No Time for Comedy

A seven-year itch induced largely by a writer’s block infects playwright Gaylord Esterbrook. In the presence, if not precisely the arms, of “the other woman,” Amanda, Gaylord’s writing problem seems dispelled. Moreover, instead of permitting him to write trivial comedies, where he displays unquestioned mastery, Amanda inspires Gaylord to write a profound drama. “Rot,” thinks actress-wife Linda Esterbrook, somewhat out of practical concern as she awaits the fourth of her husband’s comedies as her next triumphant vehicle. (Her tolerance had already forgiven him his assumed infidelity.) Better to write successful trivial comedies than shallow tragedies. Why not a comedy based on their own romantic triangle at a time when the world is precariously perched on total chaos, and her husband, masking his need for “experience” with a kind of altruism, wants to run off to join the Spanish insurgents? What better time for comedy than a period when “The more inhuman the rest of the world the more human we. The grosser and more cruel the others, the more scrupulous, the more fastidious, the more precisely just and delicate we.” Her justification? “One should keep in one’s own mind a little clearing in the jungle of life. One must laugh.” Gaylord recognizes the wisdom of his wife’s reasoning and prepares to write his latest comedy based on his experience with Amanda.