed, even expect— such changes from women, whether there
is or is not any basis for such attitudes. Second, the
character in a comedy of manners must personify a trait,
even at the expense of inconsistency. In Paris Bound, what
is traditionally regarded as the wronged party must recog
nize that it is her selfish sense of pique that endangers
138
what the two share in the marriage rather than the outside
act by the partner. It would not suffice, however, for a
comedy of manners to begin with one who holds the tradi
tional belief and to move that person to a new strength
through accepting and forgiving the other. It is satisfac
tory to begin with one who holds sophisticated beliefs and
to test those beliefs in a severe trial during which they
may be temporarily abandoned.
In any other kind of play, Mary's character would
be unacceptable as presented here. Even here, there are
some moments when she seems perhaps too superior: in Act I
when she decrees that Jim see Noel, and when she restricts
Jim from whistling: in Act II when she analyzes Richard's
music and the reasons he has not composed more than he has,
and when she dictates diet and medicine for the baby to the
nurse who apparently is in constant charge of the baby.
Those points are quite minor, however, and Mary is the one
character in the play who may have matured. She does not
speak new wisdom to Jim, nor has she sensibly sought help
from her aunt or from Jim's mother, who should certaialy
understand, but a character in a comedy of manners does not
do those things. In the last scene, she is shown ready to
confront Jim, then dissuaded from speaking, then happy with
139
his presence, then caught up in their former mutual enthu
siasm, and finally, when they are ready to go:
JIM. You haven't forgotten anything, have you?
MARY. Not a thing. Just my dignity.
JIM. That's not serious.
MARY. Who said it was? (III.182)
Jim may think that Mary is referring to riding in a
roadster at two o'clock in the morning as forgetting her
dignity, but an audience will define dignity as the pride
that would have made her divorce Jim and thereby give up
all that they have together. She has done what Mr. Hutton
thought his wife should have done; in a speech not heard by
Mary, Mr. Hutton tells his former wife: "I think you might
have struck a better balance if you'd weathered that one
rough stretch, as you should have. You might still be the
once-wronged wife, but you'd be ten times the person you
are now" (1.23). Mary is seen getting past that "rough
stretch" and past what she has considered the crucial sixth
year (11.87), so that there is promise that she will be a
greater person than she was.
If the inconsistency in Mary's characterization
bothers, it is perhaps because of the tone and level to
which Barry reduces her discourse: "If I mean no more to
140
him than that— " "If his love for me wasn't strong enough
to--" "Jim belonged to me. Jim was all my own." "He went
from me to her. He chose her over me" (III.127-131). Such
argument will be rejected, as it must be for the playwright
to prove his thesis. A person as intelligent as Mary could
abandon her idealistic beliefs and still retain some rea
soned objectivity as she examines the problem, but such an
examination would make it a different play. In this come
dy, Mary must be made to appear quite shortsighted for not
overlooking Jim's infidelity, and statements such as those
just given accomplish the purpose.
A second woman in Paris Bound. Fanny Shippan,
should be discussed below with other secondary characters
but is treated here because of the carry-over of character
and actress to Holiday. Hope Williams played both parts,
the second role tailored to her because of her success in
the first. Fanny Shippan of Paris Bound is about twenty-
three and is described only as "bluff, smart, likable" (I.
10). In her first appearance she addresses Jim's mother—
now remarried to a Mr. White— as "Mrs. Hutton" (I.11) and
promptly realizes her mistake; in her second appearance,
when Mr. Hutton is present, Fanny makes a special effort to
get the name corrects "Hello, Mr. Hutton— are you taking
141
care of Mrs. White all right? (Her hand flies to her
mouth)" (1.23). Her "bluffness" is twice illustrated in
that speech, for just before that greeting, she says to
Mary: "My dear, I'm the ninth richest woman under thirty in
North America, and if I can't give pianos for wedding-pres-
ents, I don't know who can." Again, when she brings gifts
from Europe, she depreciates her effort with: "Tush, child.
I could give pearls, and never feel it" (11.100).
She announces herself when she returns from Europe,
and in response to Mary's "But you look simply stunning'"
says: "If that means fat, I'll have your heart out ..."
(11.96). She amuses Mary and Jim with her deprecatory ap
praisal of Europe, reveals her growing skepticism about
marriage, and rushes out as she rushed in, but not before
unknowingly telling Mary of Jim's infidelity, her chief
function in the play.
Although there is no reference to romance for Fanny,
the impression is created that her cutting cleverness and
bluff manner intimidate men and, at the same time, make her
"one of the boys," always included in the group but proba
bly without a male companion. Fanny is often found with
Peter and Nora Cope, and they are a fun-loving trio; in
Holiday Linda Seton can tag along with Nick and Susan
142
Potter, and there is promise at the end of the play that
that trio will become a quartet. Linda is described in
slightly more detail than is Fanny.
LINDA is twenty-seven, and looks about twenty-two. She
is slim, rather boyish, exceedingly fresh. She is
smart, she is pretty, but beside JULIA'S grace, JULIA'S
beauty, she seems a trifle gauche, and almost plain.
( 1.16)
Julia, Linda's sister, is briefly described: "She
is twenty-eight, and quite beautiful" (1.8). It is chiefly
by comparison and contrast that both girls are character
ized. As did Paris Bound, Holiday begins in an upstairs
sitting room, this one on the third floor. At rise, Julia
is discovered writing a note, and if the appearance of the
room is not sufficient indication of wealth, it is rein
forced by the entrance of the butler, who announces that
another man-servant is bringing up Johnny Case. Julia
checks the number of people expected for lunch and asks:
"Hasn't Miss Linda friends, too?" The butler replies "Not
as we've been told, Miss" (1.8). Thus, in the first half
page of dialog, it is established that Julia belongs to a
family of wealth and position, that she is expecting a gen
tleman caller, and that Miss Linda apparently has none,
very strong foreshadowing to come that early.
143
In the next few pages Johnny and Julia provide ex
position, much of it arising from their having just re
turned from Lake Placid, where they had met and become en
gaged, and from Johnny's realizing for the first time that
Julia is one of the banking Setons. Julia shows charm and
some wit; through her remards, however, there is a seam of
practicality that contrasts lightly with Johnny's romanti
cism and which becomes increasingly more evident as the
play progresses. Not only does Julia show a workman-like
approach to the wedding, she also plans for Johnny and her
to get Linda and Ned back into a right attitude. Their
difference works up to the point that Julia says: "We can't
just wander forever up snowy mountains through pine woods
with never a care, you know" (1.15). Johnny's answer to
her sudden sadness is a kiss, and it is at that moment that
Linda enters. By contrast, her lines are much brighter
than Julia's; she is talking as she enters, interrupts her
self to call mock shame on Julia, asks if that is any way
to spend Sunday morning, and runs that question into two
more: "Who's your partner? Anyone I know?" (1.16).
From that point forward, Linda is in charge, asking
them how they met and interrupting their answers with clev
er comments. Their brother Ned enters, and when he asks
144
when Johnny and Mr. Seton will meet, Linda begins preparing
Johnny in one of the most often quoted scenes from any of
Barry's plays. Although Julia had engaged in a few lines
of banter earlier, her character protests Linda's banter,
which is irreverent toward money. Johnny cooperates, and
Ned encourages, but the scene is Linda's. She begins as
soon as Julia states that Johnny and Mr. Seton will meet
before luncheon.
LINDA. (rises). That soon? See here, Case, I
think you need some coaching.
JOHNNY. I'd be grateful for anything in this trou
ble .
LINDA. Have you anything at all but your winning
way to your credit?
JOHNNY. Not a thing.
JULIA. Oh, hasn't he, though'
LINDA. The first thing Father will want to know
is, how are you fixed?
JOHNNY. Fixed?
LINDA. (firmly). Fixed.— Are you a man of means,
and if so, how much?
JULIA. Linda:
LINDA. Be still, Beauty. (To JOHNNY.) I know you
wouldn't expect that of a man in Father's position, but
the fact is, money is our god here.
JULIA. Linda, I'll— :— Johnny, it isn't true at
all.
145
NED. (looks up from his paper). No?— What is
then?
LINDA. Well, young man?
JOHNNY. (goes to her). I have in my pocket now,
thirty-four dollars, and a package of Lucky Strikes.
Will you have one?
LINDA. Thanks. (She takes a cigarette from him.)
— But no gilt-edged securities? No rolling woodlands?
JOHNNY. I've got a few shares of common stock
tucked away in a warm place.
LINDA. — Common? Don't say the word. (She ac
cepts a light from him.) I'm afraid it won't do, Julia.
— He's a comely boy, but probably just another of the
vast army of clock-watchers. (She moves toward the
window. JOHNNY laughs and seats himself on the sofa at
Right.)
NED. (from behind his newspaper). How are you so
cially?
JOHNNY. Nothing there, either.
LINDA. (turning). You mean to say your mother
wasn't even a Whoozis?
JOHNNY. Not even that.
JULIA. Linda, I do wish you'd shut up.
NED. Maybe he's got a judge somewhere in the fam
ily.
LINDA. Yes, that might help. Old Judge Case's
boy. White pillars. Guitars a-strummin'. Evenin',
Massa.
NED. You must know some prominent people. Drop a
few names.
LINDA. — Just casually, you know: "When I was to
146
Mrs. Onderdonk's cock-fight last Tuesday, whom should I
see but Mrs. Marble. Well, sir, I thought we'd die
laughing— "
JULIA. (to JOHNNY). This is a lot of rot, you
know.
JOHNNY. I'm having a grand time.
LINDA. "'Johnny,' she says to me— she calls me
'Johnny'— "
JULIA. Oh, will you be quiet! What on earth has
set you off this time?
LINDA. But it's dreadful. Sister. (To JOHNNY.)—
Just what do you think you are going to prove with Ed
ward Seton, financier and cotillion-leader? (1.19-21)
When Linda and Johnny are alone, they list Julia's
virtues— her beauty, her sweetness— but they soon strike a
strong rapport, and each reveals to the other that he wants
to break the artificiality and tedium of the day and find
life. When Linda and Julia are alone, they reveal that
they have been rather close to each other, but they give
more indication of differences. Julia reports that their
father thinks Julia is being married for money, and Linda—
after ascertaining that "Case didn't know our foul secret"
— says: "Even if he had, what of it?— And what good's all
this jack we've got, anyway— unless to get us a superior
type of husband? Julia responds: "I hate you to talk like
that! I hate it!" (1.28). When the talk turns to Johnny,
147
obviously they envision different things for him.
And so the pattern continues. Linda tries to in
ject fun and warmth into the wedding plans, but Julia is so
concerned with pleasing their father that Linda and her
plans are pushed aside. Linda persists in believing that
Julia is a good and lovely person who holds values similar
to her own, but in the third act when they argue about
Johnny's disappearance, about their father's effect on the
engagement, and about their inability to discuss the matter
and to agree on anything, Julia makes it known that the
closeness is something felt primarily by Linda.
LINDA. We've always agreed before— always.
JULIA. No— I think quite often I've given in, in
order to avoid scenes and upsets and— oh, well—
LINDA. (A silence. Then) — Is that true, Julia?
JULIA. You've always been the "stronger character,"
haven't you? At least people have always thought so.
You've made all the decisions, you've always had the
ideas— (III.88)
Julia has simply been accomodating when that was
the easiest thing to be. Linda's impassioned plea that
Julia cannot think that their life is good, cannot want
that life, brings Julia's answer that she does think it
good and the declaration: "I want it, and it's all I want"
(III.88-89). Linda still does not want to believe what
148
Julia has said, that one as sweet and appealing could be so
arbitrary, so selfish, and so narrow. She even rejects
Ned's analysis that people "make a big mistake about Julia
. . . they're taken in by her looks. At bottom she's a
very dull girl, and the life she pictures for herself is
the life she belongs in” (III.93). But when Julia refuses
to go with Johnny on Johnny's terms, and when Julia ex
presses relief that Johnny has gone, referring to him as a
"lightweight," Linda realizes that Julia does not love
Johnny for himself, but only for the promise that he showed
of rising to riches from nothing as had their grandfather.
Julia brought a favorable comment— indeed, a defense— from
George Jean Nathan, one of the few that Barry got from Na
than:
I can see no reason on earth why the abrupt change that
Barry injects into the character of Julia Seton is not
logical, rationally irrational and sound. What the re
viewers have demanded, and complained of for not get
ting is a stage puppet. Barry has given them a girl
not out of dramatic text-books, but one out of life.24
Julia, of course, is not a girl from out of real
life, and the change is not abrupt. As noted earlier, her
seam of practicality is made evident in Act I, and,
24"Leopard Spots," American Mercury. XVI (February,
1929), 245.
149
throughout, she has been a highly sophisticated copy of the
eternal and deadly predatory female.
Linda's gaiety and idealism that are dampened dur
ing the play are made fresh again by the realization that
Julia does not love or want Johnny as he is. Encouraged by
Ned, who mitigates any guilt she might feel, Linda sets out
after Johnny, showing some of their grandfather's fight and
determination as she defies her father to try to stop her.
Thus, Linda does not change, or develop, either; she begins
as the idealist— frustrated and almost demoralized— and
ends as the idealist— her frustration unblocked.
Linda is an apex, a synthesis, a culmination of
Barry womanhood to that time. She has Ronny Duane's fresh
and boyish wholesomeness; Nancy Blake's tasteful but ag
gressive desire for getting people to be what she wants
them to be; Lissa Terry's feeling of entrapment and a trace
of her wistfulness; Mary Todd's naturalness of manner,
openness of heart, and willingness to work and wait for
something good; Mary Hutton's lack of affectation by wealth
and her active approach toward finding a theory by which to
live; and, of course, Fanny Shippan's "bluff, smart, lik
able" nature. Barry departed somewhat from that girl but
came back to her for his greatest success.
150
After Holiday, Barry's next two plays— Hotel Uni
verse (1930) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931)— were dramas,
but the characters were— as has been amply observed— much
the same. Ann Field in the first and Eve Redman in the
second play would not be out of place in Paris Bound or
Holiday, even if Eve does live in a small town in Indiana.
Next came The Animal Kingdom (1932) in which there
are two women, neither of them with all the credentials of
a typical Barry heroine. Cecelia Henry, the girl that Tom
marries, has the proper pedigree but no money. She is
"twenty-eight, lovely of figure, lovely of face, beautiful
ly cared for, beautifully presented" (1.3). Like Julia in
Paris Bound, Cecelia wants to move in fashionable society
circles and is very much concerned with appearances. Daisy
Sage, the artist and Tom's former mistress, has neither po
sition nor wealth, but her speech and her features are in
distinguishable from Fanny's or Linda's.
Daisy is twenty-six, slim, lithe, a stripling, but with
dignity beyond her years and a rare grace to accompany
it. In contrast to CECELIA'S lush beauty, she is plain,
but there is a certain style of her own, a presence, a
manner that defies description. Instantly and lasting
ly attractive, like no one else one knows; in short "a
person," an "original." (I.ii.39)
The Joyous Season (1934) included four women, all
of whom approximate the pattern. Teresa Farley Battle,
151
"twenty-eight, slim, straight, fine," (1.3) is the most
typical; she follows the line of Lissa Terry, Ann Field,
Eve Redman, and is a depressed Mary Hutton. Monica Farley,
"not yet twenty, pretty as a picture," (1.16) is a little
affected, but will probably become another Mary Hutton, al
though she has streaks of Fanny Shippan and Linda Seton.
Their sister-in-law, Edith Choate Farley, "in her late
thirties, bright, capable, trim-looking," (1.22) is much
like Nancy White and Julia Seton with her wish to maintain
her position and advantages. Each of them changes slightly,
becomes a bit warmer and more understanding, as a result of
the visit of another Farley girl, now a Mother Superior.
Christina combines all the virtues of the other Barry women
with greater spiritual depth and wisdom.
The next two comedies were a return to the mood and
character of Paris Bound and Holiday. Katherine Hepburn,
who had understudied Hope Williams in Holiday, and who was
contracted to play Daisy Sage in The Animal Kingdom but re
leased when Leslie Howard found her difficult to work with,
was featured in The Philadelphia Story and in Without Love.
The Barry comedy heroine truly reached her zenith in those
two plays.
Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story is on the
152
surface another Julia Seton and at heart another Linda; the
action of the play burnishes away the surface, and the true
Tracy emerges. She is described simply as "a strikingly
lovely girl of twenty-four" (1.16). At rise, she is dis
covered, in another of those expensive sitting rooms, writ
ing thank-you notes for wedding presents. It is quickly
revealed that she will be married— for the second time— the
following day. Her first marriage was an elopement with
C. K. Dexter Haven, with whom she had grown up, in the
Philadelphia Main Line society, and the marriage had lasted
ten months. It is also soon revealed that her father is
living in New York, probably with a young Broadway dancer,
for which reason Tracy has not invited him to the wedding.
When Tracy's fifteen-year-old sister, Dinah, asks their
mother about Tracy's attitude, Mrs. Lord answers: "Tracy
sets exceptionally high standards for herself, that's all,
and although she lives up to them, other people aren't al
ways quite able to" (1.16).
The wedding is to be covered by a writer and a
photographer from Destiny magazine, a concession to keep
that magazine from carrying a story about Mr. Lord and his
dancer. Although Tracy must submit to that arrangement,
her indignation is such that she declares: "I'll give them
153
a story— I'll give them a story they can't get through the
mails!" (1.22). She orders copies of books written by the
writer, which is a character inconsistency. She has no
time to read the day before her wedding and would not need
to know anything about his writing in order to do what she
plans. She does read the stories, however, and through
them establishes an empathy with Mike Connor, the writer.
Her several scenes with him are a vital part of the awaken
ing of the latent woman.
