Page:Jesse Lynch Williams - Why Marry.djvu/18

 Therefore, tell us something we know isn't true. It will be so much nicer for our young people.

It is to be feared, however, that young people who go to see "Why Marry?" in the hope of being shocked do not get their money's worth. I have heard of but two persons who have been scandalized by this play, and they were both old people. One was a woman in the country who had not seen it, but had read the title, and so wrote several indignant letters about it. The other was an elderly bachelor of the type which finds useful occupation in decorating club windows like geraniums. He took his niece to see it, and, deciding at the end of Act II that the play was going to be unpleasant in Act III, took her home at once. The next afternoon she appeared at the matinée with a whole bevy of her own generation and saw the rest of the play. I asked her later if it had shocked any of them.

"Oh, no," she replied, "we are too young to be shocked."

That little incident also struck me as socially significant. There never were two generations inhabiting the same globe simultaneously with such widely separated points of view.

For several years after this play was first published no theatrical manager on Broadway would