M.A.Eng. C.No.211

Directorate of Distance Education
UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU
JAMMU
SELF LEARNING MATERIAL

M.A. ENGLISH
Title of the Course : DRAMA-II Course Code : ENG 211

DRAMA II UNIT : 1 - VI
SEMESTER - II LESSON : 1 - 24
2019 onwards
Course Coordinator : Teacher Incharge :

Prof. Anupama Vohra Mr. Stanzin Shakya
http:/www.distanceeducationju.in
Printed & Published on behalf of the Directorate of Distance Education,
University of Jammu by the Director, DDE, University of Jammu, Jammu.
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M.A. ENGLISH
SEMESTER - II
Lesson Writer : Proof Reading :
Dr. Sanjay Chawla Prof. Anupama Vohra
Prof. Bhim S. Dahiya
Prof. Manorama Trikha
Ms. Ujjala Devi
Dr. Jagruti Upadhaya
C Directorate of Distance Education, University of Jammu, Jammu 2018
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WELCOME MESSAGE
Dear Distance Learners
Welcome to English Semester II !
This co urse is devo ted t o t he develo pment o f Drama fro m

Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century. The sociological, philosophical and
lit erary implicat io ns o f t he prescr ibed plays as well as t he different
dramatic techniques will be studied by you in t his paper.
You are request ed t o read t he t exts of the plays prescribed in

det ail. Also co nsult the bo oks in t he library.
Wish you good luck and success!
Prof. Anupama Vohra

Course Co-ordinator
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UNIVERSITY OF JAMMU
DETAILED SYLLABUS OF M.A. ENGLISH SEMESTER - II
Course Code : ENG 211 Duration of Examination : 3 hrs

Title of the Course : Drama II Total Marks : 100
Credits : 6 (a) Semester Examination - 80
(b) Sessional Assessment - 20
Detailed Syllabus for the examinations to be held in May 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Objective: The purpose of the course will be to acquaint the distance learners
with the development of Drama from Eighteenth Century to the Twentieth Century.
The Sociological, Philosophical and literary implications of the prescribed plays
as well as the different dramatic techniques will be studied.
Texts Prescribed (For Detailed Study)

UNIT - I
Literary and Intellectual background of drama from the Eighteenth Century upto
the 20th Century
UNIT - II
Oliver Goldsmith : She Stoops to Conquer
UNIT - III
G. B. Shaw : Man and Superman
UNIT - IV
T. S. Eliot : Family Reunion
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UNIT - V
Samuel Beckett : Waiting for Godot
UNIT-VI
Bertolt Brecht : Life of Galileo
Mode of Examination
The paper will be divided into Sections A, B and C. M.M. = 80
Section A Multiple choice questions
Q. No. 1 will be an objective type question covering the entire syllabus. Twelve
objectives, two from each unit, with four options each will be set and the candidate
will be required to write the correct option and not specify by putting a tick mark
(). Any ten out of twelve are to be attempted. Each objective will be for one
mark. (10 x 1=10)
Section B Short answer questions
Q. No. 2 comprises short answer type questions covering the entire syllabus.
Four questions will be set and the candidate will be required to attempt any two
questions in about 80-100 words. Each answer will be evaluated for 5 marks.
(5 x 2 = 10)
Section C Long answer questions
Q.No.3 comprises long answer type questions covering the entire syllabus. Six
questions, one from each unit, will be set and the candidate will be required to
attempt any five questions in about 300-350 words. Each answer will be evaluated
for 12 marks. (5 x 12=60)
Suggested Reading :
1. Bernard Bergonzi : Wartime and Aftermath : English Literature
and its Background 1939-60.
2. Colin Chambers and : Playwright’s Progress: Patterns of Postwar
Mike Prior British Drama.
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3. Harold Bloom : George Bernard Shaw (Bloom’s Modern
Critical Views)
4. T. S. Eliot : Selected Essays
5. John Loftis (Ed.) : Restoration Drama : Modern Essays in
Criticism.
6. Raymond Williams : Drama from Ibsen to Brecht.
7. Thomas H. Fujimura : The Restoration Comedy fo Wit.
8. John Russell Taylor : Anger And After : Guide to the New British
Drama.
9. Katherine J. Worth : Revolution in Modern English Drama.
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M.A. ENGLISH
COURSE CODE : ENG 211 (SEMESTER - II) DRAMA - II
LIST OF CONTENTS
UNIT - I Literary and intellectual background of drama Page No.

from the restoration period upto the 20th century
Lesson 1 - 3 1-64
Lesson Writer :
Dr. Sanjay Chawla
UNIT - II The Way of the World (William Congreve) 65-152
Lesson No. 4-7
Lesson Writer :
UNIT - III Man and Superman (G. B. Shaw) 153-194
Lesson No. 8-12
Lesson Writer :
Prof. Manorama Trikha
UNIT - IV Family Reunion (T. S. Eliot)
Lesson No. 13-16 195-283
Lesson Writer :
Ms. Ujjala Devi
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UNIT - V Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) 284-338
Lesson No. 17-20
Lesson Writer :
UNIT - VI Life of Galileo (Bertolt Brecht) 339-393
Lesson No. 21-24
Lesson Writer :
Dr. Jagruti Upadhaya
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M.A. ENGLISH : SEMESTER - II
COURSE CODE : ENG 211 LESSON NO. 1
DRAMA - II UNIT - I
LITERARY AND INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

OF DRAMA FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
UPTO THE 20TH CENTURY
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DRAMA
STRUCTURE
1.1 Introduction: The Decline of the Theatre
1.2 Objectives
1.3 The French Influence
1.4 Sentimental Comedy
1.5 Domestic Tragedy
1.6 The Stagecraft
1.7 The Melodrama
1.8 Let Us Sum Up
1.9 Self-Assessment Questions
1.10 Examination Oriented Questions
1.11 Suggested Reading
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1.1 INTRODUCTION: THE DECLINE OF THE THEATRE
The drama of the eighteenth century does not reach the same high level
as the novel. One has to wait late in the century for Goldsmith and Sheridan
to find writers who make any permanent contribution to the English stage.
The Licensing Act of 1737 restricted the freedom of expression by dramatists
and drove a number of good men out of the theatre. Henry Fielding had been a
dramatist before that date and his more mature genius might have gone into
the theatre instead of the novel. From 1737 to 1968 the theatre has been
hampered by the restrictions of censorship. Further, the most austere section
of the middle classes, the conduct of which is regulated by Puritan, and next
by Methodist views, still fosters an aversion on principle for the play.
In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy

lost favour, to be replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as
George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest
in Italian opera. Popular entertainment became more dominant in this period
than ever before. Fair-boo th burlesque and musical ent ertainment , t he
ancestors of the English music hall, flourished at the expense of legitimate
English drama. By the early 19th century, few English dramas were being
written, except for closet drama, plays intended to be presented privately
rather than on stage.
1.2 OBJECTIVES
In this lesson, we shall discuss in detail the various characteristic features

of the eighteenth century drama. The lesson will also throw light on the various
differential characteristics of restoration comedy and sentimental drama.
1.3 THE FRENCH INFLUENCE
In Italy and in Germany, as in England and in Spain, the men-of-letters

maintained the necessity of conforming to the theatrical theory of the French
because they believed the French to be the only true exponents of the Greek
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tradition, which it was the bounden duty of every dramatic poet to follow blindly.
The rules of the theatre as the French declared them had only a remote connection
with the Greek tradition; and they consisted mainly of purely negative restrictions.
They told the dramatic poet what he was forbidden to do, and they declared
what a tragedy must not be. To accord with the demands of the French theory a
tragedy should not have more or less than five acts and it should not be in prose;
it should deal only with a lofty theme, having queens and kings for its chief
figures, and avoiding all visible violence of action or of speech, and all other
breaches of decorum; it should eschew humor, keeping itself ever serious and
stately, and never allowing any underplot; and, above all, it should permit no
change of scene during the whole play, and it should not allow the time taken by
the story to extend over more than twenty-four hours.
How widely the ideal of tragedy upheld by the French dramatists

under Louis XV differed from that pursued by the English playwrights under
Elizabeth, and also from that followed by the Greek poets under Pericles,
was made plain by Voltaire’s own formal declaration in which he set up a
standard of tragedy as he understood it: “To compact an illustrious and
interesting event into the space of two or three hours; to make the characters
appear only when they ought to come forth; never to leave the stage empty;
t o put t ogether a plo t as pro bable as it is at t ractive; t o say not hing
unnecessary; to instruct the mind and move the heart; to be always eloquent
in verse with the eloquence proper to each character represented; to speak
one’s tongue with the same purity as in the most chastened prose, without
allowing the effort of rhyming to seem to hamper the thought; to permit no
single line to be hard or obscure or declamatory;—these are the conditions
which nowadays one insists upon in a tragedy.” From this explicit definition
it is evident that Voltaire regarded tragedy as a work of the intelligence
rather than of the imagination; and it might even be inferred that he distrusted
the imagination, and that he thought that the intelligence could be aided in
the accomplishment of its task by the rules.
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These were the rules to conform to which Corneille cramped himself
and curbed his indisputable genius. French tragedy had a graceful symmetry
of its own, but it was lacking in bold variety and in imaginative energy. Here
is an added reason why it was widely accepted in the eighteenth century,
which has been termed “an age whose poetry was without romance” and
“whose philosophy was without insight.” The century itself, rather than the
French example, is to blame if it has left so few poetic plays deserving to
survive.
A flexible prose is plainly the fittest instrument for the comedy of

manners; and the comedy of manners is as plainly the kind of drama best
suited to the limitations of the eighteenth century. By their comedies rather
than by their tragedies are the dramatists of that century now remembered.
Their comedies, like their tragedies, were composed in imitation of French
models. Within a few years after Molière’s death the type of comedy which
he had elaborated to suit his own needs and t o cont ain his veracio us
portrayal of life as he saw it, had been taken across to England by the
comic dramatists of the Restoration, some of whom had borrowed plots
from him and all of whom had tried to absorb his method. No one of the
English dramatists had Mo lière’s insight int o charact er o r his st urdy
moralit y.
Clever as these Restoration comedies were and brilliant in their

reflection of the glittering immorality, their tone was too offensive for
our modern taste, and scarcely anyone of them now survives on the stage.
Yet the fo rm t hey had copied fro m Mo lière t hey firmly established in
England, where the conditions of the theatre had come to be like those in
France; and this form has been accepted by all the later comic dramatists
of English, who have never cared to return to the looser and more medieval
form which had to satisfy the humorous playwrights under Elizabeth. Steele
and Fielding and, later in the century, Goldsmith and Sheridan continue in
English comedy the tradition established by Molière. In She Stoops To
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Conquer and in The Rivals there is an element of rollicking farce not quite
in keeping with the elevation of high comedy. In the School for Scandal we
have an English comedy with solid structure, but narrow in its outlook.
Although the French theorists insisted on a complete separation of

the comic and the tragic, disapproving fiercely of any humorous relief in a
tragedy, they also maintained that comedy should hold itself aloof from
vulgar subjects, that it should ever be genteel; and there were some who
held that it ought to be unfailingly dignified. Even in England Goldsmith
was reproached for having disfigured She Stoops to Conquer with scenes
of broad humor “to low even for farce”; and Sheridan in the prologue of
The Rivals felt fo rced t o make a plea fo r laught er as a no t unnatural
accompaniment of comedy. Without asserting categorically that the drama
should be strenuously didactic, many critics considered that it was the
duty of comedy, not first of all to depict human nature as it is with its
foibles and its failings, and no t t o clear t he air with heart y laughter
wholesome in itself, but chiefly to teach, to set a good example, to hold
aloft the standards of manners and of morals. Dryden had declared that
the general end of all poetry was “to instruct delightfully”; and not a few
later writers of less authority were willing enough to waive the delight if
only they could make sure of their instruction.
1.4 SENTIMENTAL COMEDY
Thus t here came into existence a new dramat ic species, which

flourished for a little space on both sides of the English Channel and which
was known in London as sentimental-comedy and in Paris as tearful-
co medy, comédie larmoyante. The most o bvious characteristic of this
comedy was that it was not comic; and in fact it was not intended to be
comic, but pathetic. It was a mistake that a play of this new class should
call itself comedy, which was precisely what it was not, and that by this
false claim it should hinder the healthy growth of true comedy with its
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ampler pictures of life and its contagious gaiety. But the new species,
however miscalled, responded to a new need of the times. It was the result
of that awakening sensibility of the soul, of that growing tenderness of spirit,
of that expansion of sympathy, which was after a while to bring about
the Romanticist upheaval.
Sentimental Comedy is an 18th century dramatic genre which sprang

up as a reactio n to the immo ral tone of English Restoratio n plays. In
Sentimental comedies middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a
series of moral trials. These plays aimed to produce tears rather than laughter
and reflected contemporary philosophical conceptions of humans as inherently
good but capable of being led astray by bad example. By appealing to his
noble sentiments, a man could be reformed and set back on the path of virtue.
While the plays contained characters whose natures seemed overly virtuous
and whose problems were t oo easily resolved, they were accept ed by
audiences as truthful representations of the human predicament.
The best kno wn wo rk o f this genre is Sir Richard St eele’s The

Conscious Lovers (1722), in which the penniless heroine Indiana faces
various tests until the discovery that she is an heiress leads to the necessary
happy ending. Steel wished his plays to bring the audience, “a pleasure too
exq u isit e fo r lau g ht er. ” St eele was an I r ish wr it er and p o lit ician,
remembered mainly for co-founding the magazine The Spectator. While he
wrote a few notable sentimental comedies, he was criticized for being a
hypocrite as he wrot e mo ral plays, boo klet s, and art icles but enjoyed
drinking, occasional dueling, and debauchery around town.
Scholars argue that a more important writer of the genre was Colley
Cibber, an actor-manager, writer, and poet laureate who wrote the first
sentimental comedy, Love’s Last Shift in order to give himself a role. The play
did establish him as both an actor and a playwright, and though some of his 25
plays were praised, his political adaptations of well known works met with
much criticism.
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Neither Steele nor Colley, or any other writer, made a career of writing
sentimental comedies as the genre was popular for only a short time. In fact,
all of the authors of sentimental comedy at this time wrote other forms
including restoration comedy and tragedy. Sentimental comedies continued
t o co exist wit h more conventio nal laughing co medies such as Oliver
Go ld smit h’s S h e St o o p s t o C o n q u er ( 1 7 7 3 ) an d Richar d Br insley
Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775) until the sentimental genre waned in the early
19th century.
Sent iment al co medy was a react io n t o t he bawd y rest o rat io n

comedy of the 17th and 18th centuries. Many believed that the sexually
explicit behaviour enco uraged by Charles II o n the st age lead t o the
demoralization of the English population outside the theatre. Many felt that
restoration comedies, which started out ridiculing vice, appeared to support
vice inst ead t herefo re beco ming o ne o f t he leading causes o f mo ral
corruption. One of the leading environmental factors that made way for this
new g enre was Jeremy Co llier ’s S ho rt View o f th e Immoral it y an d
Profaneness of the English Stage, published in 1698. This essay signaled
the public opposition to the supposed improprieties of plays staged during
the previous three decades. Collier convincingly argued that the, “business
o f plays is t o reco mmend Virt ue, and disco u nt enance Vice”. Ot her
sentimentalists took on the responsibility to moralize the stage in hopes of
repairing the perceived damage of restoration comedies. These playwrights
and theoreticians used the theatre to instruct rather than delight after puritan
opposition to theatre grew from 1660 to 1698.
At the opening night of Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift at Drury Lane Theatre in

January 1696 spectators experienced a new genre. They were genuinely surprised
by the unexpected reconciliation and the joy of seeing this, “spread such an
uncommon rapture of pleasure in the audience that never were spectators more
happy in easing their minds by uncommon and repeated plaudits and honest
tears.” This enthusiasm was aroused by the virtue of the characters, creating a
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sense of astonishment in the audience because they allowed them to feel admiration
for people like themselves. This feeling became the hallmark of sentimentalism.
Richard Steele stated that sentimental comedies, “makes us approve ourselves
more” and Denis Diderot advocated that sentimentalism helps spectators
remember that all nature is inherently good. Sentimentalists met resistances with
playwrights of true comedy, who also had a moral aim but strove to reach it by
exhibiting characters from which the audience should take warning instead of
emulate.
In England this sentimental comedy never amounted too much, even though
it had for one of its earliest practitioners Steele, who claimed that a certain play
of his had been “damned for its piety.” But Steele, undeniable humorist as he
was, lacked the instinctive touch of the born playwright, and his humour was too
delicate to adjust itself easily to the huge theatres of London. Steele’s is the only
interesting name in all the list of writers for the English stage who intended to
edify rather than to amuse and who did not regret that their comedies called for
tears rather than laughter. That the liking for sentimental comedy was more
transient in England than in France perhaps was due to the fact that the Londoners
had already wept abundantly over dramas of an irregular species, not comedies
of course, nor yet true tragedies, but dealing pathetically with the humbler sort of
people.
If we needed proof of the temporary popularity of the ingenuous domestic

drama which pretended to be comedy, although it preferred tears to laughter, we
could find this in the fact that it tempted even Voltaire to essay it. Yet for sentimental
comedy it would seem as though Voltaire had few natural qualifications, since he
was deficient in sentiment, in pathos, and in humour. Wit he had in profusion,—
indeed, he was the arch-wit of the century; and he was so amazingly clever that
when he attempted tragedy he was able to make his wit masquerade even as
poetry. In the drama, as in almost every other department of literature, Voltaire is
the dominating figure of this time. He was very fond of the theatre, and he had
possessed himself of some of the secrets of the dramaturgic art. He could devise
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an ingenious story; but he had no firm mastery of human motive. However artfully
his plots might be put together, they were generally improbable in the main theme
and arbitrary in the several episodes.
1.5 DOMESTIC TRAGEDY
Sentimental comedy influenced and became absorbed into a new genre

called Domestic Tragedy beginning around the mid 18th century. These tragedies
intended to use real life situations, settings, and prose to move an audience and
foreshadowed the realism to come in the 19th century.
A domestic tragedy is a tragedy in which the tragic protagonists are

ordinary middle-class or lower-class individuals. This subgenre contrasts
with classical and Neoclassical tragedy, in which the protagonists are of kingly
or aristocratic rank and their downfall is an affair of state as well as a personal
matter.
The ancient Greek theorist Aristotle had argued that tragedy should

concern only great individuals with great minds and souls, because their
catastrophic downfall would be more emotionally powerful to the audience; only
comedy should depict middle-class people. Domestic tragedy breaks with
Aristotle’s precepts, taking as its subjects merchants or citizens whose lives
have less consequence in the wider world.
In Britain, the first domestic tragedies were written in the English

Renaissance one of the first was Arden of Faversham (1592), depicting the murder
of a bourgeois man by his adulterous wife. Other famous examples are A Woman
Killed with Kindness (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), and The Witch of
Edmonton (1621). Othello can be classified as a domestic tragedy.
Domestic tragedy disappeared during the era of Restoration drama, when

Neoclassicism dominated the stage, but it emerged again with the work of George
Lillo and Sir Richard Steele in the eighteenth century.
Lillo revived the genre of play referred to as domestic tragedy (or bourgeois
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tragedy). Even though the Jacobean stage had flirted with merchant and artisan
plays in the past (with, for example, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Heywood), The
London Merchant was a significant change in theatre, and in tragedy in
particular. Instead of dealing with heroes from classical literature or the Bible,
presented with spectacle and grand stage effects, his subjects concerned everyday
people, such as his audience, the theatre-going middle classes, and his tragedies
were conducted on the intimate scale of households, rather than kingdoms.
1.6 THE STAGECRAFT
The rules of the theatre, including that of the Three Unities, had been
adopted in France in the seventeenth century largely because Corneille had
given his adhesion to them, although they held him in bondage he could not but
feel; and they were maintained in France in the eighteenth century very largely
because of the authority of Voltaire, who was ever ready to reproach Corneille
for every chance dereliction and to denounce Shakespeare for every open
disregard of dramatic decorum. The weight of Voltaire’s authority was
acknowledged not only in France but throughout Europe. His plays were
translated and acted in the various languages of civilization; and his opinions
about the theatre were received with acquiescence in Italy, in Germany, and in
England. It is true that in England, while the professed critics deplored the
lamentable lack of taste shown by their rude forefathers, they themselves
continued to enjoy the actual performances of the vigorous plays of the
Elizabethan dramatists. It is true that in Italy the men-of-letters who accepted
the rulings of Voltaire could take little more than an academic interest in the
drama, since their theatre was not flourishing, and even the comedy-of-masks
seemed to be wearing itself out. It is true that in Germany also the theatre was
in a sorry condition, and that the German actors were often forced to perform
in adaptations of French plays in default o f native dramas wo rt hy o f
consideration.
With his practicality and his perfect comprehension of the conditions of
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the modern theatre, Lessing made one important modification in the form of the
drama which Molière had supplied. Where the Frenchman had no difficulty in
concentrating the action into a single day and a single spot, the German, rejecting
the Unity of Time and the Unity of Place, held himself at liberty to protract the
action over so long a period as he might find advisable, and to change the
scene as often as he might see fit. But Lessing perceived the advantage of not
distracting the attention of the audience by changes of scene during the progress
of the act; and he therefore made his removals from place to place while the
curtain was down. He was apparently the first playwright who gave to each act
its own scenery, not to be changed until the fall of the curtain again. Here he
supplied an example now followed by the most accomplished playwrights of
the twentieth century.
In this avoiding of the confusion resulting from frequent shifting of

the scenery before the eyes of the spectators, Lessing was more modern
than either Goethe or Schiller, both of whom appeared to hold that the
example of Shakespeare warranted their returning to the more medieval
practice of making as many changes of place as a loosely constructed plot
might seem to require. Nowadays Goethe’s surpassing genius is everywhere
acknowledged,—his comprehensive and insatiable curiosity, his searching
int err o gat io n o f life, his po wer o f self- exp ressio n in almo st ever y
department of literature. But great poet as he was, a theatre-poet he was
not. He was not a born playwright, seizing with unconscious certainty
upon the necessary scenes, the scènes a faire, to bring out the conflict of
will ag ainst will which was t he hear t o f his t heme. He lack ed t he
instinctive perception of the exact effect likely to be produced on the
audience, and he was deficient in t he int uit ive kno wledge of the best
method to appeal to the sympathies of the spectators. In fact, the time
came in Goethe’s career as a dramatic poet when he refused to reckon
with the playgoers who might be present at the performance of his plays,—
an attitude inconceivable on the part of a true dramatist and as remote as
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possible from that taken by Sophocles, by Shakespeare, and by Molière.
When he was director of the theatre in Weimar he did not hesitate to assert
that “the public must be controlled.”
It was Victor Hugo who once declared that the audience in a theatre can
be divided into three classes,- the crowd which expects to see action, women,
who are best pleased with passion, and thinkers, who are hoping to behold
character. The main body of playgoers has always wanted to be amused by the
spectacle of something happening before their eyes; and many of them, including
nearly all women, desire to have their sympathies excited; but it is only a chosen
few who go to the theatre seeking food for thought and ready, therefore, to
welcome psychological subtlety and philosophic profundity. The great dramatists
have been able to satisfy the demands of all three classes; Oedipus the
King, Hamlet, and Tartuffe were popular with the plain people from their first
performance. But Goethe seemed to care for the approval of only the smallest
class of the three; and only in Faust did he reveal the dramaturgic skill needed
to devise an action interesting enough in itself to bear whatever burden of
philosophy he might wish to lay upon it.
A Theatre-poet Schiller was, even if Goethe was not; yet Schiller’s

first drama, the Robbers, was not written for performance,—although it soon
found its way to the stage-door, after the poet had somewhat restrained its
boyish extravagance. Schiller rejected the model he could have found in
Lessing’s tragedies of middle-class life, a model too severe for the tumultuous
turbulence of the storm-and-stress period. He followed Goethe, who, in Goetz,
had claimed the right to be formless as Shakespeare was supposed to be.
There is in the Robbers a certain resemblance to the crude Elizabethan
t ragedy-o f-blo o d wit h it s perfervid grandilo quence and it s frequ ent
assassination.
In this first play Schiller’s stagecraft was primitive and unworthy; he

shifted his scenes with wanton carelessness, and he let his absurd villain turn
himself inside out in interminable soliloquies. But however reckless the technique,
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the play revealed Schiller’s abundant possession of genuine dramatic power.
The conflict of contending passions was set before the spectator in scenes full of
fire and action. The antithesis of Moor’s two sons, one strenuously noble and the
other unspeakably vile, was rather forced, but it was at least obvious even to the
stupidest playgoer. The hero lacked common sense, no doubt; but he had energy
to spare; and at the end he rose to tragic elevation in his willingness to expiate
his wrong-doing.
Dramatist as Schiller was by native gift, he was but a novice in the

theatre when the Robbers was written, and it was the fitting of that play to
the actual stage which drew his attention to the inexorable conditions of
theatrical performance. In his later dramas, in William Tell, for example, and
in Mary Stuart, the technique is less elementary and more in accord with the
practice of the contemporary playhouse. But Schiller appears to have been
thinking rather of his readers than of the spectators massed and expectant in
the theatre. He seems to have taken no keen interest in spying out the secrets
of the stage. His plays are what they are by sheer dramatic power, and not by
reason of any adroitness of technique. Indeed, in Schiller’s day the German
theatre was almost in chaos; and probably he never saw any satisfactory
performance of a dramatic masterpiece, German or French or English, until
he went to Weimar.
Despite his limitations, Schiller was the one dramatic poet of the
eight eent h cent ury who is t o be co mpared, no t wit h So pho cles and
Shakespeare, the supreme masters, but rather with Calderon and Hugo. He
lacked their conscious control of theatrical effect, but he had something of
their rhetorical luxuriance and their exuberant lyricism. He was intellectually
deeper than the Spaniard and he was more masculine than the Frenchman.
Schiller’s influence on the later development of the drama would have been
fuller if his structure had been more modern and if he had profited earlier by
the example of Lessing, emulating the great critic’s certainty of artistic aim
and imitating his rigorous self-control.
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1.7 THE MELODRAMA
The most of the German dramas of this period of unrest were not intended
for the actual theatre, although many of them did manage to get themselves acted
here and there. With all their wild bombast and with their entire overstrained
emotionalism, they were not without significance and a vitality of their own, a
freshness of self-expression wholly lacking on the German stage before Lessing
had inspired it. If these dramas had been controlled by something of Lessing’s
self-restraint, if they had been less excessive in their violence, they might have
afforded shelter for the growth of a dramatic literature native to the soil and
national in spirit. But they were not healthy enough, and they soon fell into decay;
and what did burgeon from their matted roots was the melodrama of Kotzebue,
with its exaggeration of motive, its hollow affectation, and its tawdry pathos.
Kotzebue’s taste is dubious and his methods now outworn; but his play-making
gift is as undeniable as that of Heywood before him or that of Scribe after
him. Misanthropy and Repentance, known in England as the Stranger, has caused
as many tears to flow as A Woman Killed with Kindness; and whereas Heywood’s
simply pathetic play was known to his contemporaries only in the land of its
language, Kotzebue’s turgid treatment of the same theme was performed in all the
tongues of Europe, in Paris and London and New York as well as in Vienna and
Berlin.
Melodrama bears much the same relation to tragedy and to the loftier type
of serious play that farce does to pure comedy. When we can recall more
readily what the persons of a play do than what they are, then the probability is that
the piece if gay is a farce, and if grave a melodrama. Even among the tragedies of
the Greeks we can detect more than one drama which was melodramatic rather
than truly tragic; and not a few of the powerful plays of the Elizabethans were
essentially melodramas. So also were some of Corneille’s, though they masqueraded
as tragedies and conformed to the rules of the pseudo-classics. Yet it was only in
the eighteenth century that melodrama plainly differentiated itself from every other
dramatic species.
22
The “tradesmen’s tragedies” of Lillo and Moore in England and the
tearful-comedies of La Chaussée and Sedaine in France had helped along
its development; but it was Kotzebue in Germany who was able at last to
reveal its large possibilities. In the pieces which the German playwright
was prolific in bringing forth there was something exactly suited to the
temper of the times; and this helped to make his vogue cosmopolitan. He
was the earliest play-maker who se dramas were instantly plagiarized
everywhere; and in this he was the predecessor of Scribe and Sardou. He
influenced men like Lewis in England and Pixérécourt and Ducange in
France. In the works of the Parisian playwrights there was a deftness of
touch not visible in the pieces of Kotzebue, who was heavy-handed. It was
this French modification of eighteenth century German melodrama which
was to serve as a model for French romanticist drama in the nineteenth
century. Theatre historians usually considered the runaway success of The
Stranger, the English version of Menschenhass und Reue (Misanthropy and
Repentance by Kotzebue), in both England (where it opened in 1798) and
the United States as one of the harbingers of the emerging popularity of
theatrical melodrama, which dominated European and American stages for
the first seventy-five years of the nineteenth century.
1.8 LET US SUM UP
A century is only an artificial period of time adopted for the sake of

convenience and corresponding to no logical division of literary history. None
the less we are able to perceive in one century or another certain marked
characteristics. No doubt every century is more or less an era of transition;
but surely the eighteenth century seems to deserve the description better than
most. For nearly three quarters of its career, it appears to us as prosaic in
many of its aspects, dull and gray and uninteresting; but it was ever a battle-
ground for contending theories of literature and of life. In the drama more
especially it was able to behold the establishment and the disestablishment
of pseudo-classicism.
23
At its beginning the influence of the French had won wide-spread
acceptance for the rules with their insistence on the Three Unities and on
the separation of the comic and the tragic. At its end every rule was being
violated wantonly; and the drama itself seemed almost as lawless as the
bandits it delighted in bringing on the stage so abundantly. Throughout
Europe, except in France, the theatre had broken its bonds; and even in
France, the last stronghold of the theorists, freedom was to come early in
the nineteenth century. Lessing had undermined the fortress of pseudo-
classicism; and the walls of its last citadel were to fall with a crash at the
first blast on the trumpet of Hernani.
1.9 SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. The Restoration period’s most characteristic drama, ‘the comedy of

manners’ was gradually replaced by ‘sentimental drama’ in response to
the shifts in the audience’s tastes. Which of the following sentences best
represents the difference between these two types of comedies?
(a) Comedies of manners expose human follies to laughter, sentimental

comedies provoke sympathetic tears for the character’s faults.
(b) Comedies of manners were commercially successful while

sentimental comedies were not.
(c) Comedies of manners were critically successful while sentimental

comedies were not.
(d) Comedies of manners were written in rhymed couplets while

sentimental comedies were written in blank verse. Ans. (a)
2. What is a Melodramatic play?
(a) A play which has predominance of pity.
(b) A play which has predominance of violence and heinous crimes.
(c) A play which has boisterous laughter.

