[Paul Green has] evolved a type of lyrical folk drama unlike anything that has so far been written in this country. Such plays as The End of the Row and In Abraham's Bosom are as firmly rooted in the soil of the South as Deep River or Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The more I read of his most significant work, the more firmly am I convinced that Mr. Green is doing for our drama what the writers of the spirituals have done for Negro music. I think our theater has found here an artist of rare gifts. I must qualify this statement, not because I hesitate to speak out what I feel or because I want to wait for Mr. Green's later plays to justify my first enthusiasm; I am just a little skeptical as to whether our theater, as it is now organized and run, is ready to give Mr. Green's plays the chance they ought to have. (pp. vii-viii)
[White Dresses marks the first time], so far as I am aware, a dramatist has taken a Negro theme almost as old as our literature, and made it live in dramatic form. Mr. Green knows his Negroes, and like John Synge, that other artist who created literature as well as drama out of the folk idiom, he has made use of the commonest words and phrases, giving them new and surprising turns, and making of them a living speech. (p. xi)
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