Radio Plays as Literature

Abstract

fying danger as well as a rich hope. Radio is the newest and greatest of these media, and although fifty years are not yet up, its danger is certainly still with us-and the hope has certainly not yet been extinguished. My concern here is with one facet of this hope, a very exciting one, the alliance of the radio play with literature shown by the printing of numerous radio plays in the last two or three years. The greatest days of the theater were those when it was the medium of the poet and wit; it went to the bad in the eighteenth century when it went over to the actor, and when the actor was joined by the stage designer, musician, and producer, it slid into the pit of a Victorian hades, since when only a few heads have peered over the verge, one of them waggling a red beard. But here, on the radio, the writer has come into his own again, having only the actor to stand between him and his audience (the word is once again etymologically exact), whenever his mercantile Maecenas permits-Throw out the Lifebuoy, Jergens is coming to save! When, therefore, these playwrights consider their plays of sufficient merit to justify publication in the literary medium of print, it is very proper to become excited, and just as proper to examine their literary claims. The aspiration to literature and the sovereignty of the author are the greatest hopes of the radio play, for even if they are not realized in any particular one, they are still the way to salvation from the dreary triviality of the modern theater. This is not to deny that a spectacle may achieve high artistry; but a spectacle and a play are not the same. By the same token, a radio play may be good entertainment when supported by the arts of the actor, the musician, and the sound-effects man, but it is likely to be less a good play as it leans more heavily on them. A play, I swear, is not a good play unless it reads as a good play. So here are one man's rather discursive opinions on the literary values of the radio plays he has read.1 The opin-