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Volume 3674a
WHY RAZZ THE KIDS?
An Unpublished Play By
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Continued from Part IOne of the strangest of the Burroughs works, an unfinished manuscript marked "commenced April 6, 1927," opens with three pages in story form and then shifts to a play in complete dialogue with stage directions. That it was intended as a play is evidenced by Burroughs' own drawing of a stage set, a living room with locations of furniture, doors, and stairs indicated. Curiously, a printed box on the page containing this drawing appears to state the theme of the play: "Youth has a right to question the moral mandates of its parents when by their panderings to the follies of the age, weak parents lay themselves open to question." Beneath the drawing Burroughs listed the titles he was considering: "Mary Who?"; "Why Razz the Kids?"; "Holy Bonds of Wedlock." Perhaps the play was designed for his daughter Joan who, at the time, was involved in amateur theatrics.
For no reason related to the action of the play, Burroughs gave most of his characters Spanish surnames. In the twenty-nine-page play Burroughs seems to be striving for a sophisticated atmosphere, an attempt to portray a dissolute society. The social-climbing Mrs. Trepador and her wealthy friends Pansy and Birdie are shown as heavy drinkers and women of loose morals, in contrast to the high-principled Professor and his foster-daughter Mary.
For his plot Burroughs resorts to old devices. Mrs. Trepador's six-month marriage to the wealthy John Dayton had culminated with his death, and she soon wedded a stodgy university professor. Dayton, at the request of a friend, had agreed to rear Mary Quien, a foundling. Mrs. Trepador views the girl with contempt and tells her that she is illegitimate and "tainted." John Dayton, Jr., a son of Dayton by a previous marriage, returns after a four-year absence to discover that he loves Mary and he announces his intention to marry her; to the socially-aspiring Mrs. Trepador this is unthinkable. In the ensuing furious quarrel that ends the manuscript, Mary decides to leave the Trepador home and John threatens to follow her.
In the shallow contrast of the goody-goody Mary versus the dissipations of Mrs. Trepador and her fast prohibition-era set, and the preaching and moralistic tone of sections of the dialogue, the play emerges as trite and unrealistic.
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