Too often, indeed, the muddlement gets into the construction as well as the themes of his plays. _Desire Under the Elms_, one of the most nearly tragic of his plays, starts as a study of greed, with old Cabot as the central character. Cabot, in fact, has heroic qualities, for he is a man of will. But half way through, the play turns off into the more alluring theme of sexual lust; old Cabot is thrust into the background; and the ending is, surprisingly, the traditional one of crime and retribution. The play lacks artistic unity; it falls in two. The lack of unity is felt, again, in _Anna Christie_, which in spite of the author’s expressed intention has for the audience simply a conventional happy ending. It is strikingly manifest in _Strange Interlude_. The central character of this alone knits together the various situations and themes of the nine acts. Of the situations three or four distinct plays might have been built. Of the themes there are at least eight; and it is impossible to say which the author considered central. Much, for example, is said about “happiness” as the end of life. Again, the doubtful value of self-sacrifice is illustrated. From Darrell’s point of view, love, that blind biological urge, seems to be a modern variety of Fate. More than once Nina expresses the notion that God is a woman. The most powerful scene of the play is where Nina exults over her “three men”: are we to look for possessiveness in love as a theme? Or a woman’s need of several sorts of love? Or is the play a study in relativity with reference to insanity? Certainly the character with the insane inheritance is actually the most normal person. Or perhaps we have a study in the results of meddling with other people’s lives. The popular success of this play is hardly an indication of unification. That success seems to be attained in spite of lack of unity, and to rest chiefly on the novelty of the nine acts and of the technic of spoken thought, on the frank treatment of sex, and on the great power of characterisation and of separate situations. Here is a writer with a genius for the theatre, a powerful imagination, and great emotional force, who except in shorter studies of melodramatic horror seems unable to canalise his energies into rounded and unified works of art. He suffers the conflict he symbolises in “Dion Anthony,” between his inborn longing for goodness and beauty, and an acquired frustration, cynicism, and despair. Often the despair conquers; but we must honour him for the fact that, having no faith, he persists in seeking one. Unlike lesser writers he is no compromiser with truth as he sees it; but in one play at least he has persuaded himself into a positive affirmation. The play is _Lazarus Laughed_.