24
(d) A play in which the hero is the villain. Ans. (b)
3. Which of the following dramatists is a writer of Melodramas?
(a) George Etheredge
(b) William Congreve
(c) John Webster
(d) William Wycherley Ans. (c)
1.10 EXAMINATION ORIENTED QUESTIONS
1. Evaluate Joseph Addison as a dramatist.
Ans. In 1713 Addison produced the tragedy Cato, part of which had been in
manuscript as early as 1703. It is of little merit and shows that Addison,
whatever his other qualities may be, is no dramatist. He also attempted an
opera, Rosamond (1707), which was a failure and the prose comedy The
Drummer (1715) is said to be his too. If it is, it adds nothing to his
reputation.
2. Discuss Richard Steele as a dramatist.
Ans. Steele wrote some prose comedies, the best of which are The Funeral,
The Lying Lover, The Tender Husband and The Conscious Lovers. They
follow in general scheme the Restoration comedies, but are without the
grossness and impudence of their models. Indeed, Steele’s importance as
a dramatist rests on his foundation of the sentimental comedy, avowedly
moral and pious in aim and tone. In places his plays are lively and reflect
much of Steele’s amiability of temper.
3. Examine the prose comedies of Oliver Goldsmith.
Ans. Goldsmith wrote two prose comedies, both of which rank high among
their class. The first called Good Natured Man is not so good as the
second She Stoops to Conquer. Goldsmith has a real sense of character,
25
especially of the pleasantly grotesque, comic invention, natural sentiment
and amusing dialogue. He despised the sentimental comedy, ridiculed it
and introduced in his plays comic situation, humor and character all of
which the sentimental comedy lacked.
4. Trace the replacement of Restoration Comedy with Sentimental Comedy

in the eighteenth century.
5. The Comedy of Manners is as plainly the kind of drama best suited to the
limitations of the eighteenth century. Discuss.
6. How does Domestic tragedy break with Aristotle’s precepts? Discuss.
1.11 SUGGESTED READING
 Fisk, Deborah Payne, ed. The Cambridge Companion to English

Restoration Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
 l, Allardyce. A History of Restoration Drama. A History of Early

Eighteenth-Century Drama, 1700-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1925.
 Trussler, Simon. The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
 Legouis & Cazamian, History of English Literature. Macmillan:

Macmillan India Ltd, 1965
 Hudson, William Henry, An Outline History of English Literature. London

G. Bell, 1913
*******
26
COURSE CODE : ENG-211 LESSON NO. 2
DRAMA - II UNIT - I

NINETEENTH CENTURY DRAMA
STRUCTURE
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Objectives
2.3 Melodrama
2.4 Romanticism and the Dramatic Subject
2.4.1 Romanticism in Germany and France
2.5 Meiningen Ensemble and Richard Wagner
2.6 Theatre in Britain
2.7 Naturalism and Realism
2.8 Changes in the Methods of Theatrical Production
2.9 Boulevard Theatre
2.10 The Audience in the Theatre
2.11 Let Us Sum Up

27
2.12 Self -Assessment Questions
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the

theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the
West, they include Romanticism, melodrama, the well-made plays of Scribe
and Sardou, the farces of Feydeau, the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism,
Wagner’s operatic Gesamtkunstwerk, Gilbert and Sullivan’s plays and operas,
Wilde’s drawing-room comedies, Symbolism, and proto-Expressionism in the
late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen.
Several important technical innovations were introduced between 1875

and 191 4. First g as light ing and t hen elect ric light s, int ro d uced in
London’s Savoy Theatre in 1881, replaced candlelight. The elevator stage was
first installed in the Budapest Opera House in 1884. This allowed entire sections
of the stage to be raised, lowered, or tilted to give depth and levels to the
scene. The revolving stage was introduced to Europe by Karl Lautenschläger
at the Residenz Theatre, Munich in 1896.
2.2 OBJECTIVES
This chapter introduces the learner with the various trends pervalent in
the nineteenth century drama in England. Further it acquaint the readers with the
various changes taking place in t heatrical world due t o t echno logical
advancements.
2.3 MELODRAMA
Beginning in France after the theatre monopolies were abolished in

1791 during the French Revolution, melodrama became the most popular
28
t heat rical fo rm. Alt ho ugh mo no po lies and subsid ies were reinst at ed
under Napoleon, it continued to be extremely popular and brought in larger
audiences than the state-sponsored drama and operas. Although melodrama
can be traced back to classical Greece, the term mélodrame did not appear
until 1766 and only became popular after 1800. August von Kotzebue’s
M i sa n t h ro p y a n d R ep e n t a n ce ( 1 7 9 8 ) is o ft en co nsid er ed t he fir st
melodramatic play. The plays of Kotzebue and René Charles Guilbert de
Pixérécourt established melodrama as the dominant dramatic form of the
e ar ly 1 9 t h c e nt u r y. D av id G r ims t e d , in h is b o o k M el o d ra m a
Unveiled (1968), argues that:
Its conventions were false, its language stilted and commonplace, its
characters stereotypes, and its morality and theology gross simplifications.
Yet its appeal was great and understandable. It took the lives of common
people seriously and paid much respect to their superior purity and wisdom.
[...] And its moral parable struggled to reconcile social fears and life’s
awesomeness with the period’s confidence in absolute moral standards,
man’s upward progress, and a benevolent providence that insured the triumph
of the pure.
In Paris, the 19th century saw a flourishing of melodrama in the many

theatres that were located on the popular Boulevard du Crime, especially
in the Gaîté. All this was to come to an end, however, when most of these
t heat r es wer e d emo lished d u r ing t he r ebu ild ing o f P aris by Bar o n
Haussmann in 1862.
By the end of the 19th century, the term melodrama had nearly
exclusively narrowed down to a specific genre of salon entertainment: more
or less rhythmically spoken words (often poetry)—not sung, sometimes more
or less enacted, at least with some dramatic structure or plot—synchronized
to an accompaniment of music (usually piano). It was looked down on as a
genre for authors and composers of lesser stature (probably also the reason
why virtually no realisations of the genre are still remembered).
29
2.4 ROMANTICISM AND THE DRAMATIC SUBJECT
Until the nineteenth century, most European playwrights drew their

t ragic plot s fro m ancient myt hs o r legendary histo ry and their co mic
material from a repertory of stock characters and attitudes. These choices
of dramatic subjects reflect the priorities that endured from the days of
Periclean Athens to the middle of the eighteenth century. On the one hand,
these choices demonstrate a belief that truly important things happened
only to those who were high on the social scale; on the other, they show
that artists tested their abilities not so much through innovation as by
imitation. Thus familiar plots and characters continued to be worth writing
about; new talent revealed itself by finding new ways to dramatize old
truths.
By the l750s, however, the same changes that were brewing political
revolution began to affect the drama. More and more plays began focusing on
the trials and tribulations of those on the lower rungs of the social ladder.
From this so-called bourgeois drama emerged a transformation that culminates
in one of the great periods of theatrical activity, the modern era, which begins
around 1870.
Interest in the experiences of ordinary people reached a high point with

Romanticism and its exaltation of the common place. The poor invited little
notice in pre-eighteenth century literature; when nineteenth century writers
turned their attention toward these lives, they began by “romanticizing” them.
However dirty and boring common life was, the Romantic artist saw in it a
trace of Edenic innocence. Lives not lived in palaces were somehow perceived as
being unspoiled.
If the dramatic subjects chosen by the early Romantics were wider

ranging than those chosen by the ancients, the treatment the subjects received,
as we have suggested, was far from realistic. The tendency to idealize the
poor also led to the glorification of the outlaw, a sign of the revolutions that
30
were to come. Added to this, a newly self-conscious nationalism found
expression in a variety of historical dramas that extolled two often-lost causes,
liberty and nationhood.
2.4.1 ROMANTICISM IN GERMANY AND FRANCE
Romantic ideas emerged early in Germany in the work of three major

playwrights: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Christophe Friedrich von
Schiller (1759-1805), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These writers
articulated new theoretical justifications for their choice of dramatic material.
As admirers of Shakespeare, to whom the neoclassicists had condescended
on account of his indifference to rules, Lessing and Schiller in particular
championed diversity and freedom in theatrical texts.
The most prolific playwright of the three, Schiller especially widened

the range of theatrical plots. When he turned to the past for his subjects, he did
not select the mythological figures who attracted Goethe, but rather the patriots
of relatively recent European history. Prime among them are Joan of Arc, to
whom the title The Maid of Orleans (1801) refers, and William Tell, the Swiss
National Hero (1804).
In Germany, there was a trend toward historic accuracy in costumes and

settings, a revolution in theatre architecture, and the introduction of the theatrical
form of German Romanticism. Influenced by trends in 19th century philosophy and
t he visual art s, German writ ers wer e increasing ly fascinat ed wit h
their Teutonic past and had a growing sense of nationalism. The plays of Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and
other Sturm und Drang playwrights, inspired a growing faith in feeling and
instinct as guides to moral behaviour. Romantics borrowed from the philosophy
of Immanuel Kant to formulate the theoretical basis of “Romantic” art. According
to Romantics, art is of enormous significance because it gives eternal truths a
concrete, material form that the limited human sensory apparatus may apprehend.
Among those who called themselves Romantics during this period, August Wilhelm
31
Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck were the most deeply concerned with theatre. After
a t ime, Romant icism was adopt ed in France wit h t he plays of Victo r
Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, and George Sand. By the 1840s,
however, enthusiasm for Romantic drama had faded in France and a new “Theatre
of Common Sense” replaced it.
2.5 MEININGEN ENSEMBLE AND RICHARD WAGNER
In Germany, drama entered a state of decline from which it did not

recover until the 1890s. The major playwrights of the period were Otto
Ludwig and Gustav Freytag. The lack of new dramatists was not keenly felt
because the plays of Shakespeare, Lessing, Goet he, and Schiller were
prominent in the repertory. The most important theatrical force in later 19th
century Germany was that of George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen and
his Meiningen Ensemble, under the direction of Ludwig Chronegk. The
Ensemble’s productions are often considered the most historically accurate
of the 19th century, although his primary goal was to serve the interests of the
playwright. The Ensemble’s productions utilised detailed, historically accurate
costumes and furniture, something that was unprecedented in Europe at the
time. The Meiningen Ensemble stands at the beginning of the new movement
t o war d u nified p r o d u ct io n ( o r what Ric har d Wag ner wo u ld ca ll
the Gesamtkunstwerk) and the rise of the director (at the expense of the actor)
as the dominant artist in theatre-making.
The Meiningen Ensemble traveled throughout Europe from 1874–1890

and met with unparalleled success wherever they went. Audiences had grown
tired with regular, shallow entertainment theatre and were beginning to demand a
more creatively and intellectually stimulating form of expression that the Ensemble
was able to provide. Therefore, the Meiningen Ensemble can be seen as the
forerunners of the art-theatre movement which appeared in Europe at the end of
the 1880s.
Richard Wagner (1813–1883) rejected the contemporary trend toward
32
realism and argued that the dramatist should be a myth maker who portrays an ideal
world through the expression of inner impulses and aspirations of a people. Wagner
used music to defeat performers’ personal whims. The melody and tempo
of music allowed him to have greater personal control over performance than he
would with spoken drama. As with the Meininger Ensemble, Wagner believed that
the author-composer should supervise every aspect of production to unify all the
elements into a “master art work.” Wagner also introduced a new type
of auditorium that abolished the side boxes, pits, and galleries that were a prominent
feature of most European theatres and replaced them with a 1,745 seat fan-shaped
auditorium that was 50 feet (15 m) wide at the proscenium and 115 feet (35 m) at
the rear. This allowed every seat in the auditorium to enjoy a full view of the stage
and meant that there were no “good” seats.
2.6 THEATRE IN BRITAIN
In Brit ain, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byro n were t he mo st

important literary dramatists of their time (although Shelley’s plays were not
performed until later in the century). Shakespeare was enormously popular,
and began to be performed with texts closer to the original, as the drastic
rewriting of 17th and 18th century performing versions for the theatre (as
opposed to his plays in book form, which were also widely read) was
gradually removed o ver by the first half o f t he century. In t he minor
theatres, burletta and melodrama were the most popular. Kotzebue’s plays were
translated into English and Thomas Holcroft’s A Tale of Mystery was the first
of many English melodramas. Pierce Egan, Douglas William Jerrold, Edward
Fitzball, James Roland MacLaren and John Baldwin Buckstone initiated a trend
towards more contemporary and rural stories in preference to the usual historical
or fantastical melodramas. James Sheridan Knowles and Edward George
Bulwer-Lytton established a “gentlemanly” drama that began to re-establish
the former prestige of the theatre with the aristocracy.
Melodramas, light comedies, operas, Shakespeare and classic English
33
drama, pantomimes, translations of French farces and, from the 1860s, French
operettas, continued to be popular, together with Victorian burlesque. The most
successful dramatists were James Planché and Dion Boucicault, whose penchant
for making the latest scientific inventions important elements in his plots exerted
considerable influence on theatrical production. His first big success, London
Assurance (1841) was a comedy in the style of Sheridan, but he wrote in various
styles, including melodrama. T. W. Robertson wrote popular domestic comedies
and introduced a more naturalistic style of acting and stagecraft to the British
stage in the 1860s. So successful were the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,
such as H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Mikado (1885), that they greatly
expanded the audience for musical theatre. This, together with much improved
street lighting and transportation in London and New York led to a late Victorian
and Edwardian theatre building boom in the West End and on Broadway. At the
end of the century, Edwardian musical comedy came to dominate the musical
stage. In the 1890s the comedies of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw
offered sophisticated social comment and were very popular.
The Closet Drama
At the height of the Romantic period, just as more elaborate theatrical

performance became possible, many poets turned to neo-Shakespearean dramatic
verse to write plays that they never expected to see performed. Inspired by the
Romantic quest for unreachable goals, these writers preferred not to concern
themselves with the practical problems of staging plays and sought instead to
explore philosophical issues in poetic dialogue that would have defeated credible
acting before an audience. Such plays, written to be read rather than performed,
are known as closet dramas. Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron all wrote in this
form.
2.7 NATURALISM AND REALISM
Naturalism, a theatrical movement born out of Charles Darwin’s The

Origi n o f Species ( 185 9) and co nt emp o rary po lit ical and eco no mic
34
conditions, found its main proponent in Émile Zola. His essay “Naturalism
in the Theatre” (1881) argued that poetry is everywhere instead of in the
past or abst ract io n: “There is mo re poet ry in t he lit t le apart ment o f
a bourgeois than in all the empty worm-eaten palaces of history.”
The realisation of Zola’s ideas was hindered by a lack of capable

dramatists writing naturalist drama. André Antoine emerged in the 1880s with
his Théâtre Libre that was only open to members and therefore was exempted
from censorship. He quickly won the approval of Zola and began to stage
Naturalistic works and other foreign realistic pieces. Antoine was unique in
his set design as he built sets with the “fourth wall” intact, only deciding which
wall to remove later. The most important French playwrights of this period
were given first hearing by Antoine including Georges Porto-Riche, François
de Curel, and Eugène Brieux.
The work of Henry Arthur Jones and Arthur Wing Pinero initiated a new
direction on the English stage. While their work paved the way, the development
of more significant drama owes itself most to the playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Ibsen was born in Norway in 1828. He wrote 25 plays, the most famous
of which are A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), The Wild Duck (1884),
and Hedda Gabler (1890). A Doll’s House and Ghosts shocked conservatives:
Nora’s departure in A Doll’s House was viewed as an attack on family and home,
while the allusions to venereal disease and sexual misconduct in Ghosts were
considered deeply offensive to standards of public decency. Ibsen refined Scribe’s
well-made play formula to make it more fitting to the realistic style. He provided
a model for writers of the realistic school. In addition, his works Rosmersholm
(1886) and When We Dead Awaken (1899) evoke a sense of mysterious forces at
work in human destiny, which was to be a major theme of symbolism and the so-
called “Theatre of the Absurd”.
After Ibsen, British theatre experienced revitalization with the work

o f George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and (in fact fro m 1900) John
35
Galsworthy. Unlike most of the gloomy and intensely serious work of their
contemporaries, Shaw and Wilde wrote primarily in the comic form.
2.8 CHANGES IN THE METHODS OF THEATRICAL PRODUCTION
Nineteenth-century playwrights proved as eager as nineteenth-century

novelists to emulate the camera, but major innovations in technology were
required before photographically accurate scene pictures could be mounted
on stage. By the early 1800s, theatres could be equipped with substantial
backstage storage space and revolving turntables; no longer did plays have
to be presented against a single generalized painted backdrop. Gas lights
were introduced into some theatres in the 1820s and by mid-century, lighting
effects could be overseen by a technician stationed at a central control board.
Sunlight could become moonlight and summer turn into fall in the course of a
single performance; specific geographical locales could be reproduced on
stage and shifted with ease.
At first, these resources were exploited in only a few extravagant

productions. A famous early treatment of Schiller’s Maid of Orleans recreated
the French countryside and churches of Joan’s childhood, most spectacularly
in a coronation scene that had hundreds of actors and musicians on stage in
fu ll v iew o f t he a u d ie nce. A L o nd o n p r o d u ct io n in t he l8 5 0 s
of Sardanapalus, written by Lord Byron, the English Romantic poet, actually
set up on the stage a replica of an ancient Babylonian palace that seemed to
be consumed by fire at every perfo rmance, thanks t o intricat e scenic
construction and lighting devices.
In other words, the stage in the mid-nineteenth century was capable of

providing audiences with the large-scale panoramas that we associate with
historical films. The embrace of limits that had fueled the imagination of earlier
dramatists had been eclipsed by a fascination for decorative effect. This era of
extravagant staging is notable as well for a new emphasis on the actor as
celebrity, for star performers quickly learned to exploit the sophisticated lighting
36
boards by commanding spotlights to follow their every movement onstage.
Offstage, actors hired railroad cars and crossed Europe and America in hugely
publicized personal tours. Stage image and star power drew so much attention
that an entirely new theatrical professional, the director, emerged. The director’s
job was to coordinate the performances of self-absorbed actors and to oversee
every det ail o f t he expensive and complicat ed product ions audiences
increasingly demanded.
2.9 BOULEVARD THEATRE
Mid-nineteenth century Europe luxuriated in the profits of industrial

progress; not only in France, but also in England (where this period is named
after the long-lived Queen Victoria) and elsewhere on the continent, new
ruling classes based on wealth rather than intellect or inheritance wielded
power. The theatre, always a barometer of social change, celebrated its
achievements, and monied audiences gloried in a style of drama that catered
to their tastes. Since Parisian tastes were especially crucial to the development
of modern drama, we will focus here on the evolution of the French theatrical
scene.
Playwrights themselves became entrepreneurs in this climate, giving

the public a saleable product. Unlike the realist novelists of this period who
satirized the bourgeoisie, the dramatists Eugène Scribe (1791-1861), the
younger Alexandre Dumas (1824-95), and Victorien Sardou (1831-1908)
pandered to it. Scribe, Dumas, and Sardou wrote literally hundreds of plays
that exemplify Boulevard Theatre. This term, like the comparable American
designation, Broadway Theatre, denotes plays written less for art than for
profit.
In place o f myt h and hist o ry, of t ragic hero es and nat io nalist
firebrands, Boulevard dramatists and other playwrights of the mid-nineteenth
century focused o n comfort able middle-class lives. Drama in the pre-
Romantic era, as we have seen, had begun to extend the range of subjects to
37
include sympat het ic po rt rait s o f humble and o rdinary peo ple. In t he
conservative middle of the century, however, melodrama, farce, and what
were called well-made plays concentrated on the upper middle-class world
of privilege funded by money and power rather than birth. The nouveaux
riches were both envied and disdained by the old aristocrats, who responded
with a heightened snobbery and avoided the gathering places where the new
elite went to amuse themselves.
Well-made plays actually were the ancestors of the contemporary

t elevisio n series. Rarely explo ring charact er develo pment , t he genre
deployed instead stock figures involved in intricate plots that lead to last-
minute dramatic revelations. Sacrificing human probability for theatrical
effect iveness, t hese plays t ypically includ e a series o f u nbelievable
coincidences that bring long-lost relatives together, or compromising letters
that expose a villain’s true motives. In other words, after an initial fright,
true love and virtue (easily recognized categories in the relatively simplistic
moral universe of melodrama and the well-made play) are rewarded in the
end.
In much the same way, complex dilemmas are resolved handily in the
length of time available (minus several minutes for commercials) in the
half- and full-hour format of prime-time TV slots. Audiences in every era
have found these exciting but unchallenging plays eminently satisfying, for
they provide evidence — if any beyond their own good fortune were required
—that the deserving prosper in this world.
2.10 THE AUDIENCE IN THE THEATRE
The superior technical resources of the theatres built in the nineteenth

century depended in large part upon the proscenium arch, which framed the
stage and created a clean break between the playing area and the audience.
Associated with the development of fixed perspective in Renaissance Italy,
proscenium arches made possible the visually convincing realistic backdrops
38
that proliferated in the 1800s. The first permanent theatre with a built-in
proscenium arch was created for Cardinal Richelieu’s palace in 1641. As
new theatres were built throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
proscenium arches got higher and thicker and more imposing. Paradoxically,
a device that originally promised to draw the viewer ’s eye into the playing
area had the opposite effect of detaching audiences from the action.
The amphitheatres of ancient Greece, the thrust stages of Elizabethan

England, the court theatre rooms of classical India or seventeenth-century
Europe, indeed almost every theatrical structure that the world had known
up until this time had flourished by uniting spectators and actors in dramatic
performances with important consequences for all the participants. The
nineteenth-century European auditorium, however, had evolved into a place
where socially ambitious members of the audience had better views of each
other than of the stage. Hoping to lure customers to their theatres, owners
installed upholstered chairs in place of wooden benches and began selling
tickets in advance for these comfortable accommodations. This apparent
improvement actually meant that people began going to the theatre at times
when they had committed themselves to do so rather than when they most
desired to do so.
Furthermore, the most expensive seats o ften afforded t he worst

perspective for watching the play itself; patrons paid dearly to occupy walled-
off boxes with movable armchairs and private anterooms that circled the
auditorium in several tiers. On the extreme sides of the stage, often in box
seats built into the proscenium itself and facing toward the central royal box
rather than the performance space, expensively gowned and bejeweled women
displayed themselves to the gaze of those who sat opposite them. Other theatre
goers, also more intent on personal matters than dramatic production, could
sit in the dark recesses of the box and whisper to each other. During the
lengthy intermissions, visits were exchanged from box to box; when the next
act began, viewers often had moved from their own seats to be near those
39
they had really come to see at the theatre.
So common place were these games of musical chairs that a theatre

scene became a staple of nineteenth-century novels. Authors used their
characters’ attitude toward theatrical presentation as gauges of moral worth.
Tolstoy, for instance, signals that Ivan Ilych has learned to detect the falsity
of materialism by showing him cringe when his wife and daughter leave him
on his deathbed to go see the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt.
Probably the ultimate theatrical form of the century was opera. In the
size of its gestures and its direct appeal to the senses through music, dance,
and spectacle, the opera filled ever-larger theatres. When Flaubert’s Madame
Bovary goes to see a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, she
is so swept away by the music and the melodramatic tale that she almost
loses control of her senses. Indeed, it is no accident that many of the libretti
(or scripts) of the greatest operas of the century were texts written by Scribe
and Sardou, specialists in lifting their audiences out of humdrum reality,
thrilling and flattering them at the same time.
The combination of the proscenium arch, the heavy curtain traditionally

hung from it, and the darkened auditorium so segregated performers from
audiences that the public’s shift of attention from stage action to social
interplay had become a formidable challenge to playwrights. Modern theatre
artists have sought to restore the spectators’ vital role in two diametrically
opposed ways, either by disregarding the barrier separating audiences from
actors or by insisting on it. Dramatic realists treat the space before the stage
as the so-called fourth wall, with audiences in effect spying on the activities
of their neighbours for the night, the actors appearing before them in essentially
realistic settings. Other playwrights emphasize the gap between theatrical
illusion and everyday reality. The early modern dramatists forced complacent
and self-absorbed theatre goers to recognize the dilemmas of their own lives
in the staged plays performed before them; the later modern dramatists force
40
theatre goers to take account of the distance between them and the actors in
front of them. In each phase of modern drama, however, the playwright strives
to make theatrical experience integral to the life of the viewer and not simply
a pleasant entertainment.
2.11 LET US SUM UP
The romantic movement did not blossom in French drama until the
1 8 2 0 s, and t he n p r imar ily in t he w o r k o f Vict o r Hu g o a nd
Alexandre Dumas père, while in England the great Romantic poets did not
p r o d u c e imp o r t ant d r ama, a lt ho u g h bo t h Lo r d B yr o n and P er cy
Bysshe Shelley were pract it io ners of t he closet drama. Burlesque and
mediocre melodrama reigned supreme on the English stage.
Although melo drama was aimed solely at producing superficial

excitement, its development, coupled with the emergence of realism in the 19th
cent., resulted in more serious drama. Initially, the melodrama dealt in such
superficially exciting materials as the gothic castle with its mysterious lord for
a villain, but gradually the characters and settings moved closer to the realities
of contemporary life.
The co ncer n fo r generat ing excit ement led t o a mo re careful

consideration of plot construction, reflected in the smoothly contrived
climaxes of the “well-made” plays of Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou of
France and Arthur Wing Pinero of England. The work of Émile Augier and
Alexandre Dumas fils combined the drama of ideas with the “well-made” play.
Realism had perhaps its most profound expression in the works of the great
1 9 t h- cent u r y Ru ssian d r amat ist s: Niko lai Go go l, A. N. Ost r o vsk y,
Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, and Maxim Gorky. Many of the
Russian dramatists emphasized character and satire rather than plot in their
works.
Related to realism is naturalism, which can be defined as a selective

realism emphasizing the more sordid and pessimistic aspects of life. An
41
early forerunner of this style in the drama is Georg Büchner ’s powerful
tragedy Danton’s Death (1835), and an even earlier suggestion may be seen
in t h e p e ss imis t ic r o ma n t ic t r a g e d ie s o f He in r ic h v o n Kle is t .
Friedrich Hebbel wrote grimly naturalistic drama in the middle of the 19th
century, but the naturalistic movement is most commonly identified with
the “slice-of-life” theory of Émile Zola, which had a profound effect on
20th-century playwrights.
Henrik Ibsen of Norway brought to a climax the realistic movement of
the 19th century and also served as a bridge to 20th-century symbolism. His
realistic dramas of ideas surpass other such works because they blend a complex
plot, a detailed setting, and middle-class yet extraordinary characters in an
organic whole. Ibsen’s later plays, such as The Master Builder (1892), are
symbolic, marking a trend away from realism that was continued by August
Strindberg’s dream plays, with their emphasis on the spiritual, and by the plays
of the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck, who incorporated into drama the theories
of the symbolist poets (see symbolists).
While these anti realistic developments took place on the Continent,

two playwrights were making unique contributions to English theatre.
Oscar Wilde produced comedies of manners that compare favourably with
the works of Congreve, and George Bernard Shaw brought the play of ideas
to fruition with penetrating intelligence and singular wit.
1. Why is a Poetic play so called?
(a) Because it is written in verse.
(b) Because it is written only by a poet.
(c) Because it is meant to be read as a poem and not meant to be acted.
(d) Because it has a high poetic imagery. Ans. (c)
42
2. Why is a Poetic play also called a Closet play?
(a) Because it is a closed play.
(b) Because it can be read and enjoyed in a closet without any company.
(c) Because it is very short.
(d) Because it can be acted privately in one’s own house.
Ans. (b)
1. Comment on the condition of drama in the early nineteenth century.
Ans. After Sheridan and Goldsmith the drama rapidly decayed. There are
several reasons for this. There was a gulf between the men of letters and
the theatre which had grown vulgar. The age did not lend itself to dramatic
expression. It was fundamentally critical, romantic, reflective and
philosophic.
2. What type of drama was popular in the early nineteenth century?
Ans. In this period the Closet drama was popular. The romantic poets were set
dramatists of the high order. The poetical plays make the first appearance
of Closet drama-that is, of drama which is intended to be read and is not
written for representation on stage. The prevailing note of the period was
lyrical and not dramatic. Scott, Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote plays
but they were not effective either as play or as literature. Keats, Southey
and Byron’s Manfred and Cain and Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound are
fine poems though not successful. The Cenci by Shelley was written for
the stage and it is the only stage play of real merit though not without its
defects.
3. Trace the evolution of the French theatrical scene.
4. Comment on the popularity of Meiningen Ensemble and Richard Wagner.
43
5. Write a note on theatre in Britain in the nineteenth century.
6. Comment on the superior technical resources of the theatres built in the

nineteenth century.



