the poor unemployed, perish. In the end, in the classical tradition, McGafferty perishes helplessly along with them. The play, which has been seen as a hybrid—both Aristotelian tragedy and proletarian drama—drew heavily on the then voguish expressionist techniques. MacLeish was encouraged by the play’s acceptance: When both workers and the unemployed responded enthusiastically, MacLeish stated, “Now I have found my audience.”

This period piece of the Depression is highly significant in MacLeish’s dramaturgic development, for in Panic, he experimented with a new verse form, accentual meter, responsive to the contemporary American speech rhythms. He continued to use this form, and not the popular blank verse, in all of his subsequent plays, with one exception, the prose Scratch. Briefly, accentual meter is a type of sprung rhythm; rather than counting syllables, one counts the number of stresses or accented syllables in a line. MacLeish’s choice was a combination of five-accent lines (but unlimited syllables) and three-beat lines, both to underline conflict inherent in his plots and to avoid monotony.

The Fall of the City and Air Raid

MacLeish’s two vivid half-hour radio dramas in verse, The Fall of the City and Air Raid, followed his next poetry collection. Along with Panic, all three of his verse plays of the 1930’s were evidence of his “public” poetry, generalizations of philosophical truths about human behavior focused on timely political issues. In the radio plays, which featured a collective protagonist, the seductive dangers of rampant totalitarianism as well as isolationism were presented by expressionist techniques. The Fall of the City, broadcast on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1937, included in its published version a foreword in which the playwright remarked on the effectiveness of radio for the presentation of verse drama to attract large audiences, claiming that “the imagination works better through the ear than through the eye.” Here, MacLeish recalls that poetry is meant primarily to be heard, and thereby to stimulate the undistracted “word-excited imagination” into evocation of the depicted action. The advent of television eclipsed radio presentations of this sort, however, and MacLeish’s advocacy came to little, as graphically visualized action rapidly captured popular taste.

In MacLeish’s play The Fall of the City, the disembodied voice of an Announcer (as in classic expressionism, the characters lack personal names) objectively and dispassionately describes the collapse and destruction of a metropolis. A demoralized and terrified population has mindlessly refused to defend itself against the attack of the Conqueror, who promised a strong leadership for which they are willing to sacrifice personal freedom (“Freedom’s for fools: Force is the certainty!”). The more digressive Air Raid does not exemplify the unity of place evident in the other radio drama, and therefore lacks the total immediacy and impact so vivid there but gains its effect by its topicality: Two years before Air Raid’s presentation on CBS, the ancient Basque town of Guernica had been destroyed by Nazi planes in a cruel demonstration of the blitzkrieg strategy of modern warfare. Again, in this play, MacLeish employed a callous and impersonal Announcer to describe the attack, underlining the grave dangers inherent in refusal by Americans to denounce this massacre of the innocent and the vulnerability of those who refuse to protect themselves against aggression. Ruthless and impersonal technical “progress” is thereby measured ironically against its price in human suffering. Together, these two verse plays, The Fall of the City and Air Raid, constitute American radio’s major contribution to dramatic literature.

The Trojan Horse

Not until the 1950’s did MacLeish turn again to poetic drama. In six years, three plays appeared—The Trojan Horse, This Music Crept by Me upon the Waters, and his masterpiece in the genre, J. B.—each increasingly more complex both poetically and dramaturgically than anything he had previously attempted. The Trojan Horse continued MacLeish’s indictment of mindless collective consent to self-destructive fear, in this case generated by the accusations of Joseph McCarthy. Recognizing that in the age of television, poetic drama written for radio was all but moribund, MacLeish indicated that his new one-act play would be performed on the stage, without scenery or other elements of stagecraft that might detract from the impact of the spoken word, as well as on radio. Indeed, the play was presented in both forms, broadcast by BBC radio and included in a double bill with This Music Crept by Me upon the Waters by the Poets’ Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Trojan Horse continued MacLeish’s use of mythology as a vehicle for social criticism. Here he varied somewhat his use of accentual meter, combining a verse line of three accents with blank verse. MacLeish continued his expressionist technique of de-emphasis on individual characters by using nameless type characters, thereby focusing on the theme rather than on fully rounded characterization.