There are chiefly three scenes of direct involve
ment that cause Tracy to see herself as she has been posing.
In the first of them, Dexter, Tracy's first husband, begins
describing Tracy for Mike, in Tracy's presence, but Mike
slips away as the two become more involved in their discus
sion of her nature. Dexter charges that every blow has
been softened for her; that she is self-centered; that she
has no sympathy for another's faults; that "strength is her
religion"; that "she is a goddess without patience for any
kind of human imperfection"; that she wanted a man to be
not a husband but "a kind of a high priest to a virgin god
dess"; that George Kittredge, her fiance, is intellectually
and imaginatively beneath her; that she "could be the
damndest, finest woman on earth" if it were not for her
154
"prejudice against weakness," her "blank intolerance"; that
she might "have some regard for human frailty" if her foot
were ever to slip, which her "sense of inner divinity won't
allow"; and that she is probably only one of many such,
that she belongs to "a special class of American female now
— the Married Maidens— And of Type Philadelphiaensis," she
is "the absolute tops" (II.i.54-58).
George enters, Dexter leaves, and straightway
George begins confirming Dexter's charges. George states
that he is going to build her an ivory tower; that he has
no objection to Dexter, who could never have been Tracy's
"lord and master," for no one ever was or will be; and that
that is the wonderful thing about her— all of which he ex
plains by saying:
You're like some marvelous, distant~Oh, queen, I
guess. You're so cool and fine— and always so much
your own. That's the wonderful you in you— that no one
can ever really possess— that no one can touch, hardly.
It's— it's a kind of beautiful purity, Tracy, that's
the only word for it. (II.i.59-61)
He adds even more, including his opinion that it is
an honor to be covered by Destiny. The third of the three
scenes immediately follows. Tracy's parents enter, and
George leaves. Tracy turns on her father, is reprimanded
for that by her mother, who says that what he is doing
155
concerns no one else except himself. Mr. Lord concurs and
explains that middle-aged philandering comes from a reluc
tance to grow old. He then develops a variation on the
theme just expressed by Dexter and George. After serious
thought he has realized that "the best mainstay a man can
have as he gets along in years is a daughter— the right
kind of a daughter," which Tracy has not been; he names all
her strengths and says that she has "everything it takes to
make a lovely woman except the one essential— an under
standing heart," without which she "might just as well be
made of bronze"; he says that if there is any blame to be
attached to his relationship with the dancer, part of the
blame is hers; and when Tracy calls him a coward for saying
that, he responds: "No.— But better to be one than a prig—
and a perennial spinster, however many marriages" (II.i.
63-65).
Tracy goes through several reactions as she is put
ting all those comments together. She goes to her wedding
party, has too much to drink, talks a great deal with Mike,
begins feeling an attraction for Mike, which is reciprocal,
and wants to go swimming in the nude with Mike, but she
passes out as soon as she hits the water. When the prud
ish George thinks that all is compromised and walks out—
156
after wedding guests have arrived— Tracy insists that she
will get herself out of the situation, that she will not
have the blow softened for her, although Mike offers— asks
— to marry her. She turns to Dexter, and he sees her
through; the wedding begins as the play ends.
It is a miraculous transformation: if she were all
the things noted, she could not break those habit patterns
so thoroughly and so quickly as she does. It is understood,
however, that that one slip of her divine foot has made her
human; she truly wants to marry Dexter and promises to be
everything that she should be, and she expresses her love
for her father.
What Tracy had not been to her father, Jamie Coe
Rowan in Without Love (1942) had been to her father, the
late Senator Coe. That time the giving of a masculine name
to a girl took effect. Jamie was an only child, and her
mother died when Jamie was eight; she became constant com
panion to her father and "simply worshipped the ground he
walked on" (I.ii.21). She went from the sheltered, perfect
life with her father to a sheltered, perfect life with her
husband, which ended after two years when Harry Rowan was
thrown from a horse and killed. Thus, life for her had
ended before the action of the play begins. She has wealth
157
from her father and from her husband and entry into society
if she wishes, but she does nothing and does it alone.
She is twenty-seven, expensively but unbecomingly
dressed, pale and rather dim looking. Her features are
good, but nothing has been made of them. She seems to
be an object, rather than a person. In appearance, in
voice, in manner there is an apparent lack of personal
awareness. (I.i.14)
She is brought into awareness by Pat Jamieson, a
young man with a mission: to involve Ireland in the war.
They arrange a marriage of convenience; neither wants any
thing to do with love: Jamie because she has had the best;
Pat because he has had the worst. Of course, they go from
friendship through some reversals to love. Their friend
ship recalls the relation of Tom Collier and Daisy Sage in
The Animal Kingdom; Tom is the only person she knows who is
honest enough to demand quality in Daisy's painting, and
she thanks him for his severity. In Without Love. Pat
warns Jamie that he will not be an easy friend, to which
she replies: "I know— and I don't want you easy" (l.ii.27).
After they are married, Pat describes her as Tracy
Lord was described: "You're your own special creation and
will remain so . . . " (II.i.48). Or, later, "You're like
the Tower of Pisa: you may have certain leanings, but you
always remain upright" (II.ii.72). That comes after a
158
scene reminiscent of Paris Bound. Although there has been
no sexual love between them, Jamie wants to confess that
she almost yielded to the blandishments of another man.
Pat does not want to hear about it and says so in speeches
that are only slightly altered paraphrases of Jim's
speeches to Mary in Paris Bound. In this instance, Pat and
Jamie move from realistic discussion of Jamie to a realis
tic discussion of a trip and then shift into an unrealistic
scene of pure fancy as they go through an imaginary regis
tration at a hotel which leads them to bed as the scene
ends, and the marriage that began without love is consum
mated with love.
The war involvement theme introduced many complica
tions, and there was one of those scenes of psychiatric
role-playing in which Jamie presented herself in the image
and manner of the girl who had given Pat the worst of love,
but, for the most part, Jamie Coe Rowan is Tracy Lord in
another time and place.
The father-daughter relationship that is secondary
in those two plays is primary in Barry's last play. Miran
da Bolton, in Second Threshold (1951) has just graduated
from Bennington College and is at home for a brief visit
before sailing to England to marry a man two years older
159
than her father. When Miranda gets home, she learns from
Toby Wells, a childhood friend and now a doctor, that her
father, Josiah Bolton, has despaired of living and has
probably attempted suicide. Like Jamie Coe Rowan, Miranda
was constant companion to her father in Washington politics,
serving as secretary, hostess, and confidante after her
parents were divorced. Miranda and her father had been im
personal and intellectual in their relationship; both had
been strong, confident, and unemotional. Like Tracy Lord
Miranda demands perfection from herself and from others;
she is guided by the head always— never by the heart. Al
most complete estrangement between father and daughter re
sults from their lack of feeling. In the course of the
play, both find some feeling; Josiah realizes that his
daughter really wants him to live, and so he wants to live;
Miranda realizes that she was only searching for her father
when she agreed to marry a man her father's age, and having
found her father, she can explain to the man— who will un
derstand— and then be free to marry Toby.
There is then a definite type at the center of Bar
ry's plays. The fiances and husbands of those women are
also a definite type, and even when the males have the dom
inant role in a play, they can usually be more easily
160
identified than can the women. Some of them are wholesome,
contributing members of the system— neither bowing down to
it nor borne down under it. Others are fighting the system,
and some come from outside the system. Among the other men
characters are some who are ambitious to make the most of
the system and some who have despaired of the system. The
husbands and fiances are usually ingratiating; they are not
quite handsome, have a ready sense of humor, and, for the
most part, are a little slower in grasping the significance
of situations and relations than are their female counter
parts.
The first of the young men is Ricky White from You
and I (1923), and he is given longer description than are
the later ones.
He is a well-set-up, thoroughly nice boy about
twenty-one, with high color, hair carefully brushed, a
disarming smile. Although his expression is bright and
animated, his countenance appears to be totally without
guile. Only RICKY knows the multitude of scrapes that
he has got him out of.
If you come near enough, particularly on a rainy
day, you will catch, as it hovers about his golf
clothes, a thoroughly satisfactory aroma of peat-smoke.
RICKY has a proper regard for old clo1. His polo-shirt,
though it may be a little frayed, has the merit of be
ing clean. His brown-and-white shoes— genuine antiques
— have not. (1.13-14)
Ricky is always amusing, his tone is never serious,
161
and he is seemingly quite unaware that Ronny is disturbed
because his words about enjoying business do not correspond
with his actions, which show continued absorption with ar
chitecture to the point that he replies absent-mindedly
when she asks him to put down his book of designs and kiss
her. As stated before, he does not question his father's
invented story of a legacy, but he is always level, always
likable. Although his parents discuss him, as they natu
rally would, Ricky is easily characterized by showing per
son after person yielding to his winning way.
While Ricky could be comfortable in or out of the
system, Richard Winslow in The Youngest (1924) can only re
bel against it.
He is about twenty-two, and with a fresh, sensitive ea
ger face. His hair has not been brushed since morning.
He wears an old soft brushed jacket, the collar of
which is turned up. His trousers are old gray homespun,
pitifully out of press. His heavy brown shoes, once
good, are now genuine antiques, and no attempt has been
made to renew their youth by polishing. His white
polo-shirt, with button-down collar, is badly frayed at
the neck. His tie— an old, bright-colored figured fou
lard, is pulled askew. He is smoking a pipe and indus
triously writing with a pencil upon a large pad of pap
er. (1.6)
Richard wants to be a writer rather than another
member of the family business, and is efficiently charac
terized by setting him against his all-business,
162
by-the-rules brothers.
Lissa Terry of In a Garden has two mens her husband,
Adrian, would like to keep her, and Norrie Bliss, a friend
from the past, would like to claim her. Although Adrian,
at forty, is older than most of the young men, he is "tall
and of youthful figure, with a face uncommonly fine and
sensitive, for the strength of the features" (1.7). He is
a highly successful playwright who sees everything in terms
of material for a play and believes that there is a pre
dictable plot line for all lives. Like Johnny Case, he ar
rived at a decision— without telling his wife— to stop
working and to live, but he cannot resist setting a scene
for the visit of his wife's friend from the past. His
characterization, more than most Barry characters, depends
on commentary by others.
Norrie Bliss, the man from the past, "is thirty-two
or three, well-built, well-dressed. Handsome, perhaps, but
his charm lies principally in the impression he gives of a
fresh and youthful vitality" (1.41-42) . His entrance is
prepared for, and he serves the one function of offering to
Lissa the freshness and the vitality of an un-ordered life.
He is characterized chiefly by the charm and spontaneity of
what he says and of what he chooses to speak about; in all
163
ways, he is a direct contrast to Adrian.
The next play, White Wings (1926), again, is a fan
tasy, not a comedy of manners, but Archie Inch, "a nice-
looking boy of about twenty, (1.4), is but a fantasy ver
sion of the prototype. He is charming and blindly loyal to
his way of life, unaware that a new order is leaving him
behind.
Jim Hutton, in Paris Bound (1927), is perhaps the
most representative of the Barry hero who can be natural
and remain within the system. He is twenty-six and "almost
handsome" (1.3-4). He is characterized at the outset as a
charming, self-assured young man and remains so throughout
the play. After the initial impression is created in the
opening scene with Mary, there is confirmation, as there is
of Mary, by others. He is shown to be without guile as he
asks his divorced parents what it is like to be together
again and why they had separated (1.26-29). At the same
time, he expresses unsophisticated confidence in his own
union: "Marriage is a pretty big job, of course. But it
seems to me that if both people use their heads, they can
manage it" (1.29).
That same lack of guile and sophistication is shown,
in part, to be lack of awareness. When Mary tries to
164
explain her apprehensions that arise from seeing the many
marriages that are failures and calls for attitudes and ac
tions to assure that their marriage is a success, Jim shows
limited understanding by asking: "— But how can we help but
be?! You— ? Me— ?” (1.39). References to Jim's lack of
musicianship occur earlier, and the subsequent scene with
Noel Farley, who is making a scene at the reception, shows
other insensitivities. Again, without guile or tact, he
simply asks Noel to go home. He is sensitive enough to see
that he has disturbed her and does apologize, but he seems
unaware that he holds a special attraction for Noel and de
nies that he has any love for her. When Noel gives Jim the
reassuring insight that she envies Mary but that Mary need
never envy her, Jim says: "Noel, I haven't the remotest
idea of what you're driving at, I really haven't." To that,
Noel responds: "Well, great intelligence never was your
long-suit, was it?" (1.57).
Apparently, then, it is Jim's charm and out-going
enthusiasm that make him appealing. Even Fanny was at
tracted to him; when Jim says: "Fanny, you're a girl after
my own heart," she rejoins: "No, Darling— I was once, but
Mary was too quick for me" (11.100). His enthusiasm is al
ways translated into action. His second line of the play
165
is a statement that he will be ready in half the time that
Mary takes, and he is. He is considerate enough to ask
Mary where she would like to dine after the wedding but he
has already arranged for entertainment: "I wired the man at
the club to see what revues he could get seats for, and
then to get two for the ones he couldn't" (1.33). When he
returns from Europe, he contrives to avoid waiting to go
through quarantine by riding in on the mail boat, and it is
his infectious enthusiasm about an anniversary party and
about driving to the country to see the children that makes
Mary willing to forget her wanting to air a grievance.
Given those traits, it is understandable that he
would not resist Noel if the two of them were to find them
selves together far away from home; however, his going with
Noel cannot be justified in terms of his first-act state
ments about using his head, about working at marriage, and
about profiting from his father's mistakes. Jim makes no
statement about what happened in Europe; indeed, the struc
ture of the play does not permit such comment. Mary must
discard the idea that casual adultery is reason for divorce,
and she must do it so unselfishly that Jim does not know of
it. it does not even matter that Jim might be innocent,
for, if he is found to be, Mary has no decision to make,
166
and the play does not develop along the intended lines. As
long as she thinks him guilty, however, she must make that
decision.
Again, it is in keeping with his character that he
would divert Mary's attempts to broach a serious subject.
Of course, Jim assumes that Mary is trying to tell him
something about her and Richard, which indicates a more
generous attitude on Jim's part. If Jim had gone with Noel,
it has in no way diminished his happiness with Mary, nor
his love for her— the guileless evidence of which returns
Mary to him.
Jim remains, therefore, an ideal comedy-of-manners
character throughout the play. Not only does he possess
the requisite traits; he possesses them so clearly that he
can be left off-stage for major portions of the play with
out diminishing his character: he remains fixed, strong,
clear.
Johnny Case, of Holiday (1928), has been rather
well revealed already in earlier commentary. "He is thirty,
medium-tall, slight, attractive-looking, luckily not quite
handsome1 ’ (1.8). He is both from outside the system and
fighting the system although he has used it to his advan
tage and cannot be distinguished by speech, dress, or
167
manners from members of the system. He is not a self-con
sistent character: he is sensitive enough to appeal to Lin
da, which should make him sensitive enough to realize that
Julia does not want what he wants. He does not know pre
cisely what he wants himself, but he is determined to exer
cise his right to search. That has been his purpose for
proving his ability in business, but he can state no defi
nite purpose for leaving business.
There seems some basis for the occasionally encoun
tered contention that the next play, Hotel Universe
(1930), was written to show what freedom without purpose
may lead to. Certainly, Pat Farley and Tom Ames are the
worse for having nothing to do. Whereas Barry's comedy
people are characterized by their bright wit, Pat and Tom
are characterized by their macabre wit.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931), another drama, was
similar to In a Garden in that the heroine is given a hus
band and a man who would take her away from her husband,>
Gail Redman, the husband, "is thirty, tall, well-built,
likable-looking" (I.i.4). He is a businessman and sports
man and is quickly characterized by his first not under
standing and then falling asleep as his wife of six years
tries to explain the emptiness she feels because she has
168
nothing to do and no one to care for.
Nicholas Hay, the visiting lecturer by whom Eve has
a child, "is thirty-four, fine-looking, strong-looking"
(I.ii.23). Like Mr. Hutton in Paris Bound and Mr. Lord in
The Philadelphia Story. Hay argues that what is between him
and Eve has nothing to do with Gail. According to Hamm,
Barry said several years later: "I believed in Nicholas Hay
when I wrote the play. I now believe him to be a fake."25
Had the play been a comedy and Hay had had only one func
tion, to give Eve a child, he could have been dispensed
with thereafter, but the complication of bringing him back
meant that he had to make some response, that his character
had to assume some other dimension; but the marriage was to
stand, so Hay had to be more than an instrument to bring
Eve fulfillment but less than the man who could take Eve
away from her husband.
Tom Collier, in The Animal Kingdom (1932), is, like
Hay, a cad for dropping honest, wholesome Daisy to marry
grasping, social-climbing Cecelia. Tom is also like Johnny
Case in that he is supposed to be sensitive enough to de
serve and appreciate the difference between the two without
25Hamm, p. 49.
169
being perceptive enough to see the difference. Like Jim
Hutton's lack of awareness that Noel had long been in love
with hiflf, Tom does not recognize that Daisy truly loves him.
Unlike Jim Hutton, Tom does not get along with his father
and will not follow in the family business. "Tom is in his
early thirties, slim, youthful, with a fine, sensitive,
humorous face" (I.i.17). Tom is in all ways a combination
of Johnny Case and Jim Hutton: charming, out-going, inde
pendent, aware of some things and not of others— altogether,
a good comedy character.
Although the women in The Joyous Season (1934)
could be said to fit the Barry pattern, the men are so un
distinguished that they could be put into the pattern or
left out without making much difference. John "is forty-
five, the oldest. Square, set, brief, determined, the act
ing head of the family" (1.18). So concerned with position
and appearance that he will not marry beneath himself (he
is in love with his secretary), he has remained a bachelor,
but Sister Christina alters his attitude. Martin Vis for-
^ *
ty-three, keen-looking, altogether prepossessing" (1.6).