G. Bell, 1913
********
44
DRAMA - II UNIT - I

TWENTIETH CENTURY DRAMA
STRUCTURE
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Objectives
3.3 Background
3.4 Trends
3.4.1 Realism and Myth
3.4.2 Poetic Realism
3.4.3 Women
3.4.4 Political Theatre and War
3.5 Types of Modern Drama
3.5.1 Realism
3.5.2 Naturalism
3.5.3 Social Realism
45
3.5.4 Avant Garde Theatre
3.5.5 Symbolism/Aestheticism
3.5.6 Surrealism
3.5.7 Expressionism
3.5.8 Epic Theatre
3.6 Let Us Sum Up
3.7 Self -Assessment Questions
3.1 INTRODUCTION
Twentieth-century theatre describes a period of great change within

the theatrical culture of the 20th century. There was a widespread challenge
to long established rules surrounding theatrical representation; resulting in
the development of many new forms of theat re, including Modernism,
Expr essio nism, Impr essio nism, po lit ical t heat re and o t her fo rms o f
Experimental theatre, as well as the continuing development of already
established theatrical forms like naturalism and realism.
Throughout the century, the artistic reputation of theatre improved

after being derided throughout the 19th century. However, the growth of
o ther media, especially film, has result ed in a diminished ro le wit hin
culture at large. In light of this change, theatrical artists have been forced
to seek new ways to engage with society. The various answers offered in
response to this have prompted the transformations that make up its modern
history.
De velo p men t s in ar eas lik e Ge nd er t he o r y and P o st mo d e r n

philosophy identified and created subjects for the theatre to explore. These
46
sometimes explicitly meta-theatrical performances were meant to confront
the audience’s perceptions and assumptions in order to raise questions
about their society. These challenging and influential plays characterized
much of the final two decades of the 20th century.
Although largely developing in Europe and North America through the

beginning of the century, the next 50 years saw an embrace of non-Western
theatrical forms. Influenced by the dismantling of empires and the continuing
development of post-colonial theory, many new artists utilized elements of
their own cultures and societies to create a diversified theatre.
3.2 OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of this unit is to acquaint the learners with the
characteristic features of twentieth century drama. Further it provides brief
historical background and various trends popular in the theatre of twentieth
century.
3.3 BACKGROUND
The early twentieth century denoted the split between ‘frocks and
frills’ drama and serious works, following in the footsteps of many other
European countries, “In Britain the impact of these continental innovations
was delayed by a conservative theatre establishment until the late 1950s
and 1960s when they converged with the counter-cultural revolution to
transform the nature of English language theatre.” The West End, England’s
Broadway, tended to produce the musical comedies and well-made plays,
while smaller theatres and Irish venues took a new direction. The new
direction was political, satirical, and rebellious. Common themes in the
new early 20th century drama were po litical, reflect ing the unease or
rebellion of the workers against the state, philosophical, delving into the
who and why of human life and existence, and revolutionary, exploring the
themes of colonization and loss of territory. They explored common societal
business pract ices (co ndit io ns of facto ries), new polit ical ideo logies
47
(socialism), or the rise of a repressed sector of the population (women).
Industrialization also had an impact on Twentieth century drama, resulting
in plays lamenting the alienation of humans in an increasingly mechanical
world. Not only did Industrialization result in alienation; so did the wars.
Between the wars, two types of theatre reined. In the West End, the middle
c las s at t e nd e d p o p u la r, c o ns e r va t ive t he a t r e d o min at e d b y No ë l
Coward and G.B. Shaw. “Commercial theatre thrived and at Drury Lane
large budget musicals by Ivor Novello and Noel Coward used huge sets,
extravagant costumes and large casts to create spectacular productions.”
After the wars, taboos were broken and new writers, directors, and actors
emerged with different views. Many played with the idea of reality, some
were radically political, others shunned naturalism and questioned the
legitimacy of previously unassailable beliefs. Towards the end of the century,
the term ‘theatre of exorcism’ came into use due to the amount of plays
conjuring the past in order to confront and accept it. Playwrights towards
the end of the century count among their numbers: Samuel Beckett, Harold
Pint er, Andrew Llo yd Webber, Brian Friel, Caryl Churchill, and To m
Stoppard. The last act of the century was a turn back towards realism as
well as the founding of Europe’s first children’s cultural center.
3.4 TRENDS
3.4.1 Realism and Myth
Realism in the last half of the 19th-century began as an experiment to

make theatre more useful to society. The mainstream theatre from 1859 to
1900 was still bound up in melodramas, spectacle plays (disasters, etc.),
comic operas, and vaudevilles.
But political events—including attempts to reform some political systems

—led to some different ways of thinking. Revolutions in Europe in 1848
showed that there was a desire for political, social, and economic reform.
Many governments were frightened into promising change, but most didn’t
48
implement changes after the violence ended.
Technological advances were also encouraged by industry and trade,

leading to an increased belief that science could solve human problems.
But the working classes still had to fight for every increase in rights:
unionization and strikes became the principal weapons workers would use
after the 1860s—but success came only from costly work stoppages and
violence. In other words there seems to be rejection of Romantic idealism;
pragmatism reigned instead. The common man seemed to feel that he needed
to be recognized, and people asserted themselves through action.
Three major developments helped lead to the emergence of realism:
1. August Comte (1798-1857), often considered to be the “father of

Sociology,” developed a theory known as Positivism. Among the Comte’s
ideas was an encouragement for understanding the cause and effect of
nature through precise observation.
2. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published The Origin of Species in 1859,

and created a worldwide stir which exists to this day. Darwin’s
essential series suggested that life developed gradually from common
ancestry and that life favoured “survival of the fittest.” The implications
of Darwin’s Theories were threefold:
(i) people were controlled by heredity and environment
(ii) behaviours were beyond our control
(iii) humanity is a natural object, rather than being above all else
3. Karl Marx (1818-1883) in t he late 1840’s espoused a po litical

philosophy arguing against urbanization and in favour of a more equal
distribution of wealth.
These three stated ideas that helped open the door for a type of
theatre that would be different from any that had come before.
49
Even Richard Wagner (1813-1883), while rejecting contemporary
trends to ward realism, helps lead toward a moderate realistic theat re.
Wagner wanted complete illusionism, but wanted the dramatists to be more
than a recorder—he wanted to be of “myth-maker.”True drama, according
to Wagner, should be “dipped in the magic founding of music,” which allows
great er contro l o ver performance t han spoken drama. Wagner want ed
complete control over every aspect of the production in order to get a
“master art work.”
Because Wagner aimed for complete illusion, even though his operas
were not all realistic, many of his production practices helped lead the way
for realism. For instance the auditorium was darkened, the stage was framed
with a double proscenium arch, there were no side boxes and no center aisle,
and all seats were equally good. Further, he forbade musicians to tune in the
orchestra pit, allowed no applause or curtain calls, and strove for historical
accuracy in scenery and costumes. Therefore, even though Wagner’s operas
are fantastic and mythical, his attempts at illusionism helped gain public
acceptance for realism.
Sigmund Freud inspired an interest in myth and dreams as playwrights

became familiar with his studies of psychoanalysis. Along with the help of
Carl Jung, the two psychiatrists influenced playwrights to incorporate myths
into their plays. This integration allowed for new opportunities for playwrights
to increase the boundaries of realism within their writing. As playwrights
started to use myths in their writing, a “poetic form of realism” was created.
This form of realism deals with truths that are widespread amongst all humans,
bolstered by Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious.
3.4.2 Poetic Realism
Much of the poetic realism that was written during the beginning of
the twentieth century focused on the portrayals of Irish peasant life. John
Millington Synge, W.B. Yeats, and Lady Gregory were but a few writers to
50
use poetic realism. Their portrayal of peasant life was often unappealing and
many audiences reacted cruelly. Many plays that are poetically realistic often
have unpleasant themes running through them, such as lust between a son and
his step-mother or the murder of a baby to “prove” love. These plays used
myths as a surrogate for real life in order to allow the audience to live the
unpleasant plot without completely connecting to it.
3.4.3 Women
The female characters progressed from the downtrodden, useless

woman to an empowered, emancipated woman. They were used to posing
subversive questions about the social order. Many female characters portray
the author’s masculine attitudes about women and their place in society. As
t ime p asse d , t ho u g h, females b eg an g aining emp o wer ment .
G.B. Shaw became one of the first English playwrights to follow Ibsen’s
influence and create roles of real women. Mrs. Warren, Major Barbara, and
Pygmalion all have strong female leads. Women first started voting in 1918.
Later in the century, females (and males) were both subjected to the alienation
of society and routinely were not given names to suggest to the audience the
character’s worth within the play.
3.4.4 Political Theatre and War
Po lit ical theatre uses t he theat re to represent “ho w a so cial or

political order uses its power to ‘represent’ others coercively.” It uses
live p er fo r mances and o ft en sho ws t he p o wer o f p o lit ics t hr o u g h
“demeaning and limiting” prejudices. Political theatre often represents
many different types of groups that are often stereotyped - “women, gay
men, lesbians, ethnic and racial gro ups, the po or.” Political t heatre is
used to express one’s political ideas. Agitprop, a popular form of political
t heat re, even had it s ro o t s in t he 1930s wo men’s right s mo vement .
Propaganda played a big role in political theatre, whether it be in support
of a war or in opposition of political schemes, theatre played a big role
51
in influencing the public.
The wars also affected the early theatre of the twentieth century.
The consternation before Wo rld War I pro duced the Dada movement,
the predecessor to Surrealism and Expressionism.
3.5 TYPES OF MODERN DRAMA
3.5.1 Realism
Realism, in theatre, was meant to be a direct observation of human

behaviour. It began as a way to make theatre more useful to society, a way to
hold a mirro r up to society. Because of this thrust towards the “real”
playwrights started using more contemporary settings, backgrounds and
characters. Where plays in the past had, for the most part, used mythological
or stereotypical characters, now they involved the lower class, the poor, the
rich; they involved all genders, classes and races. One of the main contributors
to this style was Henrik Ibsen.
Theatrical realism was a general mo vement that began in the 19th

cent ury t heat re, aro und t he 1870s, and remained present t hro ugh much
o f t he 20 t h cent u ry. I t d evelo ped a set o f dr amat ic and t he at r ical
co nvent io ns wit h t he aim o f bringing a great er fidelit y o f real life t o
t ext s and perfo rmances. Part o f a bro ader art ist ic mo vement , it shared
many st ylist ic cho ices wit h nat uralism, including a fo cus o n everyday
(middle-class) drama, o rdinary speech, and o rdinary set t ings. Realism
and nat uralism diverge chiefly o n t he degree o f cho ice t hat charact ers
have: while nat uralism believes in the o verall st rengt h o f ext ernal forces
o ver int ernal decisio ns, realism assert s t he po wer o f t he individual t o
choo se.
Russia’s first professional playwright, Aleksey Pisemsky, along with Leo

To lst o y (in his The Power o f Da rkness o f 18 86), beg an a t radit io n
of psychological realism in Russia. A new type of acting was required to replace
52
the declamatory conventions of the well-made play with a technique capable of
conveying the speech and movements found in the domestic situations of everyday
life. This need was supplied by the innovations of the Moscow Art Theatre,
founded by the actor-director Constantin Stanislavski along with his impresario
colleague Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Whereas the subtle expression of
emotion in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull through everyday small-talk had initially
gone unappreciated in an old-fashioned production in St. Petersburg, a new staging
by the Moscow Art Theatre brought the play and its author, as well as the company,
immediate success. A logical development was to take the revolt against theatrical
artifice a step further in the direction of naturalism, and Stanislavski, especially
in his production of Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, helped this movement
achieve int ernat io nal reco gnit ion. While the emphasis on t rut hfulness
in Stanislavski’s system of acting is in keeping with the underlying thrust of
naturalism, Stanislavski stressed that his own aims were quite distinct, focusing
on “the truth of feeling and experience” rather than on what he called “an outward
and coarse naturalism” The Moscow Art Theatre’s ground-breaking productions
of plays by Chekhov, such as Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard, in turn
influenced Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Bulgakov. Stanislavski went on to develop
his ‘system’, a form of actor training that is particularly well-suited to
psychological realism.
19th century realism is closely connected to the development of modern

drama, which is usually said t o have begun in t he early 1870s wit h
the work of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s realistic drama in
prose has been enormously influential.
In opera, verismo refers to a post-Romantic Italian tradition that sought
to incorporate the naturalism of Émile Zola and Henrik Ibsen. It included realistic
– sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of contemporary everyday life,
especially the life of the lower classes.
3.5.2 Naturalism
53
While Ibsen was perfecting realism, France was demanding a new drama
based on Darwinism:
1. All forms of life developed gradually from common ancestry,
2. Evolution of species is explained by survival of the fittest
The implications of Darwin’s ideas seemed to be that:
1) Heredity and environment control people;
2) No person is responsible, since forces are beyond control;
3) Progress is the same as improvement/evolution; it is inevitable and can

be hastened by the application of the scientific method;
4) Man is reduced to a natural object.
France had been defeated in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71,

ending Napoleon III’s empire, and making France a Republic. Attitudes
shifted: the working man had few privileges, it appeared, and socialism
gained support. By 1900, every major country in Europe had a Constitution
(except Russia); there was therefore a strong interest in the plight of the
working class. Science and technology became major tools for dealing with
contemporary problems.
Naturalism became a conscious movement in France in the 1870’s; Emile

Zola (1849-1902) was an admirer of Comte and an advocate of the scientific
method. Literature, he felt, must become scientific or perish; it should illustrate
the inevitable laws of heredity and environment or record case studies. To
experiment with the same detachment as a scientist, the writer could become
like a doctor (seeking the cause of disease to cure it, bringing the disease in the
open to be examined), aiming to cure social ills.
Zola’s first major statement came in a novel, Therese Raquin, which was
dramatized in 1873; his preface states his views. He also wrote a few treatises
about naturalism in the theatre and in the novel: he wanted art to detect “a scrap
54
of an existence.”
Even though Therese Raquin failed to adhere to most of the principles

of naturalism, except in the setting (it was mostly a melodrama about murder
and retribution), his followers were even more zealous. The most famous
phrase we hear about naturalism is that it should be “a slice of life.” We
often tend to forget what a later French writer stated should be included
with that phrase: “… put on the stage with art.”
Naturalism, as it was interpreted, almost obliterated the distinction

between life and art. As you can imagine, there is a serious lack of good
naturalistic plays and embodying its principles, has it is virtually impossible
t o do . Henri Becque (1837-1899) mo st nearly capt ured t he essence
of naturalism in two of his plays, The Vultures (1882) and La Parisienne
(1885), both of which dealt with sordid subjects, were pessimistic and cynical,
had no obvious climaxes, had no sympathetic characters, and progressed
slowly to the end. However, Becque refused to comply with suggested changes
when the show was first produced in a conservative theatre, so naturalism
was still not really accepted.
3.5.3 Social Realism
Social Realism began showing up in plays during the 1930s. This

realism had a polit ical conscience behind it because the wo rld was in
a depression. These plays painted a harsh picture of rural poverty. The
drama began to aim at showing governments the penalties of unrestrained
capitalism and the depressions that lax economies created. One of the main
contributors to this style was G.B. Shaw.
Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to

describe a Brit ish cultural movement t hat developed in the late 1950s
and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose
protagonists usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style
of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working
55
class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their
off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political
controversies.
The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in
poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn
speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains
o n S u n d a y ( 1 9 4 7 ) is a p r e c u r s o r o f t h e g e n r e , an d t h e Jo h n
Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the
genre.
The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place
in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the
genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows
as Coronation Street and East Enders.
Unlike Socialist realism, social realism is not an official art produced

by, or under the supervision of the government. The leading characters are
often ‘anti-heroes’ rather than part of a class to be admired, as in Socialist
realism.Typically, they are dissatisfied with their lives and the world—
rather than being idealised workers who are part of a Socialist utopia in
the process of creation. As such, social realism allows more space for
the subjectivity of the author to be displayed.
Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism,

which promoted lofty concepts such as the “ineffable” beauty and truth of art
and music, and even turned them into spiritual ideals. As such, social realism
focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working
class people, particularly the poor.
3.5.4 AVANT GARDE THEATRE
Avant-garde theatre or experimental theatre began in Western theatre in

the late 19th century as a rejection of the dominant ways of writing and
56
producing plays. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre
world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical. It was
created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Despite different
political and formal approaches, all avant-garde theatre opposes bourgeois
theatre. It tries to introduce a different use of language and the body to change
the mode of perception and to create a new, more active relation with the
audience.
Tradit io nally au d iences are seen as p assive o bservers. Many

pract it io ners o f experiment al t heat re have want ed to challenge t his.
For example, Bertolt Brecht wanted to mobilise his audiences by having
a character in a play break through the invisible “fourth wall,” directly ask
the audience questions, not giving them answers, thereby getting them to
think for themselves; Augusto Boal wanted his audiences to react directly
to the action; and Antonin Artaud wanted to affect t hem directly on a
subconscious level. Peter Brook has identified a triangle of relationships
within a performance: the performers’ internal relationships, the performers’
relat io nships t o each o t her o n st age, and t heir relat io nship wit h t he
a u d ie n ce . T h e Br it is h ex p e r ime nt a l t h e at r e g r o u p Welfa r e S t a t e
International has spoken of a ceremonial circle during performance, the cast
providing one half, the audience providing another, and the energy in the
middle.
Aside from ideological implications of the role of the audience,

theatres and performances have addressed or involved the audience in a
variety of ways. The proscenium arch has been called into question, with
performances venturing into non-theatrical spaces. Audiences have been
engaged differently, often as active participants in the action on a highly
practical level. When a proscenium arch has been used, its usual use has
often been subverted.
Audience participation can range from asking for volunteers to go
57
onstage to having actors scream in audience members’ faces. By using audience
participation, the performer invites the audience to feel a certain way and by
doing so they may change their attitudes, values and beliefs in regard to the
performance’s topic. For example, in a performance on bullying the character
may approach an audience member, size them up and challenge them to a fight
on the spot. The terrified look on the audience member’s face will strongly
embody the message of bullying to the member and the rest of the audience.
Absurdist Drama
T he T he at r e o f t he Absu r d is a d es ig na t io n fo r p ar t icu lar

plays of absurdist fictio n writt en by a number o f primarily Euro pean
playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which
has evolved from their work. Their work expressed what happens when human
existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks
down, in fact alerting their audiences to pursue the opposite. Logical
construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to
its ultimate conclusion, silence.
Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay “Theatre of the
Absurd.” He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar
to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, “The Myth of
Sisyphus”. The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a
world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or
menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide
range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad
comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images;
characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless
actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are
cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and
the concept of the “well-made play”.
Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd
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include Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom
Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Miguel Mihura, Alejandro Jodorowsky,
Fernando Arrabal, Václav Havel, and Edward Albee.
Absurdist Drama was exist ent ialist t heat re which put a direct
perception of a mode of being above all abstract considerations. It was also
essentially a poetic, lyrical theatre for the expression of intuitions of being
through movement, situations and concrete imagery. Language was generally
downplayed. Symbolism, Dadaism and their offspring, Surrealism, Theatre
of Cruelty, and Expressionism all fall into this category.
Dadaism
The first major anti-art movement, Dada was a revolt against the
culture and values which - it was believed - had caused and supported the
carnage of The First World War (1914-18). It quickly developed into an
anarchistic type of highly avant-garde art whose aim was to subvert and
undermine the value system of the ruling establishment which had allowed
the war to happen, including the arts establishment which they viewed as
inextricably linked to the discredited socio-political status quo. Erupting
simultaneously in 1916, in Europe and America, its leaders were typically
very young, in their early twenties, and most had “opted out”, avoiding
conscription in the shelter of neutral cities such as New York, Zurich and
Barcelona.
3.5.5 Symbolism/Aestheticism
In England, Symbolism was also known as Aestheticism. A very stylized

format of drama, wherein dreams and fantasies were common plot devices,
Aest het icism was u sed by numer o us p laywrig ht s fro m Yeat s t o
Pinter. The staging was highly stylized, usually using minimal set pieces
and vague blo cking. While t he playwrights who co uld be co nsidered
Aest het icist s lived and wo r ked at t he beg inning o f t he cent ur y, it
influenced all of the following styles.
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The symbolist s aimed t o eliminat e all t races o f nat uralist ic o r
imitative acting, and all romance and melodrama. In theory, the actor was
to be a depersonalized symbol pointing to a meaning beyond what was
visible on t he stage. In France, the Théâtre d’Art and the Théâtre de
l’Oeuvre put on plays by symbolist writers and held experimental poetry
st ag ings. In addit io n t o t he p lays o f French writ ers, t hey pro d uced
adapt at io ns o f wo rks by Edg ar Allan P o e, which had recent ly been
translated, the play Oscar Wilde had written in French during his exile
fr o m Brit ain. P lays by t he Belg ian symbo list s were also p ro du ced.
Significantly, the sets were meant not to echo the visible shapes or forms
of the characters, but, in a kind of synesthesia, to analogize the essence of
the play itself.
Plays by the Scandinavian writers Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) and

August Strindberg (1849–1912) also became important parts of the French
symbolist repertoire. The symbolist critic Camille Mauclair identified Ibsen
wit h t he symbo list struggle t o express “libertarian ideas or taste fo r
aestheticism” and “modern beauty.” Ibsen’s plays Ghosts, The Wild Duck,
H e d d a Ga b l er, A D o l l ’s Ho u s e, T h e L a d y f ro m t h e S e a ,
Rosmersholm, and An Enemy of the People were all staged in the early
1890s. Part of the reason Ibsen was appropriated as a symbolist had to do
with the staging. The Danish actor, director, and novelist Hermann Bang
described Lugné-Po e’s staging o f Rosmersholm as “wit hout any firm
contours. The actors wander restlessly over the stage, resembling shadows
drifting continuously on the wall. They like to move with their arms spread
out, … like the apostles in o ld paint ings who loo k as if t hey’ve been
surprised during worship”. Bang’s description of actors resembling apostles
and shadows on a wall gives us a sense of how the staging of the play used
vagueness and suggestiveness to reach higher spiritual meanings. Several
of August Strindberg’s psychological dramas (including The Father and The
Creditors ) were also staged at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, despite the fact
60
that he too had previously been understood to be a naturalist.
3.5.6 Surrealism
Lik e Aest het icism, S urrealism has it s base in t he myst ical. It

developed the physicality of theatre and downplayed words, hoping to
influence its audiences through action. Other common characteristics of
surreal plays are unexpected comparisons and surprise. The most famous
British playwright in the 20’s surrealist style is Samuel Beckett. Theatre of
Cruelty is a subset of surrealism and was motivated by an idea of Antonin
Artaud. It argues the idea that theatre is a “representational medium” and
t ried to bring current ideas and experiences to t he audience t hro ugh
participation and “ritualistic theater experiments.” Artaud thought that theatre
should present and represent equally. This type of theatre relies deeply on
metaphors and rarely included a description of how it could be performed.
A product of Dadaism, Surrealism can be traced back to Guillaume

Apollinaire’s only play, The Breasts of Tiresias, which was performed in
Paris in 1918. The unique verbal associations of this unique comedy, along
with its anything-goes dreamlike atmosphere and the theoretical implications
of the author’s preface, became the foundation for the surrealist movement.
After Apollinaire’s untimely death (1918), Andre Breton emerged as

the main spokesman for Surrealism. Although Dadaism had been primarily
negat ive, it s dest ruct ive force had cleared t he air, making roo m fo r
Surrealism which believed in t he great po sit ive, healing fo rce of the
subco nscio us mind. Bret o n declared the subco nscio us t o be t he real
repository of truth and advocated automatic writing, dream logic, and other
techniques to tap into this universal wellspring of veracity. During the 1920s
and 1930s, surrealists such as Breton, Louis Aragon, Roger Vitrac, and
Antonin Artaud experimented with various techniques to liberate themselves
from the straitjacket of convention. They consciously abandoned order,
clarity, and rational thought (for centuries the prerequisites of great art) for
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the spontaneity, originality, and anarchic humour of disjointed, dreamlike
(and sometimes nightmarish) episodes which attempted to capture a different
kind of truth. Their objective was to abolish art as a mere imitation of
surface reality and replace it with visions that were, in essence, more real
than reality—that dealt with inner truth rather than outward appearance.
Some of the plays produced during this period were Artaud’s Upset Stomach,
or The Mad Mother, Vitrac’s The Mysteries of Love, and Aragon’s At the
Foot of the Wall.
Surrealist theatre was not received with great enthusiasm by the critics.
For the most part, they seemed to keep it at an arm’s length, not wishing to
condone such uncivilized displays on the stage and continually asserting that
it must only be a passing phase in the dramatic development—a disquieting
anomaly. They, like many audience members of the time, seemed almost
frightened by the surrealists’ intuitive exploration of the nature of the
subconscious.”
Dur ing Wo rld War II , Su rrealism was gradually abso r bed by

more successful movements such as the Theatre of the Absurd. After the
chaos and uncertainty of this catastrophic global war, most people became
more willing to accept the inexplicable onstage, for they were familiar with the
absurdity of the human condition, having experienced it first hand. Today, the
influence of Surrealism can be seen in the works of such dramatists as Caryl
Churchill and Gao Xingjian.
3.5.7 Expressionism
The term ‘Expressio nism’ was first coined in Germany in 1911.

Expressionism also had its hey-day during the 20s although it had two distinct
branches. The branches had characters speaking in short, direct sentences or in
long, lyrical expanses. This type of theatre usually did not name the characters
and spend much time lamenting the present and warning against the future.
Spiritual awakenings and episodic structures were also fairly common.
62
There was a concentrated Expressionist movement in early 20th
century German theatre of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most
famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard
Sorge, Walter Hasenclever, Hans Henny Jahnn, and Arnolt Bronnen. They looked
back to Swedish playwright August St rindberg and German actor and
dramatist Frank Wedekind as precursors of their dramaturgical experiments.
Oskar Kokoschka’s Murderer, the Hope of Women was the first fully

Expressionist work for the theatre, which opened on 4 July 1909 in Vienna.
The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects,
declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity would become characteristic
of later Expressionist plays. The first full-length Expressionist play was The
Son by Walter Hasenclever, which was published in 1914 and first performed
in 1916.
Expressionist plays often dramat ize the spiritual awakening and

sufferings of their protagonists, and are referred to as Stationendramen
(station plays), modeled on the episodic presentation of the suffering and
death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross. August Strindberg had pioneered
this form with his autobiographical trilogy To Damascus.
The plays often dramatize the struggle against bourgeois values and
established authority, often personified in the figure of the Father. In Sorge’s The
Beggar, (Der Bettler), the young hero’s mentally ill father raves about the prospect
o f mining t he riches o f Mars; he is finally p o iso ned by his so n. In
Bronnen’s Parricide (Vatermord), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death,
only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother.
In expressionist drama, the speech is heightened, whether expansive

and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director Leopold Jessner became
famous for his expressionistic productions, often unfolding on the stark, steeply
raked flights of stairs that quickly became his trademark.
In the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed a brief period of popularity in

63
the theatre of the United States, including plays by Eugene O’Neill (The Hairy
Ape, The Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown), Sophie Treadwell
(Machinal), Lajo s Egri (Rapid Transit) and Elmer Rice (The Adding
Machine)
3.5.8 Epic Theatre
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-

20 t h cent u ry fro m t he t heo ries and pr act ice o f a number o f t heat re
practitioners who were responding to the political climate of the time through
the creation of a new political theatre. Those practitioners included Erwin
P isc a t o r, Vla d imir M a yak o v sk y, Vs e v o lo d M e yer h o ld a nd , mo s t
famously, Bertolt Brecht. The term epic theater comes from Erwin Piscator
who coined it during his first year as Director of Berlin’s Volksbühne (1924-
1927). Piscator aimed to encourage playwrights to address issues related
to “contemporary existence” thereby creating new subject matter to stage
and then staging it thro ugh t he use of do cumentary effects, audience
interaction as well as creating ways in which the audience feel distanced
from the event. Although many of the concepts and practices involved in
Brechtian epic theatre had been around for years, even centuries, Brecht
unified t hem, develo ped t he st yle, and po pularized it . E pic t heat re
incorporates a mode of acting that utilises what he calls gestus. The epic
form describes both a type of written drama and a methodological approach
to the production of plays: “Its qualities of clear description and reporting
and its use of choruses and projections as a means of commentary earned it
the name ‘epic’.” Brecht later preferred the term “dialectical theatre” near
the end of his career over epic theatre to describe the style of theatre he
pioneered . From his later perspective, the term “Epic Theatre” had become
t o o fo rmal a co ncep t t o be o f u se anymo r e; o ne o f Br echt ’s mo st
impo rt ant aest het ic inno vat io ns prio r it ized f u nct io n o ver t he st er ile
opposition between form and content. A function of the style of theatre is
to ensure that the audience is consistently aware that they are wat ching and
64
involved in an artificial production.
Epic theatre was a reaction against popular forms of theatre, particularly

the naturalistic approach pioneered by Constantin Stanislavski. Like Stanislavski,
Brecht disliked the shallow spectacle, manipulative plots, and heightened emotion
of melodrama; but where Stanislavski attempted to engender real human behaviour
in acting through the techniques of Stanislavski’s system and to absorb the
audience completely in the fictional world of the play, Brecht saw Stanislavski’s
methodology as producing escapism. Brecht’s own social and political focus
departed also from surrealism and the Theatre of Cruelty, as developed in the
writings and dramaturgy of Antonin Artaud, who sought to affect audiences
viscerally, psychologically, physically, and irrationally.
3.6 LET US SUM UP
During the 20th century, especially after World War I, Western drama
became more internationally unified and less the product of separate national
literary traditions. Throughout the century realism, naturalism, and symbolism
(and various combinations of these) continued to inform important plays.
An important movement in early 20th century drama was expressionism.

