The Assassins

It was getting so that the Broadway critics scarcely had time to duck. Maxwell Anderson had socked them for their treatment of Truckline Cafe (TIME, March 11). This week Playwright Irwin Shaw, in a preface to the published version of his short-lived Assassin (Random House; $2), socked them harder.

Shaw socked not only critics, but audiences, actors, censors, directors, theatrical unions, and virtually anybody he could reach.

OF AUDIENCES: "The writer for the theater in America today has a special relation with his audience. It is the same relation that Marie Antoinette must have had with the crowds along the streets on the way to the . . . guillotine."

OF ARMY CENSORS: who had to pass on the script of The Assassin, because Shaw was in uniform, "After holding it just long enough to halt production that year, it was passed--with one reservation. In the third act the hero is asked where he got the gun with which he assassinated the tyrant. In answer, sardonically, he says, 'From three medical students in exchange for the address of a Spanish whore.' The Army objected to the word 'Spanish,' explaining that Spain was a neutral country whom we did not wish to offend. They suggested as an alternative that I substitute a Greek whore, Greece, I presume, not being considered neutral and therefore capable of being offended without danger."

OF ACTORS: "Building a theater today with the present members of Equity is like, trying to build a bomb shelter with sand."

OF CRITICS: "There is a constant pull exerted . . . to write a bad review of a play. Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms. Their bons mots, which are quoted and remembered, are always capsule damnations, cutting and sour. Their reputations, and I suppose their pay, depend, then, upon disliking plays . . . In no other art is there anything vaguely resembling this. . . . [Critics] become Shakespeare's peer. "It was better in France. There the critics were perceptive and corrupt. The managers paid them off and bought good reviews and the plays were left to the honest decision of the audiences. . . . "

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