It was his marriage to Edith Chaote that moved the family
out of the country and onto Beacon Hill, but he breaks out
of the system with Sister Christina's inspiration. Ross
"is about thirty, dark, slight, sensitive" (I.11). He
fights the system and gains some new understanding from
Sister Christina. Hugh is twenty-three, "very much a man-
of-the-world" (1.9), and he gains some maturity through
Sister Christina. There is also a brother-in-law, Francis
Battle, who is "likable-looking, somewhat scholarly in ap
pearance" (1.3). He is twenty-seven, a year younger than
his wife, Teresa, an exception to the pattern of having the
men older— sometimes by several years. The very number of
men in the family and the placing of the focus on none of
them contributed to making them indistinctive— and to mak
ing the play a failure.
In The Philadelphia Story (1939), the woman is
again given two men, indeed three men, all of whose charac
ters were fairly well revealed when the characterizing of
Tracy was discussed. George Kittredge, aged thirty-two,
has worked his way up from the bottom of the coal mines to
a supervisory position and has been such a success that ar
ticles about him have appeared in national magazines. That
he is a snob and a prude has already been noted; he is
quickly characterized by his dull speeches and by his find
ing no humor in what amuses others. It is only Tracy's
adopted priggishness that has drawn her to him, and in the
171
play her deeply hidden poetic nature draws her to Macaulay
(Mike) Connor, who covers his own poetic nature with a
brash exterior. Mike, aged thirty, writes for a magazine
he hates in order to support his writing books that will
not earn him a living. The surface selves of the two clash,
and the inner selves pull them together. Mike comes from
outside the system, is strongly opposed to the system,
learns that some people outside the system are worse than
some in it, and is in the play for the prime purpose of
helping to awaken the woman in Tracy.
C. K. Dexter Haven, aged twenty-eight, is the pro
totype one step refined from Jim Hutton and Tom Collier.
He is characterized by his constant good humor, his ready
and witty comments, and by his understanding and awareness
— qualities reflected in his analysis of Tracy, qualities
not owned by other Barry men. Tracy had divorced him be
cause of his excessive drinking, which he attributed to his
having nothing for his mind to do. It is implied that he
now has something for his mind to do, but exactly what is
not stated. It is understood, however, true comedy-of-
manners character that he is, that he and Tracy will have
a full and happy life.
Patrick Jamieson, in Without Love (1942), is about
172
thirty-two, but looks about twenty-eight.
He is slightly built. . . . His face, intensely awake,
can be described neither as handsome nor genial. Al
though attractive in expression and regular enough in
feature, there is too much awareness, too sharp humor
in the eyes and around the mouth, too lean, too keen a
look for his and, at times, other people's comfort.
(I.i.6)
He has all the qualities possessed by the best of
the Barry men and political purpose besides; he is, there
fore, more definitely a high comedy character and less a
real person. He is on stage at the beginning of the play,
in a strange situation, but quite in command: he plays the
piano, takes care of a man who has had too much to drink,
puts down the man's domineering and nagging wife, orders
from the maid as if he were her accustomed master, teases
and ingratiates himself with the cold and aloof Jamie Coe
Rowan— all within the first ten pages of dialog, which is
highly effective and direct characterization.
Toby Wells, in Second Threshold (1951), has all the
requisite attributes, but is much quieter about it than Pat
or Dexter. "He is in his late twenties, spare, rangy, with
a humorous, likeable face, not at all handsome" (I.i.3).
He is onstage at the beginning of the play in one of those
upstairs sitting rooms and is characterized by his open and
direct manner with Miranda, whom he is seeing for the first
173
time since they were children. Toby remains available, a
steadying presence, bright enough and alive enough for Mi
randa to learn to love.
Not only is there a sameness among the young men
and women in the first rank of Barry's plays, there is also
a similarity among their friends in the second rank, many
of whom are, of course, from the same set. Fanny Shippan
and Peter and Nora Cope from Paris Bound and Nick and Susan
Potter and Ned Seton from Holiday are the best and fullest
examples. The Copes and the Potters are quite the same fun
couple, simply moved from one play to the other. They are
satiric, facetious, bantering, nonsensical, but never ser
ious or straightforward. One example will serve to illus
trate: in Act III of Paris Bound. Mary Hutton has just told
her father-in-law that she is going to divorce Jim as soon
as he returns from Europe; Richard Parish has arrived just
after that to tell Mary that he loves and wants her, and
then in come Fanny and the Copes. They have been partying,
and after a few minutes of nonsense greetings, they make
some ironic remarks about Jim's return and then shift into
a fanciful parody of a serious society conversation about
Mary as if she were not there.
174
FANNY. Come along with us to hell and Rector's,
will you?
MARY. Well I should say not.
NORA. Why not?
MARY. It's too hot, and I want some sleep.
FANNY. (to NORA) — So she'11 look her prettiest
when the great big steamboat brings Daddy home to
morrow .
MARY. (smiling) Yes. That's it.
PETER. What news of the lad?— Any news is good
news.
MARY. He lands at about nine in the morning.
PETER. I can't stay up that long. It's impossible.
NORA. (to FANNY, watching MARY) It'll be good to
have Jim back, won't it?— if only to get Mary out of
her doldrums.
FANNY. "Doldrums'1— there's a funny word. It
sounds quite lewd.
NORA. But have you seen Mary much lately?
FANNY. My dear, she sees no one.
NORA, is she ill do you think?
FANNY. It were better if she were.
NORA. Not having an affair with someone!
FANNY. Mary? Oh no!
NORA. What is it, then?
FANNY. They say in Poictesme that she loves her
husband.
PETER. Will the gray hordes never cease? God.1
Are we too late?
FANNY. Six weeks without him is just too much to
bear, it's too much to bear.
« •
NORA. Never mind. To-morrow we'll have our old
Mary back again.
PETER. She had charm, that girl. Always a smile
for everyone.
FANNY. And now it's a curse or a blow.
PETER. Love is like that. (III.157-59)
Richard Parish is one of several artists to appear
as companions to members of the privileged set. Linda Se
ton apparently has some such friends who do not appear in
Holiday. Tom Collier not only has Daisy Sage in The Animal
Kingdom but a violinist and a writer who appear in the play
and other artists who do not. Tracy Lord in The Philadel
phia Story wants to make it possible for Mike to be able to
write full time and for the photographer who travels with
Mike, Liz Imbrie, to have an opportunity to paint. Those
artists are not to the comedy of manners born, and Barry's
artists frequently drew the criticism that they are soci
ety's caricatured image of the artist— which is, of course,
what they should be in these comedies, and Barry did treat
them sympathetically.
The elders of those young people have already been
176
mentioned. Maitland White, upon whom the focus of You and
JI is centered, is in a state of "quiet desperation," which
he reveals in conversation with a friend from the past; his
wife, Nancy, who is but a more mature version of the proto
type, reveals, in part, her husband's frustration and urges
him to turn to painting. In Barry's last play, as in his
first, there is father who has despaired, and the focus of
Second Threshold is on Josiah Bolton, who has no further
reason for living. The critics seem to have wanted Barry's
posthumous play to succeed, but disagreed about the charac
ter. John Gassner noted that the play begins with an un
used statesman, but shifts to a father-daughter relation
and is resolved in those terms, which divides attention and
makes use of the "cashiered diplomat" questionable.2® John
Mason Brown, on the other hand, thought that the father-
daughter relationship was to dominant and that more of Jo-
27
siah's public life should have been revealed. '
Mr. Hutton of Paris Bound is in form and appearance
an older version of his son, Jim. Jim's mother who appears
26"Entropy in the Drama," Theatre Arts XXXV (Sep
tember, 1951), 16-17.
27"Seeing Things— Success Story," Saturday Review
of Literature. XXXIV (January 27, 1951), 25-27.
177
in only one scene has the grace and manners of the younger
women, but not the strength; she appears for one purpose,
to demonstrate the strict attitude that adultery is cause
for divorce and to show the result of giving up a marriage
for that reason. Tracy Lord's parents in The Philadelphia
Story are similar, except that Mrs. Lord understands that
her husband's affair with a Broadway dancer has nothing to
do with her.
Mr. Seton of Holiday and Mr. Collier of The Animal
Kingdom represent the vested interests of big business.
They are both strong, vital, and domineering, with Mr. Se
ton 's having somewhat better success at dominating his
children (except for Linda). They are the prime blocking
characters; they are the stern, impassive men who see their
purpose in life the making of money through control of
business and industry. Indeed, when Johnny Case says that
he wants to take leave of business, wants to turn down an
opportunity to make great amounts of money, Mr. Seton de
clares: "I consider his whole attitude deliberately un-
American" (III.90).
There were many other characters in the plays, of
course: the Holiday Setons have a cousin and his wife, the
only physically unattractive people in the comedies, who
178
show the worst aspect of big business and society attitudes;
Tom Collier keeps a former boxer as a companion and some
time butler in The Animal Kingdom? and Without Love has
government officials, clerks, and opportunists running
through the play. The smart young people, however, are the
predominant and most appealing characters. They are most
often characterized by direct action and direct dialog.
That direct action, it must be noted, is the action of com
edy— not of drama. Action in drama or tragedy involves in
ter-action and heightened relationship of characters.
There is little commentary in this chapter about character
relationships simply because, with the exception of the fa
ther-daughter relationships, characters do not act upon
other characters. The situation— not a person— produces
action. It is Jim's adultery— not Jim— that precipitates
action. It is Johnny Case's one idea— not Johnny— that
turns Julia away, and it is that idea more than it is
Johnny that sends Linda chasing after him. The characters
do not significantly change each other; they are much the
same at the end of the play as they are at the beginning.
They have been held up alongside one another to see whether
or not they match; they have not been mixed together to
produce a new blend.
179
Bright, charming people amuse and delight as they
find or retain the right mate, and they express themselves
in Barry's personalized language, which is the subject of
the next chapter.
CHAPTER VI
LANGUAGE
The language spoken by the smart people in Philip
Barry's comedies elicited frequent and contradictory com
mentary. Some commentators considered the dialog appropri
ately clever; others found it clever for its own sake.
Some thought it true to the rhythms of actual speech; some
found it false. Some praised the language as a chief at
tribute; others depreciated the language as a hindrance to
development. Whether they liked or disliked the language,
however, most writers considered it to be Barry's own.
Some of the praise came from Brooks Atkinson, who
wrote about the "spinning patter that is Mr. Barry's spe
cial talent, 1,1 and about Barry's "silk-ply dialogue."2
^"The Play, Mr. Barry's Strange Interlude," New
York Times, January 14, 1931, p. 26.
2"The Play, Philip Barry and Company," New York
Times, December 28, 1927, p. 26.
180
181
John Mason Brown called Barry a "stylist with dialogue."3
Francis R. Bellamy applied the term "sparkling dialogue, "4
and Richard Dana Skinner expressed pleasure with Barry's
"rich feeling for dialogue"3 and his "delicious nonsense."3
Barrett Clark found some "glorious nonsense" and "a curious
inter-mixture of suave humor and cutting satire."7 A writ
er for Newsweek referred to Barry's "graceful wit";8 one
for Current Opinion remarked that Barry's "metier seems to
be the writing of d i a l o g u e " and another for Commonweal
stated that "repartee was his stock in trade.
The strong contrasts of opinions is readily noted.
3"The American Barry," Saturday Review of Litera
ture. XXXII (December 24, 1949), 24.
4"The Theatre," Outlook and Independent. CLI (Jan
uary 2, 1929), 11.
3"The Joyous Season," Commonweal. XIX (February 9,
1934), 34.
^"Holiday," Commonweal. IX (February 6, 1929), 405.
7An Hour of American Drama, p. 105.
®"The Joyous Season," Newsweek. Ill (February 10,
1934), 39.
9"You and I: A Moon and Sixpence Comedy," Current
Opinion. LXXXIV (June, 1923), 702.
^"Second Threshold," Commonweal. LIII (January 26,
1951), 398.
182
Brooks Atkinson, in a single article, appraised Barry as
"an uncommonly allusive stylist," "the most subtle stylist
in the American theatre," and "no facile stylist, but an
artist with a strong artistic morality.1,11 Eleanor Flexner
thought his plays weak, in part, because of "Barry's ab
sorption in clever dialogue for its own sake. John
Gassner stated that Barry "must be respected as an artist,
since he proved himself a flashing humorist with a flair
for the mot juste, as well as for the right juxtaposition
of characters. . . ."13 George Jean Nathan wrote that Bar
ry "employs a tricky verbal adroitness to conceal his lack
of any real penetration" of his characters and "takes re
fuge in badinage to hide his own philosophical nervousness
and boyish uncertainity."14
Such contradictory commentary may be found on spe
cific points as well as on the language in general. Fran
cis R. Bellamy wrote of Paris Bound: "Certainly we have
never listened to an outburst of gayety and chatter that
H"Valuing Integrity," New York Times. January 24,
1932, sec. 8, p. 1.
^American Playwrights: 1918-1938, p. 253.
^ Masters of Drama, p. 670.
^ Testament of a Critic, p. 117.
183
sound falser than the happy and excited dialogue of the
last scene. . . . "15 But Brooks Atkinson complimented "the
gayety of its spirit as it wings across treacherous waters,"
and, in contrast with Bellamy, considered: "Even when the
suspense is most disquieting in the last act, and the emo
tion tremblingly painful, Mr. Barry's play purrs with the
mocking nonsense of puns and sardonic heroics."I®
In that same review, Atkinson wrote that Barry "un
derstands his characters" and "has an ear for the tone of
their patter and a respect for their good impulses.El
eanor Flexner charged that Barry's "characters all talk
alike, not the way people really do speak, but in phrases
that have become the playwright's own mannerisms. He has
no ear for the ordinary colloquial rhythms of speech."1®
Bellamy, who thought Paris Bound false, found in Holiday
"people who have original points of view, and who express
their ideas in the satirical and absurd manner which such
15"Lights Down," Outlook. CXLVIII (January 25,
1928), 147.
16"The Play, Philip Barry and Company," New York
Times, December 28, 1927, p. 26.
17Ibid.
18American Playwrights; 1918-1938. p. 253.
184
people usually employ.Boyd Martin found the dialog
true and ahead of its time:
As a contriver of comedy Mr. Barry has a light
touch, a happy turn of conversational style in dialog
and a smartness of thought which quite often antici
pates public opinion.
Several commentators thought Barry's dialog pre
cious, brittle, or too light, and a few writers thought
Barry's language was a hindrance to his development.
George Pierce Baker was credited with helping him overcome
some glibness, but there were often comments such as Stark
Young made about Holiday (which was otherwise considered
delightful): "What defects it has come first of all from a
certain fluency: the dialogue pours from Mr. Barry so eas
ily that it is sometimes without enough substance."21 Many
critics, of course, wanted deep exploration of issues and
emotions, so that they would say with Lloyd Morris: "That
the public preferred the polished surface of Barry's come
dies to their content of ideas worked out to the
19«The Theatre," Outlook and Independent. CLI (Jan
uary 2, 1929), 11.
2^Modern American Drama and Stage, p. 48.
21"two New Pieces," New Republic. LVII (December 12,
1928), 97.
185
disadvantage of his talent."22
Barry's talent worked to sufficient advantage, how
ever, to secure for him a special place in the American
theater. Commentators, frequently stated that Barry's dia
log is unique, or wrote from an acceptance of its unique
ness. Wolcott Gibbs wrote of Barry's last play: "There is
the kind of writing of which no other author of his time
was quite capable. . . ."23 About that same play, Newsweek
contained the comment that Second Threshold "has the ring
of authentic Barry. . . ."24 Richard Dana Skinner, in his
review of The Joyous Season, stated that Barry's dialog
helps "give him a place above all our American playwrights,"
and added that there is a "general scarcity of that quality
of dialogue which only Barry can write."25 And in his re
view of Holiday. Skinner wrote: "No American playwright can
create such delicious nonsense as Barry at his
22Curtain Time, p. 339
23"Death and Honor," The New Yorker, XXVI (Janu
ary 13, 1951), 42.
24"The Play," Newsweek. XXXVII (January 15, 1951),
78.
25
"The Joyous Season," Commonweal. XIX (February 9,
1934), 413.
186
best. . . .'*26 John Mason Brown, after a deprecatory re
view of Foolish Notion, wrote that the play "cannot fail to
bear some of the felicitous stamps of his authorship. The
Barry touch is upon it. . . . His play has its fair quota
27
of amusing Barryesque lines. . . . Joseph Wood Krutch,
in his review of Without Love wrote:
Not more than one or two other contemporary playwrights
can equal or even approach him when it comes to turning
out an epigram— as distinguished from the epigram's
roughneck twin, the wisecrack— pointed enough to be de
lightful without being too elaborate to sound convinc
ing as conversation.28
In a later discussion of Holiday, Krutch again used
those terms, and what he said there is a most accurate ap
praisal of the language in all of Barry's comedies:
Mr. Barry does not cultivate either the wisecrack
or its literary brother, the epigram. His dialogue is
not of the sort which can be quoted in fragments, and
it is almost too insubstantial to be subject to analy
sis. But it ripples in one continuous stream through
out the piece like the conversation one hopes to hear
(but never has actually heard) at some supernally well-
selected dinner party.
2®"Holiday," Commonweal. IX (February 6, 1929), 405.
27"seeing Things: Did You Ever See Some Dreams
Walking?" Saturday Review of Literature, XXVIII (March 24,
1945), 19.
2®"A Vehicle for Miss Hepburn," Nation. CLV (Nov
ember 21, 1942), 553.
29American Drama Since 1918, p. 168.