Expressionist playwrights tried to convey the dehumanizing aspects of 20th-century
technological society through such devices as minimal scenery, telegraphic dialogue,
talking machines, and characters portrayed as types rather than individuals.
The 20th century also saw the attempted revival of drama in verse, but although
such writers as William Butler Yeats, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Fry,
and Maxwell Anderson produced effective results, verse drama was no longer an
important form in English.
Three vital figures of 20th century drama are the American Eugene
O’Neill, the German Bertolt Brecht, and the Italian Luigi Pirandello. O’Neill’s
bo dy o f plays in many fo r ms—nat ur alist ic, expressio nist , symbo lic,
psychological—won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and indicated
the coming-of-age of American drama. Brecht wrote dramas of ideas, usually
65
promulgating socialist or Marxist theory. In order to make his audience more
intellectually receptive to his theses, he endeavored—by using expressionist
techniques—to make them continually aware that they were watching a play,
not vicariously experiencing reality. For Pirandello, too, it was paramount to
fix an awareness of his plays as theater; indeed, the major philosophical concern
of his dramas is the difficulty of differentiating between illusion and reality.
World War II and its attendant horrors produced a widespread sense of

the utter meaninglessness of human existence. This sense is brilliantly expressed
in the body of plays that have come to be known collectively as the theatre of the
absurd. By abandoning traditional devices of the drama, including logical plot
development, meaningful dialogue, and intelligible characters, absurdist
playwrights sought to convey modern humanity’s feelings of bewilderment,
alienation, and despair—the sense that reality is itself unreal. In their plays
human beings often portrayed as dupes, clowns who, although not without dignity,
are at the mercy of forces that are inscrutable.
Probably the most famous plays of the theatre of the absurd are
Eugene Ionesco’s Bald Soprano (1950) and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot (1953). The sources of the theater of the absurd are diverse; they can be
found in the tenets of surrealism, Dadaism, and existentialism; in the traditions
o f t he mu sic hall, vaud eville, and bu rlesqu e; and in t he films o f
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The pessimism and despair of the 20th
century also found expression in the existentialist dramas of Jean-Paul Sartre,
in the realistic and symbolic dramas of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and
Jean Anouilh, and in the surrealist plays of Jean Cocteau.
Somewhat similar to the theatre of the absurd is the so-called theatre

of cruelty, derived from the ideas of Antonin Artaud, who, writing in the
1930s, foresaw a drama that would assault its audience with movement and
sound, producing a visceral rather than an intellectual reaction. After the
violence of World War II and the subsequent threat of the atomic bomb, his
approach seemed particularly appropriate to many playwrights. Elements of
66
the theatre of cruelty can be found in the brilliantly abusive language of
John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? (1962), in the ritualistic aspects of some of Genet’s plays,
in the masked utterances and enigmatic silences of Harold Pinter’s “comedies
o f menace,” and in t he o rgiast ic abando n o f Julian Beck’s Para dise
Now! (1968); it was fully expressed in Pet er Broo ks’s pro ductio n o f
Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade (1964).
Realism in a number of guises—psychological, social, and political—

continued to be a force in British works. In keeping with the tenor of the times,
many of the works of the period were marked by elements of wit, irony, and
satire.
The late decades of the 20th century were also a time of considerable
experiment and iconoclasm. Experimental dramas of the 1960s and 70s were
followed by a mixing and merging of various kinds of media with aspects
of postmodernism, improvisational techniques, performance art, and other kinds
of avant-garde theater.
Thematically, the social upheavals of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s—

particularly the civil rights and women’s movements, gay liberation, and the AIDS
crisis—provided impetus for new plays that explored the lives of minorities and
women.
Feminist and other women-centered themes dramatized by contemporary

female playwrights were plentiful in the 1970s and extended in the following
decades. Skilled monologuists also provided provocative female-themed one-
women shows.
Gay themes (often in works by gay playwrights) also marked the later
decades of t he 20th century. Homosexual charact ers had been treated
sympathetically but in the context of pathology. Gay subjects were presented
more explicitly during the 1960s.
67
1. Which of the following phrases best characterizes the late-nineteenth

century aesthetic movement which widened the breach between artists
and the reading public, sowing the seeds of modernism?
(a) Art for intellect’s sake
(b) Art for God’s sake
(c) Art for the masses
(d) Art for art’s sake Ans. (d)
2. With which enormously influential perspective or practice is the early

twentieth century thinker Sigmund Freud associated?
(a) Eugenics
(b) Psychoanalysis
(c) Phrenology
(d) Anarchism Ans. (b)
3. Which thinker had a major impact on early twentieth century writers,

leading them to reimagining human identity in radically new ways?
(a) Sigmund Freud
(b) Sir James Frazer
(c) Immanuel Kant
(d) Friedrich Nietche Ans. (c)
4. Which scientific or technological advance did not take place in the first
fifteen years of the twentieth century?
(a) Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity
(b) Wireless communication across the Atlantic
68
(c) The creation of the internet
(d) The invention of the airplane Ans. (c)
5. What did T. S. Eliot attempt to combine, though not very successfully, in

his plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party?
(a) Regional dialect and political critique
(b) Religious symbolism and society comedy
(c) Iambic pentameter and sexual innuendo
(d) Witty paradoxes and feminist diatribe Ans. (c)
6. How did one critic sum up Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?
(a) nothing happens twice
(b) Political correctness gone mad
(c) kitchen sink drama
(d) angry young men Ans. (a)
7. In what decade did the “angry young men” come to prominence on the
theatrical scene?
(a) 1910s
(b) 1930s
(c) 1950s
(d) 1990s Ans. (c)
8. What event allowed mainstream theatre companies to commission and

perform work that was politically, socially, and sexually controversial
without fear of censorship?
(a) the abolition of Lord Chamberlain’s office in 1968
69
(b) the illegal performance of work by Howard Breton and Edward
Bond
(c) the collapse of liberal humanist consensus in the late 1960s
(d) the establishment of the Abbey Theatre Ans. (a)
9. Which of the following has been a significant development in British

theatre since the abolition of censorship in 1968?
(a) the rise of workshops and the collaborative ethos
(b) the emergence of a major cohort of women dramatists
(c) the diversifying impact of playwrights from the former colonies
(d) all of the above Ans. (d)
1. What was Bernard Shaw’s contribution to English drama?
Ans. Shaw’s name is indissolubly linked with the new drama of the twentieth
century. It is new because it converted the stage into a forum or pulpit
or a debating society. Action was not so important as the discussion of
ideas, which are at the bottom of men’s faiths and convictions. In the
earlier era, the stage was generally considered as a public place where
one went for a couple of hours of entertainment, when people could
forget their private worries and cares in contemplating a romantic world,
dazzling people and pleasant scenes or stirring incidents.
2. Summarize some of the important developments in modern drama.
Ans. Some of the important developments in modern drama are expressionism,

epic theatre, symbolism, surrealism, and the theatre of the absurd.
1. Expressio nism: E xpr essio nism in drama was co ncent rat ed in

Germany in the early 20th century. Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser
70
(1878-1945) was the mo st famous expressio nist dramatist . His
popular plays include "From Morn to Midnight" and "The Burghers
of Calais." The main feature of expressionism is a distortion of
physical reality to highlight certain emotional effects and convey
personal moods and feelings.
2. Epic Theatre: The chief proponent and successful practitioner of this form
of modern drama was the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).
Its main feature was the use of the ancient epic convention of choruses and
projections as a means of commentary. Mother Courage (1939) is Brecht's
most famous play.
3. Symbolism: The aim of symbolism was to capture absolute truth by

indirect methods. Symbolism emphasized mysticism, and the life of
dreams and fantasies. The most famous symbolist theatre person
was Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard, Count Maeterlinck (1862-
1949). His most famous play is The Blue Bird (1908).
4. Surrealism: Wilhelm Albert Wodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, (1880-
1918) is the foremost surrealist playwright and his most successful play is
The Breasts of Tiresias (1903,1917). Surrealism's main aim is to reveal
the dynamics of the sub conscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery
and juxtaposition of bizarre subject matter.
5. Theatre of the Absurd: As the word 'absurd' indicates the dramas of

the "Absurd" reveal the meaninglessness of modern life and depict
man as a puppet controlled by some bizarre external force. Some of
the important playwrights of this type of drama are Samuel Beckett
and Harold Pinter. Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1948,1953) is one
of the most important plays of the twentieth century.
6. How did early modern playwrights use the physical resources of the stage
to create meaning?
71
7. How does the political, social or religious context of a particular play
help us to understand it?
8. Write an essay about the creation of, adherence to, and/or breaking of,
generic conventions in the drama of the period.
9. Discuss Epic theatre as a reaction against the naturalistic form of theatre.
10. Write an essay on Avant Garde Theatre.
11. Write a brief essay on types of modern drama.
 Chothia, Jean. “English Drama of the Early Modern Period, 1890-1940.”

London: Longman, 1996. Print.
 Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. “Twentieth Century Drama.” The

Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.
1843-847. Print.



G. Bell, 1913
*********
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DRAMA - II UNIT - II
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER : AN OVERVIEW
STRUCTURE
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Objectives
4.3 She Troops to Conquer : Various Genres to which it can belong
4.3.1 Comedy of Manners
4.3.2 Sentimental Comedy
4.3.3 Romantic Comedy
4.3.4 Satire
4.3.5 Farce or Comedy of Errors
4.4 Dramatic Technique
4.4.1 The Three Unities
4.5 Oliver Goldsmith : Life and Works in Brief
4.5.1 Oliver Goldsmith : Contemporaries and Cronves
4.5.2 Themes of Oliver Goldsmith’s Works
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4.5.3 Augustan Age
4.6 Summary/Conclusion/Let Us Sum Up
4.7 Glossary
4.8 Short Answer Questions
4.8.1 Multiple Choice Questions
4.1 INTRODUCTION
She Stoops to Conquer is a play in five acts, written by the Anglo-Irish author

Oliver Goldsmith. It is a comedy. It was first performed on stage in London, in the
year 1773. It is an exceptional play, in the sense, that it still retains its appeal despite
belonging to the 18th century. As a result its been regularly performed on stage and
adapted into film. Initially the play was titled, Mistakes of a Night , as the title
shows that all events of the play happen on one single long night. In the year 1778,
John O’ Keefe, penned down its sequel titled, Tony Lumpkin in Town.
Mr. Hardcastle, an affluent countryman fixes a meeting between his daughter

Kate with Charles Marlow, a wealthy Londoner’s son, with the hope to get them
married. After knowing that Malow prefers lower-class women, Mr. Hardcastle plans
Kate to pretend to be a common woman in order to conquer the heart of Marlow. As
a result Kate stoops down to pose as a maid in order to win Marlow and this central
act provides the title of the play.
Marlowe falls for Kate and with another gentleman, George Hastings, an
admirer of Miss Constance Neville, (who too is putting up with the Hardcastles)
seeks to their home . During the journey, both men get lost and have a stopover at an
alehouse ( The Three Jolly Pigeons). Tony Lumplin, Kate’s step brother and Constance’s
74
cousin accosts Marlowe and plays a practical joke by telling them that they are a
long way from their destination and would have to put up in the inn overnight. The
supposed “inn” he directs them is actually the house of the Hardcastles. On their
arrival , the Hardcastles who were actually expecting them, go out of their way to
welcome them. Marlow and Hastings, believe to be in an inn, act disdainfully towards
their hosts. Hardcastle bears their unwitting insults with patience, because of
friendship to Marlow’s father.
Kate learns of her suitor’s shyness from Constance and a servant tells her
about Tony’s trick. She decides to masquerade as a serving-maid by altering her
accent and attire in order to know him. Marlow falls in love with her and plans to
elope but because she appears of a lower class, acts in a bawdy manner with her. All
misunderstandings are resolved at the end, through an appearance of Sir Charles
Marlow.
The sub-plot is about a clandestine romance between Constance and Hastings.

Constance needs her jewels, an inheritance, guarded by Tony’s mother, Mrs.
Hardcastle, who wants Constance to marry her son, so that jewels are retained in the
family. Tony detests the idea of marrying Constance, he prefers a barmaid at the
alehouse. Therefore, agrees to steal the jewels from his mother’s safekeeping for
Constance, to make her elope with Hastings to France. The play ends with Kate’s
plan succeeding, she and Marlow get engaged. Tony comes to know that his mother
lied about his being “of age” and thus entitled to his inheritance. He refuses to marry
Constance, who is then eligible to receive her jewels and get engaged to Hastings,
which she does.
4.2 OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of this lesson are:-
1. To acquaint the learner with an overview to the play She Stoops to Conquer.
2. To introduce the learner with various concepts/terms related to the genre of

the play She Stoops to Conquer.
75
3. To introduce the learner with the dramatic technique in the prescribed play,
She Stoops to Conquer.
4. To provide a background to the playwright Oliver Goldsmith, so that the

learner can understand the play with some extra background knowledge .
5. To provide the learner with background to Augustan age, as Goldsmith belongs

to this age.
6. Written assignments for practice with key so that the learner can do self
evaluation.
7. Suggesting list of books for further reading.
4.3 SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER : VARIOUS GENRES TO WHICH IT CAN

BELONG
As the play is seminal from literature point of view, there has been constant
research and discussions on its genre. Majority of scholars consider the play to be
comedy of manners, but studies consider it to be a laughing comedy, a romantic
comedy, satire, and comedy of errors too.
All the above genres are discussed briefly as follows:-
4.3.1 COMEDY OF MANNERS
The comedy of manners is a type of comedy that satirizes the manners and
affectations of the contemporary society and questions the societal standards. Comedy
of manners has a polite society setting, the comedy arises from the gap between the
characters’ attempts to preserve standards of polite behaviour and their true behavior.
William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, is considered as the first comedy
of manners in England. This genre actually flourished during the Restoration period.
The play is seen as a comedy of manners.
4.3.2 SENTIMENTAL COMEDY
Sentimental comedy was an 18th century dramatic genre that arose as a reaction
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against the immoral tone of the English Restoration plays. In Sentimental comedies
middle-class protagonists courageously overcame a series of moral trials. These
plays aimed to bring out tears rather than laughter and reflected contemporary
philosophical ideology of humans as basically good but capable of being led astray
by bad example. By appealing to a man’s noble sentiments, he could be reformed
and brought back on virtuous path. The plays had characters whose natures seemed
overly virtuous and whose problems were too easily resolved, they were accepted
by audiences as true enactment of the human predicament.
4.3.3 ROMANTIC COMEDY
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines romantic comedy as “a

general term for comedies that deal mainly with the follies and misunderstandings
of young lovers, in a light hearted and happily concluded manner which usually
avoids serious satire”.
Research trends have treated She Stoops to Conquer , as a romantic comedy

as it depicts the seriousness of love by the youngsters resulting into display of
foolishness. In this sense it bears resemblance to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s
Dream, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It. Kate’s stooping and Marlow’s nervousness
are good examples of romantic comedy also Constance Neville’s and George
Hastings’ love and plan to elope are also examples of romantic comedy.
4.3.4 SATIRE
A satire is defined as :
(1) a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.
or
(2) sharp wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly.
She Stoops to Conquer is also seen as a satire, where characters are presented
as either ludicrous or eccentric. Such a comedy might leave the impression that the
characters are either too foolish or corrupt to be ever reformed, for instance Mrs.
Hardcastle.
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4.3.5 FARCE OR COMEDY OF ERRORS
The play She Stoops to Conquer, is sometimes described as a farce, an

exaggerated comedy also treated as a Farce or comedy of errors. A farce is defined
as an event or series of events made ridiculous by the number of errors that were
made throughout the play. It is a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay
and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.
Some synonyms are improbable situations.
Comedy of errors is defined as an event or series of events made ridiculous

by the number of errors that are made throughout the play. In the play She Stoops
to Conquer, Marlow and Hastings believing the Hardcastles’ house is an inn, results
into comedy of errors.
4.4 DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE
A narrative technique interchangeably used with the terms literary

technique, literary device, or fictional device, is one of the several specific methods
or strategies the author of a text uses to convey what is desired. In other words, a
strategy used in the making of a text to provide information to the audience and,
particularly, to “develop” the text , usually in order to make it more complete,
complicated, or interesting.
4.4.1 THE THREE UNITIES
The dramatic technique of classical unities is employed by Goldsmith to some

extent in She Stoops to Conquer.
Classical unities :
The classical unities also known as Aristotelian unities or the three unities are
broad rules of a drama mentioned in Aristotle’s Poetics. They are three in number, as
follows:
1. unity of action: a play should have only one action, with minimal subplots.
2. unity of time: the action in a play should take place 24 hours.

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3. unity of place: a play should depict a single physical space and should not
attempt to shift geographical locations, nor should the play represent more
than one place.
The Unity of Action – This is the one Unity that Goldsmith does not rigorously

follow; the inclusion of the subplot of Constance-Hastings eloping distracts from the
main narrative of the play. However, it shares similar themes of relationships and
what makes the best kind (mutual attraction or the arrangement of a parent or guardian).
Furthermore, the subplot interweaves with the main plot, for example when Hastings
and Marlow confront Tony regarding his mischief making.
The Unity of Time – The alternative title of Mistakes of the Night illustrates

that the Unity of Time is carefully observed. With all of the events occurring in a
single night, the plot becomes more stimulating as well as lending more plausibility
to the series of unlucky coincidences that conspire against the visitors.
The Unity of Place – While some may question whether She Stoops to

Conquer contains the Unity of Place – after all, the scene at “The Three Pigeons” is
set apart from the house – but the similarity between the alehouse and the “old rumbling
mansion, that looks all the world like an inn” is one of close resemblance; enough
that in past performances, the scenes have often doubled up the use of the same set
backdrop. Also, there is some debate as to whether the excursion to “Crackskull
common” counts as a separate setting, but since the truth is that the travellers do not
leave the mansion gardens, the Unity of Place is not violated.
4.5 OLIVER GOLDSMITH : LIFE AND WORKS IN BRIEF
Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Irish novelist,
playwright and poet, who is well known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766),
a pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and dramas The Good-Natur’d Man
(1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He also wrote
the classic children’s tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765). In 1744
Goldsmith went to Trinity College, Dublin , for further studies. Goldsmith wrote
massively as a hack writer on Grub Street for the publishers of London. But his few
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painstaking works earned him the company of Samuel Johnson, with whom he founded
“The Club”.
He settled in London in 1756, and tried his hand at several jobs. He had a
share in vices too, perpetually in debt and was addicted to gambling. Goldsmith
died suddenly on April 4, 1774, after suffering from a kidney disease that he refused
to treat properly. It was an early death, but not entirely unexpected considering his
lifestyle. His work The Haunch of Venison was published posthumously in 1776.
4.5.1 OLIVER GOLDSMITH : CONTEMPORARIES AND CRONIES
Oliver Goldsmith’s painstaking works earned him the company of Samuel

Johnson, with whom he founded “The Club”. The two writers often exchanged ideas,
leading to perhaps one of the most enriching intellectual partnerships in eighteenth-
century English literary world. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke and James
Boswell too were associated with “The Club”. Although he is not as popular as he
once was, Goldsmith remains one of the major writers of eighteenth-century England;
he is still acclaimed by many critics for his effortlessly masterful prose-style that
makes even his slightest works eminently readable. Greatly respected by the writers
of his own time, Goldsmith is one of the luminaries of his period.
4.5.2 THEMES OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH’S WORKS
His works deal with quintessential eighteenth-century themes of social class

and position, affluence and poverty. The eighteenth century, to which Goldsmith
belongs, was the century of sentimentalism, which is based on a view of the innate
goodness of people who find themselves at odds with a sometimes “sinful” world.
4.5.3 AUGUSTAN AGE
Literature of Augustan age is Augustan literature, also referred as Georgian

literature. This literature was produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George
I and George II. The literature of the 18th century, particularly the early 18th century,
which is the pure “Augustan” age commonly indicates, is explicitly political in ways
that few others are. Professional as well as hack writers were active but authors who
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wrote poetry, novels, and plays were frequently either politically active or politically
funded. Satire, in prose, drama and poetry, was the genre that attracted the most
energetic and voluminous writing. The Augustan era is considered a high point of
British satiric writing, The Augustan era’s drama ended definitively in 1737, with
the Licensing Act (an Act for the licensing of theatrical premises).
4.6 SUMMARY/CONCLUSION/LET US SUM UP
Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Irish novelist,
playwright and poet. In 1744 Goldsmith attended Trinity College, Dublin. Samuel
Johnson was a prominent contemporary of Oliver Goldsmith). His works deal with
typical eighteenth-century themes of social class and position, affluence and poverty.
Literature of Augustan age is Augustan literature, also referred as Georgian literature.
This literature was produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I and
George II. Goldsmith died suddenly on April 4, 1774, after suffering from a kidney
disease that he refused to be treated properly.
She Stoops to Conquer (1771, was first performed on stage in 1773). It is a

play in four acts, written by the Anglo-Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It is a comedy.
It was first performed on stage in London, in the year 1773. Mistakes of a Night (the
initial title) as the title shows that all events of the play happen on one single long
night. Mr. Hardcastle, an affluent countryman fixes a meeting between his daughter
Kate with Charles Marlow, a wealthy Londoner’s son, with the hope to get them
married. After knowing that Malow prefers lower-class women, Mr. Hardcastle plans
Kate to pretend to be a common woman in order to conquer the heart of Marlow. As
a result Kate stoops down to pose as a maid in order to win Marlow and this central
act provides the title of the play. Marlowe falls for Kate and with another gentleman,
George Hastings, an admirer of Miss Constance Neville (who too is putting up with
the Hardcastles) seeks to their home . During the journey, both men get lost and have
a stopover at an alehouse ( The Three Jolly Pigeons). Tony Lumplin, Kate’s step
brother and Constance’s cousin accosts Marlowe and plays a practical joke by telling
them that they are a long way from their destination and would have to put up in the
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inn overnight. The supposed “inn” he directs them is actually the house of the
Hardcastles. On their arrival , the hardcastles who were actually expecting them, go
out of their way to welcome them. Marlow and Hastings, believe to be in an inn. The
sub-plot is about a clandestine romance between Constance and Hastings. The sub-
plot is about a clandestine romance between Constance and Hastings. Constance
needs her jewels, an inheritance, guarded by Tony’s mother, Mrs. Hardcastle, who
wants Constance to marry her son, so that jewels are retained in the family.
As the play is seminal from literature point of view, there has been constant
research and discussions on its genre. Majority of scholars consider the play to be
comedy of manners, but studies consider it to be a laughing comedy, a romantic
comedy, satire, and comedy of errors too. The dramatic technique of classical unities is
employed by Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer. The classical unities also known
as Aristotelian unities or the three unities are broad rules of a drama mentioned in
Aristotle’s Poetics. They are three in number- unity of action, unity of place and
unity of time.
4.7 GLOSSARY
1. Stoops : to descend from one’s level of dignity; condescend; deign:
2. Conquer : Gain the love, admiration, or respect of (a person or group of people).
3. Comedy : A play characterized by its humorous or satirical tone and its depiction
of amusing people or incidents, in which the characters ultimately triumph over
adversity.
4. Lower-class women : women from the social group that has the lowest status;
the working class
5. Stopover : a stop at an intermediate point in one’s journey.
6. Practical joke : A trick played on someone in order to make them look foolish
and to amuse others.
7. Disdainfully : Showing contempt or lack of respect.
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8. Masquerade : A party or assembly of people wearing masks, and amusing
themselves with dancing, conversation
9. Bawdy : Dealing with sexual matters in a comical way; humorously indecent.
10. Clandestine : kept secret or done secretively, especially because illicit.
11. Barmaid : A woman serving behind the bar of a pub or hotel.
12. Alehouse : a tavern where ale or beer is sold; bar; pub.
13. Safekeeping: Preservation in a safe place.
14. Genre : a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized

by a particular style, form, or content
15. Seminal : containing important new ideas and having a great influence on later
work
16. Affectations : Behaviour, speech, or writing that is pretentious and designed to

impress.
17. Restoration period : (The Restoration)-The re-establishment of Charles II as

King of England in 1660. After the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, his son
Richard (1626–1712) proved incapable of maintaining the Protectorate, and
General Monck organized the king’s return from exile. The period following
the Restoration of Charles II, is called Restoration period
18. Protagonist : protagonist is the leading character of the story.
19. Satire : The use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and
criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary
politics and other topical issues.
20. Sarcasm : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or
give pain
21. Farce : A farce is a broad satire or comedy, though now it’s used to describe
something that is supposed to be serious but has turned ridiculous
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22. Buffoonery : foolish or playful behavior or practice
23. Horseplay : at first glance a horseplay looks like actual fighting or wrestling
until the more playful “fooling around” element become visible, but a horseplay
sometimes can deteriorate into real fighting.
24. Strategy : A strategy is a general plan or set of plans intended to achieve
something
25. Aristotelian : is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration

from the work of Aristotle.
26. Playwright : a person who writes plays.
27. Pastoral : shepherds herding livestock around open areas
28. Hack writer : The term “hack writer” was first used in the 18th century, for
a writer who is paid to write low-quality, rushed articles or books “to order”,
often with a short deadline.
29. Grub Street : According to Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, the term was “originally
the name of a street... much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries,
and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet”. Johnson
himself had lived and worked on Grub Street early in his career. Famous for its
concentration of impoverished hack writer , were aspiring poets, and low-end
publishers and booksellers, Grub Street existed on the margins of London’s
journalistic and literary scene.
30. Luminaries : a person of prominence or brilliant achievement.
31. High point : an event or period of time is the most exciting or enjoyable part of
it.
4.8 SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
Q. 1 What was the initial title of the play She Stoops to Conquer ? Why was it named
so?
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_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 2 Who and in which year the sequel to She Stoops to Conquer was published?
What was the title?
____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 3 What is Mr Hardcastle’s plans for marriage for Kate?
______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 4 Why Marlowe and George Hastings seek to Mr. Hardcastle’s home?
____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 5 During journey where do these two men stop?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
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_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 6 What was the practical joke by Tony Lumplin?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 7 What is actually the supposed inn as told by Tony Lumplin’s as a practical

joke?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 8 Who tells Kate about her suitor’s shyness? Who inform Kate about Tony’s trick?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 9 What does Kate do in order to know her suitor well?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________
Q. 10 What is the sub-plot of the play about?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 11 Define comedy of manners.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q.12 Define Sentimental comedy
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q.13 Define Romantic comedy.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
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Q. 14 Give two definitions of Satire.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 15 Define Farce.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Possible Answers: -
A.1 Initially the play was titled, Mistakes of a Night , as the title shows that all

events of the play happen on one single long night.
A. 2 In the year 1778, John O’ Keefe, penned down its sequel titled, Tony Lumpkin
in Town.
A. 3 After knowing that Marlow prefers lower-class women, Mr. Hardcastle plans
Kate to pretend to be a common woman in order to conquer the heart of
Marlow.
A. 4 Marlowe falls for Kate and with another gentleman, George Hastings, an
admirer of Miss Constance Neville, (who too is putting up with the
Hardcastles) seeks to their home .
A. 5 During the journey, both men get lost and have a stopover at an alehouse ( The
Three Jolly Pigeons).
A. 6 Tony Lumplin, Kate’s step brother and Constance’s cousin accosts Marlowe
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and plays a practical joke by telling them that they are a long way from their
destination and would have to put up in the inn overnight.
A.7 The supposed “inn” Tony Lumplin directs them is actually the house of the
Hardcastles.
A.8 Kate learns of her suitor’s shyness from Constance and a servant tells her
about Tony’s trick.
A. 9 She decides to masquerade as a serving-maid by altering her accent and attire

in order to know him.
A.10 The sub-plot is about a clandestine romance between Constance and

Hastings.
A.11 The comedy of manners is a type of comedy that satirizes the manners and
affectations of the contemporary society and questions the societal
standards.
A.12 Sentimental comedy was an 18th century dramatic genre that arose as a reaction
against the immoral tone of the English Restoration plays.These plays aimed
to bring out tears rather than laughter
A.13 Romantic comedy as “a general term for comedies that deal mainly with the
follies and misunderstandings of young lovers, in a light hearted and happily
concluded manner which usually avoids serious satire”.
A. 14 A satire is : 1) a literary work holding up human vices and follies to

ridicule or scorn. or 2) sharp wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and
discredit vice or folly.
A.15 A farce is defined as an event or series of events made ridiculous by the

number of errors that were made throughout the play.
A.16 A narrative technique interchangeably used with the terms literary

technique, literary device, or fictional device, is one of the several specific
methods or strategies the author of a text uses to convey what is desired.
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4.8.1 MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
Q.1 In which year She Stoops to Conquer performed in London?
(a) 1771
(b) 1773
(c) 1774
(d) 1776
Q. 2 Initially what was the play She Stoops to Conquer titled?
(a) Mistakes by the Nights
(b) Mistakes created in Night
(c) Errors of a Night
(d) Mistakes of a Night
Q. 3 In the year——, John O’ Keefe, penned down its sequel titled, Tony Lumpkin
in Town.
(a) 1779
(b) 1776
(c) 1774
(d) 1778
Q.4 Name the alehouse in the play She Stoops to Conquer. ( The Three Jolly
Pigeons
(a) The Three holy Pigeons
(b) The Three Jolly Pigeons
(c) The free Jolly Pigeons
(d) The great Jolly Pigeons

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Q.5 To which genre William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, belongs?
(a) Tragi-comedy
(b) Pure comedy
(c) Romantic comedy
(d) Comedy of Manners
Q. 6 Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It.
(a) Tragi-comedy
(b) Pure comedy
(c) Romantic comedy
(d) Comedy of Manners
Q. 7 The classical unities also known as Aristotelian unities or the three unities are
broad rules of a drama mentioned in Aristotle’s —————.
(a) Poetics
(b) Poetry
(c) Unities
(d) Uni-poetics
Q. 8 Oliver Goldsmith’s life span is from:-
(a) (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1778)
(b) (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1776)
(c) (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774)
(d) (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1770)
Q. 9 She Stoops to Conquer was first performed in the year ——
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(a) 1770
(b) 1771
(c) 1772
(d) 1773
Q.10 He settled in London in the year ——
(a) 1772
(b) 1758
(c) 1763
(d) 1756
Q.11 Goldsmith died suddenly on——————- 1774
(a) April 4
(b) April 5
(c) April 6
(d) April 7
Q. 12 The Haunch of Venison was published posthumously in————.
(a) 1772
(b) 1776
(c) 1763
(d) 1756
Q. 13 Oliver Goldsmith’s painstaking works earned him the company of Samuel

Johnson, with whom he founded ————
(a) The Cub
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(b) The Buds
(c) The Company
(d) The Club
Q.14 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke and ———————too were associated
with “The Club”
(a) James Boxwell
(b) James Bawley
(c) James Boswell
(d) James Blacksburg
Q. 15 Literature of Augustan age is Augustan literature, also referred as ————

——————
(a) Edwardian literature
(b) Georgian literature
(c) Victorian literature
(d) New literature
Q.16 Augustan/ Georgian literature was produced during the reigns of ————,
King George I and George II.
(a) Queen Emma
(b) Queen Victoria
(c) Queen Annette
(d) Queen Anne
Q.17 The Augustan era’s drama ended definitively in 1737, with the —————
Act.
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(a) Patrolling
(b) Licensing
(c) Logo
(d) Finish
Answers
A. 1) (b) 1773
A. 2) (d) Mistakes of a Night
A. 3) (d) 1778
A. 4) (b) The Three Jolly Pigeons
A. 5) (d) Comedy of Manners
A. 6) (c) Romantic comedy
A. 7) (a) Poetics
A. 8) (c )10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774
A. 9) (d) 1773
A. 10) (d) 1756
A. 11) (a) April 4
A. 12) (b) 1776
A. 13) (d) The Club
A. 14) (c) James Boswell
A. 15) (b) Georgian literature
A-16) (d) Queen Anne
A-17) (b) Licensing
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Q. 1 Explain the meaning and significance of the title She Stoops to Conquer.
Q. 2 Discuss Various genres to which She Stoops to Conquer belongs.
Q.3 Explain how She Stoops to Conquer is a Comedy of Manners.
Q.4 Write brief notes on :-
· Sentimental comedy
· Romantic comedy
· Satire
· Farce or comedy of errors
Q.5 What do you understand by Dramatic Technique ? Which Dramatic Technique

is used by Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer.
Q. 6 Write a brief note on the life and works of Oliver Goldsmith.
Q. 7 Elaborate on Augustan age.
Q.8 Explain how much of Goldsmith’s comedy relies on his ability to set-up a joke.
1. Freeman, William, Oliver Goldsmith, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977 c1952.
2. Gamble, William, Two Irish poets: Goldsmith and Moore, Philadelphia: R.

