In Giraudoux’s “Two Laws,” he writes about “the eternal status of the playwright” in relation to their characters and in this quote below, to the playwright’s responsibility to reflect the period in which they live. Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944):
“…It is futile to believe that a year or a century can find the resonance and elevation ultimately befitting the emotional debate and effort represented by each period of our passage on earth, if it does not have a spokesman of its tragedy or drama in order to reach its heights or plumb its depths. Tragedy and drama are the confession which humanity – this army of salvation and ruin – must also make in public, without reticence and in loudest tones, for the echo of its voice is clearer and more real than its voice itself.”*
*Toby Cole, Playwrights on Playwriting, (Hill and Wang) pp. 62-63