This Music Crept by Me upon the Waters

MacLeish’s other one-act verse drama of this period, This Music Crept by Me upon the Waters (the title is from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, pr. 1611), uses the more conventional pattern of ten named cast characters to focus on an American proclivity to spoil whatever dreams and plans one has for achieving happiness. Because of the large cast, emphasis is on conversation, much in the manner of Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (pr. 1949). Living on a contemporary paradisiacal Caribbean island, a group has gathered for dinner and falls into a discussion of what might constitute the good life—peace, order, simplicity—but each speaker reveals an inability to sustain such an idyllic existence. MacLeish implies that such idlers dream of the prelapsarian Edenic state without the willingness to assume the efforts that would earn it. In their despair, the antithesis of Job’s fortitude, they inevitably “fumble happiness.”

J. B.

MacLeish’s major achievement in poetic drama, J. B., fulfilled his own exhortation to poets to discover a metaphor for the truth they were moved to communicate. In the poetry of the Old Testament Book of Job, MacLeish found a metaphor for the eternal human dilemma: human beings’ compulsion to know the meaning and cause of their afflictions and to be able to justify the works of God.

From one point of view, J. B. is two plays: the original script (the basis of the popular published version) produced at Yale University in April, 1958, and the revision that was produced and directed by Elia Kazan on Broadway in December of that year. The original is far more austere and poetic, although critics generally agree that the verse in J. B. does not represent MacLeish’s finest poetry. When the drama was mounted for New York, a largely rewritten version developed during rehearsals, one that not only altered the play’s structure (from eleven continuing scenes to two acts with an intermission) but also introduced new characters (such as the roustabouts), deleted others, and altered the roles of still others. Dramatically effective episodes of stage business were also developed in the Kazan production. Many of these changes resulted in little more than clarification for the stage of MacLeish’s original ideas, but in the play’s final scene, the entire philosophic resolution is altered by a shift in the protagonist’s rationalization of his ordeal. In the New York version, as he is reunited with his wife, Sarah, he recognizes the value of his experience and affirms an almost Shelleyan belief in the strength and efficacy of love as a requisite for survival. In the original script, the play ends with Sarah’s conviction that eventually the couple will achieve knowledge (“Blow on the coal of the heart and we’ll know. . . . We’ll know. . . .”). In the Kazan version, however, J. B. refutes her claim (“We can never know”), proclaiming that only by his suffering has he learned that one can “still live . . . still love.”

Structurally also, J. B. is two plays, for the trials of the protagonist, the wealthy, powerful, and satisfied industrialist and banker, J. B., form a play within a play. J. B.’s story is framed by the drama of Zuss and Nickles, who appear to be “two broken-down actors” (MacLeish’s own description of them) reduced to hawking balloons and popcorn at “a side show of some kind.” As Zuss gradually assumes the role of a god (Zeus), metamorphosing into the imposing God of the biblical Job, Nickles assumes the role of the taunting Satan (Old Nick); together these two characters function as a Greek chorus, commenting on and participating in the trials of J. B. (Job).

MacLeish himself pointed out yet another aspect of duality in J. B. He saw his accomplishment as the construction of “a modern play inside the ancient majesty of the Book of Job,” rather than as a distinct freestanding reconstruction, for he admitted the questions he probed in the play were “too large” to be handled without the strong undergirding structure of the biblical story. Therefore, many of the original situations and characters appear in MacLeish’s modernization: the specific details of Job’s suffering (loss of fortune and family, as well as his physical afflictions), and the parade of his comforters, the ostensibly supportive Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar, who jargonize respectively Marxist, Freudian, and theological arguments that leave J. B., like his earlier counterpart, suffering even more acutely.

The original version of J. B. opens with a prologue: The elderly actors Zuss and Nickles are inspired to play an impromptu dialogue between “God in Job” and Satan, and they wear appropriate masks to facilitate their performance under the circus tent. By nature, Zuss is reluctant to attempt such a lofty role, but during the repartee with the cynical wit Nickles, he eventually assumes a highly orthodox religious posture that only goads his adversary to more audacious taunts. As they prepare for their “performance,” they realize the need for someone to play Job, but foresee no difficulty, for, as Nickles observes, “Job is everywhere we go.”

