Mr. MacLeish has a weakness for the large subject; he finds convenient fairways in the major myths; previous works of his have rehandled the material of Hamlet and of the Book of Job. In [Herakles] he is at one with many or most 20th-century poets…. Mr. MacLeish has certainly made it a central part of his business to "manipulate a continuous parallel" between the immemorial and the modern…. But I must admit that the grounds of his considerable success are, for the most part, opaque to me. I cannot understand why The Hamlet of A. MacLeish was ever taken with much seriousness…. His epic, Conquistador, is hardly any more readable than the general run of long narrative poems in our time, which means virtually that it is not readable at all. His most successful verse play, J.B., had a good run in the theatre, and I can only assume that it had some sort of theatrical vitality that made it worth watching; but on the page it is so disastrously inferior to the original as to be positively agonizing. I think if I were to spend an evening in the theatre following the story of Job, I would rather have someone come on to the stage, open the Bible and just read the story aloud; it is one of the greatest works of literature, quite arguably the greatest, and in MacLeish's treatment of it, as in his treatment of Hamlet, one has the uncomfortable sensation of watching the original "stiffen in a rented house."

In spite of all this, a new work by MacLeish is always worth looking into; there is always the chance that he might have rung the bell; the evidence of his shorter poems is there to remind us that he is, or has been, a poet of true sensibility and originality. One of these, "Ars Poetica" (1926), must be one of the most often quoted of all modern poems, partly no doubt because it has provided a slogan for the modern criticism of poetry, but also because it is genuinely impressive…. Herakles, I am glad to report, is rather more successful in "being" than J.B. was. It is deftly constructed as one large-scale metaphor: of man's achievement resulting in a sharpened confrontation with what is tragic in his destiny. The play has two acts, and it presents two great achievers…. (p. 25)

MacLeish has got hold of a real subject, and he is too experienced to miss the opportunities inherent in it. Also, since there is no one clearly defined masterpiece, like the Book of Job, towering in the background, but only a tangle of stories which can well bear being told again, there isn't that crippling sense of secondhandness. The writing, line by line, is not very interesting, but probably speakable by actors. Rhythmically—and for the writer of verse drama rhythm is by far the most important single technical problem—MacLeish has kept well clear of the ten-syllable iambic that makes any play sound like sub-Shakespeare; the verse he uses most is a brisk four-beat line that derives, I suppose, from Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes. Eliot, one is bound to add, used it much better…. MacLeish has very few passages which come off quite successfully; the best writing, on the whole, is in set-pieces like Herakles' description of going down into Hades to fight Cerberus…. [Given the] general poise and expertness of the verse, Herakles should be attractive to directors, players and audiences; perhaps, to readers on the page also. Certainly, on the coolest analysis, it has something to say and it succeeds in saying it. (pp. 26, 30)