The opening of Introduction
Tradition in the sphere of books is relentlessly imperious and will not be denied. The present anthology of one-act plays, in defiance of a keen reluctance on the part of the editors, is condemned at birth to the heritage of a title; for this practice, as is well known, has been the unchallenged punctilio of book-making and book-editing from time immemorial. And yet if the truth be told, the editors have found precisely this to be by far the most embarrassing of the various tasks that have arisen in connection with the project. In the selection of a title, the immediate problem was of course to avoid, so far as possible, the slightest pretense or assumption of categorical standards of choice or even the merest intimation that there existed somewhere, attainable or unattainable, an ideal norm according to which one-act plays could be faultlessly assessed and pigeon-holed.