In the following excerpt, Brown offers a mixed assessment of The Glass Menagerie, maintaining that while the play is "blessed with imagination" and "is the work of a mind both original and sensitive... .Mr. Williams's drama sometimes proves empty." Brown also speculates that the play suffers from a plot that is too loosely constructed and dialogue that provides little action and thus fails to hold the audience's interest.

A lady, obviously no psychologist, once encountered William Lyon Phelps on the street in New Haven. "I hope you won't mind my telling you how much I enjoyed your lecture yesterday?" she asked. "Madam," beamed Professor Phelps, "you misunderstand me entirely. I am glutton for praise."

All of us are. Praise has never made anyone unhappy. We like it even when we do not believe it. We tire of it only when it is bestowed too long on other...