From its first production, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance has been controversial. Reviewers of the initial British productions found flaws with the play’s structure. Hilary Spurling of the Spectator contended: ‘‘There is no conflict. I defy anyone to explain the plot, except perhaps as a series of expedients to stave off the grand climax until the last act. . .’’

Only a few critics favorably assessed Arden’s play. Alan Brien asserted that ‘‘I have never seen a play which created its own mad, obsessed, otherworld so completely as Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance.’’

American critics offered mixed reviews of the drama. Stanley Kauffmann of The New York Times maintained, ’’Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance . . . has been hailed as the best postwar English play and has been derogated as murky. To me, there seems to be good argument on both sides.’’

An anonymous critic in Newsweek asserted: ‘‘There is no single ’point’ to Musgrave. Read by some as a muddled pacifist tract and by others as an equally muddled anti-imperialist one, its real dramatic vision is that of the horror of single-mindness, of ends determining means and even more crucially of abstraction in moral life.’’

Only a few American commentators praised Arden’s work, such as Henry Hewes of The Saturday Review. He found ‘‘Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance . . . a deeply evocative and earth-rich dramatic experience.’’

Most critics took the tone of Harold Clurman. He claimed: ‘‘One cannot see Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance . . . without realizing that one is in the presence of a real dramatist, a man of passion and power. A cross-grained poetry emerges from his work. Yet one is not wholly satisfied. . .’’

Many American critics delineated the many problems they found in Arden’s text. Kauffmann composed a list: ‘‘Control of the central image is dissipated; tensions slacken; the theme is unclear and unresolved, even somewhat arbitrarily tied up.’’

Along similar lines, Edith Oliver of The New Yorker maintained: ‘‘Mr. Arden’s writing is not the clearest on earth, and he certainly is a relentless man with an obvious point, hammering away long after it has reached home. Sifting out his subsidiary ideas and the twists of his plot from all the clatter and clutter becomes a problem.’’

Thematic concerns were the focus of several reviews. The anonymous Time critic asserted: ‘‘He tries to practice consensus drama, a contradiction in terms. For Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance to possess any intrinsic vitality, there would have to be a respectable body of thought holding that war is heavenly. As it is, Arden is merely preaching to the converted. . .’’

Oliver also considered Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance’s lack of vitality. She contended: ‘‘For all the noise and movement, the play has little real vitality, being neither moving nor stirring. Underneath its jumpy surface, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance seems to me . . . conventional, sentimental, and, what is worse, condescending to its own characters, most of whom are of the working class and could have been assembled from old Punch cartoons.’’

Between the 1960s and 1980s, Arden and his play were closely scrutinized by scholars. He came to be viewed as an icon in British theater, as Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance was interpreted and studied from every angle.

By the time the play was revived in Great Britain in 1984, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance was an integral part of England’s theater history. Many reviews acknowledged its iconic status. As Michael Billington of the Manchester Guardian Weekly asserted, ‘‘But, when all one’s reservations have been registered, the blunt fact is that Arden’s work is one of the best post-war political plays and deserves to be seen as well as studied.’’