The Ibsenite Maugham

Abstract

No PLAYWRIGHT IN HISTORY has so pleased the general public of his day as has W. Somerset Maugham. His commercial success has been truly fabulous, bringing him millions. On the other hand, no playwright of equal popularity-and ability-ever met with the condescension and outright hostility from critics and students of the drama as has Maugham. It is true that he has not been without his supporters; such persons as Sir Desmond MacCarthy and St. John Ervine have praised him highly. Possibly it was his commercial success itself that led critics to assume, as Richard Aldington once pointed out, "that a writer who has continued to delight large audiences all over the world for several decades must be ephemeral and in some unspecified way unworthy of 'serious consideration.” Glenway Wescott, in Harper’s Magazine, observed that the booming market for whatever Maugham wrote made critics doubly disrespectful of his merits, so much that they became what Wescott aptly called "anti-fans." The result of this lack of critical approval has been that Maugham's dramatic work has received little attention in currently available surveys of twentieth century drama. Only one book has been devoted to a study of Maugham as a playwright: Paul Dottin's superficial Le Theatre de Somerset Maugham.