Joseph Wood Krutch has accurately sub-titled ["Modernism" in Modern Drama] "A Definition and Estimate." According to him, modernism consists of a rejection of three beliefs fundamental in the previously-held credo of post-Renaissance man—that man is "a creature capable of dignity," that life "as led in this world" is worth living and that "the realm of human rationality is the realm in which many may most fruitfully live." Krutch takes a dim view of the modernism in modern drama, and his opinion of the achievements of modern playwrights is greatly troubled because they have made one or more of the above-mentioned rejections. He also notes with disapproval the tendency, especially marked in the work of Pirandello, to "dissolve the ego," a tendency particularly characteristic of the present century. He does discern a return to more traditional attitudes, especially in the efforts of O'Neill and Anderson to write tragedy...