The successful playwright, whose dramatic scope is never outwardly wide, whose characters are as commonplace as old shoes, and whose subject matter rarely rises above the ordinary routine of small-town life, necessarily must possess compensating gifts. William Motter Inge … has an abundance of such gifts. Possessed of extraordinary perception, sensitivity, and compassion, he has the rare and admirable trait of expressing the frustrations and dilemmas of "the so-called little man without being patronizing and without the sentimentalist's knack of killing him with a dubious sort of kindness, à la Saroyan." His dramatic aim, as expressed in a series of midwestern and southwestern community plays, is modest but almost invariably true. As the creator of a large number of well-realized, though ordinary men, women, and children, Inge has portrayed the fortunes and misfortunes of their domestic lives with integrity and sympathy…. [Beginning with Come Back, Little Sheba] his career has...