West, 1977.
3. Ginger, John, The notable man: the life and times of Oliver Goldsmith, London:
Hamilton, 1977.
4. Goldsmith: interviews and recollections, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire:

Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
5. MacLennan, Munro, The secret of Oliver Goldsmith, New York: Vantage

Press, 1975.
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6. Sells, A. Lytton (Arthur Lytton), Oliver Goldsmith: his life and works, New
York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974.
7. Wibberley, Leonard, The good-natured man: a portrait of Oliver Goldsmith, New

York: Morrow, 1979.
********
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SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER - DETAILED SUMMARY
STRUCTURE
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Objectives
5.3 She Stoops to Conquer : Summary
5.3.1 Act I
5.3.2 Act II
5.3.3 Act III
5.3.4 Act IV
5.3.5 Act V
5.4 Important Dialogues / Quotes
5.5 Epilogues
5.7 Glossary
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5.1 INTRODUCTION : THE DECLINE OF THE THEATRE
She Stoops to Conquer is an 18th century play which is still relevant from
performance point of view to theatres, as it moves at a fast pace and the audience is
captivated throughout the play. She Stoops to Conquer opens with a prologue in
which an actor mourns the death of the classical low comedy at the altar of sentimental,
“mawkish” comedy. He anticipates that Dr. Goldsmith can remedy this problem
through the play about to be presented. She Stoops to Conquer was written during a
time when England was undergoing fast social and economic changes, launched by
the Industrial Revolution. Cities grew in importance. The population and power of
the middle classes multiplied manifold. If one were a factory owner, merchant or
banker, they prospered, but those who inhabited the countryside felt that their
traditional way of life was under threat. The play pictured the changing pulse of the
society of the time. It is a well written play in the sense that it delivers a complicated
plot with recognizable characters. The complicated characters are presented in the
guise of stock characters, thus the play is interesting and it subverts the expectations
of the audience.
5.2 OBJECTIVES
1. To introduce the learner with the detailed summary of the play She Stoops to
Conquer .
2. To acquaint the learner with brief overview of the two epilogues of the play
She Stoops to Conquer .
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3. To introduce the learner with some important dialogues of the play.
4. To introduce the learner with difficult terms and vocabulary words for easy
understanding.
evaluation.
5.3 SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER : SUMMARY
5.3.1 ACT I
Act I is the foundation stone of the entire play. Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle live
in an old house that looks like an inn, and they are anticipating the arrival of Marlow,
son of Mr. Hardcastle’s old friend and a potential suitor to his daughter Kate. Kate is
quite close to her father, so much so that she dresses plainly in the evenings (to suit
his conservative tastes) and gaudily in the mornings for her friends. Meanwhile, Mrs.
Hardcastle’s niece Constance is in the old woman’s care, and has her small inheritance
(consisting of some valuable jewels) held until she is married, hopefully to Mrs.
Hardcastle’s spoiled son from an earlier marriage, Tony Lumpkin. The problem is
that neither Tony nor Constance love one another, and in fact Constance has a beloved,
who will be travelling to the house that night with Marlow. Tony’s problem is also
that he is a drunk and a lover of low living, which he exhibits when the play shifts to
a pub nearby. When Marlow and Hastings (Constance’s beloved) arrive at the pub,
lost on the way to Hardcastle’s, Tony plays a practical joke by telling the two men
that there is no room at the pub and that they can find lodging at the old inn down the
road (which is of course Hardcastle’s home).
5.3.2 ACT II
Act II builds the complication. When Marlow and Hastings arrive, they are
disrespectful and rude to Hardcastle, whom they think is a landlord and not a host
(due to Tony’s trick). Hardcastle expects Marlow to be a polite young man, and is
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shocked at his behavior. Constance finds Hastings, and reveals to him that Tony must
have played a trick. However, they decide to keep the truth from Marlow, because
they think revealing it will upset him and spoil the trip. They decide they will try to
get back her jewels and elope together. Marlow has a strange tendency to exaggerate
timidity to “modest” women, while speaking in lively and hearty tones to women of
low-class. When he has his first meeting with Kate, she is well dressed, and hence
drives him into a debilitating stupor because of his inability to speak to modest
women. She is nevertheless attracted to him, and decides to try and draw out his true
character. Tony and Hastings decide together that Tony will steal the jewels for
Hastings and Constance, so that he can be rid of his mother’s pressure to marry
Constance, whom he doesn’t love.
5.3.3 ACT III
Act III shows the way in which Hardcastle and Kate are confused with the
disposition of Marlow they had seen . Hardcastle is shocked at Marlowe’s
impertinence and Kate was disappointed to have seen only modesty in Marlowe.
Kate asks her father for a chance to show him that Marlow is more than what they
both had seen in him. Tony stole the jewels, but Constance doesn’t know and
continues to beg her aunt for them. Tony convinces Mrs. Hardcastle to pretend they
were stolen to dissuade Constance, a plea she willingly accepts until she realizes
they have actually been stolen. Kate dresses up in plain dress and was mistaken by
Marlow (who never looked her in the face in their earlier meeting) as a barmaid.
Marlowe is attracted to her. She decides to play the part, and they have a lively,
and interesting conversation which ends with him trying to embrace her, a move
Mr. Hardcastle observes. Kate asks for the night to prove that he can be both
respectful and lively.
5.3.4 ACT IV
Act IV finds the plots almost falling apart. News has spread that Sir Charles
Marlow, (Hardcastle’s friend, and father of young Marlow) is on the way, which
will reveal Hastings’s identity as beloved of Constance and also force the question
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of whether Kate and Marlow are to be married. Hastings has sent the jewels in a
casket to Marlow for safekeeping but Marlow, was confused and he gives them to
Mrs. Hardcastle (whom he still believes is the landlady of the inn). When Hastings
discovers it, he realizes his plan to elope with wealth is over, and decides he must
convince Constance to elope immediately. Meanwhile, Marlow’s impertinence
towards Hardcastle (whom he believes is the landlord) reaches its apogee, and
Hardcastle throws him out of the house, during this altercation Marlow begins to
realize what is actually happening. He finds Kate, who now pretends to be a poor
relation to the Hardcastles, which would make her a proper match as far as class but
not a good marriage as far as wealth. Marlow starts loving her, but unable to pursue
it because it would be unacceptable to his father as she is bereft of wealth, so he
leaves her. Meanwhile, a letter from Hastings is received that Mrs. Hardcastle
intercepts, and she reads that he waits for Constance in the garden, ready to elope.
Angrily she insists that she will send Constance far away, and makes plans for it.
Marlow, Hastings and Tony confront one another, and the anger over all this deceit
leads to a severe argument, resolved temporarily when Tony promises to solve the
problem for Hastings.
5.3.5 ACT V
Act V enacts the truth coming to sight, and everyone is happy. Sir Charles has
arrived, and he and Hastings laugh together over the confusion young Marlow was
in. Marlow arrives to apologize, and in the discussion over Kate, claims he barely
talked to Kate. Hardcastle accuses him of lying, since Hardcastle saw him embrace
Kate (but Marlow does not know that it was Kate). Kate arrives after Marlow leaves
the room and convinces the older men she will reveal the full truth if they watch an
interview between the two from a hidden vantage behind a screen. Meanwhile,
Hastings waits in the garden, according to Tony’s instructions. Tony arrives to tell
him that he drove his mother and Constance all over in circles, so that they think they
are lost far from home but actually they have been left nearby. Mrs. Hardcastle,
distraught, arrives and is convinced she must hide from a highwayman who is
approaching. The “highwayman” proves to be Mr. Hardcastle, who scares her in her
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confusion for a while but ultimately discovers what is happening. Hastings and
Constance, nearby, decide they will not elope but rather appeal to Mr. Hardcastle for
mercy. Back at the house, the interview between Kate (playing the poor relation) and
Marlow reveals his truly good character, and after some discussion, everyone agrees
to the match. Hastings and Constance seek permission to marry and, since Tony is
actually of age and therefore can of his own volition decide not to marry. To Constance,
the permission is granted. All are happy (except for miserly Mrs. Hardcastle), and
the “mistakes of a night” have been corrected.
5.4 IMPORTANT DIALOGUES/QUOTES
• “Let school-masters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and
learning; Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.”
-Tony Lumpkin’s
Song, Act I
• “There be two gentlemen in a post-chaise at the door. They have lost their
way upo’ the forest; and they are talking something about Mr. Hardcastle.”
- Landlord, Act I
• “So I find this fellow’s civilities begin to grow troublesome. But who can be
angry at those assiduities which are meant to please him!”
- Hastings, about Hardcastle

Act II
• “Pardon me madam. I was always willing to be amused. The folly of

most people is rather an object of mirth than uneasiness.”
- Marlow, to Kate
Act II
• “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs. I procured them by the rule of
thumb. If I had not a key to every drawer in mother’s bureau, how could I go
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to the alehouse so often as I do? An honest man may rob himself of his own at
any time.” - Tony, to Hastings
Act III
• “It’s very odd, I can read the outside of my letters, where my own name
is, well enough. But when I come to open it, it’s all – buzz. That’s hard,
very hard; for the inside of the letter is always the cream of the
correspondence.” - Tony, about the letter that’s arrived from Hastings
Act IV
• “Ha, ha, ha, I understand; you took them in a round, while they supposed
themselves going forward. And so you have at last brought them home again.”
- Hasting, to Tony
Act V
• “Prudence once more comes to my relief, and I will obey its dictates. In the
moment of passion, fortune may be despised, but it ever produces a lasting
repentance. I’m resolved to apply to Mr. Hardcastle’s compassion and justice
for redress.” - Constance, to Hastings
5.5 EPILOGUES
An epilogue is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature, usually
used to bring closure to the work. There are two epilogues generally printed to the
play, one of which sketches in metaphor Goldsmith’s attempt to bring comedy back to
its traditional roots, and the other of which suggests Tony Lumpkin has adventures
yet to be realized.
There are two epilogues commonly published with the play. The first is
intended to be spoken by Kate. In the first epilogue, the character begins by
summarizing that she has “stooped to conquer with success” and that the author has
thereby conquered his audience. She proposes that “our life is all a play” and then
traces the five act life of a pretty country barmaid. In her first act, she is simple,
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afraid and eager to please. In her second act, she is loud and authoritative. She next
moves to town where she impresses everyone with her character and charm. Her
fourth act has her wedding to a man of high reputation, and affectations towards
snobbish taste, she ends up losing her edge. Goldsmith (as author) is responsible for
her fifth act, in which she might again become judge.
The second, intended to be spoken by Tony Lumpskin, was not written in

time for the original production. The second epilogue is attributed to J. Cradock, an
actor and dramatist of the time. It is meant to be spoken in Tony Lumpkin’s voice.
Tony notes that, now that the play is done, the audience must want to know what
happened to him. He tells how he will “in the great world appear,” bringing his
lively spirit to London where he will show the world what good taste is.
5.6 SUMMARY/CONCLUSION/LET US SUM UP
She Stoops to Conquer opens with a prologue in which an actor mourns the
death of the classical low comedy at the altar of sentimental, “mawkish” comedy. He
anticipates that Dr. Goldsmith can remedy this problem through the play about to be
presented. Act I is the foundation stone of the entire play. Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle
live in an old house that looks like an inn, and they are anticipating the arrival
of Marlow, son of Mr. Hardcastle’s old friend and a potential suitor to his daughter
Kate. Mrs. Hardcastle’s niece Constance is in the old woman’s care, and has her
small inheritance (consisting of some valuable jewels) held until she is married,
hopefully to Mrs. Hardcastle’s spoiled son from an earlier marriage, Tony Lumpkin.
The problem is that neither Tony nor Constance love one another, and in fact Constance
has a beloved, who will be travelling to the house that night with Marlow. When
Marlow and Hastings (Constance’s beloved) arrive at the pub, lost on the way to
Hardcastle’s, Tony plays a practical joke by telling the two men that there is no room
at the pub and that they can find lodging at the old inn down the road (which is of
course Hardcastle’s home). Act II builds the complication. When Marlow and Hastings
arrive, they are disrespectful and rude to Hardcastle, whom they think is a landlord
and not a host (due to Tony’s trick). Constance and her lover, Hastings decide they
will try to get back her jewels and elope together.
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Marlow has a strange tendency, is well dressed, and hence drives him
into a debilitating stupor because of his inability to speak to the modest women.
She is nevertheless attracted to him, and decides to try and draw out his true
character. Kate dresses up in plain dress and was mistaken by Marlow (who
never looked her in the face in their earlier meeting) as a barmaid. Marlowe is
attracted to her. Act IV finds the plots almost falling apart. News has spread that
Sir Charles Marlow, (Hardcastle’s friend, and father of young Marlow) is on
the way, which will reveal Hastings’s identity as beloved of Constance and also
force the question of whether Kate and Marlow are to be married. Act V enacts
the truth coming to sight, and everyone is happy. Sir Charles has arrived, and he
and Hastings laugh together over the confusion young Marlow was in. Back at the
house, the interview between Kate (playing the poor relation) and Marlow reveals
his truly good character, and after some discussion, everyone agrees to the match.
Hastings and Constance seek permission to marry. To Constance, the permission
is granted. All are happy There are two epilogues commonly published with the
play. The first is intended to be spoken by Kate. The second, intended to be
spoken by Tony Lumpskin, was not written in time for the original production.
5.7 GLOSSARY
Theatre : a building, part of a building, or outdoor area for housing dramatic

presentations, stage entertainments, or motion-pictures
Prologue : a part at the beginning of a play, story, or a long poem that introduces it.
Mawkish : exaggeratedly or childishly emotional Industrial Revolution:

the totality of the changes in economic and social organization that began about
1760 in England and later in other countries. Characterized chiefly by the concentration
of industry in large establishments.
Stock characters : a stereotypical fictional character in a work of art such

as a novel, play, or film, whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences
in a particular literary tradition. Stock characters are archetypal characters
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distinguished by their flatness. As a result, they tend to be easy targets
for parody and to be criticized as clichés.
Subverts : to overturn or overthrow from the foundation.
Potential : someone’s potential is an ability the person has not yet developed.
Conservative : traditional
Gaudily : cheaply showy in a tasteless way; flashy.
Inheritance : possessions received from someone after the person has died.
Beloved : a beloved is a much adored, treasured, loved one used to define the one
whom you affectionately love unconditionally.
Pub : an establishment where alcoholic beverages are sold and consumed.
Practical joke : a prank intended to trick or embarrass someone or cause physical

discomfort
inn : a commercial establishment that provides lodging, food, etc., for the public,
especially travellers small hotel
trick : an action that is intended to deceive, either as a way of cheating someone, or

as a joke or form of entertainment
timidity : lacking in self-assurance, courage, or bravery; easily alarmed; timorous;

shy.
Modest : having or showing a moderate or humble estimate of one’s merits,

importance, etc.; free from vanity, egotism, boastfulness, or great pretensions.
Debilitating : to make weak or feeble; enfeeble
Stupor : a condition of greatly dulled or completely suspended sense or sensibility
Disposition : prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination
Impertinence : rude and not showing respect, especially towards someone older or
in a higher position than you
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Plea : an appeal or entreaty
Barmaid : a woman who bartends; bartender.
Casket : a small chest or box, as for jewels.
Safekeeping : the act or process of preserving in safety
Intercepts : to stop and catch something or someone before that thing or person is
able to reach a particular place
Vantage : a position giving a strategic advantage, commanding perspective, or

comprehensive view.
Distraught : extremely worried, nervous, or upset
Dramatist : a writer of dramas or dramatic poetry; playwright
Q. 1 Discuss the social times during which She Stoops to Conquer was written.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 2 Where do Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle live? What are they anticipating?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 3 Is Kate close to her father? How does it affect her dressing sense?
_____________________________________________________________
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_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 4. Who plays a practical joke on Marlow and Hastings ? When is this joke
played?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 5 Narrate the joke played by Tony.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 6 Why Marlow and Hastings are disrespectful and rude to Hardcastle on their
arrival?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 7 Why is Hardcastle shocked at Marlow’s behavior.
_____________________________________________________________
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_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 8 What leads to a debilitating stupor in Marlow?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 9 Who steals the jewels from Mrs. Hardcastle? What does Constance do for the
jewels?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 10 What does Hastings do with the casket of jewels? What does Marlow’s
confusion lead to?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 11 How many epilogues are there in the play. For whom is the first epilogue
intended to be spoken?
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_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 12 For whom is the second epilogue intended to be spoken?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 13 To whom is the second epilogue attributed to?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Possible Answers:
A-1) She Stoops to Conquer was written during a time when England was
undergoing fast social and economic changes, launched by the Industrial
Revolution.
A-2) Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle live in an old house that looks like an inn, and they
are anticipating the arrival of Marlow, son of Mr. Hardcastle ‘s old friend
and a potential suitor to his daughter Kate.
A-3) Kate is quite close to her father, so much so that she dresses plainly in the
evenings (to suit his conservative tastes) and gaudily in the mornings for her
friends.
A-4) When Marlow and Hastings (Constance’s beloved) arrive at the pub, lost on
the way to Hardcastle’s, Tony plays a practical joke on them.
110
A-5) Tony tells the two men that there is no room at the pub and that they can find
lodging at the old inn down the road (which is of course Hardcastle’s home).
A-6) When Marlow and Hastings arrive, they are disrespectful and rude to Hardcastle,
whom they think is a landlord and not a host (due to Tony’s trick).
A-7) Hardcastle expects Marlow to be a polite young man, and is shocked at his
behavior.
A-8) When Marlow has his first meeting with Kate, she is well dressed, and hence
drives him into a debilitating stupor because of his inability to speak to the modest
women.
A-9) Tony stole the jewels, but Constance doesn’t know and continues to beg her
aunt for them. Tony convinces Mrs. Hardcastle
A-10) Hastings has sent the jewels in a casket to Marlow for safekeeping but Marlow,
was confused and he gives them to Mrs. Hardcastle (whom he still believes is
the landlady of the inn).
A-11) There are two epilogues generally printed to the play. The first is intended to
be spoken by Kate.
A-12) The second, intended to be spoken by Tony Lumpskin.
A-13) The second epilogue is attributed to J. Cradock, an actor and dramatist of the time.
Q.1 She Stoops to Conquer is a 18th century play
(a) 16th
(b) 17th
(c) 18th
(d) 19th
Q. 2 She Stoops to Conquer opens with a ————in which an actor mourns

111
the death of the classical low comedy at the altar of sentimental, “mawkish”
comedy.
(a) prologue
(b) epilogue
(c ) introduction
(d) invocation
Q. 3 She Stoops to Conquer is a well written play in the sense that it delivers a
complicated plot with recognizable characters. The complicated characters
are presented in the guise of ————characters.
(a) protagonist
(b) antagonist
(c) small
(d) stock
Q. 4) Kate is quite close to her ——————.
(a) mother
(b) father
(c ) sister
(d) brother
Q. 5 Kate’s father is —————— tastes
(a) modern
(b) conservative
(c) Victorian
(d) contemporary
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Q. 6 ———— is Mrs. Hardcastle’s spoiled son from an earlier marriage.
(a) Tony Lumpkin.
(b) Marlowe
(c ) Mr. Hastings
(d) Constance
Q. 7 Constance finds Hastings, and reveals to him that ————— must have
played a trick.
(a) Marlowe
(b) Hastings
(c ) Constance
(d) Tony
Q.8 Tony and Hastings decide together that —————will steal the jewels for
Hastings and Constance.
(a) Marlowe
(b) Hastings
(c ) Tony
(d) Constance
Q. 9 Tony stole the jewels, but —————— didn’t know and continued to beg
her aunt for them.
(a) Tony Lumpkin.
(b) Marlowe
(c ) Hastings
(d) Constance
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Q.10 Kate dresses up in plain dress and was mistaken by Marlow (who never
looked her in the face in their earlier meeting) as a —————————.
(a) barmaid
(b) dancer
(c ) singer
(d) entertainer
Q. 11 Tony drove his mother and Constance all over in circles, so that they think
they are lost far from home but actually they have been left nearby.
(a) mother and Marlowe
(b) mother and Hastings
(c ) mother and Constance
(d) mother and Tony
Q. 12 Mrs. Hardcastle, distraught, was convinced she must hide from a ————
who was approaching.
(a) Tony Lumpkin.
(b) highwayman
(c ) policeman
(d) Constance
Q. 13 The “highwayman” proves to be —————————
(a) Tony Lumpkin.
(b) Marlowe
(c ) Hastings
(d) Mr. Hardcastle
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Q. 14) There are ———— epilogues commonly published with the play.
(a) two
(b) Marlowe
(c ) Hastings
(d) Mr. Hardcastle
Q. 15 The first epilogue was intended to be spoken by —————
(a) Tony Lumpkin.
(b) Marlowe
(c ) Kate
(d) Mr. Hardcastle
Q. 16 The second epilogue was intended to be spoken by ————————
(a) Tony Lumpkin.
(b) Marlowe
(c ) Hastings
(d) Constance
Answers
A-1) (c) 18th
A-2) (a) prologue
A-3) (d) stock
A-4) (b) father
A-5) (b) conservative
A-6) (a) Tony Lumpkin.
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A-7) (d) Tony
A-8) (c ) Tony
A-9) (d) Constance
A-10) (a) barmaid
A-11) (c ) mother and Constance
A-12) (b) highwayman
A-13) (d) Mr. Hardcastle
A-14) (a) two
A-15) (c ) Kate
A-16) (a) Tony Lumpkin
Q. 1 Who stoops to conqer? What was conquered?
Q. 2 What is the structure of the play She Stoops to Conquer?
Q.3 What is the main conflict and climax in the play She Stoops to Conqer?
Q.4 Justify the title She Stoops to Conquer and the subtitle Mistakes of the Night.
Q. 5 How does Kate manage to conquer Marlow in the play She Stoops to Conquer?
Q. 6 Why did Oliver Goldsmith use the theme of reality vs. appearance in the play
She Stoops to Conqer?
Q. 6 Describe Marlow’s personality in the play She Stoops to Conquer?
Q. 7 How is the play She Stoops to Conquer a Satire.
Q.8 Why is Tony Lumpkin an important character in the play She Stoops to Conquer?
Q. 9 What is an epilogue? Analyse the two epilogues in the play She Stoops to
Conquer?
116
Q. 10 Which is your favorite Act in the play She Stoops to Conquer? Why?
1. Jain, BB. Goldsmith -She Stoops to Conque. Lakshmi Narain Agarwal

Educational Publisher.
2. Tilak , Raghukul. Goldsmith -She Stoops to Conquer - Rama Brothers Educational

Publisher.
3. Boas, Frederick. An Introduction to 18th Century Drama, New York :1953
4. Krutch, Joseph, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration, New York:
1949.
5. Lynch Box, James , Pit and Gallery : Stage and Society in Johnson’s London,
Berkeley: 1953 6. Pedicord, H.W., The Theatrical Public in the Time of Garrick,
New York :1954.
7. Richards, K. R. (Ed.) , Essays on the 18th Century English Stage, London:

1972.
*******
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SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER - CHARACTER
STRUCTURE
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Objectives
6.3 Important Terms with Explanation (related to character)
6.3.1 Character and Genre Conservations
6.4 How to Analyse Character
6.4.1 Stereotyped Character
6.4.2 Round Character
6.5 Character Porterayals Form the Play She Stoops to Conquer
6.7 Glossary
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6.1 INTRODUCTION
In the play She Stoops to Conquer, characters play a dominant role therefore
deserve close attention. This drama presents us with scenes which are based on its
characters, actions and interactions. Generally, the characters in plays can generally be
divided into major characters and minor characters, depending on how important they
are for the main plot. A good indicator as to whether a character is major or minor is the
amount of time and speech as well as presence on stage he or she is allocated. Usually,
major characters usually have a lot to say and appear frequently throughout the play,
while minor characters have less presence or appear only marginally.
In the previous chapter a lot has been said about the summary of the play,
without discussing about the storyline, we will directly discuss the characters. Chief
characters of the play with a small introduction are as follows:-
Sir Charles Marlow
Father of young Marlow and friend of Hardcastle. A respectable and

aristocratic person from the town who believes his son is of very modest character.
Marlow
A respectable person who comes to Hardcastle’s home to meet Kate

Hardcastle. Having a strange contradictory character, he gets mortified to speak to
any “modest” woman, but is lively and excitable in conversation with barmaids or
other low-class women.
Hardcastle
The patriarch of the Hardcastle family, and owner of the estate where the
play is set. He despises the ways of the town, and is dedicated to the simplicity of
country life and old-fashioned traditions.
Hastings
Friend of Marlow’s, and lover of Constance Neville. A sober person who is

willing to marry Constance even without her money.
119
Tony Lumpkin
Son of Mrs. Hardcastle from an earlier marriage, and known for his free-
wheeling ways of drinking and tomfoolery. Loves to play practical jokes. Proves to
be good-natured and kind despite his superficial disdain for everyone. His mother
wants him to marry Constance but he is set against the idea.
Diggory
Hardcastle’s head servant.
Mrs. Hardcastle
Matriarch of the Hardcastle family, most notable for her pronounced vanity.
She coddles her son Tony, and wants him to marry her niece, Constance Neville.
Kate Hardcastle
Called “Miss Hardcastle” in the play. The heroine of the play, she is able to
balance the “refined simplicity” of country life with the love of life associated with
the town. She pretends to be a barmaid in order to judge her suitor Marlow’s true
character.
Constance Neville
Called “Miss Neville” in the play. Niece of Mrs. Hardcastle, an orphan whose
only inheritance is a set of jewels in the care of her aunt. Her aunt wishes her to
marry Tony Lumpkin, but Constance wants to marry Hastings.
Maid
Kate’s servant. The woman who tells her that Marlow believed Kate to be a
barmaid, which leads Kate towards her plan to stoop and conquer.
Landlord
Landlord of the Three Pigeons, who welcomes Marlow and Hastings, and
helps Tony to play his trick on them.
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Jeremy
Marlow’s drunken servant. His drunken impertinence offends Hardcastle,

which leads Hardcastle to order Marlow to leave.
6.2 OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of this unit are:-
1. To introduce the learner with major and minor characters from the play She
Stoops to Conquer .
2. To acquaint the learner with the terminology of character portrayal.
3. To introduce the learner with Character and Genre conventions.
4. To introduce the learner the nuances of character analysis.
5. Present the learner with character sketches from the play She Stoops to
Conquer .
6. Written assignments for better understanding of the lesson
6.3 IMPORTANT TERMS WITH EXPLANATION (RELATED TO

