"It was with some such ideas in mind that I started on this play. Or else they developed as I wrote it. Or else I have developed them in defense of it now that it is written. It is not easy to know what a play is "about" until it is finished, and by then what it is "about" is incorporated in it irreversibly and is no more to be separated from it than the shape of a statue is from the marble. Writing a play is thinking, not thinking about thinking; more like a dream than a scheme—except that it lasts six months or more, and that one is responsible for it."