Revolutionary or reform themes: Co-op; Depression Island; Singing Jailbirds; The Second-Story Man; After the War Is Over; Oil!; Prince Hagen.
Indirect demands for reform: The Machine; The Millennium; Doctor Fist; The Great American Play; John D; Love in Arms; Bill Porter; The Grand Duke Lectures; The Pamela Play; The Saleslady; The Convict; The Naturewoman; Hell.
Those on topical subjects: A Giant’s Strength; The Enemy Had It Too.
Nonreform subjects: The Pot Boiler; Marie and Her Lover; The Emancipated Husband; The Most Haunted House; Wally for Queen; Cicero.
Lost and forgotten: The Jungle dramatization.
III
The latest of my plays, Cicero: A Tragic Drama in Three Acts, was written in the winter of 1959-60. I had been reading a history of ancient Rome and was impressed by the resemblances between the time of Cicero and the time of Eisenhower: the extremes of contrast between the rich and the poor; the rich exhibiting their glory by fantastic extravagances; the unemployed poor crowding into the cities, existing in slums on doles; the farmers deserting their land and rioting—they were doing it in Oklahoma; the domination of public affairs by big money; and the total blindness of the public to all these manifest evils.
I did not intend to preach a sermon; on the contrary, I determined to leave the resemblances to the discernment of the audience. I was going to show what Cicero faced and what happened to him. He was a rich man himself, a consul, a senator; he had all the honors. A lawyer, he tried criminal cases and made fortunes; a statesman, he was driven into exile, and when his party came into power he came back. In the end his enemies triumphed, and he fled and was captured; his head and hands were cut off and exhibited in the forum. That hasn’t happened as yet to anybody in America—but who knows?
Most terrifying in ancient Rome was—and in our own land is—the sexual corruption. When I was young I wrote a book about love and marriage, Love’s Pilgrimage. It contained a bridal scene and a birth scene that were detailed and without precedent; but every line was clean and true, and every doctor and every married person knew it. I was told there would be trouble, but there wasn’t. I was told there would be trouble in England, and I asked the English publisher to send a copy of the book to every bishop of the Church of England. He did so, and I got some kind letters from these gentlemen; you will find examples in the volume, My Lifetime in Letters. There was no trouble.
But the vileness that is being published today is revolting to every decent-thinking person. It is deliberately advertised and sold as vileness, and one after another the books enter the bestseller list. I have chosen to stay out of that competition; all I say here is that it is exactly what Cicero saw in ancient Rome. He blistered it in his courtroom speeches; he named names—and that was a contributing cause to his murder.