CHARACTER)
Protagonist or the hero is the main character of a text. It is around him that
the action of the plot moves. If the name of the hero appears in the title, he becomes
an eponymous character. For instance King Lear in the play King Lear is an
eponymous character. Foil is a character who contrasts with another character -
usually the hero— to highlight particular qualities of the other character. In some
cases, a subplot can be used as a foil to the main plot. A foil usually either differs
dramatically or is extremely similar but with a key difference setting them apart.
Not necessary that only major characters play an important role,

occasionally even minor characters or virtually non-existent characters may be
more important but this scenario is rather exceptional. E.M. Forster in Aspects of
the Novel (1927) distinguishes between round and flat characters. A flat character
121
is also called type or two-dimensional. This type of character is presented without
much individualizing detail and therefore can be described in a single phrase or
sentence. A round character is complex and is difficult to describe with any
adequacy as a person in real life, and like real persons is capable of surprising the
reader. Major characters are frequent ly, but no t always, mult i-
dimensional and dynamic (round character) while minor characters often
remain mono-dimensional and static (flat character). A round character grows from
beginning to end of a text and a flat character does not grow. Multi-dimensional
characters display several (even conflicting) character traits and are thus reasonably
complex. They also tend to develop throughout the plot (hence, dynamic), though
this is not necessarily the case. Mono-dimensional characters, on the other hand,
can usually be summarised by a single phrase or statement, i.e., they have only few
character traits and are generally merely types. Frequently, mono-dimensional
characters are also static, i.e., they do not develop or change during the play.
6.3.1 CHARACTER AND GENRE CONVENTIONS
Sometimes the quality of characters can also depend on the subgenre to which
a play belongs because genres traditionally follow certain conventions even as far as
the dramatis personae, i.e., the dramatic personnel, are concerned. According
to Aristotle’s Poetics, characters in tragedies have to be of a high social rank so that
their downfall in the end can be more tragic (the higher they are, the lower they fall),
while comedies typically employ ‘lower’ characters who need not be taken so seriously
and can thus be made fun of. Since tragedies deal with difficult conflicts and subject
matters, tragic heroes are usually complex. According to Aristotle, they are supposed
to be neither too good nor too bad but somewhere ‘in the middle’, which allows them
to have some tragic ‘flaw’ (hamartia) that ultimately causes their downfall. Since tragic
heroes have almost ‘average’ characteristics and inner conflicts, the audience can identify
more easily with them, which is an important prerequisite for what Aristotle calls the
effect of catharsis (literally, a ‘cleansing’ of one’s feelings), i.e., the fact that one can
suffer with the hero, feel pity and fear, and through this strong emotional involvement
clarify one’s own state of mind and potentially become a better human being.
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Comedies, by contrast, deal with problems in a lighter manner and therefore
do not necessarily require complex figures. Furthermore, types are more appropriate
in comedies as their single qualities can be easily exaggerated and thus subverted
into laughable behaviour and actions.
6.4 How to analyse character
Mostly characters are either rounded or stereotyped. Information about

characters can be found by the author in the list of characters, but most of the
information can be found in the dialogue of the character and that of the other characters
.Realistic plays usually have rounded characters whereas absurd, epic and comedies
have stereotyped characters. A rounded character can be analyzed in depth while
with a stereotyped character focus would be on one or two typical characteristics
which would be explored in detail. In order to analyse a character, it is important to
first understand the character by understanding the text.
6.4.1 Stereotyped characters
In case of stereotyped characters , texts usually provide very little information

about them, apart from typical one or two exaggerated characteristics that define the
character. While portraying any of these characters , one has to focus on that one
particular characteristic that defines the character. As there is usually no progression
in these characters and no visible change as compared to rounded characters.
It is important to note that the characters are stereotyped by others and not by
themselves. The evil character, for instance, doesn’t believe he is evil and so on.
Even though the character is stereotyped the character will also have a goal as in the
case with a rounded character. It is important to find the character’s goal within the
play. For instance, the evil character’s goal might be to steal the money or kill his
enemy. It is necessary to approach the character with his or her goal in mind.
6.4.2 ROUND CHARACTERS
During the period of realism in theatre, it was important to create characters

on stage who could be perceived by the audience as a “real” person. In other words
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the audience was supposed to believe they were not watching an actor on stage
pretending to be someone else, but that the actor has really become the character.
The theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski constructed a four level plan

to analyze and understand any rounded character based on the given information in
the text. For rounded characters there will always be information about the character’s
history, personality traits, values, status and relationships with other characters. All
of these have to be explored in detail by the actor to establish a truthful and believable
character on stage. The four different levels of analysis of a rounded character
according to Konstantin Stanislavski are:-
Physical-First Level:
The text will give an indication of the age and physical appearance of the
character. It is not always given in the character list or stage directions of the play,
but mostly in what is said about the character by others or the character’s own words.
If a character has a disability or a specific mannerism, it will also be clearly stated
in the text. It is therefore very important to read the text a couple of times and make
notes of all this information. It is very unlikely that you will pick up all the information
with one reading.
Psychological - Second Level:
Here one has to look at the goals of the character. This is a tedious process as
one would not only have to find the major goal for character in the play, but also a
specific goal for each scene the character is part of. One can either first find the main
goal for the character in the entire play or find specific goals for each scene. Goals
provide specific motivation for what the character is saying and doing.
Social – Third Level:
It is important to know the character’s status in the play. A character’s status

can be low or high or even in between. Status can also change. One should also
explore relationships with other characters carefully. This can stay the same throughout
the play, but many times relationships change and can be different in different scenes.
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It is also important to know if these relationships are real or pretended. The words a
character utters can either be true or false. To determine it, one has to explore the text
to notice if the relationship is based on honesty or not.
Moral –Fourth Level:
This is where the personality, values and beliefs of your character will be
explored . All this is revealed by the text. Notice the nature of the character - good or
bad. Make a list of questions for the character and then find these answers from the
text. The answers can determine the nature of the character.
6.5 CHARACTER PORTRAYALS FORM THE PLAY SHE STOOPS TO

CONQUER
Charles Marlow :
The Protagonist is Marlow, a handsome young man, well-dressed according

to the latest fashion, so much so that he, along with his friend Hastings, is mistaken
for Frenchmen. He is sent by his father to visit Miss. Hardcastle, but the idea of
courtship is very embarrassing to him. Tony has certainly done him good by directing
him to the house of Hardcastle with the impression that he is going to an inn. Marlow
should have been a little self-centred at the house of Hardcastle, which he takes to be
an inn.
He is shy and modest in the company of ladies of rank and status, but he can
be quite bold and forward in the company of ladies of lower strata of society. Kate
had discerned his potential capacity to become a genuine lover. She succeeded in
curing him of his shyness, he has already acquired some self-confidence through his
courtship of her. Marlow is too passive a character to be regarded as the hero of the
play. He is more of a ‘gull’, the object of common laughter, owing to the serious of
blunders he commits. His blustering, bragging and insolence, “are psychological
compensations”, for his tongue-tied shyness and reserve in the presence of ladies of
rank and status whose society he has rarely enjoyed. It is humility that Marlow can be
in love with a woman in spite of economic differences. He is a man of honour .When
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Hastings questions him if he is going to rob the woman of her honour, he stoutly
denies it. If the girl has virtue, he would be the last man in the world to attempt to
corrupt it.
Tony Lumpkins:
Tony is an important character in the play. Without Tony there is no fun and
mirth, the complication of the action and the final resolution. He is fond of tavern-
life and low company. It is but a young man, allowed to run wild, and his mother is
responsible for it. But there are good elements in his character, and they emerge
later in the play. He is a likable character, unlike his mother. His love of mischief
misdirects Marlow and Hastings to the house of Hardcastle as to an inn. And that is
the real starting point of the drama. Tony has a motive too for misdirecting the two
gentlemen: “father-in-law has been calling me whelp an hound this half year. Now
if I pleased, I could be revenged upon the old grumbletonia.” Of course out of fun
he plays this trick. His delight is in mischief making. The revenge motive is just
invented by him. His trick is essential to the action of the play and to giving it a
fully comic turn. Tony now saves the situation, thanks to his good nature. He drives
his mother and Miss Neville in a chaise round and round under the pretext of taking
them to pedigree’s, and lands them by the horse -pond at the bottom of the garden.
The mother is none the happier for the trick played upon her; “Yes, I shall remember
the horse -pond as long as I live: I have caught my death in it”. The circumstances
of his life have driven him to self-repression, and we see very little of the finer
elements of his character. In the last scene we discover the potential goodness of
his character. Tony loves mischief for the fun of it; but he is neither selfish nor
greedy. At heart he is generous and kind. This is clearly seen in the tricks he plays
upon his mother. He does not want to be married off to Constance; he loves Bet
Bouncer, and so he aids Constance and Hastings, taking their part and deceiving
his mother. He is for fair play. He suggests to her that she should pretend that
Constance’s jewels are missing, and he supports her when tells this to Constance.
He develops and grows, as no other character does; we see him more in the ‘round’
than any other character of the play.
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George Hastings:
Friend of Charles Marlow and the admirer of Miss Constance Neville.

Hastings is an educated man who cares deeply about Constance, with the intention of
fleeing to France with her. However the young woman makes it clear that she can’t
leave without her jewels, which are guarded by Mrs. Hardcastle, thus the pair and
Tony collaborate to get hold of the jewels. When Hastings realises the Hardcastle
house isn’t an inn, he decides not to tell Marlow who would thus leave the premises
immediately.
Mr. Hardcastle:
The father of Kate Hardcastle but is mistaken by Marlow and Hastings as an

innkeeper. Hardcastle is a level-headed countryman who loves “everything old” and
hates the town and the “follies” that come with it. He is very much occupied with the
‘old times’ and likes nothing better than to tell his war stories and to drop names,
such as the Duke of Marlborough into conversations. Hardcastle cares for his daughter
Kate, but insists that she dress plainly in his presence. It is he who arranges for
Marlow to come to the country to marry his daughter. Hardcastle is a man of manners
and, despite being highly insulted by Marlow’s treatment of him, manages to keep his
temper with his guest until near the end of the play. Hardcastle also demonstrates a
wealth of forgiveness as he not only forgives Marlow once he has realised Marlow’s
mistake, but also gives him consent to marry his daughter.
Mrs. Hardcastle:
Wife to Mr. Hardcastle and mother to Tony, Mrs. Hardcastle is a corrupt and
eccentric character. She is an over-protective mother to Tony, whom she loves, but
fails to tell him he’s of age so that he is eligible to receive £1,500 a year. Her
behaviour is either over-the-top or far-fetched, providing some of the play’s comedy.
She is also partly selfish, wanting Constance to marry her son to keep the jewels in
the family; she’s blissfully unaware however, that they despise each other, and that
Constance is in fact planning to flee to France with Hastings. Mrs. Hardcastle is a
contrast to her husband, which provides the humour in the play’s opening. She loves
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the town, and is the only character who’s not happy at the end of the play.
Miss Kate Hardcastle:
Daughter to Mr. Hardcastle, and the play’s stooping-to-conquer heroine.

Kate respects her father, dressing plainly in his presence to please him. The formal
and respectful relationship that she shares with her father, contrasts with that between
Tony and Mrs. Hardcastle. Kate enjoys “French frippery” and the attributes of the
town, much as her mother does. She is both calculating and scheming, posing as a
maid and deceiving Marlow, causing him to fall in love with her.
Miss Constance Neville:
Niece of Mrs. Hardcastle, she is the woman whom Hastings intends to court.
Constance despises her cousin Tony, she is heir to a large fortune of jewels, hence
her aunt wants her to remain in the family and marry Tony; she is secretly an admirer
of George Hastings however. Neville schemes with Hastings and Tony to get the
jewels so she can then flee to France with her admirer; this is essentially one of the
sub-plots of She Stoops to Conquer.
Sir Charles Marlow:
A minor character and father of Charles Marlow; he follows his son, a few
hours behind. Unlike his son, he does not meet Tony Lumpkin in the ‘Three Pigeons’
alehouse, and thus is not confused. He is an old friend of Mr. Hardcastle, both of
them once having been in the British military, and is quite pleased with the union of
his son and his friend’s daughter. Sir Charles enjoys the follies of his son, but does
not understand these initially. However, he is quite upset when his son treats Kate as
a maid.
6.6 SUMMARY/ CONCLUSION/ LET US SUM UP
Generally, the characters in plays can generally be divided into major

characters and minor characters, depending on how important they are for the main
plot. A good indicator as to whether a character is major or minor is the amount of
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time and speech as well as presence on stage he or she is allocated. Usually, major
characters have a lot to say and appear frequently throughout the play, while minor
characters have less presence or appear only marginally. Major characters are -Sir
Charles Marlow, Marlow, Hardcastle, Hastings, Tony Lumpkin, Mrs. Hardcastle,
Kate Hardcastle and Constance Neville. Minor characters are- Diggory, Maid,
Landlord and Jeremy.
Protagonist or the hero is the main character of a text. If the name of the
hero appears in the title, he becomes an eponymous character. E.M.Forster in Aspects
of the Novel (1927) distinguishes between round and flat characters. A round
character grows from beginning to end of a text and a flat character does not grow. A
flat character is also called type or two-dimensional. This type of character is
presented without much individualizing detail and therefore can be described in a
single phrase or sentence. A round character is complex and is difficult to describe
with any adequacy as a person in real life, and like real persons is capable of
surprising the reader.
Sometimes the quality of characters can also depend on the subgenre to which
a play belongs because genres traditionally follow certain conventions even as far as
the dramatis personae, i.e., the dramatic personnel, are concerned. According
to Aristotle’s Poetics, characters in tragedies have to be of a high social rank so that
their downfall in the end can be more tragic (the higher they are, the lower they fall),
while comedies typically employ ‘lower’ characters who need not be taken so seriously
and can thus be made fun of. Since tragedies deal with difficult conflicts and subject
matters, tragic heroes are usually complex. Comedies, by contrast, deal with problems
in a lighter manner and therefore do not necessarily require complex figures.
Furthermore, types are more appropriate in comedies as their single qualities can be
easily exaggerated and thus subverted into laughable behaviour and actions.
In case of stereotyped characters ,texts usually provide very little information

about them, apart from typical one or two exaggerated characteristics that define the
character. While portraying any of these characters , one has to focus on that one
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particular characteristic that defines the character. The theatre practitioner Konstantin
Stanislavski constructed a four level plan to analyze and understand any rounded
character based on the given information in the text. For rounded characters there
will always be information about the character’s history, personality traits, values,
status and relationships with other characters.
6.7 GLOSSARY
• Major characters: major characters usually have a lot to say and appear
frequently throughout the play.
• Minor characters: minor characters have less presence or appear only

marginally.
• Modest: having or showing a moderate or humble estimate of one’s merits,

importance, etc.; free from vanity, egotism, boastfulness, or great pretensions.
• Free-wheeling : 1. not limited by rules or accepted ways of doing things: 2.

willing to experiment and take risks by going beyond the usual rules.
• Tomfoolery: silly behaviour, especially done as a joke, foolish, often playful,

behavior.
• Impertinence : rude and not showing respect, especially towards someone
older or in a higher position than you, not showing enough respect; rude.
• Protagonist : the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other

literary work.
• Eponymous : when something is eponymous, it takes its own name as its

title.
• Dynamic : marked by usually continuous and productive activity or change.
• Dramatis personae : the characters or actors in a drama, dramatic personnel
• Hamartia : a character fault or a mistake that causes someone to fail or be

destroyed, some tragic ‘flaw’.
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• Catharsis : Catharsis is getting rid of unhappy memories or strong emotions
such as anger or sadness
• Stereotyped : fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people

believe represent a particular type of person or thing.
• Gull : someone who is easily tricked or cheated
• Man of honour : honorable gentleman, chivalorous
• whelp : the young of the dog, or of the wolf, bear, lion, tiger, seal, etc., a
youth, especially an impudent or despised one.
• Pedigree : an ancestral line; line of descent; lineage; ancestry
• Frippery : finery in dress, especially when showy, gaudy, or the like
• Sub-plots : a secondary or subordinate plot , as in a play, novel, or other

literary work; underplot.
• Alehouse : a tavern where ale or beer is sold; bar; pub
Q.1 What is the indicator to determine whether a character is major or minor?

_____________________________________________________________
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Q. 2 What do you know about Marlow’s strange contradictory character?
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Q. 3 What do you know about tony Lumpkin’s nature?
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Q. 4 Why does Kate Hardcastle pretend to be a barmaid?
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Q. 5 What is the maid’s role in Kate’s plan to stoop and conquer?
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Q. 6 What leads Hardcastle to order Marlow to leave?
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Q. 7 What do you know about a protagonist and an eponymous character?
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Q. 8 What do you know about foil? Elaborate.
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Q. 9 What does E.M.Forster discuss about character in Aspects of the Novel ?
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Q. 10 A flat character is also called type or two-dimensional. (True/False)
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Q. 11 What kind of characters Comedies typically employ ?
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Q. 12 How a round and stereotyped character can be analysed?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Possible Answers:
A-1) A good indicator as to whether a character is major or minor is the amount of

time and speech as well as presence on stage he or she is allocated. Usually,
major characters usually have a lot to say and appear frequently throughout the
play, while minor characters have less presence or appear only marginally.
A-2) Marlow was a respectable person who came to Hardcastle’s home to meet
Kate Hardcastle. Due to a strange contradictory character, he gets mortified to
speak to any “modest” woman, but is lively and excitable in conversation with
barmaids or other low-class women.
A-3) Tony Lumpkin’s was the son of Mrs. Hardcastle from an earlier marriage, and
known for his free-wheeling ways of drinking and tomfoolery. Loves to play
practical jokes. Proves to be good-natured and kind despite his superficial
disdain for everyone. His mother wants him to marry Constance but he is set
against the idea.
A-4) Kate Hardcastle is the heroine of the play, she is able to balance the “refined
simplicity” of country life with the love of life associated with the town. She
pretends to be a barmaid in order to judge her suitor Marlow’s true character.
A-5) The maid tells Kate that Marlow believed Kate to be a barmaid, which leads
Kate towards her plan to stoop and conquer.
A-6) Jeremy’s drunken impertinence offends Hardcastle, which leads Hardcastle to

order Marlow to leave.
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A-7) Protagonist or the hero is the main character of a text. It is around him that the
action of the plot moves. If the name of the hero appears in the title, he becomes
an eponymous character.
A-8) Foil is a character who contrasts with another character - usually the hero—
to highlight particular qualities of the other character. In some cases, a subplot
can be used as a foil to the main plot.
A-9) E.M.Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927) distinguishes between round and
flat characters.
A-10) True, a flat character is also called type or two-dimensional.
A-11) Comedies typically employ ‘lower’ characters who need not be taken so
seriously and can thus be made fun of.
A-12) A rounded character can be analyzed in depth while with a stereotyped character
focus would be on one or two typical characteristics which would be explored
in detail.
Q. 1 Generally, the characters in plays can generally be divided into
(a) good and bad characters
(b) fat and thin characters
(c ) active and lazy characters
(d) major characters and minor characters
Q. 2 Sir Charles Marlow was father of young Marlow and friend of —————
(a) Hardcastle.
(b) Hastings
(c ) Kate Hardcastle
(d) Constance Neville

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Q. 2 Marlow was a respectable person who comes to Hardcastle’s home to
meet —————————
(a) Constance Neville
(b) Mrs. Hardcastle
(d) Hastings
Q. 4 Hardcastle was the —————of the Hardcastle family, and owner of the
estate where the play is set.
(a) caretaker
(b) grandfather
(c ) patriarch
(d) helper
Q. 5 Hardcastle despises the ways of the town, and is dedicated to the simplicity
of country life and ————————————
(a) conventional outlook
(b) old-fashioned traditions
(c ) contemporary style
(d) Victorian traditions
Q. 6 ——————— was a friend of Marlow’s, and lover of Constance Neville.

A sober person who is willing to marry Constance even without her money.
(a) Hardcastle.
(b) Hastings

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Q. 7 Hastings was a sober person who is willing to marry Constance even without
her——————.
(a) Job
(b) Aunt
(c ) Family
(d) money
Q. 8 —————————Loves to play practical jokes
(a) Tony Lumpkin
(b) Hastings
Q. 9 ———————was Hardcastle’s head servant.
(a) Constance Neville
(b) Tony Lumpkin
(c ) Hastings
(d) Diggory
Q. 10 Mrs. Hardcastle coddles her son Tony, and wants him to marry her niece,
Constance Neville.
(a) Diggory
(b) Constance Neville
(c ) Tony Lumpkin
(d) Hastings
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Q. 11 Constance Neville’s aunt wishes her to marry Tony Lumpkin, but Constance
wants to marry——————.
(a) Diggory
(b) Constance Neville
(c ) Tony Lumpkin
(d) Hastings
Q. 12 Kate’s —————— tells her that Marlow believed Kate to be a barmaid.
(a) Maid
(b) mother
(c ) father
(d) lover
Q. 13 Landlord of the Three Pigeons, welcomes Marlow and Hastings, and helps
———————to play his trick on them.
(a) Jeremy
(b) Hardcastle
(c ) Diggory
(d) Tony
Q. 14 Jeremy’s drunken impertinence offends Hardcastle, which leads Hardcastle

to order ——————to leave.
(a) Marlow
(b) Tony
(c ) Diggory
(d) Landlord
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Q-15 If the name of the —————appears in the title, he becomes an eponymous
character.
(a) heroine
(b) villain
(c ) author
(d) hero
Q. 16 —————- is a character who contrasts with another character - usually
the hero
(a) villain
(b) eponymous character
(c ) Foil
(d) heroine
Q. 16 E.M.Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927) distinguishes between ———

—————
(a) good and bad characters
(b) fat and thin characters
(c ) active and lazy characters
(d) round and flat characters.
Q. 17 A round character grows from beginning to —————of a text
(a) middle
(b) quarter
(c ) end
(d) penultimate
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Q. 18 A ————character does not grow.
(a) minor
(b) major
(c ) complex
(d) flat
Q. 19 ———————characters display several (even conflicting) character traits

and are thus reasonably complex.
(a) major
(b) minor
(c ) flat
(d) Multi-dimensional
Q. 20 Mono-dimensional characters, on the other hand, can usually be summarised

by a —————phrase or statement
(a) single
(b) long
(c ) short
(d) complicated
Q. 21 The theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski constructed a ————level

plan to analyze and understand any rounded character based on the given
information in the text.
(a) double
(b) triple
(c ) four
(d) single
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Answers:
A-1) (d) major characters and minor characters
A-2) (a) Hardcastle.
A-3) (c ) Kate Hardcastle
A-4) (c ) patriarch
A-5) (b) old-fashioned traditions
A-6) (b) Hastings
A-7) (d) money
A-8) (a) Tony Lumpkin
A-9) (d) Diggory
A-10) (b) Constance Neville
A-11) (d) Hastings
A-12) (a) Maid
A-13) (d) Tony
A-14) (d) hero
A-15) (c ) Foil
A-16) (d) round and flat characters.
A-17) (c ) end
A-18) (d) flat
A-19) (d) Multi-dimensional
A-20) (a) single
A-21) (c ) four
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Q.1 Differentiate between major and minor character. Give examples from the
play She Stoops to Conquer.
Q. 2 Write short notes on :-
Round and Flat characters
Hero and Foil
Eponymous character
Q. 3 Write a short note on ‘Character and Genre Conventions’.
Q. 4 What are the nuances to analyse a character? Give suitable examples to discuss.
Q. 5 The theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski constructed a four level plan
to analyze and understand any rounded character based on the given information
` in the text. Elaborate.
Q.6 Compare and contrast the characters of Charles Marlow and Tony Lumpkins.
Q. 7 Give a pen picture of Miss Kate Hardcastle.
1. Aristotle, Poetics
2. Abrams, M.H. Glossary of Literary Terms
******
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SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER - MAJOR THEMES
STRUCTURE
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Objectives
7.3 She Stoops to Conquor : Major Themes
7.3.1 Class
7.3.2 Money
7.3.3 Behaviour/Appearance
7.3.4 Moderation
7.3.5 Contradiction
7.3.6 Deceit/Trickery
7.5 Glossary
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7.1 INTRODUCTION
She Stoops to Conquer is a drama in the form of a comedy of manners, which

ridicules the manners (way of life, social customs, etc.) of a certain segment of
society, in this case the upper class. The play is also sometimes termed as a drawing-
room comedy. The play uses farce (including many mix-ups) and satire to poke fun at
the class-consciousness of eighteenth-century Englishmen.
Most of the action takes place in the Hardcastle mansion in the English
countryside, about sixty miles from London. The mansion is an old but comfortable
dwelling that resembles an inn. A brief episode takes place at a nearby tavern, ‘The
Three Pigeons Alehouse’. The time is the eighteenth century. The climax occurs when
Kate reveals her true identity to young Marlow while Hardcastle and Sir Charles
listen behind a screen.
By now the learner knows the detailed story of the text She Stoops to Conquer
, and other related aspects of the play. Instead of discussing the summary or related
aspects lets come directly to this topic i.e. themes. Theme and main idea are important
components of any story. The main difference between theme and main idea is, theme
is a lesson or a moral whereas the main idea tells us what the story is about.
There may be one or many themes in a text but as the name suggests , main idea is the
central idea or the crux of the text.
7.2 OBJECTIVES
1. To introduce the learner with the major themes of the play She Stoops to
Conquer .
2. To acquaint the learner with a detailed overview of the themes of the play
She Stoops to Conquer .
3. To introduce the learner with difficult terms and vocabulary words for easy
understanding.
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evaluation.
7.3 SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER : MAJOR THEMES :
7.3.1 Class :
Theme of class is central to the drama, in the title of the play She Stoops to
Conquer , the word stoop is the key to the play, the heroine decides to stoop in order
to win the heart of the man. She stoops from her class to a lower class. The thought
process and perspectives of characters on one another, is mainly based on what
class they belong to. Class plays an important role in shaping the personality of the
characters. For instance, Tony openly loves low-class people like the drunks in the
inn ‘Three Pigeons’, Marlow prefers to hide his love of low-class women from his
father and “society.” His relationship with Kate (and the way he treats her) is
programmed by who he thinks she is at the time – from high-class Kate to a poor
barmaid to a woman from good family but with no fortune.
Hasting’s and Marlow’s response to Hardcastle is also to a great extend, an

example of the importance of class—they find him impudent and absurd, because
they believe him to be of low class, but his behavior would be perfectly reasonable
if they found out that he belonged to the upper class, as he actually did.
The play also has a series of conflicting philosophies of class issues, such as,
high-bred aristocrats vs. low-bred common folks; city life vs. country life; wealth
vs. poverty, etc. Much of the absurdity that fuels Goldsmith’s comedy comes from
exploiting the way most people engage in contradictions related to class. The best
example is Marlow, and his bizarre contradictory attitudes towards women depending
on their class.
Kate shows best understanding to issues of class. As a country girl who has
spent time in town, she is an example of what Marlow calls “refined simplicity,” and
knowing as much as she does about humanity, is able to also enjoy and be amused by
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the contradictions rather than disgusted by them (as most of the elder characters are).
7.3.2 Money:
Money is one of the themes that keeps the play down to earth. Some characters,
like Marlow and Hardcastle, are mostly unconcerned with questions of money, whereas
there are several characters whose lives are largely defined by a lack of or access of
money. Constance cannot run away with Hastings because she worries about a life
without her inheritance. When Marlow thinks Kate is a poor relation of the Hardcastles,
he cannot get himself to propose because of her lack of dowry. And Tony seems to
live a life unconcerned with wealth, although the implicit truth is that his dalliances
are facilitated by having access to wealth.
Beyond doubt, Tony or Constance, really need money for a strong future.
Even between Constance and Hastings – money becomes an inescapable force, and
in the end they turn to the virtue of asking Hardcastle’s permission not because of
some innate virtue, but because they acknowledge that they will need money.
7.3.3 Behaviour/ Appearance:
Behavior or appearance is one of the elements that Goldsmith uses as a

measurement instrument for his characters. It speaks volumes about them. Even though
it is a fact that one’s behavior – in terms of “low” versus “high” class behavior –
does not necessarily indicate who someone is? Some characters in the play are blinded
to a character’s behavior because of an assumption or preconceived notions in the
mind. For instance, Marlow and Hastings treat Hardcastle rudely because they take
him to be the landlord of an inn, and are confused by his behavior, which seems
forward. The same behavior would have seemed appropriately high-class if they
hadn’t been fooled by Tony. In the play, several characters (especially Marlow)
assume that they understand someone’s behavior but what actually guides them is
their assumption or preconceived notions of the other character’s class.
There is a strong conflict between town and country set up from the beginning
of the play, when Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle argue about the virtues and vices of town
146
and country. The town is associated with elements like: wealth and pretension,
education, style, and in the broadest sense, living life for oneself. The country is
associated with simplicity and a slower, more considered way of life. The characters
who come from town are for sure to be admired, but they are shown to have serious
faults, particularly in terms of their pretensions and cruelty towards Hardcastle when
they think he is a landlord and not their host. Likewise, while the theatre audience at
the time would probably consider the country characters to be overly simple, there is
a great kindness revealed in the way Hardcastle is willing to forgive everyone despite
how he is treated. The best character overall is Kate, who shows a moderation in her
way to find “refined simplicity” by embracing the best of both worlds.
7.3.4 Moderation :
Throughout the play runs a conflict between the refined attitudes of town and
the simple behaviors of the country. The importance of this theme is underscored by
the fact that it is the crux of the opening disagreement between Hardcastle and his
wife. Where country characters like Hardcastle see town manners as pretentious,
town characters like Marlow see country manners as bumpkinish. The best course of
action is of moderation, proposed through Kate, who is praised by Marlow as having
a “refined simplicity.” Having lived in town, she is able to appreciate the values of
both sides of life and can find happiness in appreciating the contradictions that exist
between them.
7.3.5 Contradiction:
Golding’s characters are initially presented as comic types, he spends time

throughout the play complicating them all by showing their contradictions. At the
beginning of the play, it seems as though all the characters fall into traditional comic
patterns. Hardcastle is the old curmudgeon who hates modern life, Mrs. Hardcastle a
vain old lady, the young men are handsome heroes, Kate is the pretty young heroine,
and Tony is the comic drunkard. Very quickly, Goldsmith explores the depth of class,
money and human contradictions by putting those qualities in broader contexts.
Hardcastle turns out to be not entirely incorrect about the impertinence of the
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young (which he discovers because of Tony’s trick), but turns out to be forgiving.
Mrs. Hardcastle is frankly never deepened, and stays who she is throughout. Hastings
remains a valiant young man, but Marlow is obviously full of absurd contradictions
very much connected to the very aristocratic virtue that seems to define him in the
beginning. And Kate, of course, is perhaps the deepest and fullest character of all,
not a simple heroine to be won by the young man.
Most clear are the contradictions within Marlow, who is both refined and
base. The final happy ending comes when the two oldest men – Hardcastle and Sir
Charles – decide to accept the contradictions in their children. In a sense, this theme
helps to understand Goldsmith’s purpose in the play, reminding us that all people are
worthy of being mocked because of their silly, base natures, and no one is above
reproach.
7.3.6 Deceit/Trickery:
Much of this play’s comedy comes from the trickery played by various
characters. The most important deceits come from Tony, including his lie about
Hardcastle’s home and his scheme of driving his mother and Constance around in
circles. However, deceit also touches to the center of the play’s more major themes.
In a sense, the only reason anyone learns anything about their deep assumptions about
class and behavior is because they are duped into seeing characters in different
ways. This truth is most clear with Marlow and his shifting perspective on Kate, but
it also is true for the Hardcastles and Sir Charles, who are able to see the contradictions
in others because of what trickery engenders.
7.4 SUMMARY / CONCLUSION/ LET US SUM IT UP
Major themes of the play She Stoops to Conquer are :
• Class: Theme of class is central to the drama, in the title of the play She
Stoops to Conquer , the word stoop is the key to the play, the heroine decides
to stoop in order to win the heart of the man. She stoops from her class to a
lower class. The thought process and perspectives of characters on one
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another, is mainly based on what class they belong to. Class plays an important
role in shaping the personality of the characters.
• Money: Money is one of the themes that keeps the play down to earth. Some
characters, like Marlow and Hardcastle, are mostly unconcerned with
questions of money, whereas there are several characters whose lives are
largely defined by a lack of or access of money.
• Behaviour/ Appearance: Behavior or appearance is one of the elements

that Goldsmith uses as a measuring instrument for his characters. It speaks
volumes about them. Even though it is a fact that one’s behavior – in terms of
“low” versus “high” class behavior – does not necessarily indicate who
someone is?
• Moderation : Throughout the play runs a conflict between the refined attitudes
of town and the simple behaviors of the country. The best course of action is
that of moderation and is proposed through Kate, who is praised by Marlow
as having a “refined simplicity.”
• Contradiction: Golding’s characters are initially presented as comic types,

he spends time throughout the play complicating them all by showing their
contradictions. Most clear are the contradictions within Marlow, who is both
refined and base. The final happy ending comes when the two oldest men –
Hardcastle and Sir Charles – decide to accept the contradictions in their
children. In a sense, this theme helps to understand Goldsmith’s purpose in
the play, reminding us that all people are worthy of being mocked because of
their silly, base natures, and no one is above reproach.
• Deceit/Trickery: Much of this play’s comedy comes from the trickery played
by various characters. The most important deceits come from Tony, including
his lie about Hardcastle’s home and his scheme of driving his mother and
Constance around in circles. However, deceit also touches to the center of
the play’s more major themes.
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7.5 GLOSSARY
• Theme : an idea that recurs in or pervades a work of art or literature.
• Crux : a vital, basic, decisive, or pivotal point
• Barmaid : a woman who bartends; bartender.
• Fortune : great wealth; ample stock of money, property, and the like.
• impudent : of, relating to, or characterized by impertinence or effrontery
• absurd : utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all

reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false
• bizarre : markedly unusual in appearance, style, or general character and

often involving incongruous or unexpected elements; outrageously or
whimsically strange; odd
• innate : existing in one from birth; inborn; native, inherent in the essential
character of something:
• moderation : the quality of being moderate restraint; avoidance of extremes

or excesses; temperance
• vain : excessively proud of or concerned about one’s own appearance,

qualities, achievements, etc.; conceited
• valiant : boldly courageous; brave; stout-hearted, marked by or showing

bravery or valor; heroic:
• reproach : to find fault with (a person, group, etc.); blame; censure.
Q.1 How is the word ‘stoop’, the key to the play, She Stoops to Conquer ?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
150
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q2 How does class play an important role in shaping the personality of the
characters. Give an example.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 3 Name the series of conflicting philosophies of class issues, in the play, She
Stoops to Conquer.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 4 Why Constance cannot run away with Hastings ?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 5 Why Marlow could not propose Kate ?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________
Q. 6 Which theme Goldsmith uses as a measurement instrument for his characters.

