The four one-act plays collected in Washington Square Plays were first performed by the Washington Square Players between 1914 and 1915, a period when the little theatre movement was challenging Broadway's commercial formulas. Walter Prichard Eaton's introduction frames the volume by tracing the history of the theatrical afterpiece, noting that audiences once expected a short, often comic work to follow a full-length play. The preface by director Edward Goodman explains that these plays were chosen for their variety: Lewis Beach's The Clod is a stark farmhouse drama; Edward Goodman's Eugenically Speaking a satirical sketch; Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones an experimental split-self play; and Philip Moeller's Helena's Husband a farce set in ancient Greece.

The Clod: Moral Weight in a Single Room

Lewis Beach's The Clod confines its action to a farmhouse kitchen, where a young woman named Kate faces a life-altering decision. The play's power lies in its compression: the entire drama unfolds in one room over a short span of time. Kate's husband is absent, and a wounded Union soldier arrives seeking refuge. The dialogue reveals her internal conflict through terse, practical exchanges rather than lengthy speeches. When she finally acts, the choice is both sudden and inevitable, shaped by the claustrophobic setting and the weight of domestic routine. The play's title suggests a kind of earthy, unrefined resilience, but the text avoids moralizing; instead, it presents a woman whose circumstances force her to define her own code of loyalty.

Overtones: The Split Self on Stage

Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones is the most formally inventive play in the collection. It presents two women, Harriet and Margaret, each accompanied by a visible counterpart—Hetty and Maggie—who represent their primitive, unfiltered selves. The stage directions specify that the cultured women wear light chiffon, while their primitive selves wear darker versions of the same gown, suggesting that the two selves are always on the verge of merging. The characters never touch; instead, they speak in parallel, with the primitive selves shadowing their trained counterparts. Harriet tells Hetty, “I am your educated self,” while Hetty retorts, “I am the rushing river; you are the ice over the current.” This technique externalizes the tension between social performance and inner desire, particularly in the context of marriage and jealousy.

Helena's Husband: Farce from Ancient Myth

Philip Moeller's Helena's Husband takes a comic approach to the story of Helen of Troy and Menelaus. The play is a farce, relying on rapid dialogue and absurd situations rather than historical accuracy. Menelaus is portrayed as a jealous, bumbling husband, and the humor derives from his attempts to assert control over the legendary beauty. The play's tone is light and irreverent, a deliberate contrast to the moral seriousness of The Clod and the psychological complexity of Overtones. By placing a familiar myth in a domestic comedy framework, Moeller subverts expectations: the grand figures of epic become petty and ridiculous. The farce serves as a palate cleanser, but it also underscores the volume's recurring interest in marriage as a site of conflict and performance.

Readers approaching Washington Square Plays should note that each play was designed for a single sitting, and the volume rewards attention to the specific staging cues—particularly the split-stage technique in Overtones and the minimalist set of The Clod. The introduction and preface provide useful context, but the plays themselves are best experienced as performance texts, with an ear for the rhythms of spoken dialogue and the visual contrasts between characters. The collection offers a snapshot of early twentieth-century American theatre's move toward psychological realism and formal experimentation.