187
j
When Brooks Atkinson called Barry "an uncommonly
allusive stylist," he, too, gave reasons for finding Bar
ry's plays difficult to write about immediately after per
formance; and certainly there is no easily marked rhyme and
meter nor a readily identifiable vocabulary or pattern of
construction to be idolated and named. An analysis of the
comedies does, however, reveal several recurring methods or
techniques which distinguish the comedies.
Most easily noted are the very many isolated, in
serted clever lines, often a turning of a stock expression.
There are some epigrams that do not immediately call forth
a stock expression. Nicholas Hay in Tomorrow and Tomorrow
terms Eve Redman "an artist without an art" (l.iii.57). In
that same play, Hay's secretary says: "Anyone who wouldn't
rather be a lunatic than a mental defective must be crazy"
(I.iii.42). A character in The Animal Kingdom says: "Shun
the country. Things come out of the ground there in the
Spring" (I.ii.45). Lissa Terry of In a Garden says: "Two
writers must have been talking shop here. The air's full
of smoke and phrases" (1.14).
/
More often, however, the statements turn on some
168
generally familiar expression.30 Multiple examples may be
found in the comedies; a few are selected here from the
more successful plays to show the method.
The early comedy, You and I. which was more subject
to the charge of preciosity than were the later plays, con
tained several well-turned cliches, most of them spoken by
the.women. Nancy White says: "That's as certain as death
and my hay fever" (1.20). "But— there might be a slip—
'twixt the offer and the check" (III.92). "Matey— if you
don't still think the bird in the bush worth any two in the
hand, you might as well die" (1.44). That speech is also
an example of dialog's dominating consistency of character,
for Nancy's life has been built on the bird in hand. Young
Ronny Duane can also turn a clever line: "Two minds with
out a single thought" (11.65). "I am the Indian Club among
30Barry did use many unaltered cliche's: "Rome
wasn't built in a day," and "left in a pet" in Paris Bound;
"Men were dying like flies," "armies of men underfoot,"
"I'll gird up my loins," "Keep a stiff upper lip," "They
say they always return to the scene of the crime" from
Holiday? "stout heart," "rolling off a log," "at the drop
of a hat," "bring the brass monkeys in" (one of the few
crudities in all of the plays) from The Animal Kingdom? "a
few very well-chosen words," a horse that "swallows wind by
the bucket," "mind your own beeswax," "they toil not, nei
ther do they spin," and, because of its crucial position, a
cliche plot line, "I don't quite know yet" from The Phila
delphia Story.
189
Dumbells" (11.66). Maitland White speaks a few such as:
"Matey and his money— they were soon parted, weren't they?"
(11.60).
Some indication of the bright dialog in Paris Bound
has already been given. Again, a woman has many of the
clever lines. Fanny Shippan asks whether the new baby is
"Boy or child?" (11.97). She gives presents and says: "I
got them in Venice for a certain popular song" (11.100).
Peter Cope has very few straight lines in the play. When
asked if a rope is long enough to reach from the second
floor to the ground, he replies: "Why, its reach exceeds
its grasp." A moment later he gives assurance of his abil
ity to lift a piece of luggage: "— Well, I didn't stroke
the Vassar crew for nothing" (1.42). On another occasion,
he sees someone else remove a coat, calls the act a good
idea, and adds: "He cast his coat aside like an old coat"
(III.156). A rather bitter turn of phrase comes from Mr.
Hutton as his last remark to Jim and Mary before they de
part for their honeymoon: ". . . if at first you don't suc
ceed, don't try again" (1.37).
None of the plays contained more clever lines than
did Holiday, some of which have already been cited. Again,
it is a woman who has the majority of the bright lines.
Linda remarks to Johnny: "— So you swept her off her snow-
shoes?" (1.18). She invites the cousins that she doesn't
like to stay, but adds: "I'd prefer it, however, if you'd
do your commenting on my behavior not to my face, but be
hind my back as usual— " (11.59). She objects to going to
France because "the air reeks of roses and the nightingales
make the night hideous" (11.60). Her brother, Ned, in a
most unobstrusive way, speaks a few clever lines. When he
meets Johnny Case for the second time and must pretend that
it is the first, Ned observes: "I recall your face, but
your figure puzzles me" (1.33). Into a strong argument be
tween Linda and their father about attitude toward money,
Ned inserts: "I've always said the Americans were a great
little people" (III.91). As did Peter Cope, Nick Potter
speaks almost every line with some twist such as: "Why,
he'll come down on you like Grant took Bourbon" (11.48).
"But there's more in this than meets the ear ..." (III.
181) .
Other similar lines are to be found in all of the
comedies, but in no other play are there as many isolated
clever lines as in Holiday. In The Philadelphia Story,
there are many clever lines, but most of them must be
quoted in a larger context. There are a number of puns.
191
Tracy Lord, occasionally called "Tray," says that she is
George's "faithful Old Dog Tray" (1.39). She writes a
thank-you note for a silver dish tagged "Old Dutch Muffin
Ear": "I am simply enchanted with your old Dutch Muffin Ear
— with which my husband and I will certainly hear any muf
fin coming a mile away" (I.11). In listing family names,
she refers to the "qu1est-qu-c'est Cassats" (1.21). The
photographer turns away a compliment with: "I just photo
graph well" (II.ii.85).
Puns are found in most of the plays— of course, the
turns of phrases above may be considered puns— but there
are not as many instances of play on a single word as there
are on familiar phrases. In Paris Bound. Mr. Hutton's for
mer wife remarks to him: "The years haven't put wrinkles in
your cheek, have they, James?" (1.17). When Peter Cope
tries to imagine what Noel Farley is doing, he muses: "I
can see her now— " to which Nora Cope responds: "Can you?
I never could” (III.161). Jim suggests that they wear
their wedding clothes for a sixth anniversary party; when
Mary reminds him that the clothes are in camphor, Jim re
sponds: "We'll give a camphor ball" (III.178).
In Holiday, Mr. Seton, the banker, persists in
calling Johnny Case "Mr. Chase." Johnny directs Nick to
192
the champagne with the caution: "Mumm's the word" (11.47).
Susan Potter offers: "Merry Christmas, from Dan to Beer-
sheba" (11.49).
There is another group of isolated, inserted clever
lines that are not essential to the action; they are paro
dies of what might be said in the situations. In You and I
Maitland White improvises a profile of a businessman when
he welcomes his employer for the weekend: "'— and seizing
his golf-clubs, and the latest "Cosmopolitan," our Captain
of Industry determined to relax'" (1.29). Lissa Terry, of
In a Garden prepares to be a "hardened hostess": "I think
the Chinese treaty with Syria was a mere political maneuver
to force the Cornish fishermen into Biarritz" (1.41). Pe
ter Cope in Paris Bound parodies a brochure from the rail
way: "— The railroad, or steam-demon, as it was then called,
was invented by Martin Luther in 1821. Since then— " (III.
160). In Holiday. Johnny composes the headline for a story
about his marrying Julia: "Farm Boy Weds Heiress as Bliz
zard Grips City" (11.45). When Johnny dances with Linda,
he paraphrases the instruction book: "— Place head, A,
against cheek, B, and proceed as before— " (11.73). Among
Nick Potter1s several parodies are a long one on the immi
grant 's success story and the following shorter one on an
193
item from the society section:
Mr. and Mrs. John Sebastian Case have closed their
Sixty-fourth Street house and gone to Coney Island for
the hunting. Mrs. Case will be remembered as Julia Se
ton, of Seton Pretty. (III.83)
In The Philadelphia Story. Mike Connor parodies the
fictional Dime magazine and the factual Time magazine as he
begins an expose of his employer: "'No lightweight is bald
ing, battlebrowed Sidney Kidd, no mean displacement, his:
for windy bias, bicarbonate'" (II.ii.75).
Although such clever lines which may be quoted sin
gly are representative, it is not in them that the best of
Barry's writing appears. In two kinds of longer passages—
real and fanciful— all of the above-named methods may be
found, made much better because of the continuity, because
the mood and the tone are sustained long enough to estab
lish a stronger impression. The first of the two kinds of
passages consists of retorts, or come-backs, of a building
on a previous speech, and of extended repartee.
In Paris Bound, as has been noted, the conversation
takes what turns it will, whether such turns benefit the
plot or not. The lines given above that Peter Cope speaks
about the reach of a rope and his stroking the Vassar crew
are part of the fun of escaping the wedding reception, and
194
the scene contains several interlocking exchanges such as
the following:
JIM. What about our get-away, Pete?
PETER. What about it?
MARY. Jim means, can we get away with it. (1.42-
43)
When Jim's parents argue about marriage, Mr. Hutton (James)
gets Helen to concede that Jim and Mary might know other
women or men and even love them "in a way."
JAMES. — Provided they "behave"—
HELEN. Naturally.
(He smiles.)
JAMES. — Provided they behave naturally— (1.20-21)
That sequence of building is also used in The Phil
adelphia Story:
GEORGE. But a man expects his wife to—
TRACY. To behave herself. Naturally.
DEXTER. To behave herself naturally. (Ill.114)^
Tracy— again, the female lead— has many sparkling
exchanges, and she is given some that belong to a lesser
3^Barry, as have many others, repeated himself oc
casionally, and certainly with as many characters in as
many plays who illustrate the same attitudes toward mar
riage, divorce, and career there must be many rather close
paraphrases; but there are fewer than might be expected.
195
character in a lower comedy.
TRACY. How do you spell omelet?
MARGARET. O-m-m-e-l-e-t.
TRACY. I thought there was another "1.” (I.11)
More typical of Tracy— before her humanizing— is
the following retort, delivered to her former husband:
DEXTER. Sometimes, for your sake, I think you
should have stuck to me longer, Red.
TRACY. I thought it was for life . . . but the
nice Judge gave me a full pardon.
DEXTER. That's the kind of talk I like to hear; no
bitterness, no recrimination— just a good quick left to
the jaw. (1.43)
All the characters in the play are triven some
bright lines. When Mike Connor and Liz Imbrie begin inter
viewing Sandy, Tracy's brother, they discover that Sandy,
besides coming from the Main Line of Philadelphia, works
for the editorial department of the Saturday Evening Post.
MIKE. I have to tell you, in all honesty, that I'm
opposed to everything you represent.
SANDY. Destiny is hardly a radical sheet; what is
it you're doing— boring from within?
MIKE. — And I'm not a communist, not by a long
shot.
LIZ. Just a small pin-feather in the Left Wing.
(MIKE looks at her) — Sorry.
SANDY. Jeffersonian Democrat?
196
MIKE. That's more like it.
SANDY. Have you seen his house at Monticello?
It's quite a place too.
LIZ. Nome Team One; Visitors Nothing—
MIKE. (Looking through cards) I suppose you're all
of you opposed to the Adminiatration?
SANDY. The present one? No—-as a matter of fact
we're Loyalists. (1.28-29)
Liz not only has many wisecracks but is also given
one of the two or three crude lines to be found throughout
the comedies. Mike is exhorting against the right of any
one as useless as Tracy to have a place in society, which
leads Liz to call Mike a "funny one."
MIKE. Why?
LIZ. Use the name "Wanamaker” in a sentence.
MIKE. I bite.
LIZ. I met a girl this morning. I hate her, but
I —
MIKE. I get you, but you're wrong. You couldn't
be wronger. . . . Women like that bore the pants off me.
LIZ. For a writer, you use your figures of speech
most ineptly. (II.i.47-48)
Tracy's Uncle Willie, in explaining the laws of
libel (which Dinah calls "liable"), says: "Suppose it was
erroneously stated, that during my travels as a young man I
was married in a native ceremony to a dusky maiden in
197
British Guinea, I doubt if I could collect a cent." A mo
ment later, Tracy asks him: "What was she like, Uncle
Willie?" and he responds: "So very unlike your Aunt Geneva,
my dear" (1.26-27).
Uncle Willie, a pincher, likes young ladies and
leads Liz on a tour of the house and grounds.
UNCLE WILLIE. Miss Imbrie, as a camera fiend, I
think I have another interesting subject for you.
LIZ. Will I have time?
UNCLE WILLIE. Time is an illusion. Come with me,
please. (She takes his arm) It's part of the old
house, a little removed from it.
LIZ. But what?
UNCLE WILLIE. An ancient granite privy, of superb
design— a dream of loveliness.
LIZ. — At sunset— idyllicI (II.i.49)
That sets up a delayed punch line, allowing Dinah to answer
a question concerning Liz's whereabouts with: "She's gone
to the privy with Uncle Willie" (II.i.59).
The way in which the characters in Holiday play off
each other's lines has been in part indicated. Linda Seton
has a great many of the quick and clever responses. When
Johnny tells Mr. Seton his up-from-nothing success story,
he asks Mr. Seton: "Anything else, Sir?" Mr. Seton asks
for clarification: "I beg your pardon?" and Linda inserts:
"I should think you would” (1.35). When her cousin Seton
Cram appears with his wife, Laura, both of whom Linda dis
likes, Linda adds an edge of acid, for Seton and Laura
would miss any point subtly made. In response to Laura's
”1 do hope we're not late," Linda says: "You're early.”
When Laura kisses Julia and starts toward Linda, Linda
warns her: "Careful, Laura— I've got the most terrible
cold.” When Laura beckons Linda: "— Now sit right down and
tell us everything you've been doing— " Linda mocks with:
"Well, take the average day: I get up about eight-thirty,
bathe, dress, and have my coffee" (1.37-38). To escape the
situation, Linda reminds Ned and Johnny of their plan to
excuse themselves to "brush up" before lunch, checks Julia,
who declines, and then:
But look at me, will youj (She moves quickly
across the room after NED and JOHNNY, flecking imagi
nary dust from her dress as she goes) — Simply covered
with dust.' — Wait, boys.' (1.38-39)
It is in the second kind of scene, the fanciful
scenes, that Holiday, and Barry, are most coruscating.
Such scenes are found in all of the comedies: they are fan
ciful, unrealistic, and unnatural (even for unrealistic and
unnatural characters): they are mock-serious, facetious,
and full of pretending, parodying, bantering, and
199
role-playing. The characters shift into and out of such
scenes as whimsy and necessity dictate. They are the
scenes which Krutch said could not be quoted in fragments,
_ j' •
that are too insubstantial to be subject to analysis, that
ripple in a continuous stream like the conversation one
hopes to hear but never actually does. One of the best
sustained of such scenes is the one from Holiday quoted in
Chapter V, following which, Linda and Johnny, left alone
for the first time, begin with a bantering parody of soci
ety conversation, then shift to a realistic discussion of
Julia's and Johnny's plans, and then let the conversation
take what turn it will for the remainder of the scene.
LINDA. However do you do, Mr. Case?
JOHNNY. — And you, Miss— uh— ?
LINDA. Seton is the name.
JOHNNY. Not one of the bank Setons!
LINDA. The same.
JOHNNY. Fancy!— I hear a shipment of ear-marked
gold is due on Monday. (Now they are seated.)
LINDA. (In her most social manner) Have you been
to the Opera much lately?
JOHNNY. Only in fits and starts, I'm afraid.
LINDA. But, my dear, we must do something for
them! They entertained us in Rome.
200
JOHNNY. --And you really saw Mount Everest?
LINDA. Chit.
JOHNNY. Chat.
LINDA. Chit-chat.
JOHNNY. Chit-chat.
LINDA. Will that do for the preliminaries?
JOHNNY. It's all right with me.
LINDA. I love my sister Julia more than anything
else in this world.
JOHNNY. I don't blame you. So do I. (1.23-24)
As they move through a matter-of-fact discussion,
Linda reveals that she is unhappy, but she shifts to banter
before she reveals very much.
JOHNNY. It seems to me you've got everything.
LINDA. Oh, it does, does it?
JOHNNY. What's the matter? Are you fed up?
LINDA. — To the neck.— Now tell me about your op
eration.
JOHNNY. I had been ailing for years— I don't know
— life seemed to have lost its savor—
LINDA. Couldn't you do your housework?
JOHNNY. Every time I ran upstairs I got all run
down. (1.26)
A great portion of the second act, when the Potters
are present, is filled with nonsense dialog. The language
201
is seldom straightforward, even in a relatively serious
discussion, but serious or light-hearted, the conversation
is likely to turn into fanciful banter. The Potters and
Johnny and Linda discuss places that they might like to
live, and Johnny says that it must be a place where he can
swim. Nick picks up the word swim, and all consideration
of places to live is dropped while they string together
non-sequiturs.
NICK. (Rises and leans upon the table) Young man,
in the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word.
Swimming is for idlers.
SUSAN. — And Hawaiians.
LINDA. — And fish.
NICK. Are you a fish? Answer me that. — Can you
look yourself squarely in the eye and say "I am a
fish"? No. You cannot.
JOHNNY. You are a hard man, sir.
NICK. It is life that has made me hard, son.
JOHNNY. — But I only want to be like you, Daddy—
how can I be like you?
NICK. You ask me the story of my success?— Well,
I'll tell you—
LINDA. Come— gather close, children. (They turn
their chairs and face him.)
NICK. — I arrived in this country at the age of
three months, with nothing in my pockets, but five
cents and an old hat-check. I had no friends, little
or no education, and sex was still the Great Mystery.
202
But when I came down the gang-plank of that little
sailing-vessel— steam was then unknown except to the
very rich—
— And that, my dears is how I met your grandmother.
(He bows.) (11.60-62)32
In Barry's first play on Broadway, there is perhaps
a greater preciosity than in the later plays, but the dia
log skims and skips over the surface of You and I. and the
characters drop into bits of fanciful and figurative— if
precious— banter, such as the following:
NANCY. Why don't you make me go up and dress?
MATEY. (Sternly) Go up and dress'
NANCY. I won't!
