This play is often referred to as an example of Depression-era political thought, pointing out how the rich feed off the labor of the poor. Perhaps the purest example of the pro-labor movement in the 1930s is Clifford Odets's 1935 play Waiting for Lefty, in which taxi drivers in a union hall discuss life and their place in it. It is available in the paperback Waiting for Lefty and Other Plays, published by Grove Press in 1993.

Anderson was often said to be the artistic successor of Eugene O'Neill, who also wrote about sweeping historical subjects. Many people consider O'Neill's 1939 drama The Iceman Cometh, about an assortment of lower-class people in a run-down bar, to be his best work. It has been published by Vintage Books in a 1999 edition.

Anderson is remembered for his experiments writing dramas in blank verse. Readers will...