# They Knew What They Wanted

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Sidney Howard won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for this play.
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They Knew what they Wanted
by Sidney Howard
THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED
Scene from Act I of The Theatre Guild Production
THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED
A Comedy in Three Acts
BY SIDNEY HOWARD
THE THEATRE GUILD VERSION, WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE THEATRE GUILD PRODUCTION
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1925
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY SIDNEY HOWARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
ΤΟ
MY WIFE
“I am an honest man and an old Christian”
—Cervantes
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
In view of the fact that the publication in book form of this play serves as a record of its long and most successful run on the stage, and in view of the fact that the author has presented a sincere study of the language of his characters, it seemed only fair to the public at large to print the play substantially as acted.
THE PERSONAL PREFACE
I don’t know what value a personal preface can have, in a book which has no didactic or otherwise serious purpose to fulfil, unless the author avails himself of the opportunity it offers him for the listing of his alibis. I have the usual author’s alibis in the usual round numbers, of course, and I should like to list them all and to dwell fully upon every one. With heroic self-restraint, however, I am confining myself to a pair, only.
The first concerns the dialect which the characters of this play speak and of which I have to say that I have considerately elected to print it legibly rather than phonetically because I much prefer the reader’s imaginative coöperation to any laboured and vision-destroying phonetics that I might have invented. I have tried (with as much consistency as seemed quite convenient, the reader’s and my own sloth considered) to suggest inflection, intonation, and pronunciation through the minimum amount of misspelling.
The native American characters of the piece speak Californian, a language which may best be described as not very good American in which the “R” is less dynamic than in certain middle-western pronuncia​tions. The Italian speaks English as well as he is able and without any conformity to rule or standard.
As Mr. Richard Bennett very cannily points out, there can be no regulation or tabulation of the foreigner’s English. It depends upon too many personal factors in the life of the individual foreigner—his instinct for articulate expression; his residence among English-speaking folk; his actual experience with, and education in, the language; the proportion of his version of it which he has, so to speak, picked up bodily, and the proportion which he has literally translated from his native tongue. Furthermore, particularly in the matter of pronunciation, there can be little doubt that his English is decidedly affected by the specific locality of his birth and up-bringing in the “old country.” I am citing Mr. Bennett (whose authority I am ready to uphold against any philologist whatsoever) because he is an actor of genius with an actor’s genius for the hearing and mimicry of speech.
Of the story of this play, I have this to say. It has been generously related to the legend of Paolo and Francesca, to the dirtiest anecdotes of the Gallic pornographica, and to its superb contemporary of the New York theatre, Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms.” On that last score, Mr. O’Neill and I can readily, as they say, “get together” and agree that no two plays could possibly bear less resemblance to each other than this simple comedy of mine and his ​glorious tragedy of New England farmers and their Puritan philosophy. Of the second alleged source and kinship I cannot speak with authority because I am not sure that I know all the dirtiest French anecdotes. The first relationship I hotly deny.
The story of this play, in its noblest form, served Richard Wagner as the libretto for the greatest of all romantic operas. It is shamelessly, consciously, and even proudly derived from the legend of Tristram and Yseult, and the difference between the legend of Tristram and Yseult and that of Paolo and Francesca is simply that the Italian wronged husband killed everybody in sight while his northern counterpart forgave everybody—which amounts to the monumental difference between a bad temper and tolerance.
I don’t myself, I insist, think that the age and service stripes of a story have anything much to do with its eligibility for present purposes, and I advise all other young writers, who need plots and can’t make up good ones of their own, to pick a good one out of the classics. No story is any older than its applicability to life. No story is any younger than the motives of its characters, and human motives have a singularly enduring and permanent quality. I don’t at all intend to write a criticism or analysis of my play. I should not have said so much, except that I do so sympathize with it for being thrust, so, into print, without any of the tender and beautifully in​terpretive life which the Theatre Guild has thrown about it in the Garrick Theatre.
Indeed, I cannot adequately express my gratitude to the Theatre Guild. I suppose that I must, however, do something toward acknowledging the debt which the text of the play owes to Miss Lord, to Mr. Bennett, and to Mr. Moeller for some of its most effective lines and episodes. In the old days of the Cohan revues, Mr. Richard Carle used to hold up his right hand when he spoke one of the author’s jokes and his left hand when he spoke one of his own. In honesty, I should have marked the lines and episodes which this amiable trio contributed to my play and supplied each one of them with an accrediting footnote. My failure to do so can only be explained by a greed for more credit than I deserve.
S. Howard.
New York, 1925
CHARACTERS
Amy
Tony
Joe
Father McKee
The Doctor
The R. F. D.
Ah Gee
Two Italian Farmhands
​Stage and amateur rights for the United States and Canada and motion picture rights for the world for this play are owned and controlled by the Theatre Guild, Inc., 65 West 35th St., New York City. No performances or public readings may be given without their written consent.
The cast of the THEATRE GUILD PRODUCTION as originally presented at the GARRICK THEATRE, November 24, 1924
THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED
A comedy in three acts
By SIDNEY HOWARD
The production directed by Philip Moeller Setting and costumes by Carolyn Hancock
CHARACTERS (In order of appearance)
Farm Hands:
The Misses Cosette Faustine, Helen Fowble, Dorothy Greene, Audrey Thal, Peter Marsters, Eleanor Mish.
The Messrs. Alvah Bessie, Edward Hogan, Sanford Meisner, Arthur Sircom, Ernest Thompson, Angelo de Palma, Michael Zito.
SCENE
Tony’s farmhouse in the Napa Valley, California
ACT III—Morning, in early summer ACT III—Evening—Same day ACT III—Three months later
Stage Manager: Robert Lucius Cook Assistant Stage Manager: Jacob Zollinger
Scenery constructed by Oscar Liebetrau Painted by Robert Bergman Costumes executed by Brooks
The THEATRE GUILD, Inc.
Executive Director: Theresa Helburn
Stage Managers, Philip Loeb and Robert L. Cook
Address communications to the Theatre Guild, Inc. 65 West 35th Street, New York City
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
* Scene
* Act I
* Act II
* Act III
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1939, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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