MATEY. (Comfortably) You're an obstinate baggage.
NANCY. I am the wife of your bosom, and you adore
me.
MATEY. Which makes you none the less obstinate,
and none the less a baggage.
NANCY. Matey— you're a grand old thing— do you
know it?
32Several critics— among them Carl Carmer--suggest
ed that either Barry or Donald Ogden Stewart, who played
Nick, could have written that page-long speech. Carmer who
found sincere, moving passages of dialog in Holiday, ob
jected to such nonsense smartness, "For it reveals not a
distinctive manner but an easy method . . . the reductio
ad absurdum of the commonplaces of ordinary people . . . at
first amusing, then wearying." "Philip Barry," Theatre
Arts Monthly. XIII (November, 1929), 821.
203
MATEY. I do.
NANCY. But it doesn't become you to admit it. (A
slight pause.) I believe I'm in love with you.
MATEY. (Impressively) It is my fatal fascination.
(1.33)
Their son, Ricky, and the girl he has just asked to
marry him realize that they must use terms of endearment,
but they can begin only with a mock-serious tone and a bur
lesque of a love scene before moving to a tender moment.
RICKY. (In embarrassed delight) Oh, Lord— this is
wonderful. . . . (She rises and faces him. They stand
looking at each other, silently. RICKY finally ven-
tures it.) Dearest. . . .
RONNY. Angel. . . .
RICKY. Darling. . . .
RONNY. Lover. . . .
RICKY. (Groping for it) Uh— uh— Precious.
RONNY. (Dramatically) My tr-r-r-easure. (He pre-
sents a cheek, but RONNY edges away.) Not on your
life. . . . (RICKY intrepidly kisses her on the cheek.
She laughs. ) Gosh, Rick— you're poor!
RICKY. How do you know?
RONNY. I read a book. (At which RICKY takes her
in his arms , as if she were made of spun glass.)
RICKY. "To Veronica from Roderick, with Love."
(He kisses her lightly, but unmistakably.)
RONNY. (Softly) Oh— how diverting. (1.17)
There is one scene that has none of the preciosity
204
of those two scenes. It occurs when Geoffrey Nichols calls
on the Whites and encounters the maid, who has been posing
as an artist's model in a fashionable dress and is assumed
by Nichols to be a house guest. The scene is a parody on
Barry's parodying of society conversation and is more ap
propriate for farce, or low comedy, as are all the scenes
in which the maid is brought into the conversation.
One of the better bantering scenes of mock-serious-
ness— one more nearly suggestive of later and more success
ful plays— occurs when Nichols, a novelist, and Maitland
inspect Maitland's painting, and they call each other names
of less and less reputable writers and artists.
MATEY. Have you seen the— uh— "White" . . . ?
NICHOLS. Rather!— I'm delighted with it.
MATEY. Isn't he nice, Nanny?
NANCY. No one has ever so endeared himself to me.
MATEY. I'm going to let the Metropolitan and the
Luxembourg fight it out. Look here, Balzac— what do
you think of this left arm?
NICHOLS. But my good Gainsborough— I find it a bit
muscular!
MATEY. That, my dear Hawthorne, is light— not mus
cle .
NICHOLS. But I tell you, Sargent, that I know a
muscle when I see one!
205
MATEY. The thing I want really to know, Chambers,
is just how well do you see?
NICHOLS. Quite well enough, Mr. Christy, to know a
tendon from a sunbeam.
MATEY. Harold Bell, I find you a very stuffy per
son. . . .
NICHOLS. Oh, BriggsN-Think what you'll suffer
when the critics start to bark.' (11.77)
All of White Wings is fantasy, and there is a flow
of non-sequiturs throughout. Barrett Clark wrote of it:
How whimsically, with what subtle art and half
tones of suggestion this comedy romps along' There is
an undercurrent of tragedy expressed in terms of glori
ous nonsense; there is a curious inter-mixture of suave
humor and cutting satire; there is pure romance and
there is unalloyed silliness; but try if you can to
disentangle these things and trace any one theme or
idea or mood throughout the play. It can't be done.33
The first scene, one of the best, sets the pattern
for the play. Archie Inch and Mary Todd, who have just
left a party where they met, become acquainted with each
other as they sit on some boxes on a sidewalk at two
o'clock in the morning. Mary expresses the hope that her
father was able to sleep, and Archie says that his father,
a street cleaner as is Archie, prowls the streets "as if he
was looking for something— something he'd lost."
MARY. Poor man.
33An Hour of American Drama, p. 105.
206
ARCHIE. I don't think he's very happy.
NARY. Mine's terribly happy. He's a mechanical
genius. I am, too, in a smaller way. I don't suppose
I ought to tell you, but we're going to revolutionize
the world.
ARCHIE. When, especially?
MARY. Tomorrow afternoon. (ARCHIE laughs.) You
can laugh.'— But just you stand around the streets a
little tomorrow.
ARCHIE. That's my job— any street in particular?
MARY. Up there on the Parkway. You'll see history
made tomorrow.
ARCHIE. That ought to be— (He yawns.) — more fun
than reading it.
(MARY yawns also.)
MARY. Are you sleepy, too?
ARCHIE. I am, a little.
MARY. All of a sudden.
ARCHIE. Urn.
MARY. Rather pleasant sensation.
ARCHIE. 'Tis, isn't it?
MARY. Like— being— just a little bit drunk, I sup
pose .
ARCHIE. I don't know.
MARY. I feel it first in the back of my neck.
Sleep, I mean.
ARCHIE. It's awfully pretty.
MARY. What is?
207
ARCHIE. The back of your neck.
MARY. Is it? I've never seen it. (A pause.)
It's my ears I like. Look— (She raises her hand to
brush the hair back from an ear, but is too sleepy to
complete the motion and lets it fall again.)--Some
other time.
ARCHIE. I'll bet they're peacherinos— don't forget.
MARY. Remind me— (They begin to breathe regularly.
in unison. MARY leans against him.) Funny— even with
my eyes shut, I can see your face. (Another pause.)—
It's a funny face, even for a man. 1^ like it, and I
like the way you sit down— You sit down with a will.
ARCHIE. I try to do everything that way.
MARY. It must be a strain at times.
ARCHIE. I've got the constitution of the United
States.
MARY. Some day you must tell me all about it.
(1.6-10)
When Lissa Terry and Norrie Bliss find themselves
in a garden scene fabricated by Adrian Terry in In a Garden.
Lissa calls it a "perfect high comedy atmosphere," and
offers Bliss an imaginary cup of tea.
BLISS. (affectedly) Thanks, so much.
(LISSA continues in the manner of a drawing-room
comedy of the 'nineties:
LISSA. Nine lumps, or twenty-one?— One gives tea
to so many people in the course of a season, one for
gets what one should remember— if you know what I mean.
BLISS. No sugar. Salt.
LISSA. Salt.
BLISS. Salt.
(She smiles sweetly and gives it to him. They pre
tend to drink their tea.)
LISSA. — They say dear Lady Vi is seen much, of
late, in the company of that Italian.
BLISS. Let us hope she does not lose too much in
translation. (11.72)
A portion of one of the best examples of such
scenes from Paris Bound was included in Chapter V, but the
characters could shift into and out of such scenes in just
a few speeches. Jim, getting ready to leave for Europe, is
waiting for a telephone connection, and following Mary's
lead, they drop into an imitation of a dime-novel romance
or low-grade motion picture:
JIM. I'm in love with you.
MARY. — But what about my children?
JIM. Forget 'em. Come with me in my death-car.
MARY. When do we leave? (11.91)
Jim returns to his telephone call, and the scene is
ended. Again and again, throughout the comedies, the char
acters assume some such pose, hold it for a time, and then
go on to something else. Some of the scenes help move for
ward the plot, and some do not, but the flow of language
amuses and delights, and it was that combination of clever
209
lines in mock-serious, fanciful scenes of parody and pre
tending for which Barry is primarily distinguished.
There are several other characteristics that are
not as noteworthy but which are definitely a part of what
makes Barry's language distinctive. It may be noticed in
the excerpts cited thus far that the speeches are quite
short and that many of them seem to have been interrupted
or left incomplete. Such usage brought praise and reproof.
Brooks Atkinson wrote that the characters in The Animal
Kingdom would rarely be surprised "into unpacking their
hearts with words," but that there is never any doubt about
what the characters do not say.Richard Dana Skinner re
peatedly praised Barry on that point. In a general work,
Skinner wrote that Barry's "dialogue is matchless. His
unspoken dialogue is even better." In his review of The
Animal Kingdom, Skinner developed the point at length:
Philip Barry has a most amazing quality in his dia
logue which enables him to bring to life, at times,
characters of singular sensitiveness and sympathetic
warmth. What his characters leave unsaid is frequently
more important than what they say. They merely hint at
things and, for this very reason, their emotions leap
across the footlights to be shared spontaneously by the
audience. There is perhaps no other American play
wright who can equal this particular quality which
34"Valuing Integrity," New York Times. January 24,
1932, sec. 8, p. 1.
210
Barry enjoys.
Eleanor Flexner, as noted at the beginning of this
chapter, charged that Barry "has no ear for the ordinary
colloquial rhythms of speech," and continued: "Instead, he
creates his own, staccato and clipped to the point of styl
ization. " She then quoted passages from The Animal Kingdom
— which so pleased Atkinson and Skinner— and from Tomorrow
and Tomorrow, after which she stated:
This is not realism, the inarticulateness of overpower
ing emotion, but dialogue stylized until it has become
a shorthand of emotion, artificial instead of signifi
cant, inexpressive rather than heightened in effective
ness. 36
Certainly, there is no "overpowering emotion"; such
would be out of place in comedy. And certainly, the dialog
is "stylized" and a "shorthand of emotion" and "artifi
cial," for that is what the language of high comedy must be.
It is not expressive or effective in terms of drama. Nei
ther does the language possess all the qualities attributed
to it by Atkinson and Skinner, but the abstractions permit
empathic auditors to supply what is missing.
The passage quoted by Miss Flexner from The Animal
35"The Animal Kingdom," Commonweal, XV (February 17,
1932), 441.
36American Playwrights: 1918-1938, p. 254.
211
Kingdom follows Tom Collier's telling Daisy Sage that she
has advanced greatly in painting technique but was far from
prepared for an exhibit and should not have permitted her
work to be shown.
DAISY. You're cruel, inhuman. You're a brute.
TOM. Oh Daisy—
DAISY. Thanks for being.
TOM. If you mean it—
DAISY. From my heart— (She looks at him, smiling
now.) Oh, you skunk—
(He laughs, relieved.)
TOM. Worse. Much worse.
DAISY. (serious again) Who but you, Tom? (She
points her finger at him.) Look: only you and strang
ers honest with me ever. (II.ii.117)
If Daisy's painting were of primary importance,
perhaps there should be a fuller and more natural discus
sion, but the important thing here is to establish that Tom
and Daisy have a special rapport between them and that they
belong together. Barry's artists never quite succeed as
artists, anyway,* they do succeed as people.
There are scattered examples of what Skinner called
"unspoken dialogue" throughout the plays. In Paris Bound,
for example, just after the wedding, Jim calls Mary's name,
and, when she responds, speaks one word: "— Fun." That
212
word may mean: "The wedding was fun," "The honeymoon will
be fun," and "Here's wishing us a life of fun." In Holiday
when the climax is reached, shorthand is sufficient:
JULIA. I must decide now, must I?
JOHNNY. Please—
JULIA. ^ — And if I say No— not unless you— ? (III.
104)
The question is clear; there is no need to repeat
the alternatives. The technique is most evident in The An
imal Kingdom, however, and in You and I there are some lon
ger scenes of understatement. After Ricky has brazened his
proposal, and before he and Ronny can get into the mock-se
rious scene noted above, they find references to love and
to being married difficult to make:
RONNY. I had it all planned to marry the next per
son I was honestly fond of. But now you— you egg—
you've ruined it. I'll have to forget you first. It
would be such a filthy trick— when I— when there was
someone I actually— (She shudders.) Oh— I couldn't
stand it!
RICKY. I can't imagine being— to anyone but you,
really I can't.
RONNY. (Softly) It would be too delightful, to be
— to you. (There is a pause.)
RICKY. (A sudden idea) Listen, Ronny; there's no
reason why we shouldn't be— I'll go into Father's fac
tory, instead. (1.15-16)
In the three examples just given, a key word or
213
idea is omitted, but the meaning is readily made clear by
the context, and a longer, more complicated construction is
avoided. Daisy's "Thanks for being," for example, easily
replaces some construction such as: "Thanks for being cruel
with me about my painting instead of being nice and not
saying what you mean because you are my friend." A some
what different form of shortened construction is found
wherein a missing word is dictated as much by ordinary syn
tax as by context. Ricky in You and I omits the pronoun
when he says: "Certainly shall;" (11.64) Richard, in The
Youngest, omits not only the pronoun, in a much less likely
place, but the accompanying verb also: "Sick of being
treated like this;" (1.18)
A much more affected omission is the suppression of
a main verb, and sometimes another word, and the supplying
of an auxiliary verb. "What could we?" and "What would
you?"— omitting do and recognize— from Paris Bound (1.41,
43); "Oh I always;" and "They usually."— omitting sleep
well and do— from Second Threshold (I.i.39); "What do you
think I'll you?"— omitting feel about— from Without Love
(III.ii.92). In a similar way, "You think?" is more than
once made to stand for "You think so?" In Without Love, a
necessary object of an infinitive is dropped: "I don't know
214
what's to prevent" (III.ii.96). Or, in the same play, the
adjective cold does not appear with the adverbs that modify
ot: "There are other places not so" (III.ii.97).
The cumulative effect of such shortened construc
tions is somewhat exasperating, and such extending of ef
fective stylization probably elicited much of the criticism
that Barry's dialog is precious and pretentious.
The constructions just described, coupled with cer
tain expressions that are more nearly British than American,
or are at least not customary in this country, lend a pseu
do-British quality to much of the dialog. Motor is gener
ally used as noun and verb for automobile and drive. Ra
diogram is shortened to radio. The expression good go is
found in You and I (1.21) and in Paris Bound (11.87); "Is
it a go?" is used in Without Love (I.i.27). A number of
such expressions are found in Paris Bound: "coming on for
it" (1.26); "if she was let make a real scene" (1.50); "I
wonder doesn't he love her at all— " (1.50); "That's going
it pretty stiff don't you think?" (III.129). In The Animal
Kingdom are: "you Tom Collier" (I.ii.56); "Perhaps we
shan't go in" (II.i.65); "I wouldn't be let" (III.ii.123).
Several such constructions can be found in almost
all of the comedies and finally become recognizable as a
kind of Barry idiom, to which a certain grammatical incon
sistency contributed. Although Barry's characters would
likely have attended schools that taught traditional formal
usage, Barry shows the currency of his characters by sup
plying them with the informal usages that were gaining ac
ceptance in America. Gerunds are most often given accusa
tive subjects rather than the preferred genitive? in Paris
Bound. for example, are found: "without them knowing it"
(1.21) and "danger of them getting" (1.39) but, in the same
scene, "Your coming" (1.26). Accusative pronouns are used
as the subjects of elliptical clauses and after linking
verbs: in Paris Bound, for example, are found: "as Irish as
me" (1.56), "it's not me" (III.109), and "this isn't me"
>•
(III.146); in Holiday: "you'd get here before me" (1.8); in
The Animal Kingdom: "you're not her" (I.i.9), "it's me" (I.
i.ll), "such friends as you and me" (II.ii.121), and, in a
stage direction, "it is her" (III.ii.174). Adverbs are
used with linking verbs as if they were action verbs; in
Holiday, for example, are found: "it might not look so well"
(1.46), "how badly it would look" (11.70), and "it's well
to arrange" (III.101). The indicative mood is often used
in place of the subjunctive: in The Animal Kingdom, for ex
ample, is found: "I wish Tom was" (III.i.140); in The
216
Philadelphia Story: "if I was God" (I.11) and "I wish I was
home" (1.32). Those and other grammatical deviations are
found throughout the plays. In several of the plays, one
character corrects another's grammar or usage, and in two
of those plays— You and I (1.22; 11.63) and Holiday (1.17-
18)— the incorrect form is deliberately repeated; the first
of those instances is accompanied by the stage direction:
"Grammar is an affectation," which is perhaps the point
that Barry's characters repeatedly wish to make.
There is a relatively insignificant use of slang,
but there is a proliferation of pet names. Some diminutive
form of proper names is often used, as amply indicated in
references made thus far, but figurative expressions of af
fection frequently replace names. There is a decided ex
cess of such terms in You and I: "simpleton," "lamb," "my
first born child," "precious idiot," "sweet old thing,"
"brick," "useless person," "old precious," "old lad," "egg,"
"dreadful," "good dog," and many other such expressions in
addition to the more ordinary "dear" and "darling." Many
fewer, but similar, forms of address appear in all the
plays, adding to the charge that Barry was precious.
You and I contains many precious stage directions,
some of the least precious of which were quoted in
descriptions of characters in Chapter V. One other aspect
of language requires reading— rather than hearing— the
scripts to detect. In several of the plays, the speeches
of one character— Ricky in You and I. Richard in The Youn
gest, Jim in Paris Bound. Dinah in The Philadelphia Story.
Quentin in Without Love— include more contracted spellings
than do the lines of other characters. The contractions
are not simply those of subject and verb or verb and adverb,
but seeming attempts to indicate that that character uses
less careful articulation and yields to the easy assimila
tions of ordinary speech. Them becomes 'em, for example,
and don't know becomes dunno. In The Youngest, which con
tains the most strained of such usages, and is spelled 'n
or '£' in Richard's speeches, and several are often strung
together as in the following: "a lady's maid 'n some soft
cushions 'n chocolates 'n cheap novels 'n— " (1.25). While
that may be heard in natural speech, spelling such as "as
much's" and "stick 'round here" (1.17) indicate a more dif
ficult— not an easier— pronunciation and, therefore, lend
an affected false note to the dialog.
