S.N Behrman, one of the foremost American writers of high comedy in our century, was constantly engaged in a kind of struggle with himself. The struggle that persisted throughout the early and successful years of his dramatic career consisted of a tension between his objective comic detachment and his concern for the major issues of his times. While a number of playwrights of the twenties and thirties openly committed themselves to the communist ideology, Behrman viewed the contemporary scene with a strangely mixed feeling of concern and amusement. Charles Kaplan calls it the ‘quandary’ of Behrman’s Comic spirit, and observes that his attempt to show an “awareness of social problems” through non-satirical comedy was detrimental to his “ultimate artistic success”. But it is rather unfair to claim that Behrman did not succeed as an artist on this ground.

Keywords: Dramatic Career, Comic Detachment, Playwrights, Communist Ideology.