Now that the casting is complete, with Zuss as God and Nickles as “opposite to God,” and mindful of the “they” who are the originals, the two actors gradually and unconsciously assume the actualities behind the roles they are playing. In effect, their play becomes the Book of Job. The satanic Nickles accuses God of being a creator who “fumbles Job” by giving him a mind that could “learn to wish” and be concerned with justice. As they continue, they discover that their masks have transformed them into the characters they have assumed; Nickles asks, “You really think I’m playing?” and from the darkness comes “A Distant Voice” that affirms their transformation into more than two seedy actors. The prologue ends with the voice beneath the Godmask speaking the words from the Bible that ask of Satan when he seeks a subject for his test of power “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” and the two begin their rivalry for supremacy over a contemporary counterpart.

Scene 1 follows with a joyful Thanksgiving dinner under way at J. B.’s house, where the family considers their good fortune (“we have so much!”). J. B. asserts seriously that “never . . . have I doubted God was on my side, was good to me,” although his prescient wife, Sarah, is frightened: “It’s not so simple as all that,” for “God rewards and God can punish,” because He is just, and J. B. agrees that indeed “a man can count on Him.” Scene 2 returns to Zuss and Nickles, now controlled by their assumed roles, who rejoice that in the complacent J. B. they have found their “pigeon,” and gloat that he will soon find out “what the world is like” as he becomes God’s “victim of the spinning joke!”

In scenes 3 and 4, callous messengers come to the home of J. B. to tell him and his wife of the deaths of three of their five children in senseless accidents. In scene 5, Zuss and Nickles, who have been silently watching, return to centerstage to prophesy that J. B. is learning God’s purpose for him—to suffer. The light on them fades as another messenger enters to report that J. B.’s youngest daughter has been abducted, sexually abused, and murdered by a psychopath, and Zuss and Nickles allude to the universality of their dramatized actions by recognizing that actually J. B. “isn’t in the play at all,” but is “where we all are—in our suffering.”

Zuss and Nickles peer down in scene 6 as J. B. discovers that a bomb has destroyed his bank, taking with it his fortune as well as killing his last child. By now, Sarah is rebellious and hysterical and shrieks that God not only gives but also takes and “Kills! Kills! Kills! Kills!” Despite everything, J. B. continues to bless “the name of the Lord.” In scene 7, Zuss and Nickles review the trials of J. B. and ridicule his endurance and refusal to despair. Zuss, as God, feels that he has triumphed over Nickles in J. B.’s test, but Satan refuses to concede, even though J. B.’s acceptance is “the way it ends” in the Bible. The two decide to continue his trials.

Scene 8 reveals that a worldwide nuclear holocaust has destroyed all but a few pitiful survivors, a rag-clad J. B. and his wife among them. His skin is blistered by the fire, the modern counterpart of Job’s boils, but even now J. B. refuses to join Sarah in condemning God as their enemy, although he agonizes over why God is continuing their persecution. Sarah refuses to accept her husband’s adamant defense of God as just, and she vows to leave him, seeing his position as a betrayal of the innocence of their children. When he responds that he has “no choice but to be guilty,” she challenges him to “curse God and die,” and runs from him. Now totally alone, J. B. pleads “Show me my guilt, O God!” but experiences only an agonizing silence, just as Adam and Eve did after their Edenic transgression in Nobodaddy. Nickles, who has been watching, decides that this is the time to bring to J. B. the “cold comforters” who also appeared in the Book of Job, those dogmatists “who justify the ways of God to Job by making Job responsible.”

The three appear in scene 9, with the same names as their biblical counterparts. When J. B. asks “My God! What have I done?” (to justify such suffering), Bildad, a Marxist, cries, “Screw your justice!” and praises collectivism as the ultimate solution to humanity’s pain (“One man’s suffering won’t count”). J. B. insists that guilt matters, or all else is meaningless, but Bildad rants that “guilt is a sociological accident.” The Freudian Eliphaz sees guilt as “a psychophenomenal situation,” inciting Zophar, a religionist, to proclaim his belief that “All mankind are guilty always!,” thereby negating any place for individual will in the matter. J. B. chides them all for squabbling and for mocking his misery, asserting that only in his suffering could he have found affirmation of his identity, by knowing it was “I that acted, I that chose.”

