What Price Glory? by Laurence Stallings

First published: 1926, in Three American Plays

First produced: 1924, at the Plymouth Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Realism; war

Time of work: World War I

Locale: French countryside

Principal Characters:

• First Sergeant Quirt, the company’s first sergeant
• Captain Flagg, the company commander
• Lieutenant Aldrich, second in command
• Charmaine de la Cognac, a young French woman

The Play

What Price Glory? begins in a French farmhouse serving as a U.S. Marine headquarters in World War I. Three enlisted men, Gowdy, Kiper, and Lipinsky, are cynically discussing their motivations for volunteering for duty in France. Sergeant Quirt then appears, announcing that he is “the new top soldier here,” and abruptly dismisses Kiper and Gowdy. After receiving a briefing from Lipinsky, the company clerk, on the sad state of the company, Quirt “briskly” leaves headquarters to find Captain Flagg, the company commander.

Flagg, however, enters soon after Quirt exits. Charmaine, described as a “drab,” follows closely at his heels. She is distraught over the possibility that Flagg might leave her. He takes her by the shoulders and assures her that he will come back; it will only be “eight days in Paris.” Private Lewisohn then enters, reports in, and tells Flagg that he has lost his identification tags. The captain quickly dismisses him but asks Kiper to get him a new tag because “the God-forsaken fool’s dying from grief away from mother.” Quirt then reenters. During the course of their conversation, which primarily involves Flagg’s description of the merits of his company, the captain reveals that he was a corporal under Quirt in China. Even more revealing is the fact that a woman evidently was involved in their quarrel, which continued when Quirt first served under Flagg in Cuba. Quirt is then introduced to Flagg’s platoon leaders: Lieutenants Aldrich, Moore, Schmidt, and Sockel, who knows Quirt from Cuba. With a quick farewell, Flagg departs with his company, leaving Quirt alone with a cup of dice until Charmaine enters. He asks her for a date; she quickly refuses until Lipinsky and Gowdy bring in a rowdy Irishman. Quirt, after repeatedly telling Mulcahy to “pipe down,” dispatches the recalcitrant with a blow to the jaw. The scene ends with Quirt and Charmaine kissing.

Scene 2 opens with the news that Flagg has been imprisoned for ten days on an attempted manslaughter charge, brought against him while he was in a drunken fit. He enters, still inebriated, and discovers Cognac Pete, Charmaine’s father, waiting outside; he claims someone has taken advantage of his daughter. Flagg, assuming that he himself is the culprit, asks, through Moore, who acts as an interpreter, “how much he wants.” Cognac Pete, in a rage, demands five hundred francs and that the man in question marry his daughter. To Flagg’s obvious surprise, Pete points to Quirt. Flagg acts quickly; he orders Quirt to marry Charmaine and surrender two-thirds of his pay to Pete, reminding his senior noncommissioned officer (NCO) that an Army court-martial would not look favorably upon a “hayshaker.” Before Quirt can put up much resistance, a runner brings an order for the company to move out within the hour. A general enters and explains the impending operation to Flagg: Hold a village on the line, capture a German officer for intelligence purposes, and penetrate the enemy lines to post propaganda leaflets. As the first act ends, Quirt plays his trump card: He refuses to serve unless he can do it as a single man. Flagg, pressed for time, agrees, leaving Charmaine a single woman with a soldier’s allotment.

Act 2 begins in a wine cellar in the besieged town. Spike and Kiper, disheveled, are sleeping. Gowdy, a pharmacist’s mate, and Quirt enter, followed by Flagg, who supports the wounded Aldrich. Soon after Aldrich is given a dose of morphine, Lieutenant Moore enters in a distressed state, a victim of shell shock. Two fresh officers enter the cellar as replacements. Flagg quickly dispatches one of them, Lundstrom, to the lines as a replacement platoon leader. As soon as Lundstrom leaves, Quirt reenters the cellar, limping with a leg wound he received from a German sniper. Flagg and the other new platoon leader, Cunningham, make plans to capture a German officer in an abandoned railroad station. Suddenly, there are grenade explosions and shouts: A German attack on the cellar has failed. Act 2 ends with Flagg manhandling a German officer prisoner and the appearance of Private Lewisohn, who was mortally wounded in the attack.

Act 3 opens back at Cognac Pete’s tavern, two days later. Quirt enters in a major’s blouse that hides his hospital pajamas. Charmaine appears and becomes distraught when she sees that Quirt is injured; embarrassed at his dress, he leaves to find a suitable uniform. Flagg enters and, in a revealing conversation with Charmaine, expresses his fatigue and disgust over the war. Quirt then reappears, and in an argument exacerbated by liquor, the two agree to play blackjack; Flagg reveals the stakes: six cards under 21 and Quirt can shoot his commander. Quirt, however, is dealt a king and immediately upsets the game and the candles, pitching the room into darkness. Flagg empties his automatic wildly into the night.