In his review of Spring Dance, Grenville Vernon
raised the questions: "what is the matter with Philip Bar
ry? Why is so fine a talent gradually drying up?" and
218
answered his questions by finding the fault to lie in Bar
ry's dialog: "Year by year it is becoming more 'literary,'
37
farther divorced from life." While Vernon seemed to want
Barry to suffer so that he could write compelling drama,
there is some basis, even in comedy, for Vernon's charge.
In almost every play, there were a few of Barry's cleverly
turned phrases that were in some way literary, and only a
few such usages can give an entire play an affected tone.
Some of those phrases were built from dead or archaic lit
erary language; others rested on a rather remote literary
reference.
In You and I, Ricky tells his father: "I was break
ing the news of my approaching nuptials with one Veronica
Duane. ..." The father answers: "And didn't I felicitate
you?" (1.25). When Ricky suggests that instead of going
abroad he can go to night school, Ronny inserts: "'"Whom
are you?" said Cyril'" (1.16) in a slightly misquoted ref
erence to a George Ade character who had been to night
school. Because of the maid's suspicion of artists, Mait
land says: "I feel like the Seven Deadlies.'" (1.48).
Adrian Terry, of In a Garden, speaks to his wife:
37"Spring Dance," Commonweal. XXIV (September 18,
1936), 487.
"Ask me 'Whence the great joy,' why don't you?" and Lissa
asks: "My sprightly one— whence the great joy?" (1.28).
In Paris Bound. Mary, telling of her life with Jim,
says: "There was nothing but plain chant and Palestrina all
the whole day long" (III.130). By "plain chant," she prob
ably means that they were in unison, and "Palestrina" was a
sixteenth century Italian composer who was called the
"Prince of Music." In a line cited in Chapter V, reference
is made to "Poictesme" (III.158), a fictional medieval
country in which James Branch Cabell set some of his ro
mances that were popular in the 1920's. Peter, in a remark
of vague relevance, says to Jim: "Remember, mens sana in
corpore sano" (III.172), as if he had just recalled the
Latin phrase in free association.
In Holiday. Linda expects some guests to arrive "in
a heated barouche" (11.49). When her cousin and his wife
appear, Linda exclaims: "My God, it's Winnie-the-PoohJ"
(11.64). When reference is made to the Scottish singers
who are entertaining at Julia's engagement party, Nick says
"I wouldn't have come if I'd known the Campbells were com
ing— " (11.58), a remark of little meaning for those not
familiar with Scottish song titles.
Daisy Sage, in The Animal Kingdom, ventures:
220
"Perhaps I'd better hie me to some sylvan dell" (II.ii.114).
Tom Collier, accepting a drink after having drunk too much
the previous night, proclaims; "Similia similibus curantur.
Translated, the hair of the dog that— " (III.i.166), per
haps funnier for those who do not know that the Latin
phrase means: "like cures like." Tom appraises his fa
ther's attractions for women and wonders why he has not
married; when Mr. Collier answers: "I keep my defenses well
in line," Tom puns with a reference to a line spoken by
Charles C. Pinckney: "Millions for defense, eh, Sir?— But
not one cent for cab-fare" (I.i.25).
Sandy, in The Philadelphia Story, uses many expres
sions such as "Get thee to bed," and "Nimble Scrivener,"
(II.ii.74-75), and when he warns his sister not to drink
too much champagne, he uses an alliterative figure of
speech and the brand name of a French champagne: "I have
seen people fly in the face of Pommery before" (II.ii.72).
Pat Jamieson, preparing for a world war in Without
Love, tells Jamie Coe Rowan what to do with her idle money:
"Use it to wake people up to what's coming. Use it for
horses for new Paul Reveres! One if by land— two if by sea
— three if by air!" (I.ii.26). Pat uses many literary
phrases such as "Nut brown maid, thou hast a slender waist,"
221
and "who shall say us nay?" (II.i.48). The secretary says:
"The prospect pleaseth— " (I.iii.31); she also addresses
Jamie's cousin, Quentin, who has just joined the navy, with
successfully higher titles of rank, gives him a kiss of
congratulation on his commission, and asks for "a return
engagement," to which Quentin responds: "H.M.S. 'Dauntless,1
three points off the starboard bow" (II.i.44-45).
Each of the techniques and methods treated in this
chapter recurs clearly and frequently enough in the come
dies to be extracted and described. The final effect of
all those practices— the construction and flow of clever
lines in or out of context; the verbal improvisions and di
gressions into fantasy and whimsy; the elliptical construc
tions, grammatical'deviations, variant personalized phras
ing, and literary stylization— is a definite, distinguish
able language in Barry's plays. It is artificial rather
than natural; it is glancing rather than penetrating: it is,
therefore, especially suited to the abstracted, smart peo
ple in the comedies. The language pleased, delighted, and
exasperated— just as did the characters.
There are, of course, lines that do not fit the de
scribed pattern: there are lines that are poetic, tender,
insightful, and incisive that even the severest detractors
admired; and there are lines that even the staunchest ad
mirers found unworthy. The language usages and practices
discussed in this chapter, and re-named in the preceeding
paragraphs, however, are representative; the combination
is what made Barry's language uniquely his.
CHAPTER VII
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Philip Barry, author of eighteen plays produced on
Broadway (one of them posthumously with revisions), co-au
thor of another, and adapter of two others, earned a repu
tation in the American theater as a writer of sophisticated
comedy and as an experimentalist. The majority of the
plays featured privileged young persons who struggle— in
"'good taste— to find their places in, or their way out of,
the world their parents or grandparents made for them;
those plays include the followings You and I (1923), The
Youngest (1924), In a Garden (1925), Paris Bound (1927),
Holiday (1928), The Animal Kingdom (1932), The Joyous Sea
son (1934), The Philadelphia Story (1939), Without Love
(1947), and Second Threshold (1951). Three other plays are
variations of the pattern: Hotel Universe (1930), an exper
imental drama in one act, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931),
a three-act drama, shows the same people engaged in the
223
224
same struggle but in different settings and with different
tones; White Wings (1926) uses the same theme but different
characters in a fantasy.
The remaining eight plays include the one collabo
ration, Cock Robin (1928), a potboiler melodrama, and the
two adaptations, written by request and both failures.
Spring Dance (1936) and My Name is Aquillon (1949). There
were two unsuccessful tragedies: John (1927) and Bright
Star (1935) ; there was a commercially unsuccessful and
critically controversial drama, Here Come the Clowns (1938),
that atypically showed a stage-hand's search for God; there
was also a two-act allegory, Liberty Jones (1941), and a
comedy-fantasy, Foolish Notion (1945). The serious plays
occasioned many references to "the two Barrys."
The major portion of Barry's work, however, may be
placed in a single group for examination, and that examina
tion reveals not only an exceptional facility for comedy of
manners but also a unique treatment. Age-old comedy struc
ture is evident (1) in the struggle by which the right man
and the right woman get or keep each other in spite of op
position, (2) in the conflict between an ordered and con
trolled society and one that is free and creative, and (3)
in the resolution, the happy ending, which is imposed
rather than obligatory, promises a happy life for the prin
cipal characters, and causes no one to suffer painful de
feat. Contemporary themes are evident in the terms in
which the conflict is stated: primary emphasis is placed on
business, industry, and the making of money— which emphasis
dominated groups and regulated individuals— and a secondary
emphasis is given new attitudes about marriage and divorce.
Business reached levels of production and importance in the
1920's never known before; a greater portion of the popula
tion shared in the prosperity, -and those who had already
become prosperous became more so, their wealth and position
making them leaders of society. Society and business made
a regimen of methods and procedures, and a somewhat fixed
society with definite manners was established. Reaction to
the new wealth and to World War I led to new attitudes
about old institutions, marriage among them. In the fash
ionable set, divorce became a novelty— not a tragedy. Out
of those aspects of the 1920's Barry drew his themes, not
only for that decade but for the following one as well.
In a generally conventional comedy structure, Barry
showed a courtship or marriage in trouble, that trouble
arising from the demands of a regimented, business-oriented
society or from conflicting attitudes about those demands.
226
Conformity was required by the vested interested— not self-
expression or self-searching for fulfillment in personal
terms. The difficulty in each play was resolved by a com
promise that cost no character anything that he truly
wanted, and the happy ending was marked by some new begin
ning for the hero and heroine— a wedding, a new-found union,
a breaking away from the old order— always with the promise
of happiness and fulfillment, and always in terms of the
greatest good.
The characters who act out the themes were largely
from established Eastern society. They did not have to
struggle to make a place for themselves as had their grand
fathers, but they had to accept or reject the place and po
sition as solidified by their fathers. Their financial ad
vantage had given them a sophistication far beyond that of
the majority; they needed show no evidence of wealth, and
they were well schooled in the decorum of a society oper
ating according to a definite protocol. When they reached
maturity, they were expected to take their places and make
their careers in the ordered world established for them;
they were not expected to be idlers or artists. Barry's
best characters are those who at least resist, and at most
openly rebel against, the entrapment of business and
227
business-oriented society. Against them, of course, are
set the characters who uphold and advocate continuance of
the system.
Attention is most often focused on a young woman
who has just found or is finding the right young man for
her. Each young woman is slender and attractive; intelli
gent, accomplished, and socially poised; one differs from
another in minor ways, and, of course, the secondary char
acters used for contrast place greater value on position
and possessions. The same may generally be said of the
young men: each is slender and not-quite-handsome; intelli
gent, accomplished, and self-confident. Even those charac
ters that were not born into the privileged set have those
same qualities and speak with the same verbal smartness.
The most appealing of them demonstrate a high degree of in
tegrity in their search for self-realization.
True to comedy, the characters are abstractions at
a rather high level— not individuals. Each is made to
serve a specific purpose, to demonstrate a particular point,
or to reveal a certain characteristic. Selfishness, ambi
tion, and snobbishness; selflessness, generosity, and mod
esty are shown to be traits found among both the privileged
class and those outside it. Secondary characters much more
228
definitely serve a purpose, but all characters seem to come
to life because of their bright charm, grace, and wit.
Characterization is accomplished primarily by di-
S '
rect action and speech of each character, aided greatly by
the setting in which he is placed. Much less reliance is
placed on what other characters say, or, except for the
earlier plays, on textual descriptions.
The language spoken by those characters remains a
chief appeal of Barry's plays and has been generally con
sidered brilliant and sparkling, but sometimes precious or
too light. The dialog takes the turns dictated by whimsy
and verbal play, whether those turns advance the plot or
not. The language is made distinctive by combination of
several recurring methods or techniques: there are isolated
clever lines, often an altered cliche *or a parody of what
might be said in the situation; there are inter-connected
clever lines that frequently build into longer passages of
banter, often mock-serious and fanciful, and usually di
gressive; there is a personalized idiomatic usage that in
cludes elliptical constructions, remote references, gram
matical deviations, and unusual phrasing.
Those themes and constructions, those characters
and their language gained Barry his greatest professional
229
success in plays that may be termed comedy of manners, or
high comedy. The plays delighted and amused as they held
up a mirror before society— a mirror that reflected in all
good taste some of the posing of the time. That the plays
only reflected and did not examine in depth brought adverse
criticism from some who seemed to want searching drama, but
comedy structure is necessarily arbitrary, the characters
necessarily abstractions, and the language necessarily ar
tificial. The very request for drama instead of comedy
does, however, attest to the appeal and the pertinency of
the reflection.
The greatest degree of perfection was reached in
Paris Bound. Holiday, and The Philadelphia Story; conse
quently, those three plays receive the greatest attention
in this study, for through them the Barry comedy method is
most readily revealed, and for them Barry is best remem
bered. The points treated in this study and summarized
above made Barry unique in the American theater and made
him the country's foremost writer of society comedy.
Barry entered the American theater at a time of
great change and growth, a time when American drama was, at
last, becoming distinctly American and truly drama. The
dramatic, artistic, and literary levels of American
230
playwriting were raised to new heights in the two decades
following World War I by playwrights with new purpose and
distinction. In many discussions of the period, Barry is
mentioned second, with only Eugene O'Neill listed ahead of
him, but, regardless of the order, grouped with such promi
nent names as Robert E. Sherwood, S. N. Behrman, Elmer Rice,
Clifford Odets, Maxwell Anderson, and Sidney Howard. Barry,
however, stands to the side of the group. No other play
wright dealt so exclusively with the themes and the charac
ters that he used, and his language is so stylized that
most commentators term it particularly his. Barry's plays
completely ignored the social issues of the 1920's and
1930's that concerned other playwrights. Even S. N. Behr
man, who shared with Barry the credit for moving the come
dy of manners to its highest point of development, used the
form less consistently and evinced much greater interest
in political and social issues.
What separated Barry from his contemporary play
wrights then has since caused him to be moved further away
from the mainstream of American theater. The problems
faced by Barry's characters were expressed so definitely in
the terms of the small but very wealthy segment of the
United States of the 1920's that the plays are out-of-date.
231
The structured society upon which those plays were based
has largely passed, its decline beginning with World War II.
^The themes are still valid— perhaps even more so—
for the much greater portion of our affluent society that
enjoys the privileges formerly known only to the few. The
themes have a wider applicability, but the treatment does
not. That point may be illustrated by reference to a 1965
performance of The Philadelphia Story; a reviewer found the
play to be still charming and graceful but not effective
because times have changed.^ There were attempts to make
the play current by inserting comments about President
Johnson's Great Society and other matters of the day, indi
cation enough of the anachronistic mixing that spoils any
period play. One might as well mention twentieth century
matter in a play by Moliere or Congreve; simply because
persons now living remember original Barry productions it
should not be assumed that the plays are contemporary.
Just as Moliere and Congreve set portions of their soci
eties on stage, so did Barry set a portion of his society
on stage. All three of those societies are past, but the
^Margaret Harford, Philadelphia Story1 Same, But
Times Change," Los Angeles Times. April 27, 1965, part IV,
p. 10.
plays written about them can still be understood and can be
performed with pleasure and profit to present pictures of
those societies and the foibles of people in them. So ap
proached, Barry's plays could be advantageously performed
today.
A further indication of Barry's lone position is
the almost complete lack of identifiable influences that
led up to or away from Barry's kind of comedies. Few com
mentators made more than passing reference to other comedy
writers in their discussions of Barry, although there are
associations made between his serious plays and those of
other serious writers. A cursory examination of a popular
play catalog of the 1930's or 1940's, however, will reveal
a great number of comedies modeled after Barry's style and
technique and featuring smart people in an action that re
volves around getting the right man and woman together in
a manner similar to Barry's.
John Gassner was discussing such matters in his
study of "Philip Barry: A Civilized Dramatist," when he
wrote:
There is, indeed, no great possibility of our now
having other writers of comedy who can command his re
strained expertness, and even less possibility of our
meeting up again with playwrights who attempt to effec
tuate themselves in his kind of moralistic yet refined
233
#
drama. His talent was unique in this respect. It had,
so to speak, one foot in a genteel society still secure
and another foot in the quicksilver of society as we
know it today.2
Barry's uniqueness and his success make further
studies of him and his work feasible: comparative studies
of Barry and his contemporary playwrights and of the themes
used by him and by other writers are possible; no tracing
has been made of Barry's influence on later comedies, and
Broussard's assertion of Barry's influence on serious writ
ers has not been developed; and there have not been studies
devoted to the non-comic plays or to the reconciliation of
contradictions concerning the man and his works.
The present study has attempted none of those
things, but the analysis of Barry's comedy structure, char
acterization, and language should be of some assistance for
such studies. In a broader sense, Barry's style, taste,
humor, and detachment in treating the themes of marriage
and divorce, business and career, self-realization and
self-fulfillment may be studied with profit by any student
of the theater, especially playwrights, and by students of
social history.
2Theatre Arts. XXXV (December, 1951), 89.
APPENDIX
234
235
ORIGINAL PRODUCTION DATA
You and I
A comedy in three acts. Produced by Richard G. Herndon at
the Belmont Theater, New York, February 19, 1923. Staged
by Robert Milton; settings by Raymond Savoy and Robert
Goode. Financially successful; 174 performances.
Maitland White..................... H. B. Warner
Nancy White.........................Lucil$ Watson
Roderick White..................... Geoffrey Kerr
Veronica Duane..................... Frieda Inescort
Geoffrey Nichols...................Reginald Mason
G. T. Warren........................Ferdinand Gottschalk
Etta.................................Beatrice Miles
The Youngest
A comedy in three acts. Produced by Robert Milton at the
Gaiety Theater, New York, December 22, 1924. Staged by
Robert Milton; settings by Livingstone Platt. Moderately
successful: 104 performances.
Charlotte Winslow..................Effie Shannon
Oliver Winslow..................... Paul Harvey
Mark Winslow....................... Robert Strange
Augusta Winslow Martin............ Veree Teasdale
Alan Martin.........................Walker Ellis
Martha Winslow..................... Katherine Alexander
Richard Winslow.................... Henry Hull
Nancy Blake.........................Genevieve Tobin
Katie............................... Alice John
In a Garden
A comedy in three acts. Produced by Arthur Hopkins at the
Plymouth Theater, New York, November 16, 1925. Staged by
Arthur Hopkins; settings by Robert Edmund Jones. Finan
cially unsuccessful: 73 performances.
