Most of the plays in this volume are short, between 3 and 5 minutes in length; there is one full length work at the end, followed by an essay by Wilder on playwriting. Many of these are his early works, some of them dating back to college, which probably explains why they are not his best work. The traces of his later work were showing, but much of this work was Biblical, and he stuck perhaps a bit too close to his source for truly challenging and entertaining work of the quality of his better known works. It is interesting as a study in the evolution of a playwright, and there are some good moments in some of the works, but nothing to match what was seen later. ( )