Why?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 7 Why some characters in the play are blinded to a character’s behavior ? Give
example to prove your point.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 8 Discuss the conflict between town and country set up from the beginning of the
play.What are the associations with town and country?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 9 Golding’s characters are initially presented as comic types, how does he

complicates them?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
152
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Q. 10 Much of the play’s comedy comes from the trickery played by various
characters. Give example.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Possible answers:
A-1) The word ‘stoop’, is the key to the play, She Stoops to Conquer as the heroine
decides to stoop in order to win the heart of the man.
A-2) Class plays an important role in shaping the personality of the characters. For
instance, Tony openly loves low-class people like the drunks in the inn ‘Three
Pigeons’, Marlow prefers to hide his love of low-class women from his father
and “society.”
A-3) The play also has a series of conflicting philosophies of class issues, such as,
high-bred aristocrats vs. low-bred common folks; city life vs. country life;
wealth vs. poverty, etc
A-4) Constance cannot run away with Hastings because she worries about a life
without her inheritance.
A-5) When Marlow thinks Kate is a poor relation of the Hardcastles, he cannot get
himself to propose because of her lack of dowry.
A-6) Behavior or appearance is one of the elements that Goldsmith uses as a

measurement instrument for his characters as it speaks volumes about them.
A-7) Some characters in the play are blinded to a character’s behavior because of
153
an assumption or preconceived notions in the mind. For instance, Marlow and
Hastings treat Hardcastle rudely because they take him to be the landlord of
an inn, and are confused by his behavior, which seems forward.
A-8) There is a strong conflict between town and country set up from the beginning of the
play, when Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle argue about the virtues and vices of town and
country. The town is associated with elements like: wealth and pretension,
education, style, and in the broadest sense, living life for oneself. The country is
associated with simplicity and a slower, more considered way of life
A-9) Golding’s characters are initially presented as comic types, he spends time
throughout the play complicating them all by showing their contradictions.
A-10) Much of this play’s comedy comes from the trickery played by various
characters. The most important deceits come from Tony, including his lie
about Hardcastle’s home and his scheme of driving his mother and Constance
around in circles

Q. 1 She Stoops to Conquer is a drama in the form of a————————
(a) comedy
(b) tragic-comedy
(c ) satire
(d) comedy of manners
Q. 2 Comedy of manners ridicules the manners (way of life, social customs, etc.)
of a certain ——————-of society.
(a) segment
(b) class
(c ) religion
(d) ethnicity
154
Q. 3 She Stoops to Conquer is a drama in the form of a comedy of manners,
which ridicules the manners (way of life, social customs, etc.) of a certain
segment of society, in this case the ————
(a) middle class
(b) upper class.
(c ) upper-middle class
(d) lower class
Q. 4 She Stoops to Conquer uses farce (including many mix-ups) and ————
(a) irony
(b) lampoon
(c ) satire
(d) dramatic monologues
Q. 5 She Stoops to Conquer is also sometimes termed as a —————— comedy.
(a) bed-room
(b) kitchen
(c ) lobby
(d) drawing-room
Q. 6 The play ,She Stoops to Conquer pokes fun at the class-consciousness of —

—————Englishmen.
(a) fifteenth-century
(b) sixteenth-century
(c ) seventeenth-century
(d) eighteenth-century
155
Q. 7 In She Stoops to Conquer, most of the action takes place in the Hardcastle
mansion in the ———————— countryside
(a) English
(b) French
(c ) Polish
(d) German
Q. 8 Hardcastle mansion is , about ——————miles from London
(a) thirty
(b) forty
(c ) fifty
(d) sixty
Q. 9 ‘The Three Pigeons Alehouse’ is name of a ————————
(a) tavern
(b) zoo
(c ) ale-house
(d) bakery
Q. 10 The climax occurs when ——————reveals her true identity to young

Marlow.
(a) Constance
(b) Tony’s sister
(c ) Kate
(d) Mrs. Hardcastle
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Q. 11 When Kate reveals her true identity to young Marlow, Hardcastle and Sir
Charles listen behind a——————.
(a) window
(b) screen
(c ) partition
(d) wall
Q. 12 Marlow prefers to hide his love of low-class women from his father and
society.
(a) mother
(b) sister
(c ) friend
(d) father
Q-13) Hasting’s and Marlow’s response to Hardcastle is to a great extend, an example
of the importance of class—they find him impudent and absurd, because they
believe him to be of ———class
(a) low
(b) middle
(c ) ,high
(d) aristocratic
Q. 14 Kate is a country girl who has spent time in town, she is an example of what
Marlow calls———————————
(a) affectation
(b) refined simplicity
(c ) pure refinement
(d) simplicity
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Q. 15) Hardcastle is the old curmudgeon who hates modern life whereas Mrs.
Hardcastle is ————— old lady,
(a) plain
(b) weak
(c ) comic
(d) vain
Q. 16 The final happy ending comes when the two oldest men – Hardcastle and Sir
Charles – decide to accept the ————————in their children.
(a) complications
(b) downfalls
(c ) contradictions
(d) upliftment
Answers:
A-1) (d) comedy of manners
A-2) (a) segment
A-3) (b) upper class
A-4) (c ) satire
A-5) (d) drawing-room
A-6) (d) eighteenth-century
A-7) (a) English
A-8) (d) sixty
A-9) (a) tavern
A-10) (c ) Kate
158
A-11) (b) screen
A-12) (d) father
A-13) (a) low
A-14) (b) refined simplicity
A-15) (d) vain
A-16) (c ) contradictions
Q. 1 Explain the meaning and significance of the title She Stoops to Conquer.
Q. 2 How is Kate an example of moderation? Explain how her personality

stands as the way of life Goldsmith most recommends.
Q. 3 In what ways is Tony Lumpkin a hero in the play? Use historical/social

detail to explain why this heroism is unconventional.
Q. 4 For a comedy, She Stoops to Conquer has a serious vein of commentary of

class. Explain.
Q. 5 How does the device of dramatic irony facilitate the play’s major themes
and comedy?
Q. 6 In what ways are the characters of the play comic archetypes? How does
Goldsmith deepen these stock characters?
Q. 7 Does the play’s ending undercut Goldsmith’s attempt to write a “low” and
not “sentimental” comedy? Explain.
Q. 8 Define what “town” and “country” mean in the context of this play, using
characters as examples.
Q. 9 Explain how much of Goldsmith’s comedy relies on his ability to set-up a

joke.
159
Q. 11 How can one make a Freudian analysis of this play?
1. Jain BB. Goldsmith -She stoops to conquer. Published by Lakshmi Narain Agarwal
2. Tilak, Raghukul. Goldsmith -She stoops to conquer - published by Rama Brothers

3. Goldsmith’s Feminist Drama: She Stoops to Conquer, Silence and Language

“ In Papers on Language & Literature”, Vol. 28, No. 1. From www.ivsl.org.
4. “He Never Gives us Nothing That’s Low”: Goldsmith’s Plays and Reviews”.
In ELH, Vol. 55, No. 3. From www.ivsl.org.
5. The Dullissimo Maccaroni” : Masculinities in She Stoops to Conquer”. In

Academic journal article from Philological Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 1. From
www.ivsl.ong
References:
1. I have extensively read on Google, Wikipedia and e resources available on

google.
*******
160
DRAMA - II UNIT - III
MAN AND SUPERMAN

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856–1950)
STRUCTURE
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Objectives
8.3 Beckett’s Life and Work
8.1 INTRODUCTION
George Bernard is one of the most famous modern writers. The Unit will
introduce the learners with his life and works.
8.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the life and
major works of G.B. Shaw.
8.3 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW : HIS LIFE AND WORKS
G.B. Shaw, famous dramatist and critic, had become an institution in his
lifetime. He was born on July 26, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland, and died at the age
161
of ninety-four on November 2, 1950. Towards the end of his life he said, “I
dread to think of the biographers waiting for me to go.” He wrote no
autobiography but he left a good deal of material for biography and took
a hand in many of the biographies written during his lifetime; it was rather
to maintain and magnify the figure he chose to present to the world than
to reveal the true man. The mask in which he appeared in the public eye
was often that of a mountebank and scoffer, an irresponsible joker and
trifler. In a “Warning from the Author” attached to a special popular
edition of his complete plays published when he was well over, he said :
“I must warn you, before you attempt to enjoy my plays,

to clear out your consciousness most resolutely everything
you have ever read about me in a newspaper. Otherwise
you will not enjoy them: you will read them with a
sophisticated mind, and a store of beliefs concerning me
which have not the slightest foundation either in prosaic
fact or in poetic truth... The person they (journalists)
represent me to be not only does not exist but could not
possibly exist.”
George Bernard Shaw was a native of Dublin. He was the third child
and the only son in a family which he once described as “shabbily genteel.”
His father George Carr Shaw, a second cousin to a baronet, had been a civil
servant and retired on a pension of Sixty Pounds before Bernard, named after
his father and grandfather was born. George Shaw sold his pension and
became a corn merchant, but proved to be as unsuccessful as a man of business
as his own father who was a stockbroker. Shaw remembered especially his
father’s “alcoholic antics” as he was remorseful, yet unregenerated drinker.
From him the son inherited his superb comic gift. Shaw’s mother was Bussie
Gurly, granddaughter of a country squire; she was much younger to her husband.
A gifted singer and music teacher, she led her son to develop a passion for
music, particularly operatic. Both parents were Protestants, and Shaw was
162
baptized in the faith of the Church of England in Ireland. Somewhat later Shaw
said he had three fathers : “my official father, the musician, and my maternal
uncle.” He gives an account of his father and his early years in the preface to
his first novel Immaturity. “The musician “was George Vandaleur Lee, a
teacher of singing, who being much taken by Mrs. Shaw, gave a lot of support
to the family. To this fantastic man Shaw undoubtedly owed a great deal,
including a method of voice production from which he greatly benefited and
used afterwards not only in public speaking but in his work with actors on the
stage.
One of the maxims in The Revolutionist’s Handbook, appended to Man

and Superman reads : “He who can does. He who can’t teaches”. “Shaw, who
was to insist that all art is didactic and viewed himself as a kind of teacher,
had little respect for schoolmasters and formal education. First his uncle, the
reverend George Carroll, tutored him. At the age of ten he became a pupil at
Wesleyan Connexionall School in Dublin and later attended two other schools
for a short period of time. He hated them all and declared that he learned
absolutely nothing. It is so because Shaw possessed certain qualities which are
not always developed in the classroom. In response to a question about his
early education, he replied : “I can remember no time at which a printed page
was not intelligible to me, and can only suppose I was born literate.” He
further added that at the age of ten he had saturated himself in Shakespeare and
the Bible. When he was sixteen, Shaw left school to accept an employment as
a clerk in a Land Agency and he remained there for four and a half years. He
proved to be an efficient and dependable employee but was never satisfied
with such an occupation. In the year 1876, he resigned from his service and
joined his mother who was then teaching music in London. From November
1876 to July 1878 he wrote criticisms and other articles for a weekly paper,
The Hornet, under the name of Lee. For the next three years he gave up
‘working for his living’; he lived with his mother and concentrated largely on
trying to support himself as an author. He was methodical and wrote articles
163
on all kinds of subjects which unfortunately did not get the approval of the
editors of the newspapers and magazines. So, he set himself to be a novelist,
writing in his small hand five pages a day in an exercise book. Between the
years 1879 and 1883, he wrote five novels. By this time even Miss Annie
Besant had got interested in the young Shaw, and serialized his two earlier
novels in her magazine Our Corner. The first novel, Immaturity, remained
unpublished for some fifty years; four later ones finally did make their way into
print. Best known among them is Cashel Byron’s Profession, the story of a
prizefighter. It was apparent that Shaw’s genius was not that of a novelist.
Shaw became a vegetarian at twenty-five, following Shelley’s example, and
was a teetotaler, having before him an awful parental example. The same year
in 1881, he had a mild attack of smallpox and gave up shaving, hence the beard.
The year 1879 had greater significance for Shaw. He joined the Zetetical
Society, a debating club, the members of which held lengthy discussions on
such subjects as economics, science and religion. Shaw found himself to be “a
horridly nervous public speaker”, and deliberately set out to overcome this
drawback by speaking on every possible occasion. Shaw owes much to his
friends who taught him how to articulate words in public speaking; the result
was that he added to what he had learned from Lee and he became one of the
most fluent, cogent and attractive public speakers of his time. In 1882, he heard
Henry George lecture, which made him an enthusiastic land reformer; afterwards
he read Karl Marx, in a French version of Das Kapital at the British Museum.
He says, “From that hour I became a man with some business in the world.”
Indeed, he became a socialist, and his life had reached a turning point. With
his fifth novel, An Unsocial Socialist, completed in 1883, his novel writing
ended, though from time to time he wrote and published a short story.
The year 1884 is also a notable one in the life of Bernard Shaw. After
reading a tract entitled Why are the Many Poor? And learning that it was
published by Fabian Society, he attended the meeting of the Society. He was
accepted as a member on September 5, and was elected in its executive
164
committee in January. Shaw persuaded Sidney Webb to become a Fabian. The
two, along with Mrs. Webb, became the pillars of the society which preached
the gospel of constitutional and evolutionary socialism. Shaw’s views, voiced
in the meeting hall, are expounded at length in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide
to Socialism and Capitalism (1928); many of his ideas find a place in his
dramas, including Man and Superman. His love for Shakespeare brought him
to the New Shakespeare Society and he became very friendly with F.J. Furnivall,
joining the same scholar’s Browning Society. He was already a member of the
Shelley Society.
In the next stage of his career, Shaw emerges as a critic largely through
the help of William Archer, distinguished dramatic critic and now best
remembered as the editor and translator of Ibsen. Shaw became a member of
the reviewing staff of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. Through Archer, who
found for Shaw many journalistic jobs, he became art critic for the weekly
review, the World.
When T.P. Connor, a leading advocate of Irish Home Rule, founded The
Star in order to publicize his political views, Shaw was hired as a political
writer in 1888. As Shaw’s socialistic philosophy was too extreme for O’Connor,
Shaw was shifted to writing regular columns on music under the pseudonym
“Corno di Bassetto.” At the beginning of 1895 he started his three and a half
years’ career as dramatic critic on Frank Harris’s Saturday Review, a post he
held until May 1898 when Harris sold the paper. These were all material
factors in the making of Shaw as dramatist. However, there were other significant
friendships, for instance, of William Morris and W. B. Yeats that added to his
courage and sparking energy. Shaw was a familiar figure at the meetings of
various Societies. His reddish beard became well grown, and whether visiting
or lecturing, he invariably wore the familiar snuff-coloured tweeds made in St.
Pancras. Shaw then and always paid attention to his body, to cleanliness, to
exercise, to food and to his physical health and appearance. He dressed for
maximum bodily advantage and often flouted convention. His vegetarianism
165
had a similar origin.
During this period Shaw reached a turning point in his life. In 1890, the
Fabian Society had wanted a lecture on Ibsen. Shaw had seen twice the London
performance of A Doll’s House the year before. He had been engaged in
rigorous defence of the dramatist. He offered to give a lecture which afterwards
became The Quintessence of Ibsenism, the first book in English about the
Norwegian dramatist. What was more important was that Shaw’s attention was
turned to the drama as a means of expression of the ideas crowding his mind.
As a result his first play, The Widower’s House, which was announced as “An
Original Didactic Realistic Play” appeared. Structurally, it represented no
departure from the tradition of the well-made play. It deals with the evils of
slum-landlordism, a subject hardly calculated to regale the typical Victorian
audience. It was performed by Grein’s society on 9 December 1892, at the
Royalty Theatre in London and it made a sensation because of its ‘daring’
theme, but it never was a theatrical success and Shaw was not discouraged at
all. A year later he wrote The Philanderer, an unpleasant satire, an amusing
but rather slight comedy of manners. Many of his friends, including William
Archer, disliked it and the play was not performed for twelve years.
A few months later he wrote his third play Mrs. Warren’s Profession
on the subject of prostitution due to the “underpayment and ill treatment of
women who try to earn an honest living.” In other words, Shaw focuses on the
economic causes of prostitution and the conflict between the prostitute mother
and her daughter. The play created a tumult and the censor refused to pass it.
It could not be performed till January 1902 and is now often to be seen as the
ban upon it having been raised in 1925. However, Shaw himself grouped it
with his “Unpleasant Plays.”
Shaw, unlike many men, flourished on opposition, and the result of

banning the play was that he immediately completed two more plays, which
were pleasant plays so that the censor should not touch them. The first was
166
written because the “New Drama” had to exist. Shaw wrote Arms and the Man,
one of his most popular plays which is an attack upon the romance of war. In
1894 the play enjoyed a good run at the Avenue Theatre from April 21 to July
7, and has been revived from time to time to this very day. Now the real Shaw
had emerged: the dramatist who united irrepressible gaiety and complete
seriousness of purpose. The play has been described as “a satire on the
prevailing bravura style” and sets forth the “view of romance as the great
heresy to be swept from art and life”- a theme which was to find its place in
Man and Superman.
Shaw’s fifth play, Candida, was started towards the end of the year, that
is in 1894. It is an unquestionably superior play, which was first produced in
1895. Since and then it has been staged often extremely successfully and has
found its place in anthologies. The play is known for effective character portrayal
and use of inversions. The play shows how Candida and the Reverend Morrell,
much appreciated as an advanced thinker, reached an honest and sound basis for
a successful, lasting marriage. Early in January 1895 Shaw became a drama
critic for The Saturday Review edited by Frank Harris, who was wise enough
to give a free rein his articles, and essays written then fill two volumes which
were first published in 1931; they form a valuable record of “Our Theatres in
the Nineties.” Shaw, as a critic as well as dramatist, put into his work an
incredible dramatic energy. He wrote rapidly as he breathed, with intensity,
concentration and imaginative power of a most unusual kind. As C.B. Purdom
says, “His playwriting was his life; his other activities, extensive, as they were
became altogether subsidiary to it.”
While working with the Fabians, Shaw met Charlotte Payne-Towsend,

an Irish heiress, deeply concerned with the problem of social justice. He was
immediately attracted to her. After she had helped him through a long illness,
the two were married in 1898. She became a capable critic and assistant
throughout the years of their marriage. That year, 1898, he published the
volumes, Plays Pleasant and Plays Unpleasant. During this period he completed
167
You Can Never Tell, The Man of Destiny, and The Devil’s Discipline, which
is an inverted Victorian type melodrama, and was first acted in the United
States. It was a success financially and otherwise. The time of this play is
1777, during American War of Independence, and the theme is an incident of
Burgoyne’s invasion. By the end of the century Shaw had written Caesar and
Cleopatra and Admirable Bashville. He was now a major force in the new
drama of the twentieth century. Even William Archer, who believed that
Shaw was no dramatist, acknowledged his supremacy.
Shaw, who used the stage “to convert a misguided people” to borrow
his own words, completed and published Man and Superman in 1903. Some
twenty-three other plays were added to the Shavian canon as the century
advanced toward the halfway mark. Best known among them are : Major
Barbara (1905), Androcles and the Lion (1912), Pygmalion (1912), Heartbreak
House (1916), Back to Methuselah (1921), Saint Joan (1923) and Charles the
Second (1939). Like Shaw’s short plays, his long plays challenge the reader
by their novelty alone. His literary pre-eminence had found world-wide
recognition. He refused to accept either a knighthood or the Order of merit
offered by the crown, but in 1926 did accept the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It was quite typical of him to state that the award was given to him by a grateful
public because he had not published anything in that year. Shaw once wrote
while discussing Macbeth :
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the

harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its
own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort
of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the
moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
before handing it on to future generation.
Indeed, life was a burning torch for him till the end. In 1949, when he
was ninety-two and his highly readable Sixteen Self Sketches was published,
168
he was planning to write still another play when he died in November 2, 1950.
He was sure of his superior talent, “I know of no man, with the exception of
Homer, for whose intelligence, in comparison with my own, I have more
contempt than for Shakespeare.” And Shaw had chosen drama as a ‘tool’ to use
his intelligence to attain a serious objective. He says: “I write plays with the
deliberate purpose to convert the nation to my opinions.”
1. Adams, Elsie Bemita - Bernard Shaw and the Aestactics, Published by

Ohio State University Press.
2. Adelman, Paul - The Rise of the Labona Pauty 1880, Published by

Routledge, Oxford Shine.
3. Buoael, Charlic Leveis and Broad - Violet M., Dictionary to the Plays
and Novels of Bernard Shaw, Published by Haskell House.
4. Larr, Pat, Bernard Shaw - Vingar Publisher.
5. Dumin, Daniel, Bernard Shaw - A Psychological Study, Published by

Bucknell University Press.
References:
1. I have extensively read on Google, Wikipedia and e resources available on

google.
*******
169
MAN AND SUPERMAN

STRUCTURE
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Objectives
9.3 Bernard Shaw as a Dramatist
9.1 INTRODUCTION
This lesson will introduce the learners with salient features of plays written
by Shaw.
9.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with Bernard

Shaw as a dramatist.
9.3 BERNARD SHAW AS A DRAMATIST
If “the life of comedy is in idea’ as Meredith said, Shavian drama,
170
which is written from the point of ‘the idea,’ represents the true comedy. His
comic genius is drama that shows the power to perceive the general predicament
of mankind, or the peculiar predicament of an individual, as absurd and
laughter making. It arises from the vision of the folly, the lack of understanding
or the sheer stupidity in society or in a particular man. Shaw’s aim as a
dramatist is serious and his analysis is deep but this seriousness of purpose
is hidden behind the mask of mirth, which emerges out of the recognition of
imperfections in human nature. Shaw said of himself : “They tell me that so-
and-so is no charlatan. Well, I am. Like all dramatists, I am a natural born
mountebank.” There is so much to this self-portrait as he has taken the responsibility
to cure the ills of the society by not covering up its failures but by arousing
laughter, to heighten their sensibilities and inculcate a sense of life in them.
Shaw’s attack in the comedies may be sharp and stringing, there may be
bruises and shocks, but the aim is transformation. Shaw was a comic genius
in this sense and his plays are in the sphere of comedy. His fame does not rest,
as does Ben Jonson’s, upon less than a dozen plays, or as does Goldsmith’s
upon one, or as Sheridan or Wilde’s upon three or four, but upon more than
fifty plays of which thirty are major works. The range is astonishing though
it may not be the sole criterion of greatness but it does invite respect. Furthermore,
the vitality of his plays is indicated by the fact that even the early imperfect
plays have gained reputation in the course of time.
Shaw was not malicious except in the three Unpleasant plays. His wit was
inherent in the presentation of characters. It sprang out of his sympathetic appreciation
and love for people and insight into their problems. He saw with dazzling clarity,
and took pains to make others see what he saw. Shaw had no animus even against
his bitterest enemies; he was never cruel and mingled with the masses freely
because he was concerned with the state of mankind—a fact which made others
believe that he was a proletarian writer. In truth he was essentially an aristocratic
writer. Thus, he was an enigma to those who would not accept him on his own
terms, which were those of a craftsman who used his skill to change the life of
171
the people around him. Shaw did not start from the conviction of the irremediable
evil of man, but from the belief in equality—that is, goodness—a belief more
profound than any rationalistic notion. Though seemingly impatient with what men
do, he was essentially tolerant because he believed in the ultimate saving virtue
of the specific human quality—the intellect. This saved his comedies from being
bitter. C.B. Purdom has made a very perceptive remark about him:
He could afford to say the worst because he believed in

the best. This causes his work to possess a benevolence
not always recognized, but invariably present, which
makes him as a comedy writer unique, except for
Shakespeare. His comic genius was honest- ‘spiritually
co nscient io us’, in Niet zsche’s sense—liberal,
courageous, and gay.
Shaw’s mind was practical and concrete though not less imaginative. He
had a personal temperament. His predominant characteristic is a fearless intellectual
criticism. He possessed to the highest degree inventiveness, wit, humour. He knew
admirably how to animate ideas, make them alive; how to set them up one against
another, and conduct an intellectual debate. He has thus invested the most serious
thoughts with the exuberant liveliness of form, that is, comedy. Shaw at times
descends to idle laughter knowingly and deliberately to provide relief from the
mental efforts to which he invited his audience. Justifying himself he said,
“Tomfoolery is as classic as tragedy.” Therefore, as Irwin and Cinnes say :
Shaw was an entertainer, but with no loss to his dignity.

