"The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic"
About this Quote
The subtext is also defensive and faintly predatory. If you can’t (or won’t) build the machine, you can still take it apart in public. Criticism becomes a sanctioned way to get close to creation without the risk of failure that creation demands. Tynan, famously sharp and sometimes merciless, hints at the psychological bargain: analysis as a substitute for authorship, but also as a way of converting dazzlement into authority.
Context matters because Tynan helped make the modern British theatre critic into a cultural power broker in the postwar period, when the stage was retooling itself around new realism, new anger, new social permission. His line quietly flatters the form (plays are complex) while legitimizing the critic’s role (complexity requires interpreters). It’s witty, but not self-deprecating enough to be innocent: he’s telling you that the critic’s first credential is obsession, and his second is proximity to the work’s hardest problem - how it’s made to land.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Tynan, Kenneth. (n.d.). The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sheer-complexity-of-writing-a-play-always-had-64335/
Chicago Style
Tynan, Kenneth. "The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sheer-complexity-of-writing-a-play-always-had-64335/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-sheer-complexity-of-writing-a-play-always-had-64335/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
