"To be able to write a play a man must be sensitive, imaginative, naive, gullible, passionate; he must be something of an imbecile, something of a poet, something of a liar, something of a damn fool"
About this Quote
Sherwood’s line is a backhanded love letter to the theater: to make a play, you have to be gifted in exactly the ways polite society mistrusts. He stacks virtues that sound admirable (sensitive, imaginative, passionate) alongside traits that read as defects (naive, gullible, “something of an imbecile”), then tightens the screw with “liar” and “damn fool.” The joke lands because it’s not really a joke. It’s an accurate inventory of the mental contortions required to build a convincing illusion in public and then ask strangers to feel it.
The subtext is a defense of artistic vulnerability disguised as insult. “Gullible” isn’t stupidity so much as willingness: the capacity to believe in invented stakes long enough to make them contagious. “Liar” isn’t moral failure; it’s craft. Plays are constructed deceit - compression, coincidence, heightened speech - and the playwright has to commit to those deceptions with almost childlike faith, even while knowing they’re tricks. That tension is where theater lives: sincerity engineered through artifice.
Context matters. Sherwood wrote in an era when American playwrights were also public intellectuals, expected to “say something” about war, politics, modernity. Calling the playwright a “damn fool” punctures the prestige and acknowledges the risk: you’ll be sentimental when the room wants irony, earnest when the culture rewards cool. The line’s intent is both warning and permission - if you want to write for the stage, you must accept looking ridiculous, because that’s the cover charge for making an audience care.
The subtext is a defense of artistic vulnerability disguised as insult. “Gullible” isn’t stupidity so much as willingness: the capacity to believe in invented stakes long enough to make them contagious. “Liar” isn’t moral failure; it’s craft. Plays are constructed deceit - compression, coincidence, heightened speech - and the playwright has to commit to those deceptions with almost childlike faith, even while knowing they’re tricks. That tension is where theater lives: sincerity engineered through artifice.
Context matters. Sherwood wrote in an era when American playwrights were also public intellectuals, expected to “say something” about war, politics, modernity. Calling the playwright a “damn fool” punctures the prestige and acknowledges the risk: you’ll be sentimental when the room wants irony, earnest when the culture rewards cool. The line’s intent is both warning and permission - if you want to write for the stage, you must accept looking ridiculous, because that’s the cover charge for making an audience care.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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