236
Adrian Terry.......................Frank Conroy
Lissa Terry........................Laurette Taylor
Roger Compton......................Ferdinand Gottschalk
Norrie Bliss.......................Louis Calhern
Miss Mabie.........................Marie Bruce
Frederic........................... Cecil Clovelly
White Wings
A fantasy in four acts (published as a comedy in three
acts). Produced by Winthrop Ames at the Booth Theater, New
York, October 15, 1926. Staged by Winthrop Ames; settings
by Woodman Thompson. Failure: 27 performances.
Joseph, a Horse................... George Ali
Mary Todd.......................... Winifred Lenihan
Archie Inch........................Tom Powers
Mr. Ernest Inch................... William Norris
Herbert, a Cabby.................. J. M. Kerrigan
Paul Pillsbury)...................(Donald McKee
Ralph Otis )White Wings.......(Earl McDonald
Clyde Sims II ).............. (Ben Lackland
Kit Canari.........................Donald MacDonald
Mrs. Fanny K. Inch................Jessie Graham
Major Philip E. Inch.............. Albert Tavernier
Charlie Todd.......................Arthur B. Allen
Dr. Bowles.........................Donald McKee
Dr. Derby.......................... Earl McDonald
Taxi Driver............°........... Ben Lackland
City Employee......................Phil M. Sheridan
John
A tragedy in five acts. Produced by Guthrie McClintic at
the Klaw Theater, New York, November 4, 1927. Staged by
Guthrie McClintic; settings by Norman Bel-Geddes. Failure
11 performances.
Nathaniel.......................... William Adams
Aaron Hanan........................ Ralph Roeder
Old Man............... .............Luther T. Adler
Simon...............................Marshall Vincent
Andrew..............................Lawrence Leslie
237
Dan................................. Benjamin Hoogland
John................................Jacob Ben-Ami
James...............................Richard Nichols
Ethan...............................Ben Smith
Herodias............................Constance Collier
Antipas.............................George Graham
First Guard........................ Gordon Gunniss
Second Guard....................... Gordon McRae
John Zebedee....................... James Todd
Salome..............................Anna Duncan
Dancing Master.....................Henry Redding
Joel................................ Donald Lee
Pete................................ Albert West
Paris Bound
A comedy in three acts. Produced by Arthur Hopkins at the
Music Box Theater, New York, December 27, 1927. Staged by
Arthur Hopkins; settings by Robert Edmund Jones. Finan
cially successful: 234 performances.
James Hutton.......................Gilbert Emery
Jim Hutton......................... Donn Cook
Mary Hutton........................ Madge Kennedy
Helen White........................ Martha Mayo
Peter Cope......................... Edwin Nicander
Nora Cope.......................... Ellen Southbrook
Fanny Shippan......................Hope Williams
Noel Farley........................ Mary Murray
Richard Parrish....................Donald MacDonald
Julie...............................Marie Bruce
Cock Robin
A melodrama in three acts, in collaboration with Elmer Rice.
Produced by Guthrie McClintic at the Forty-Eighth Street
Theater, New York, January 12, 1928. Staged by Guthrie
McClintic; settings by Jo Mielziner. Financially success
ful: 100 performances.
George McAuliffe
Julian Cleveland
Richard Lane....
Edward Ellis
Moffat Johnston
Richard Stevenson
238
Harry D. Southard
James Todd
Beatrice Herford
Muriel Kirkland
Howard Freeman
Jo Milward
Beulah Bondi
Desmond Kelley
Holiday
A comedy in three acts. Produced by Arthur Hopkins at the
Plymouth Theater, New York, November 26, 1928. Staged by
Arthur Hopkins; settings by Robert Edmund Jones. Finan
cially successful: 229 performances.
Linda Seton........................Hope Williams
Johnny Case........................Ben Smith
Julia Seton........................Dorothy Tree
Ned Seton..........................Monroe Owsley
Susan Potter.......................Barbara White
Nick Potter........................Donald Ogden Stewart
Edward Seton.......................Walter Walker
Laura Cram.........................Rosalie Norman
Seton Cram.........................Thaddeus Clancy
Henry.............................. Cameron Clemens
Charles............................ J. Ascher Smith
Delia............................. .Beatrice Ames
Hotel Universe
A drama in one act. Produced by the Theatre Guild at the
Martin Beck Theater, New York, April 14, 1930. Staged by
Philip Moeller; settings by Lee Simonson. Unsuccessful:
81 performances.
Pat Farley.........................Glenn Anders
Tom Ames...........................Franchot Tone
Hope Ames..........................Phyllis Povah
Lily Malone........................Ruth Gordon
Alice Kendall......................Ruthelma Stevens
Norman Rose........................Earl Larimore
Ann Field........................ ..Katharine Alexander
Hancock Robinson
John Jessup....
Alice Montgomery
Carlotta Maxwell
Clarke Torrance.
Henry Briggs....
Maria Scott....
Helen Maxwell...
239
Felix................................Gustav Rolland
Stephen Field Morris Carnovsky
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
A drama (sometimes listed as a play) in three acts. Pro
duced by Gilbert Miller at the Henry Miller Theater, New
York, January 13, 1931. Staged by Gilbert Miller; settings
by Aline Bernstein. Financially successful: 206 perfor
mances .
Gail Redman........................ Harvey Stephens
Eve Redman I...................Zita Johann
Ella................................ Marie Bruce
Nicholas Hay....................... Herbert Marshall
Samuel Gillespie...................Osgood Perkins
Jane................................ Adele Schuyler
Walter Burke....................... John T. Doyle
Christian Redman...................Drew Price
Mary................................ Eileen Byron
Miss Frazer........................ Mary Elizabeth Forbes
Miss Blake......................... Alice Macintosh
The Animal Kingdom
A comedy in three acts. Produced by Gilbert Miller and
Leslie Howard at the Broadhurst Theater, January 12, 1932.
Staged by Gilbert Miller; settings by Aline Bernstein.
Financially successful: 183 performances.
Owen Arthur........................ G. Albert Smith
Rufus Collier...................... Frederick Forrester
Cecelia Henry...................... Lora Baxter
Richard Regan...................... William Gargan
Tom Collier........................ Leslie Howard
Franc Schmidt...................... Betty Lynne
Joe Fisk............................Harvey Stephens
Daisy Sage......................... Frances Fuller
Grace Macomber.....................Ilka Chase
240
The Joyous Season
A comedy (sometimes listed as a play) in three acts. Pro
duced by Arthur Hopkins at the Belasco Theater, New York,
January 29, 1934. Staged by Arthur Hopkins; settings by
Robert Edmund Jones. Failure: 16 performances.
Francis Battle.....................Eric Dressier
Theresa Farley Battle............. Jane Wyatt
Martin Farley......................Jerome Lawler
Patrick.............................Barry Macollum
Hugh Farley........................ Alan Campbell
Ross Farley........................ John Eldridge
Monica Farley......................Florence Williams
John Farley........................ Moffat Johnson
Edith Choate Farley............... Mary Kennedy
Christina Farley...................Lillian Gish
Nora................................Kate Mayhew
Sr. Alcysius.......................Mary Hone
Bright Star
A tragedy in three acts. Produced by Arthur Hopkins at the
Empire Theater, New York, October 15, 1935. Staged by
Arthur Hopkins; settings by Raymond Savoy. Failure: 7 per
formances .
Kate Hastings......................Jean Dixon
Emily Updike.......................Katherine Gray
Sam Riddle......................... Louis Jean Heydt
Quin Hanna......................... Lee Tracy
Hope Blake......................... Julie Haydon
Paul Herrick.......................Damian O'Flynn
Stella..............................Mae Castle
Libby Eldrege......................Rosalie Norman
241
Spring Dance
A farce in three acts, adapted from an original play by
Eleanor Golden and Eloise Barrangon. Produced by Jed Har
ris at the Empire Theater, New York, August 25, 1936.
Staged by Jed Harris; settings by Stewart Chaney. Failure:
24 performances.
Mildred.............................Mary Wickes
Walter Beckett.....................Philip Ober
Miss Ritchie....................... Marie Bruce
John Hatton........................ Jack Warren.
The Lippincot...................... Jose Ferrer
Doc Boyd............................Tom Neal
Buck Buchanan .Brooks Bowman
Mady Platt...........................Tookie Hunter
Frances Fenn....................... Peggy O'Donnell
Alex Benson..........................Louise Platt
Kate McKim...........................Martha Hodge
Sam Thatcher....................... Richard Kendrick
Here Come the Clowns
A drama in three acts. Produced by Eddie Dowling at the
Booth Theater, New York, December 7, 1938. Staged by
Robert Milton; settings by John Koenig. Financially unsuc
cessful: 88 performances.
Walter..................... ........ James Hagan
Major Armstrong....................Jerry Austin
John Dickinson..................... Russell Collins
Ma Speedy...........................Ralph Bunker
Connie Ryan........................ Madge Evans
Nora Clancy........................ Doris Dudley
Val Gurney............ .............Bertram Thorn
Dan Clancy......................... Eddie Dowling
Jim Marble......................... Frank Gaby
Gert Marble........................ Hortense Alden
Max Pabst.................... ......Leo Chalzel
Freddie Ballantine.................A. H. Van Buren
Lew Cooper......................... Thomas Palmer
Fay Farrel......................... Eve March
242
The Philadelphia Story
A comedy in three acts. Produced by the Theatre Guild at
the Shubert Theater, New York, March 28, 1939. Staged by
Robert B. Sinclair; settings by Robert Edmund Jones.
Financially successful: 417 performances.
Dinah Lord........................ Lenore Lonergan
Margaret Lord..................... Vera Allen
Tracy Lord.........................Katharine Hepburn
Alexander (Sandy) Lord........... Dan Tobin
Thomas.............................Owen Coll
William (Uncle Willie) Tracy .Forrest Orr
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie........... Shirley Booth
Macauley (Mike) Connor........... Van Heflin
George Kittredge ............Frank Fenton
C. K. Dexter Haven................Joseph Cotton
Edward.............................Philip Foster
Seth Lord..........................Nicholas Joy
May................................ Myrtle Tannahill
Elsie..............................Lorraine Bates
Mac................................Hayden Rorke
Liberty Jones
An allegory in two acts. Produced by the Theatre Guild at
the Shubert Theater, New York, February 5, 1941. Staged by
John Houseman; settings and costumes by Raoul Pene Du Bois;
music by Paul Bowles. Failure: 22 performances.
Liberty Jones..................... Nancy Coleman
Liberty's Uncle................... William Lynn
Liberty's Aunt.................... Martha Hodge
Commander Tom Smith...............John Beal
Dick Brown.........................Tom Ewell
Harry Robinson.................... Howard Freeman
Nurse Cotton...................... Katharine Squire
Nurse Maggie...................... Ivy Scott
The Two: Don Glenn, Crahan Denton
The Three: Victor Thorley, Louis Polan, Richard
Sanders
The Four: Norman Lloyd, Murray O'Neill, Allan
Frank, William Mende
243
The Seven: Lew Christensen, Joseph Anthony, Vin
cent Gardner, Craig Mitchell, William
Castle, Roy Johnston, Jack Parsons
The Eight: Elise Reiman, Bedelia Falls, Caryl
Smith, Honora Harwood, Ellen Morgan,
Helen Kramer, Barbara Brown, Constance
Dowling
The Singers: Eve Burton, Ruth Gibbs, Alyce Carter
Without Love
A comedy in three acts. Produced by the Theatre Guild at
the Saint James Theater, November 10, 1942. Staged by
Robert Sinclair; settings by Robert Edmund Jones. Finan
cially successful: 113 performances.
Patrick Jamieson...................Elliot Nugent
Quentin Ladd....................... Tony Bickley
Anna................................ Emily Massey
Martha Ladd.........................Ellen Morgan
Jamie Coe Rowan.................... Katharine Hepburn
Kitty Trimble.......................Audrey Christie
Peter Baillie ..Robert Shayne
Paul Carrel..................... ...Sherling Oliver
Richard Hood....................... Robert Chisholm
Robert Edmet Riordan.............. Neil Fitzgerald
Grant Vincent...................... Royal Beal
Foolish Notion
A comedy (or comedy-fantasy) in three acts. Produced by
the Theatre Guild at the Martin Beck Theater, New York,
March 13, 1945. Staged by John Wilson; settings by Jo
Mielziner. Financially successful: 104 performances.
Sophie Wing.........................Tallulah Bankhead
Happy Hapgood...................... Joan H. Shepard
Florence Denny.....................Barbara Kent
Gordon Roark....................... Donald Cook
Rose................................ Mildred Dunnock
Horatio Wing....................... Aubrey Mather
Elsie............................... Maria Mantpn
Jim Hapgood........................ Henry Hull
244
Flora
Flora
Flora
Maria Manton
Barbara Kent
Mildred Dunnock
My Name is Aquillon
A comedy adapted from L'Empereur de Chine by Jean Pierre
Aumont. Produced by the Theatre Guild at the Lyceum The
ater, New York, February 9, 1949. Staged by Robert B. Sin
clair; settings by Stewart Chaney. Failure: 31 perfor
mances .
Paulette...........................Phyllis Kirk
Pierre Renault.................... Pierre Aumont
Christine Benoit-Benoit.......... Lili Palmer
Denise.............................Doe Avedon
Victor Benoit......................Lawrence Fletcher
Madeleine Benoit-Benoit............Arlene Francis
Toto................................ Donald Hamner
Bascoul............................Louis Borel
Rondet............................. Richard Hepburn
A play in two acts, revised after Barry's death by Robert E.
Sherwood. Produced by Alfred DeLiagre, Jr. at the Morosco
Theater, New York, January 2, 1951. Staged by Alfred
DeLiagre, Jr.; settings by Donald Oenslager; production
associate, Philip Barry, Jr. Financially unsuccessful: 126
performances (held over despite losses).
Toby Wells.........................Hugh Reilly
Malloy.............................Gordon Richards
Miranda Bolton.................... Margaret Phillips
Josiah Bolton.......................Clive Brook
Thankful Mather.................... Betsy Von Furstenberg
Jock Bolton....................... Frederick Bradlee
Second Threshold
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
245
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Plays
The Animal Kingdom; A Comedy. New York: Samuel French,
1931.
_________. Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre.
vol. 1, John Gassner, ed. New York: Crown Publishers,
Inc., 1939.
_________. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1931-1932, Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1932.
Bright Star. MS. American Literature Collection, Yale
University.
Cock Robin? A Play in Three Acts. Written with Elmer Rice.
New York: Samuel French, 1929.
Foolish Notion. MS. New York: Samuel French, and Ameri
can Literature Collection, Yale University.
_________. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1944-1945, Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1945.
Here Come the Clowns: A Play. New York: Coward McCann,
1939.
_________. In The Best Plays of the American Theatre, sup
plementary volume, John Gassner, ed. New York: Crown
Publishers, Inc., 1960.
_________. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1938-1939, Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1939.
Holiday: A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Samuel French,
1929.
________ . In Comparative Comedies Present and Past, Rowena
Keith Keyes and Helen M. Roth, eds. New York: Noble
and Noble, 1935.
246
247
Holiday: A Comedy in Three Acts. In Famous American Plays
of the 1920's. Kenneth Macgowan, ed. New York: The
Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1959.
_________. In Three Plays about Marriage. Joseph Mersand,
ed. New York: Washington Square Press, 1962.
_________. In Representative American Dramas. National and
Local, Montrose J. Moses, ed. Boston: Little and
Brown, 1933 and in revised ed. with Joseph Wood Krutch,
1941.
. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1928-1929, Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1929.
Hotel Universe: A Play. New York: Samuel French, 1930.
________ . In Plays for the College Theatre, Garrett H.
Leverton, ed. New York: Samuel French, 1932, 1934,
1937.
_________. In The Theatre Guild Anthology. New York: Ran
dom House, 1936.
_________. In Contemporary Drama: American Plays. Ernest B.
Watson and Benfield Pressey, eds. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1931, 1938; with European plays, 1941.
. In Representative Modern Dramas. Charles H.
Whitman, ed. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1936.
In a Garden: A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Samuel
French, 1926.
_________. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926.
_________. In Modern American and British Plays, Samuel M.
Tucker, ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931.
_________. In Twenty-Five Modern Plays, Samuel M. Tucker,
ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931.
John: A Play. New York: Samuel French, 1929.
The Joyous Season: A Play. New York: Samuel French, 1935.
248
The Joyous Season: A Play. In Modern American Drama.
Sister M. Agnes David, S.S.J., ed. New York: The Mac
Millan Company, 1961.
Liberty Jones: A Play with Music for City Children. Music
by Paul Bowles. New York: Coward-McCann, 1941.
My Name is Aquillon. MS. American Literature Collection,
Yale University.
Paris Bound: A Comedy. New York: Samuel French, 1929.
________ . In Twenty-Five Best Plays of the Modern American
Theatre: Early Series. John Gassner, ed. New York:
Crown Publishers, Inc., 1949.
________ . In Representative American Plays from 1767 to
the Present Day. 5th ed. revised and enlarged, Arthur
Hobson Quinn, ed. New York: The Century Company, 1930.
________ . In Representative American Plays from 1767 to
the Present Day. 6th ed. revised and enlarged, Arthur
Hobson Quinn, ed. New York: D. Appleton-Century Com
pany, 1938.
________ . Condensed in The Best Plays of 1927-1928. Burns
Mantle, ed., 1928.
The Philadelphia Story. New York: Samuel French, 1938.
________ . New York: Coward-McCann, 1939.
________ . In Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre:
Second Series. John Gassner, ed. New York: Crown Pub
lishers, Inc., 1947.
________ . In Literature of Our Time. Leonard S. Brown
et al.. eds. New York: Holt, 1947.
' Condensed in The Best Plays of 1938-1939. Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1939.
Second Threshold. Revised by Robert E. Sherwood. New York:
Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1951.
249
Second Threshold. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1950-1951,
John Chapman, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company,
1951.
