The Theater: Playwright Bites Critics

Before Ben Hecht’s Lily of the Valley, a dull, maudlin play laid in a morgue, closed last week, irate Playwright Hecht verbally horsewhipped the reviewers:

Sonnet to the Critics

In Rebuttal

Good critics who reject my fairest song

And spatter my fine shirt with printer’s ink,

I’d bellow bitterly you do me wrong Were I not suffocated by your stink.

. . . but all my crimes Are amiable when matched beside your own—

You theatre moles with inattentive ears,

A cough and now and then a kidney stone,

Abristle with your dull but fearsome spears—

Who come to drama not to drink or sup But more to shine your little egos up.