J. B. again cries, “What have I done?” but there is still no answer from Heaven. Suddenly he hears the Distant Voice in a whirlwind; it rebukes and humiliates him for his arrogance in challenging God, and in the familiar biblical catechism reminds J. B. of God’s many powers and accomplishments. The three glib comforters depart as J. B. is accused of desiring to instruct God. Not answered, only silenced, the humbled J. B. nevertheless proclaims that his eye has now seen God, and that because of this experience, “I abhor myself . . . and repent. . . .”

As scene 10 opens, Nickles and Zuss decide that they have had enough; Zuss is particularly distressed because, as Nickles observes, although he won the argument and was right about J. B., “being magnificent and being right don’t go together in this universe.” Together they ridicule what they see as J. B.’s impotence, because he has “misconceived the part” and because he has given in and whimpered before the omnipotent voice of God. Outraged by his refusal to despair and by his utter subjection to God’s will, the two old actors prepare to resume their circus jobs but recall that there is one more scene “no matter who plays Job or how he plays it,” the restoration of his fortunes. Zuss reminds Nickles that when he is released from his suffering, J. B./Job will again assume his life, just as those of all generations do, so Nickles confronts J. B. directly to inform him of the resolution of his fate; signs of his deliverance appear, for J. B.’s blistered skin is healed and Sarah returns.

In the final lyric reconciliation scene, a new beginning from the ashes of destruction is evident as Sarah convinces J. B. that indeed there is no justice in the world, but there is nevertheless conjugal love, which, if strong enough, can triumph over heavenly tyranny. Even if God does not love, J. B. asserts, his existence suffices. In a final declaration, Sarah prophesies that when the heart is warmed by love, despite the loss of religious and societal support, “we’ll see where we are” and “we’ll know.” They have no assurance of the truth of this claim yet no alternative but to accept its challenging promise, affirming, in MacLeish’s words, “the worth of life in spite of life.”

J. B. ran for 364 performances on Broadway. In its published form (the original version), it became a best-seller and was translated into several foreign languages. Some critics faulted MacLeish’s attempt to portray modern people “in terms of a cosmic myth,” while others pointed to excessive rhetoric. Although critical interpretations differed, all agreed that MacLeish’s controversial modern morality play was a rarity on the American stage—a religious poetic drama that was a commercial and artistic success.

Herakles

MacLeish followed the triumph of J. B. with another verse play, Herakles, in 1965, and with the prose Scratch in 1971, in addition to the short The Secret of Freedom (1960), which was published together with two poetic radio dramas of the 1930’s, The Fall of the City and Air Raid. Herakles ran for fourteen performances at the University of Michigan theater, and Scratch ran for four in New York. The Secret of Freedom was written for television and was televised by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

Returning to Greek heroic myth and to Euripides for inspiration, MacLeish sought in Herakles to achieve the moral resonance of J. B. In this new parable, a monomaniacal American physicist is awarded the Nobel Prize for his Promethean achievement in finding new sources of energy but fails both as a humanist and as a husband and father in his mad pursuit of even greater glory and accomplishment. Like the labors of Herakles, Professor Hoadley’s work benefits humankind, but he is an irresponsible individual and is forced to recognize the limits of his humanity. Less lyric than the original version of J. B., Herakles is more tragically realistic in its portrayal of yet another victim of the sin of excessive pride. Whereas the essentially passive Job endured seemingly endless, meaningless suffering, the anti-Job Hoadley is a dynamic achiever, willing to sacrifice everything for the palpable rewards of his efforts.

Scratch

In Scratch, a drama suggested by Stephen Vincent Benét’s popular short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” MacLeish once again warned against the willingness to sacrifice personal freedom in exchange for controlled lives of comfort and stifling “law and order.” Although relevant to the turmoil of the 1960’s, Scratch was an artistic failure, dismissed by critics as ambiguous, too abstract, talky, and even tedious and incomprehensible. MacLeish never attempted full-length theatrical drama again. The Great American Fourth of July Parade (1975) was his final, somewhat nostalgic return to the form he had so ardently defended and so skillfully practiced.