Charmaine enters the tavern; apologetically, Flagg professes his love for her. Lipinsky then arrives with the news that the battalion has been ordered to the front. Flagg reluctantly parts company with Charmaine and exits. Quirt, from a upper floor stairway, asks Flagg to wait for him as the curtain falls.

Dramatic Devices

Without a doubt, the most powerful artistic device employed in What Price Glory? is the provocative language. In fact, the play’s first director, Arthur Hopkins, added a note to the playbill, justifying Laurence Stallings’s and Maxwell Anderson’s use of obscenities:

The speech of men under arms is universally and consistently interlarded with profanity. Oaths mean nothing to a soldier save a means to obtain emphasis. . . . The authors of What Price Glory? have attempted to reproduce this mannerism along with other general atmosphere they believe to be true. . . . The audience is asked to bear with certain expletives which, under other circumstances, might be used for melodramatic effect, but herein are employed because the mood and truth of the play demand their employment.

This profanity has an extra bite to it: The characters use it to describe things traditionally treated with at least some degree of reverence. The valor of the profession of arms, the sanctity of death, the glory of the human soul, and even the virtue of a beautiful woman are not immune to the vile barbs of Flagg’s company. No man is protected from the war’s brutality; even the most pious young soldier must find an outlet for the pressures of the violence around him.

Anderson and Stallings also employ more typical dramatic devices. The play is constructed in three acts; acts 1 and 2 basically serve to depict the common marine of the war; no one character is revealed in enough depth to display a unique and distinct personality. Quirt and Flagg’s relationship is revealed, as well as their mutual desire for Charmaine, but neither characteristic can be seen as unique to these men; all the soldiers are womanizers. Act 3 is much the same; the soldiers have returned from battle as profane and as brutal as ever and, even more significantly, still ready to leap back into action.

It is in act 3, in a scene placed between the stereotypical depictions, that Flagg, Quirt, and a few of the minor characters acquire some sense of personality. In the dismal wine cellar of a bombed-out French house, the tragedy of What Price Glory? unfolds. The “bloody naturalism” of the scene brings out the compassion of these men and, eventually, their cynicism. Dramatic juxtaposition allows the audience to see the brutality of war and its effect on the men; their profanity seems somehow justified. The audience’s reactions are further affected by Quirt’s and Flagg’s quick acquiescence to return to battle. Anderson and Stallings make no comment on the situation; they sought to depict war realistically in the play, not to discuss it morally or philosophically. The viewer may draw his own conclusion if he wishes, but the realistic writer must consider his mission complete if the audience has the tools with which to make the decision.

Critical Context

Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings blazed new dramatic trails when What Price Glory? premiered in 1924. Postwar cynicism was at its height; America had had enough of the “glory” of war. The play’s depiction of the ugly truth of war and its effect on humankind was an instant success, playing for 435 performances. Certainly the timeliness of the production contributed to its popularity: Finally, the experience of the soldier could be truthfully and realistically portrayed. Anderson and Stallings wrote What Price Glory? not to advocate, criticize, or satirize any political, social, or cultural institution or group; instead, they responded to the public’s demand for reality, for a glimpse into the American Expeditionary Force as it truly was. This shift in American attitudes had not been recognized by the authors of the time, at least not in the realm of drama. (Thomas Boyd’s Through the Wheat, 1923, makes a strong argument for an awareness in fiction, at least.)

One might expect that veterans of the “war to end all wars” would look upon any realistic portrayal of their experiences favorably. However, many top-ranking U.S. Navy and Marine Corps officers objected to what they saw as stereotypes in the play, specifically in the characters’ frequent use of profanity. Stallings based Flagg upon an officer he had met in the war who had commanded an American company at the bloody battle of Belleau Voop; the subject, however, vehemently denied any connection between himself and Flagg’s violent swaggering.

The key to the success of What Price Glory? lies in its realistic portrayal of the human tragedy of war. If that realistic portrayal must use crude language to be accurate and true, then the author must not hesitate to employ it. Such a rejection of the societal contrivances normally found in early twentieth century drama made What Price Glory? the unique and provocative play that it was in 1924—and has continued to be.

Sources for Further Study

Anderson, Maxwell. Dramatist in America: Letters of Maxwell Anderson, 1912-1958. Edited by Laurence G. Avery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.

Bailey, Mabel Driscoll. Maxwell Anderson: The Playwright as Prophet. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1957.

Brittain, John T. Laurence Stallings. Edited by Sylvie E. Brown. New York: Twayne, 1975.

Hazelton, Nancy J., and Kenneth Kravs, eds. Maxwell Anderson on the New York Stage. San Jose, Calif.: Library Research, 1991.

Horn, Barbara L. Maxwell Anderson: A Research and Production Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Krutch, Joseph Wood. The American Drama Since 1918: An Informal History. New York: G. Braziller, 1957.

Shivers, Alfred S. The Life of Maxwell Anderson. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.