Contemporary One-Act Plays — Context and Discussion

A Dialogue of Opposites: Manikin and Minikin

In the excerpt, Manikin and Minikin debate the nature of animate beings. Manikin declares that humans 'change with each going moment,' their inner lives subject to 'moods more pervious to modulation than pools to idle breezes.' He contrasts this with their own condition: they have said 'I love you' to each other 'for a hundred and seventy years' and will 'have to say it always.' The language is ornate and playful—Minikin repeatedly urges him to 'say that again'—but the argument is precise: human love is conditional on mood, while their own is eternal because they are unchanging. The scene uses repetition and acceleration ('Faster, Manikin!') to mimic the very mutability it critiques.

Structural Framing: The Study Outline

Lewis includes a 'Dramatic Analysis and Construction of the One-Act Play' in the introduction, intended to be used alongside the plays. This pedagogical apparatus suggests the anthology is designed for systematic study: each play can be examined for its 'dramatic analysis' and 'construction.' The preface emphasizes that the plays were selected 'with this need in mind,' implying that the collection is not merely a reading anthology but a workbook for understanding the one-act form. The table of contents lists eighteen plays, each by a different author, with Barrie, Chekhov, Strindberg, and Lady Gregory among the contributors.

Recurring Images: The Inanimate as Ideal

Kreymborg's play uses the inanimate as a lens to critique human impermanence. Manikin describes a woman's face as 'veined with blood' and her hair as 'tangled weeds,' while Minikin is praised as an 'animate dream' that words cannot capture. The figures recall their 'childhood in the English museum' and compare themselves to a 'little old Greek tanagra' and a 'Roman medallion.' These images of ancient, still objects serve as a counterpoint to the 'procession of deaths' that is human life. The play's structure—a single, unbroken conversation—mirrors the static perfection the characters claim for themselves.

Movement Between Scenes: From Museum to Salon

The excerpt reveals a specific geography: Manikin and Minikin were once in an English museum but have been 'moved, from place to place, to this dreadful Yankee salon.' This movement from a classical, institutional setting to a modern, domestic one suggests a shift in context that the characters themselves register as a loss. The play's single setting—the salon—is thus a site of displacement. Other plays in the collection likely employ similar contrasts: Barrie's The Twelve-Pound Look moves between a wealthy home and an office, while Chekhov's The Boor is confined to a drawing room. The anthology as a whole explores how physical space shapes dramatic conflict.

Readers approaching this collection will find that the plays reward attention to their formal constraints: each is a single act, often set in one room, with a limited number of characters. The excerpt from Kreymborg's play demonstrates how such restrictions can be turned into thematic strength—the static setting becomes a metaphor for the inanimate condition. Lewis's study outline provides a framework for analyzing these structural choices, but the plays themselves offer varied experiments in compression, from farce to psychological drama.

That rainy afternoon, Kreymborg’s manikins argued about mutability while I listened to the patter on the window, and their brittle, theatrical worry lingered. Afterwards, I found myself reaching for something steadier, more musical—the calm, deliberate cadences of Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Volume 6 — Inside the Classic felt like a quiet room after a long argument.