Spring Dance: A Comedy in Three Acts. Adapted from an
original play, "The Wary Quarry," by Eleanor Golden and
Eloise Barrangon. New York: Samuel French, 1936.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow: A Play. New York: Samuel French,
1931.
_________. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1930-1931, Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1931.
White Wings. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927.
_________. A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Samuel
French, 1929.
0
Without Love: A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Coward-
McCann, 1943.
_________. Revised and rewritten. New York: Samuel French,
1949.
You and I: A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Brentano's
Publishers, 1923.
_________. New York: Samuel French, 1925.
. In American Plays, Allen G. Halline, ed. New
York: American Book Company, 1935.
_________. Condensed in The Best American Plays of 1922-
1923, Burns Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Com
pany, 1923.
_________. Condensed in Current Opinion, LXXIV (June, 1923);
702-7, 713-15. ,
The Youngest: A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Samuel
French, 1925.
_________. Condensed in The Best Plays of 1924-1925. Burns
Mantle, ed. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1924.
250
The Youngest: A Comedy in Three Acts. Condensed in Current
Opinion, LXXVIII (April, 1925), 436-39, 441-44.
Books
Bentley, Eric. The Playwright As Thinker: A Study of Drama
in Modern Times. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1946.
Broussard, Louis. American Drama: Contemporary Allegory
from Eugene O'Neill to Tennessee Williams. Norman,
Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.
Brown, John Mason. Broadway in Review. New York: W. W.
Norton and Company, Inc., 1940.
. Two on the Aisle: Ten Years of the American The
atre in Performance. New York: W. W. Norton and Com
pany, Inc., 1938.
_________. Upstage: The American Theatre in Performance.
New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1930.
Clark, Barrett H. An Hour of American‘ Drama. Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott Company, 1930.
_________ and Freedley, George (ed.). A History of Modern
Drama. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc.,
1947.
Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1945.
Dickinson, Thomas H. Playwrights of the New American The
ater. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1925.
Downer, Alan S. Fifty Years of American Drama: 1900-1950.
Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1951.
j
Dusenbury, Winifred L. The Theme of Loneliness in Modern
American Drama. Gainesville, Florida: University of
Florida Press, 1960.
251
Fergusson, Francis. The Human Image in Dramatic Literature.
Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc.,
1957.
________ . The Idea of a Theater. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1949.
Flexner, Eleanor. American Playwrights: 1918-1938: The
Theatre Retreats from Reality. New York: Simon and
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1957.
Gagey, Edmond M. Revolution in American Drama. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1947.
Gassner, John. Masters of the American Drama. 3d ed. re
vised. New York: Dover Publications, inc., 1954.
_________. Theatre at the Crossroads: Plays and Playwrights
of the Mid-Century American Stage. New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1960.
_________. The theatre in Our Times: A Survey of the Men.
Materials and Movements in the Modern Theatre. New
York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954.
Green, Abel and Laurie, Joe Jr. Show Biz from Vaude to
Video. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951.
Greenwood, Ormerod. The Playwright: A Study of Form, Meth
od. and Tradition in the Theatre. London: Sir Isaac
Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1950.
Hamilton, Clayton. The Theory of the Theatre and Other
Principles of Dramatic Criticism. New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1939.
Holland, Norman N. The First Modern Comedies: The Signifi
cance of Ethereqe. Wycherly, and Congreve. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959.
252
Hughes, Glenn. A History of the American Theatre: 1700-
1950. New York: Samuel French, 1951.
Kinne, Wisner Payne. George Pierce Baker and the American
Theatre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. The American Drama Since 1919: An In
formal History, revised and expanded. New York:
George Braziller, Inc., 1957.
_________. "Modernism" in Modern Drama. Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 1953.
Langer, Susanne K. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1953.
Langner, Lawrence. The Magic Curtain. New York: E. P.
Dutton and Company, 1951.
_________. The Plays the Thing. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1960.
Lumley, Frederick. Trends in 20th Century Drama, A Survey
Since Ibsen and Shaw. London: Barrie and Rockliff,
1956.
Maney, Richard. Fanfare: The Confessions of a Press Agent.
New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1957.
Mantle, Burns. American Playwrights of Today. New York:
Dodd, Mead and Company, 1929.
_________. Contemporary American Playwrights. New York:
Dodd, Mead and Company, 1938.
Martin, Boyd. Modern American Drama and Stage. London:
The Pilot Press, 1943.
Marx, Milton. The Enjoyment of the Drama. 2d ed. New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961.
Matthews, Brander. Playwrights on Playmaking. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923.
253
Mersand, Joseph. The American Drama: 1930-1940. New York:
The Modern Chapbooks, 1941.
. The Play's the Thing: Enjoying the Plays of
Today. New York: The Modern Chapbooks, 1941.
Millett, Fred B. and Bentley, Gerald Eades. The Art of the
Drama. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1935.
Morehouse, Ward. Matinee Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Our The-
^ ater. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1949.
Morris, Lloyd. Curtain Time: The Story of the American
Theater. New York: Random House, 1953.
Moses, Montrose J. and Brown, John Mason, eds. The Ameri
can Stage as Seen by Its Critics: 1752-1934. New York:
W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1934.
Nathan, George Jean. Testament of a Critic. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1931.
Nevins, Allan and Commager, Henry Steele. A Short History
of the United States. New York: The Modern Library,
1942.
O'Hara, Frank Hurburt. Today in American Drama. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1939.
Palmer, John. The Comedy of Manners. London: G. Bell and
Sons, Ltd., 1913.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. A History of the American Drama from
the Civil War to the Present Day. New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, Inc., 1936.
Sharpe, Robert Boies. Irony in the Drama. Chapel Hill,
North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press,
1959.
Sievers, W. David. Freud on Broadway; A History of Psycho
analysis and the American Drama. New York: Hermitage
House, 1955.
254
Skinner, R. Dana. Our Changing Theatre. New York: Dial
Press, Inc., 1931.
Thompson, Alan Reynolds. The Anatomy of Drama. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1942.
Periodicals
I
"Angel Like Lindbergh," Time, XIX (January 25, 1932), 34-36J
Angoff, Charles. "Drama: Veteran Performers Please . . .
Seasoned Playwrights Disappoint," North American Review,
CCXLVII, no. 2 (June, 1939), 366.
Atkinson, J. Brooks. "The Play, Philip Barry and Company,"
New York Times. December 28, 1927, p. 26.
________ . "The Play: Panacea for Modern Complaints," New
York Times, April 15, 1930, p. 29.
_________. "The Unhappy Ones," New York Times. April 20,
1930, sec. 8, p. 1.
_________. "The Play: Mr. Barry's Strange Interlude," New
York Times, January 14, 1931, p. 26.
!
_________. "Governing His Own Career," New York Times, Jan
uary 25, 1931, sec. 8, p. 1.
. "The Play: Philip Barry Speaks," New York Times,
January 13, 1932, p. 26.
I
I
________ . "Valuing Integrity," New York Times, January 24, !
1932, sec. 8, p. 1.
_________. "The Play: Chronicling a Second Visit to Philip
Barry's Vaudeville Allegory 'Here Come the Clowns,'"
New York Times, December 20, 1938, p. 30.
_________. "Barry to Hepburn to Guild," New York Times.
April 2, 1939, sec. 10, p. 1.
255
iAtkinson, Brooks. "The Play: Theatre Guild Produces 'Lib
erty Jones,' an Allegory of America Written by Philip
Barry," New York Times. February 6, 1941, p. 24.
Balliet, Whitney. "Philip Barry: Cosmologist," The New
Yorker. XXXVI (October 1, 1960), 128-32.
"Barry Go Bragh," Newsweek. XX (November 23, 1942), 73.
"Beauty in Metaphysical Rebellion," New York Times. Novem
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Bellamy, Francis R. “Lights Down: A Review of the Stage,"
Outlook. CXLVIII (January 25, 1928), 148.
_________. "Lights Down: A Review of the Stage," Outlook.
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_________. "The Theatre," Outlook and Independent. CLI
(January 2, 1929), 11.
Boyd, Ernest. "To Act or Not to Act," Bookman. LXVIII,
(February, 1929), 684-85.
Brown, John Mason. "Seeing Things: Did You Ever See Some
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XXVIII (March 24, 1945), 18-19.
_________. "The American Barry," Saturday Review of Litera
ture. XXXII (December 24, 1929), 24-27.
_________. "Seeing Things: Success Story," Saturday Review
of Literature, XXXIV (January 27, 1951), 25-27.
Carmer, Carl. "Phillip [sic] Barry," Theatre Arts Monthly.
XIII (November, 1929), 819-26.
Chatfield-Taylor, Otis. "The Theatre," Outlook and Inde
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256
Chatfield-Taylor, Otis. "The Latest Plays," Outlook and
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Clurman, Harold. "From Lorca Down," New Republic, CXXIV,
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Corbin, John. "He Who Gets Flapped," New,York Times. Feb
ruary 25, 1923, sec. 7, p. 1.
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_________. "Comedies, Satirical and Sweet," Bookman. LXXIV
(January, 1932), 562-63.
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CCXXXIV (August, 1932), 173-74.
Gassner, John. "Entropy in the Drama," Theatre Arts. XXXV
(September, 1951), 16-17, 73.
_________. "Philip Barry: A Civilized Dramatist," Theatre
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Gibbs, Wolcott. "Spooks and Witches," The New Yorker. XXI
(March 24, 1945), 48.
. "Death and Honor, " The New Yorker, XXVI (Janu
ary 13, 1951), 42-43.
Gilder, Rosamond. "Hell's Paving Stones: Broadway in Re
view, " Theatre Arts Monthly, XXIII (February, 1939),
89-91, 95.
. "Portraits and Backgrounds: Broadway in Review,"
Theatre Arts Monthly. XXIII (May, 1939), 320, 324-25.
. "When the Earth Quakes: Broadway in Review,"
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. "Old Indestructable: Broadway in Review," The-
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257
Gilder, Rosamond. "Foxhole Critics: Broadway in Review,"
Theatre Arts Monthly. XXIX (April, 1945), 199.
• _____. "Notions, Foolish and Otherwise: Broadway in
Prospect," Theatre Arts Monthly. XXIX (May, 1945),
269-70.
Harford, Margaret. "'Philadelphia Story* Same, But Times
Change," Los Angeles Times. April 27, 1965, part IV,
p. 10.
Hutchens, John. "A Note on Mr. Barry's Latest," New York
Times. February 1, 1931, sec. 8, p. 2.
________ . "Playwrights' Parade: Broadway in Review," The
atre Arts Monthly. XV (March, 1931), 183-86.
_________. "Looking Up: Broadway in Review," Theatre Arts
Monthly. XVI (March, 1932), 187-88.
Isaacs, Edith J. R. "See America First: Broadway in Re
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900.
_________. "Theatre Magic: Broadway in Review," Theatre
Arts Monthly, XVIII (April, 1934), 244.
"Joyous Season," Nation (February 14, 1934), 200-202.
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Krutch, Joseph Wood. "A Fiasco," Nation. CXXV (November 23,
1927), 582-83.
_________. "A School for Wives," Nation. CXXVI (January 18,
1928), 75-76.
_________. "Weltschmerz on the Riviera," Nation, CXXX
(April 30, 1930), 525-26.
_________. "Nice People," Nation, CXXXIV (February 3, 1932),
151-152.
_________. "Prodigal's Return," Nation, CXLVII (December 24,
1938), 700-01.
258 j
Krutch, Joseph Wood. "Miss Hepburn Pays Up," Nation.
CXLVIII (April 8, 1939), 410-11.
_________. "The Irish of It," Nation. CLII (February 15,
1941), 192.
. "A Vehicle for Miss Hepburn," Nation. CLV (No
vember 21, 1942), 553-54.
_________. "Drama," Nation. CLX (March 24, 1945), 340-41.
Marshall, Margaret. "Drama," Nation. CLXXII (January 13,
1951), 44-45.
|
"Mrs. Tallulah Arden," Newsweek. XXV (March 26, 1945), 88.
Nathan, George Jean. "Polite Comedy," American Mercury. X I
(February, 1927), 245-46.
________ . "Leopard Spots," American Mercury. XVI (FebruaryJ
1929), 245.
________ . "Trial and Error," Newsweek. XII (December 19,
1938), 25.
' ______. "Susan Minus God," Newsweek. XIII (April 10, i
1939), 28-29. !
"New Play," Newsweek, XXXVII (January 15, 1951), 78.
"New Plays in Manhattan," Time, XXXII (December 19, 1938),
43-44. j
j
Nichols, Lewis. "The Play," New York Times, March 14, 1945,
p. 23.
Phelan, Kappo. "Foolish Notion," Commonweal. XLI (March 30;
1945), 589.
I
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. "National Ideals in the Drama: 1922-
1923," Scribner's Magazine. LXXIV (July, 1923), 63-71.
259
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. "The Real Hope for the American The
ater," Scribner's Magazine, XCVII (January, 1935),
30-36.
Sayler, Oliver M. "The Play of the Week." Saturday Review
of Literature. IV (January 14, 1928), 515-16.
"Second Threshold," Commonweal, (January 26, 1951), 398.
"Second Threshold," Life. XXX (January 29, 1951), 53-54.
"Second Threshold," Time. LVII (January 15, 1951), p. 39.
Seldes, Gilbert. "The Theatre," Dial. LXXX (January, 1926),
73.
________ . "The Theatre," Dial, LXXXIV (January, 1928), 81.
Skinner, Richard Dana. "Holiday," Commonweal. IX (Febru
ary 6, 1929), 405.
/
________ . "Hotel Universe," Commonweal. IX (April 30,
1930), 741.
I
________ . , "Tomorrow and Tomorrow," Commonweal. XIII (Janu-;
ary 28, 1931), 357-58. i
_________. "What of the New Season?" Commonweal. XIV
(August 26, 1931), 406.
_____________ . "The Animal Kingdom," Commonweal. (February 17,
1932), 441-42.
j
________ . "The Joyous Season," Commonweal, XIX (February 9j
1934), 413. !
Vernon, Grenville. "Bright Star," Commonweal. XXIII (No
vember 1, 1935), 19.
. "Spring Dance," Commonweal. XXIV (September 18,
1936), 487.
________ . "Here Come the Clowns," Commonweal. XXIX (Decern-;
ber 23, 1938), 244.
260
Vernon, Grenville. "The Philadelphia Story," Commonweal.
XXIX (April 14, 1939), 692.
Wilson, Edmund. "Schnitzler and Philip Barry," New Repub
lic. LXV (February 4, 1931), 322-23.
"Without Love," Commonweal. XXXVII (November 27, 1942), 144*
"Without Love," Life. XII (May 11, 1942), 78.
"Without Love," Time. XXXIX (April 27, 1942), 61.
Wyatt, Euphemia Van Rensselaer. "The Drama: Plays of Some
Importance," Catholic World. CXXXI (June, 1930), 337-
38.
_________. "The Drama: Tomorrow and Tomorrow," Catholic
World. CXXXII (March, 1931), 717-18.
_________. "The Drama: The Animal Kingdom," Catholic World.
CXXXIV (March, 1932), 714-15.
I
_________. "The Drama: The Joyous Season," Catholic World,
CXXXVIII (March, 1934), 729-30.
_________. "The Drama: Here Come the Clowns," Catholic
World. CXLVIII (January, 1939), 473-74.
i
I
_________. "The Drama: The Philadelphia Story," Catholic
World, CXLIX (May, 1939), 216-17.
_________. "The Drama: Without Love," Catholic World. CLVI
(December, 1942), 336-37.
i
. "The Drama: Robert Burns and Philip Barry," !
Catholic World, CLXI (April, 1945), 70.
_________. "Theater: The Second Threshold," Catholic World.
(February, 1951), 385.
Young, Stark. "Dilations," New Republic. LIII (January 25,
1928), 272-73.
_________. "Two New Pieces," New Republic. LVII (Decem
ber 12, 1928), 96-97.
261
Young, Stark. "Hotel Universe, * ' New Republic. LXII (May 7,
1930), 326-28.
_________. "Mycenae and Connecticut," New Republic. LXIX
(January 27, 1932), 293-94.
_________. "The Joyous Season," New Republic. LXXVII (Feb
ruary 14, 1934), 21.
_________. "Ars Longa," New Republic. XCVII (December 28,
1938), 230.
. "Fancy Romp," New Republic. CXII (March 26,
1945), 421.
_________. "Barry-Barrie," New Republic. CVII (November 23,
1942), 679-80.
Unpublished Material
Hamm, Gerald. "The Drama of Philip Barry." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation in American Civilization, University
of Pennsylvania, 1948.
Hartman, John Geoffrey. "The Development of American So
cial Comedy from 1787 to 1936." Unpublished Ph.D. dis-i
sertation in English, University of Pennsylvania, 1939. j
Kincaid, Sterling P. Jr. "A Dramaturgic Analysis of the
Plays of Philip Barry with Some Consideration of the
Psychological Aspects of His Characters." M.A. thesis
in English, University of Southern California, 1934.
i
Mays, David. "The Theme of Responsibility in the Plays of j
Philip Barry." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane ;
University, 1963.
Osborne, C. Eugene. "A Critical Analysis of the Plays of
Philip Barry." Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Uni
versity of Denver, 1954.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Boston, Leslie Paul (author)

Core Title An Analytical Study Of Structure, Characterization, And Language In Selected Comedies By Philip Barry

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication (Drama)

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,Theater

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Butler, James H. (committee chair), Lecky, Eleazer (committee member), Stahl, Herbert M. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-220528

Unique identifier UC11360163

Identifier 6610532.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-220528 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6610532.pdf

Dmrecord 220528

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Boston, Leslie Paul

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA