The fact that [Baldwin] equated playwriting with improving a troubled world [as he did in an observation made in high school] explains his theory of drama quite clearly. It may also explain why he is not a better playwright and why he has not written more plays. While the theatre brings the most immediate response for the propagandist; it also brings adverse criticism…. It is perhaps vital to note that although he used similar theses and argued the same points in his fiction and in his plays, he used different major characters in his plays which essentially remove Baldwin, his own model-hero, from the center of the work. For some reason the drama forces him to change his attitude toward his material….

Whether he is writing fiction or drama, however, Baldwin has parlayed a youthful "agony" into a philosophic view of life. (p. 172)

The major problem in the "agony way" is one of identity. (p. 173)

The significance of his continuing search for an identity or for a certain meaning in life may be clearly seen in the major themes of his works as well as his own numerous activities. He is clearly a man of great sensitivity who wants to be loved for what he is and for what he says…. All of his heroes show this need for love…. Love was a paradox for Baldwin, and it was also the major answer he found for his "troubled world." It is one of the few "positive affirmations" which his characters discover. Hope is another, but it is a hope for love…. A belief in the value of suffering is a third possibility for a Baldwin sensitive hero…. For Baldwin the revelation of Christian suffering and an idealized personal love are necessary human affirmations. He believes in love as an individual, in art and life; through it he finds an identity. (pp. 174-75)

Baldwin tries to use the theatre as a pulpit for his ideas. Mainly his plays are thesis plays—talky, over-written, and cliché dialogue and some stereotypes, preachy, and argumentative. Essentially, Baldwin is not particularly dramatic, but he can be extremely eloquent, compelling, and sometimes irritating as a playwright committed to his approach to life. (p. 176)

Although Baldwin's plays remain largely thesis or propaganda plays with eloquently preached theses and controlled views of Negro society, they are still plays with the structure and devices of the theatre. Baldwin is certainly not ignorant of the art of the theatre, but neither is he always effective in creating theatrical excitement, probably because he accepts too readily the idea of playwright as polemicist. Too often, he looks at his actors as preachers and presents little action on the stage. His major characters have inner conflicts which he has as much difficulty externalizing as he does making their inner struggles meaningful. He is, however, very clearly concerned with the visual scene on the stage and the various means by which he can achieve an emotional effect upon his audience through both eye and ear. (pp. 177-78)

The devices by which Baldwin excites emotion in his audience also deserve comment. His command of language has always been clear from his fiction, but his use of dialogue has been memorable mainly for its violence. Chiefly he has relied upon brief dialogue, vivid exposition, and narrative monologues. Monologues, of course, are not generally effective in drama, but with the exception of sermons in each play, he has avoided them. His dialogue on the other hand, tends either to be argumentative or polemical rather than dramatically related to action. A major problem, however, is his limited ability to fuse meaningful action and dialogue with developing character. Instead, he tries to keep things moving with numerous brief scenes, many of which are flashbacks to previous action, and a scattering of songs. Although the use of songs in The Amen Corner is overdone, the idea for creating the proper emotional feeling is a good one. In Blues Baldwin used a choral effect for Whitetown and Blacktown during the courtroom scene that added to the creation of the desired emotional reaction. In these and other ways Baldwin shows some natural talent for the theatre in spite of his limited experience with some of the more demanding aspects of the drama.

Although Baldwin has been criticized for creating stereotypes, his major characters are the most successful and memorable aspects of his plays. People are important to Baldwin, and their problems, generally embedded in their agonizing souls, stimulate him to write plays. A humanitarian, sensitive to the needs and struggles of man, he writes of inner turmoil, spiritual disruption, the consequence upon people of the burdens of the world, both White and Black. Action is shown to be less important in his plays than thought. (pp. 178-79)

In Baldwin's novels and plays the characters which represent his own position are always young—aspects of his own youthful past: John in Go Tell It on the Mountain, David in The Amen Corner, Rufus in Another Country, Richard in Blues for Mister Charlie, Leo Proudhammer in Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone…. All of those youthful heroes are rebels; and, as Baldwin presents them, they feel their betrayal, they leave home to go into the world, they commit suicide, they are murdered, or they live to a fearful and frustrating middle age. (p. 179)

It is interesting, however, that the characters which suggest the youthful rebellion in society, Negro society—those young heroes in whom one sees Baldwin expressing his own past—are not the main characters in his plays…. For Baldwin, the playwright, youth seems to provide the stimulus necessary to move the older generation to action, but in his plays it is this older generation which has the problems and must devise solutions and face consequences. (p. 180)

With only two plays to judge, it is perhaps presumptuous to draw conclusions about a dramatist's art. From the existing evidence, however, one may say that Baldwin emphasizes character and inner conflict more than external conflict, uses argument in language rather than deed, and shows little interest in suspense or surprise. A well-built plot is not a strong point of Baldwin's art either in the drama or the novel. There is, however, a certain inevitability in his plays as they build to a climax in a manner which stops and fills. Because Baldwin is primarily concerned with ideas, emotionally projected, his characters have long speeches and arguments which slow the action. Avoiding crowds, his strongest scenes are those with two people facing an issue together and reaching some conclusion. Undoubtedly feeling his deficiency in creating meaningful action, he tries to add to the drama by changing scenes frequently, using flashbacks, and inserting music. All have their effect, but they do not compensate for other weaknesses. For lack of plot, intrigue, action, and suspense, there develop very few crises in Bladwin's plays. He has meaningful curtains in terms of his pleading messages, but they lack dramatic effect in that no surprise, no suspense, no crisis is introduced or anticipated. Instead, his curtains reveal a character's point of view or a thought that relates to the play's message. Although the comment is frequently charged with emotion, his only strong dramatic climax comes at the final curtain of The Amen Corner.

Structurely, Baldwin's two plays are very different—which makes it even more difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about his art. Of the two, however, The Amen Corner is more successful as drama. (p. 183)

Baldwin is a very serious writer, and this is particularly evident in a play where a good change of pace or a bit of humor could be used to advantage. Instead, Baldwin sticks to his thesis with a deadly conviction, presents his main characters well but is more interested in argument than action. Few critics, however, would contend that he does not have something worth saying, although that fact does not make his plays good drama. (p. 185)

No Name in the Street is not an easy book to read: nor can it have been easy to write. When James Baldwin says that it was "much delayed by trials, assassinations, funerals and despair", it is his text, as much as the four years that it took to complete, that supplies convincing corroboration. It falls rather raggedly into two halves: a collection of autobiographical fragments, in the manner of his earlier essays; and a statement of his current position. One of the several reasons why it is difficult to read is the lack of articulation between the two halves, which often do not seem to have much to do with one another…. Sometimes, these passages [in the first half] achieve the clarity and telling precision of the earlier essays; the capacity to illuminate a general theme by reference to the particular, brilliantly exemplified in his account of Richard Wright in Paris, "Alas, Poor Richard", is still present. But on this occasion he has chosen to fragment his material and wed it to a polemic in the high rhetorical style of Black nationalism….

The confusion and despair that Mr Baldwin now feels is reflected in the form in which he has chosen to cast his material….

[He] is paying his dues; but, in so doing, trying to link his past as a writer to his future role in the Black movement.

The rage that Mr Baldwin still contained in The Fire Next Time … has now burst to the surface. When once he could write, in Notes of a Native Son, that "I love America more than any country in the world", and in The Fire Next Time tell his nephew that "this is your home my friend, so do not be driven from it … we can make America what America must become", he now concludes that "white Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any colour, to be found in the world today". The response to this confirmation of his worst fears has to be unequivocal. Once Mr Baldwin wrote, in Nobody Knows My Name, that "it is devoutly to be hoped that it will soon no longer be important to be black". Now, "black is a tremendous spiritual condition, one of the greatest challenges anyone alive can face".

Yet some ambiguities remain unresolved. Mr Baldwin writes of the supreme failure of White Americans, that they stand condemned by their own children. But in his autobiographical passages he shows how both he himself and his elder brother in turn rejected their own father…. Even so, this awkward, personal book, while not one of the major achievements of James Baldwin the writer, is clearly of fundamental significance for James Baldwin the human being.