He ascended the stage, not booth boards. His manner is
no grimace, but the practice of a mental hygiene. It is
also an efficient practical policy. To charge him with
gratuitous and systematic paradox, or self-advertisement-
as is still often done— is decidedly unjust; his thought
is coherent and serious; he fights not for himself, but for
his ideas.
172
When one comes to focus on his ideas they have their roots in Socialism
that underwent a change-from being dogmatic to leaning to radical solutions.
It gradually drifted away from Marxian orthodoxy though his mind never recanted
the indictment, which it had drawn up against what was to him economic
disorder. With all the strength of his intellectual faith, he made his own principle
and the hope of a rational reorganization of society.
Shaw’s other themes were the relations between men and women,
husbands and wives, parents and children; the problems of conscience, character
and disposition; the problems of individual and society, and the conception of
life as creative energy. Hence, he presents the classic themes of drama, the
clash within the individual mind, the clash between individual character and
between the individual and the customs, manners, religion, and the policies of
the time. His plays can be categorized according to their prominent theme
though the fact is not to be ignored that each play has secondary themes as well
which sometimes are strongly developed :
Conscience : Wi dower ’s Houses, Mrs. Wa rren ’s

Profession, Major Barbara.
Love : The Philanderer, You Can never Tell, The

Doctor’s delimma, Pygmalion, Heartbreak
House, Buoyant Billion.
Marriage : Getting Married.
Parents and Children : Misalliance, Fanny’s First Play.
Romance : Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Discipline,

John Bull’s Other Island.
High Politics : The Apple Cart, Too true to be Good, On

the Rocks, The Millionairess, Geneva, In
Good King Charles’s Golden days.
173
Religion : The Shrewin g-up of Blan co Posnet,
Androcles and the Lion, Saint Joan.
Creative Evolution : Man and Superman, Back to Methuselah,

The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles.
It is the immense variety of the themes and ideas that Shaw explained
himself saying “I am not an ordinary playwright, I am specialist in immoral and
heretical plays.”
Nicholl stated that Shaw brought to English drama “a new incisiveness

of utterance, and given virtually a new dramatic dialogue, but he has also
provided a fresh principle of characterization.” The critics are divided in
two groups so far as his art of characterization is concerned. Some of them
say that characters in Shaw’s plays are versions of himself while others say
that he was an exceptionally conscious man; in his life he was wholly
himself, and the characters he created were equally wholly themselves.
Shaw was deeply interested in people for their own sake and intended
that they should speak for themselves.
In his art of characterization Shaw at first merely used conventional

devices but gradually achieved what Desmond MacCarthy said “the exceptional
variety and vividness of his characters.” He further added that Shaw developed:
...the insight to enter into the minds of people, to

grasp their points of view, to objectify them in the
expression of their personalities, which accounts for
the wide range of his characters.
There are three important sources from which he drew the strength for
the art of his characterizations : ‘Observation’ and ‘meditation’ and the
methods of ‘inversion’ as a result his characters are inseparable from the
themes of his plays. They are not the men and women with all their weakness,
confusion and commonness but the living people who display in the bright
174
hues their masked absurdities. They are meant to awaken the people out of
their lethargy in thought. His central characters, both men and women, deserve
praise but his secondary characters are sufficiently effective to carry on the
interests of the play. It is noteworthy that it is the women who usually take
the initiative in Shavian Drama, not only in love but in everything. They are
the driving force.
Shaw’s plays can be categorized into three important varieties for

the purposes of analysis : Plays of social criticism, for example, Widower’s
House, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, or The Philanderer. Plays of Historical
background like The Man of Destiny, where he presents the satirical
portrait of the young Bonaparte or Caesar and Cleopatra, where he
contrived an impressive and full concept of the character of Caesar and
at the same time of comedy. The variety of the plays is that of Philosophical
plays as in Man and Superman, one of his most brilliant plays, which
remains unclouded by the deeper vision which emerged after the First
World War. The basic notion through which Shaw reveals his philosophy
is as Evans stated, “If man would be but alert and active, the Life Force
would use him in its unsteady and uncertain flight towards progress.”
Though indulging in an atmosphere of rich comedy, Shaw explores these
ideals in Man and Superman.
It appeared that Shaw did not write new plays during the War years
1914-1918. He was back to the stage with his Heartbreak House., a satirical
comedy in which he shows the influence of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to
record his impression of the futility of people and policies in post-war Europe.
In 1921 with Back to Methuselah he produced his most elaborate dramatic
creation in which he goes back to the very beginning of things in order to show
the nature of Life Force and its effect on the destiny of man. Shaw makes a
comment about the play Man and Superman that he intended it to be a dramatic
parable of Creative Evolution, but ‘being then at the height of my invention and
comic talent, I decorated it too brilliantly and lavishly.”
175
The play added an unprecedented status and reputation to Shaw as a
dramatic genius. Not only that, at the end of the century his ‘new drama’ of
ideas has contributed significantly to the dramatic art in many ways by fusing
fantasy and reality, and experimenting in fresh dramatic devices which fulfill
a two-fold function : (i) They make drama more literary in its qualities and
(ii) They add stage directions and other additional matters through the Preface
etc. that without losing the theatrical effectiveness. One of his critics has
rightly said, “Seeing the rivalry of the novel, he dared to step into the
enemy’s camp and take from him some most jealously guarded devices.”
Shaw’s last group of plays like St. Joan, The Apple Cart, Too True to
be True, The Millionairess and Geneva give the impression that his creative
powers were working in a spontaneous unity which makes his dramatic output
have a design to be a complete whole. He acquired a greater command over
the technique and stagecraft. His stage directions confirm that he is a consummate
artist. It may appear that he had chosen a method which was untheatrical
because, instead of expressing the meaning through the words of his characters,
he has fallen back upon an easier and direct method of explaining his purposes.
It makes many of his critics, like. T.H. Dickinson say, that he was not born to
be a dramatist; he chose theatre because it gave him a platform to propagate
his ideas, to preach his sermons. He is called to be a propagandist. This view
would not hold ground because no writer of the century has shown such a vivid
and subtle sense of theatre as Shaw. His plays, which are known to be the
dramas of ideas would survive because of their theatrical qualities. In the
History of English drama Nicholl says,
Shaw’s philosophy may be smiled at a century hence,

and his ‘problems’ may seem then problems no more,
but his drama-at least half a dozen of them-must retain
their appeal because of the way in which he has
made use of effects which are theatrically striking,
and because of the incisive beauty of the dialogue.
176
It shows that he is essentially a playwright, not a philosopher. He has
brought to drama “new incisiveness of utterance’’ and what is virtually a new
dramatic dialogue; he has provided a fresh principle of characterization; he used
new psychological insights which increased the interest in characters as distinct
from plot; he has added a serious purpose to comedy by the impartial presentation
of real life and saved it from being mere sentimentalism. He has made drama
fanciful, which depends on wit and satire. Shaw even changed the themes of
drama by making the “problems of religion, of youth and age, of labour and
capital,’’ as the suitable themes. Precisely, Shaw had a personal temperament and
possessed, to the highest degree, an inventiveness in animating the ideas. He was
a proclaimed enemy of sentimentalism. As Irwin and Cinnes state :
On the whole, however, he usefully renews and

refreshes our notion of life and the world. Even when
he irritates without convincing us, he makes our
attachment to our own opinions better justified. He
has been one of the most active leavening influences
in the moral transformation of contemporary England.
1. Nethercot Authur H.-“Bernard Shaw, Philosopher”, PMLA Publication.
2. Pearson Hesketh, Bernard Shaw - His Life and Personality, Published by

Methuen & Co. Ltd.
3. Ward A.C., Bernard Shaw - Published by Longmans.
4. Mills Caul Henery - Shaw’s Theory of Creative Evolution, Shaw Review,

Vol. XIV, No. 3.
References:
1. I have extensively read on Google, Wikipedia and e resources.
*******
177
COURSE NO : ENG 211 LESSON NO. 10
MAN AND SUPERMAN

STRUCTURE
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Objectives
10.3 Major themes in Shaw’s Man and Superman : Concept of Life Force
10.1 INTRODUCTION
This lesson will introduce the learners to Shaw’s most acclaimed concept of
Life Force.
10.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with various

themes in Man and Superman and Shaw’s concept of Life Force.
10.3 MAJOR THEMES IN SHAW’S MAN AND SUPERMAN : CONCEPT

OF LIFE FORCE, SUPERMAN
As the title of the play indicates, Shaw, who is influenced by a
178
number of thinkers like Plato and Neitzsche, evolved his own philosophical
ideas and the concept of Superman. What sort of being would this Superman
be? is a vital question. Shaw believed that this race of Supermen would be
stronger physically as it would have more bodily organs and long lives; it
would have more evolved brains. Such persons would be “pure though” as
Don Juan tells in the Hell scene of the play : “But to Life, the force behind
the Man, intellect is necessary, because without it he blunders into death.”
Life force is vital and always endeavours to contemplate itself. Condemning
hell as “the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness” Don Juan
rebukes the Devil saying, “But even as you enjoy the contemplation of such
romantic mirages as beauty and pleasure; so would I enjoy the contemplation
of that which interests me above all things: namely Life, the force that ever
strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself.” It was in the Preface
of Man and Superman that G.B. Shaw first definitely enunciated his belief
in the Life Force, which was derived from a variety of sources. This
contemplation is about the purpose. Thus, Shaw believes that Life Force is
“vitality with a purpose.”
Life force is Shaw’s name for creative evolution; he calls his play
“a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution, and adds that “nobody noticed
this new religion in the centre of the intellectual whirlpool.” He was, of
course, right, because the explanation of his new religion is to be found in
the Don Juan in Hell interlude, the third act of the play rarely included in
a production with the other three acts, and in The Revolutionist’s Handbook,
an appendix to the play. Life Force is the sustained will to progress, to rise
on the hierarchical ladder of life. It is a Supreme Spirit that can be called
Shaw’s God. It leads to a vast cosmic upward striving without any clear
understanding of its intention that it can perform what it wished to perform.
Rather it acts on the principles of trial and error, constant slips and advances,
and its purpose is ‘eugenics’ or the evolution of a race of Superman through
selective breeding, that is, the central theme of Man and Superman. In
179
other words, through union of the Mother Woman, endowed with the creative
instinct and concerned not for the individual but for the species, and Vital
man, endowed with the will and the intellect to advance, Superman will
emerge; he, the ideal philosophical human.
In this Creative Evolution the role of man and woman is well defined.
In Man and Superman, Tanner has the role of creator and elevator while Ann–
the mother woman–is preserving and perpetuating force. They exist in the play
in a state of war. It makes her a ruthless pursuer who is determined to marry
Tanner to create children. Hence, Tanner tells Octavius, the romantic poet, who
loves Ann, that “her purpose is neither her happiness, nor yours, but Nature’s.
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation. She sacrifices herself to it...”
He further adds :
It is the sacrificing women that sacrifice others most

recklessly. Because they have a purpose which is not
their own purpose, but that of the whole universe, a
man is nothing to them but an instrument of that
purpose.
If woman has a purpose, the developed man or the artist is also not
less scrupulous in his determination to fulfill a purpose. Thus, the Life Force
strives to seek perfection it does not yet possess. In its realization of intention
it uses men and women. If they are mindless creatures they are either scrapped
or made servile to the needs of the finer creature the Life Force eventually
evolved. Man differs from all the tools the Life Force had previously made,
in the supreme respect that he has at mind, through it he can understand the
purpose of the Force, and can, if he wishes, help or frustrate it. The creation
of a thinking instrument called man established freedom, for freedom is
essentially the right to choose. Man can help or hinder the Life Force, that
is, Shaw’s God. Thus, it is clear that the play is heavily overloaded with
Shavian philosophy, which he uses brilliantly in this comedy.
180
In his play, Man and Superman, Shaw dramatizes his philosophy
discussed in the Preface. Through different characters such as Ann and
Tanner, Devil and Don Juan he tries to establish the superiority of brain or
intellect over physical achievements. This is how man’s supremacy is proved
over his ancestors. Ultimately, the same brain is made an essential condition
for superhuman attainments. The Don Juan of Shaw is a votary of brain
power. The question arises whether man, for all his brain power and his
capacity to enjoy and understand Life, has not done anything ‘in the art of
Life.’ Even the Devil observes wittily that man has misused his mental gift
and spent his remarkable gift of intellect ‘in the art of death.’ According to
Don Juan only a ‘‘philosophic man’’ with his contemplation to discover ‘‘the
inner will of the world’ and look through Life, is the fittest person to
advance the goal of Life. He believes that the Life Force works in man to
save him from the forces of Death and Degeneration and says :
‘Life is a fo rce which has made innumerable

experiments in organizing itself... The mammoth and
the man, the mouse and the magatherium, the flies and
the fleas, and the Father of the Church, are all more
or less successful attempts to build up that raw force
into higher and higher individuals, the ideal individual
being omnipotent, infallible, and withal completely
undeludedly self conscious : in short, a god.’
Here is the full exposition of Shaw’s theory of Life Force and his
concept of the Superman, the Ideal Man of the Future.
Shaw’s concept of the Superman is an embodiment of the essence of his

studies in religion, metaphysics, biology and economics. It is the outcome of
a number of influences – his studies on Plato and Nietzsche, his study of history
and faith in Creative Evolution. Shaw was deeply influenced by the concept
of Plato’s Republic. He believed that sense of Goodness, Truth, Beauty and
Justice exist in an ideal form in some super-sensuous world. The common man,
181
being a slave to passion, lacks control and cannot see them.
Hence, it is possible, by appropriate education, to elevate the soul

of man to a level of insight at which he could achieve the knowledge of
the ideal form existing in the other world. Plato’s ideal community could
only be ruled by the ‘philosophic mind’, which would have a vision to
govern the masses who are impulsive, passionate and irrational. Shaw
stands in perfect agreement with Plato that the common man is frail and
irrational and does not agree with the Greeks that the Superman is the
ideal and philosophic man who can be evolved through education. In Man
and Superman Shaw vigorously denies that man, the ‘philosophic man’,
has evolved at all. His faith is that the selective breeding can produce
such a man. In this sense Tanner is a more attractive male than Octavius,
and Ann possessed by the ‘blind fury of creation’ instinctively realizes
this and so pursues him and compels him to yield to her and be the father
of her children. Dona Anna’s final cry is, ‘‘I believe in the life to come.
A father! A father! For the Superman.’’
Shaw disagrees even with Neitzsche’s belief that Life, or fate or God
will ultimately evolve somebody greater than man and further he asserts that
such a man would come as a result of prayer, working and striving. Much has
been left unexplained by him about the process of evolution and the nature of
the prayer as to would it be the traditional Christian prayer or some other
kind? Shaw believes that Life struggles upwards, not towards having better
physical form but having superior brains. As Don Juan tells in the Hell scene,
the earlier forms perished, despite their beauty and physical strength, because
they lacked brains. ‘‘These things lived and wanted to live; but for lack of
brains they did not know how to carry out their purpose, and so destroyed
themselves.’’
The Shavian superman thus, will be the product of profound intellectual

power, and will dwell permanently in thought. Shaw elaborates in Back to
Methuselah his idea of brain as the most important of the divine gifts to
182
mankind. It is by the virtue of this brain that man has conquered not only
birds and animals but also time and space to a great extent. In short, ‘‘the
transition from man to superman is an advance from ‘object’ to ‘subject’
and individuality’’ to use the expression of Stanley Diamond from his
article ‘‘Man and Superman – Anthropology in Question,’’ which appeared
in Partisan Review, No. 2.
In Man and Superman, Don Juan is re-assessed and Shaw gave him
a new raison d’etre far more satisfying than mere sensuous indulgence.
Refering to Shaw’s presentation of Don Juan in this play, Carl Henry Mills
observes in his article ‘‘Man and Superman and the Don Juan Legend,’’
Comparative Literature, XIX, No. 3 :
Shaw’s Don Juan is not a complete transformation,

nor an anti-Don Juan, nor a hero simply because he
escapes from women. On the contrary, Shaw’s Don
Juan is an extension of the traditional Don Juan.
The sub-title of the play Man and Superman is ‘‘A Comedy and a
Philosophy,’’ This shows that Shaw has tried to put the two, comedy and
philosophy as separate entities. It means that his aim is not merely to entertain
the readers, but to tell them something profound about life. Shaw was a
comedian with a serious purpose. Shaw had serious and striking ideas, which
he considered to be valuable. The substance of the play is serious, but it is
treated with utmost levity. Waggery is Shaw’s instrument. He expressed his
policy in this respect in the following words : ‘‘Spare no labour to find out
the right thing to say; and then say it with the most exasperating levity as if
it were the first thing that would come into any one’s head.’’ Thus, he was right
in calling Man and Superman a ‘Comedy’ and a ‘Philosophy’, for the play is
rich storehouse of Shavian thought on practically every subject between heaven
and earth. Even in the Hell scene, the various subjects are discussed logically
from different angles. Shaw has been impartial enough even to allow the Devil
to have his say and freely express his point of view. Thus, the thought content
183
of the play is varied and serious and in this sense the play marks the beginning
of a new epoch in the history of drama in England; it is a great literary
landmark with which the new Comedy of Purpose is firmly established.
When Shaw combines comedy with philosophy, he will not allow the
serious purpose to suffer because for him philosophy is Reality. In this
connection the observation of A.M. Gibbs is important. He says in his
article ‘‘Comedy and Philosophy in Man and Superman’’ which appeared
in Modern Drama, No XIX. No 3 that
Art although it is seen as contributing to the contemplation

of Reality, as offering a means of extending human
understanding and self-consciousness, is subordinate to
Reality. Sidney’s brazen world becomes here the golden
and the philosopher’s vision if preferred to that of the
artist.
Thus Tanner, the philosopher, reluctant to marry has to marry, despite

all paternal opposition, for Shaw wants him to take up the creative force of
Life in his hands. Octavius, the actual candidate, is brushed aside in the battle
between ‘art’ and ‘reality’ the latter must win. Here Tanner becomes a comic
figure and the play turns out to be a comedy of the highest order. There are
two statements which reveal both the sides of the play, first when Tanner says
: The Life force enchants me. I have the whole world in my arms, when I clasp
you;’’ and second, the last speech where he says ‘‘I solemnly say that I am not
a happy man...’’ He causes the universal laughter and proves that the dramatist’s
serious purpose is to show that the female is dominant and man is not the victor
in the game of sex - a thought which is at the heart of his philosophy of life.
A.C. Ward praises the play, Man and Superman, when he observes :
‘‘Man and Superman was Bernard Shaw’s earliest full

statement of his conception of the way of salvation for the
184
human race, through the obedience to the Life Force, the
term he used to indicate a power continually seeking to
work in the hearts of men and endeavouring to impel them
towards a better and fuller life. In later plays the Life
Force seemed to become more and more closely identified
with what most people mean when they speak of the Will
of God or the Holy Ghost. Though Shaw’s Life force is not
anthropomorphic, in its function it is not vastly different
from the Christian idea of the function of the Holy Ghost.
It might be described as the Holy Ghost denuded of
personality – IT, not He.’’
In this sense the play is the first indubitable masterpiece of the new
intellectual drama which has taken a complete break from the nineteenth century
drama.
1. Evans, T.F. (1999), Modern Dramatists : George Bernard Shaw (Critical

Heritage), New York, Routledge.
2. Berst, Charles A. (1973), Bernard Shaw and the Art of Drama, Chicago :
University of Illinois Press.
3. Singh, Devendra Kumar (1994), The Idea of the Superman in the Plays
of G. B. Shaw, New Delhi : Atlantic Publishers and Distributors.
*******
185
MAN AND SUPERMAN

STRUCTURE
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Objectives
11.3 Shaw’s Man and Superman as a Comedy
11.1 INTRODUCTION
Man and Superman is known as a Comedy and a Philosophy. This lesson

will introduce the learners to comical aspects of the play.
11.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with Man and
Superman as a comedy
11.3 SHAW’S MAN AND SUPERMAN AS A COMEDY : ITS METHOD

AND TECHNIQUE
Traditionally in a comedy, love between a young man and a young
186
woman who have to face some opposition in the beginning, mainly from the
paternal side, are finally reconciled to marriage. Precisely, the same situation
is presented in Man and Superman too. There are a number of father figures
in the beginning of the drama, such as Ann’s dead father, Ramsden, Melone
Senior etc. The play opens with the reading of the deceased Mr. Whitefield’s
will which is an echo of the Victorian method. According to the will Ramsden
and Tanner are jointly appointed Ann’s guardians. The contrast presented here
is that Ramsden is conservative where as Tanner is a progressive guardian.
Here again Shaw’s familiar iconoclastic situation is presented to us. There are
two potential candidates, Tanner and Octavius, to marry Ann. One of the
important and interesting themes of the play is Shaw’s presentation of the two
rivals, each having a potent cause to marry Ann. But in the interest of the
comedy one has to be rejected. The paternalistic veto of Ramsden and the
deceased father’s will favour Octavius as the rightful partner of Ann. Upto this
point there is an echo of the traditional comedy. In the sub-plot also almost the
same comic situation has been presented. Hector Malone and Violet have a
secret love affair. They do not want to subject themselves to Malone Senior’s
opposition. Malone wants Hector to marry into the English aristocracy. But
here also his paternal opposition is overcome by Violet’s commonsense. Shaw’s
anti-capitalistic views gain a fresh momentum through this situation. Afterwards,
Violet’s father-in-law has to consent to her marriage with Hector. This situation
is exploited by Shaw to be presented as a universal theme in the Hell scene.
Of Man and Superman Shaw himself said that he had written
....a trumpery story of modern London life, a life

in which... the ordinary man’s main business is to
get means to keep up the position and habit of a
gentleman and the ordinary woman’s business is to
get married.
It obviously suggests that the play is a comedy of manners replete with

wit, humour and farcical elements. Shaw himself insisted that despite the fact
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that he has expressed in the play his views on happiness, on love, marriage,
sex-relations, women, art, socialism, democracy, industrialization, religion,
morality, virtue, sin, death, war, peace, slavery and a host of other serious,
significant topics which are strikingly original, he was not an inventor in the
dramatic technique. Such familiar romantic and melodramatic elements as a
will, a love triangle, the apparently fallen woman and an episode involving
capture by brigands are also found in the play. Among the comic type of
characters are the mother bent on marrying off her daughter; the brash, impertinent
servant who knows more than his master; and others like Malone, the American
millionaire. In the characterization he almost always depends upon overstatement;
and such exaggeration is strictly in the tradition of the comic writers and
satirists. As Man and Superman is a comedy with a serious purpose, the play
provides a humorous treatment of a philosophical substance. In the play we
witness the tragi-comic spectacle of love-chase of a man (Tanner) by a woman
(Ann) and the result is amusing and laughter-provoking. The play provides a
highly comic love-chase where a woman is in love, wooing, courting, pursuing
and ultimately winning the unwilling male who regards marriage as a noose,
a trap, something to ensnare a man into becoming a proper husband and bread-
winner. Shaw here regards woman as the hunter, and man the hunted, woman
the spider and man the fly. No wonder Ann brings to bear all her woman’s viles
on this comic love-chase and gains her object, and Tanner becomes the comic
figure who ultimately succumbs to her tricks. In other words, in Acts I, II and
IV, the development, in the main, follows the style of the Romantic Comedy.
Act I introduces to us the principal characters and informs us of the conditions
laid down in the will of Ann’s father according to which Tanner will be Ann’s
guardian. Tanner is considered to be a promising thinker and Ann is shown as
a self-possessed and crafty adversary. In Act II the Love triangle develops and
Tanner notices that he is the ‘‘marked down prey.’’ The situation which emerges
shows that Tavy pursues Ann while she pursues Tanner. Ann’s pursuit of
Tanner takes the physical form in the car chase. Shaw, like Shakespeare,
develops the plot through a series of misunderstandings, which may be labeled
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as ‘‘mistaken awarenesses.’’ In each successive act Shaw offers a series of
amusing, often exciting climaxes. In Act 1, for instance, the audience witnesses
Roebuck Ramsden, a rather elderly man of affluence and affairs, who is confident
that he is the sole guardian of Ann Whitefield and is determined to see to it
that the Revolutionist, Jack Tanner shall not come near her. When Jack appears,
Ramsden learns that, very much against his will, the younger man, Tanner, is
to serve as co-guardian of the young lady. Dramatic irony of this sort is very
amusing to the audience. In the same act, the sub-plot presenting Violet Robinson-
Hector Malone gets underway and begins to provide a counterpoint to the main
action. It carries two similarities with the main plot : (a) It develops the love-
sex-marriage theme and (b) it reveals woman as the dominant partner in the
love game. Before her appearance all believe that Violet has disgraced herself.
The subplot is closely related to the main plot in so far as the secrecy about
her marriage allows us to see how an intellectual like Tanner can in practice
make a serious misjudgement. The secrecy later causes him further embarrassment
when he is told that it is the unsuspected Hector who is the missing husband.
In this way the sub-plot directly contributes to the main action of the play.
Here Shaw develops and sustains one of the finest example of dramatic
irony in modern drama. The counter-discovery, that is, the correction of mistaken
awareness, is dexterously handled: Violet is revealed as a respectable married
woman. Such situations fulfill a two-fold function : (i) they lend themselves
effectively to the development of character and (ii) they give opportunity to
voice one’s ideas. For illustration, consider the case of Jack who holds a bold
contrast to Ramsden, who being an old fashioned liberal, protests against his
new and unsolicited responsibility. Or take another particular example when
Jack eloquently defends Violet, he gets excoriated by the young lady. All this
is relevant to the main theme of the play because it shows both Ann and Violet
as young women who are determined in their way to achieve their own goals.
Throughout the play G.B. Shaw continues to make effective use of

dramatic irony. In the beginning of the play itself, it becomes apparent to the
189
audience through the dialogue between Jack Tanner and Straker that it is not
Octavius but the blissfully ignorant Tanner who would be the victim of Ann’s
wild impulses. Ann can not be suspicious that Jack has already received the
note from Roda giving the true reason as to why the younger sister cannot join
Tanner on the motor trip that exposes Ann’s lie – the first hand proof of Ann’s
reckless and unscrupulous behaviour in pursuit of the male. Similarly, when
Hector Malone enters, all but Violet are unaware of the fact that he is her
husband. Shaw realizes the comic possibilities of the situation, which provides
much needed relief and balance caused by the earlier situation involving Violet.
With a view to proving his liberal attitude Jack defends Hector and earns only
the American’s indignation.
Act III takes the reader to the Sierra Nevada in Spain, where Mendoza
and his band of brigands capture Tanner fleeing from Ann. Shaw introduces
here the story element as melodramatic as any to be found in the Victorian
plays. It contributes significantly in two ways : first, it reveals that Mendoza,
the brigand’s leader, was driven to lead this sort of life of crime because of
the rejection in love. The coincidence is that the lady turns out to be Louisa
Straker, the chauffeur’s sister. Anyway, Jack and Straker are treated generously
and Tanner composes himself to sleep. Mendoza warns him saying, “these
mountains make you dream of women–of women with magnificent hair.” “This
is a strange country for dreams.” Coincidence and “mistaken awareness” are
to be found even in the Don Juan in the Hell interlude. The old crone, who
makes an inquiry to the first soul she meets, turns out to be Dona Anna and
learns that she is speaking to her one time lover and “murderer” of her father.
The Hell Scene is lengthy, and constitutes a complete One-Act play by itself.
Though Man and Superman has often been staged without this scene but it does
not mean that it is not an integral part of the play. As a matter of fact it is a
very important scene for it clarifies the issues discussed in the play. It is a
dream of Tanner in which the foregoing Acts come to life. In a way, it may be
called a parody of the procedure of the debates and the debaters of the play.
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The whole debate is musically constructed. The subjects of hell and heaven are
replaced by the subjects of Man and Woman relationship, sex and marriage,
purpose of life; and merits and demerits of Hell and Heaven. The theatrical
properties of the scene enhance the entertaining value of the play. The characters
are re-incarnated and the themes and ideas are enacted with the view to
highlighting their absurdity. Thus, the play-within-the-play is an integral part
of the play.
In Act IV, two important events take place which are carried on by
common theatrical devices. Malone receives and reads the note Violet had
intended for Hector. This is only a variation of the eaves dropping device
commonly used in the popular theatre. Mistaken awareness also abounds in
the act as Melone believes that his son is pursuing a married woman and
then learns that Hector is her husband. Besides, in a villa in Granada, Ann
manages to win the hand of Tanner by a series of tactical moves. The
climax comes when she reveals that even the will of her father is her own
in disguise as she had been allowed to choose her own guardian. “The trap
was laid from the beginning” says Tanner and Ann adds “From the beginning
of their acquaintance, from the childhood by the Life Force” Tanner submits
to this kind of compulsion despite his concern to remain a freeman. Thus,
Man and Superman is “a repertory of old stage devices, to use Reuben A.
Brower’s terms.
Shaw is a master of inversion which is used very effectively in this

play, for example, the ‘Victorian Womanly Woman’ as heroine is replaced
by the ‘Vital Woman’ who relentlessly chases her man. Shaw honestly
admits that he has not invented the pursuing woman in literature; Shakespeare
and many others anticipated it but it is difficult to deny that he innovated
it differently. For instance, consider its use for the comic purposes in the
character of Mrs. Whitefield, but it is difficult to find a mother who was
devoted to Octavius as if he were her favourite son and one would expect
her to welcome him as her son-in-law. But no, she candidly gives her
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opinion that Tavy was too nice a boy to be victimized by Ann, whereas Jack
would be a match for her. Reversal of roles and attitudes illustrate every
shade and variety of Shavian humour. Tanner becomes a comic figure because
of a marked discrepancy between his earlier pronouncements and his
instinctive conduct. He posed to be an apostle of male freedom and
independence but suddenly declares, “I love you. The Life Force enchants
me. I have the world in my arms when I clasp you.” There are good
examples of Shavian inversion and humour in Don Juan’s Hell interlude
also.
However, it is not to be assumed that Man and Superman consists

of only comic reversals, farcical incidents and melodramatic type of
characters. As Shaw himself wrote in the dedicatory epistle, “The pleasantry
is not the essence of the play.” It remains a comedy and a philosophy. “Man
is not victor in the duel of sex” is the idea around which the simple comedy
is built: an idea of natural biology.
Shaw shows an aversion to building a well-knit and organic plot in the

conventional sense of the term though he uses many conventional devices. He
believes in writing the drama of ideas which determine his philosophy as well
as the plot of his plays. To achieve his end, he wants his characters to use
language effectively. He is adept at varying the style of speaking from one
character to another. The contrasting “voices” in the play explain what Herley
Granville-Barker meant when he issued instructions to the cast he was putting
through rehearsal “Do remember, ladies and gentlemen, that this is Italian
opera.” Shaw himself stated :
My sort of play would be impossible unless I endowed

my characters with powers of self-expression which
they would not possess in real life.
In other words, Shaw’s success in individualizing the oral style of his

characters may be illustrated by comparing the speeches of Ramsden and
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Tanner. If the former speaks like “a chairman among the directors,” the latter
sounds like “a street corner orator.” Shaw’s diversity of styles was meant to
startle people or to shock people as do his ideas. Elaborating the aspect of the
play one of his critics has aptly summed up :
Man and Superman is operatic in another way. The

longer speeches, notably those made by Jack Tanner,
are bravura pieces, comparable to the arias in grand
opera.
There are many good illustrations as in Tanner’s description of a true

artist or his defence of Violet or Don Juan’s memorable peroration which
reveal’s Shaw’s successful use of his training in voice culture that led to the
varying style of speaking and added dramatic effect to his plays.
1. Vogt, Sally Peters. “Man and Superman : Type and Archetype” : From
Modern Critical View : George Bernard Shaw Ed. with an Introduction
by Harold Bloom New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
2. Pasley, Malcolm, ed. (1978), Nietzsche : Imagery And Thought : A

Collection of Essays, Oakland, CA : University of Calfornia Press.
*******
193
MAN AND SUPERMAN

STRUCTURE
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Objectives
12.3 Shaw’s Arts of Characterization
12.1 INTRODUCTION
Shaw is famous for full-length portrait of his characters. His characters

are per so nified abst r act io ns. This lesso n will int ro duce t he learners
to Shaw’s character portrayal.
12.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with Shaw’s Art of
characterization and give them an insght into various characters.
12.3 SHAW’S ART OF CHARACTERIZATION
Shaw made it absolutely clear that his purpose as a dramatist his plays
194
were meant not only to be acted out but also to be read. It made him provide
a detailed description of setting and other stage directions as well as full-
length portraits of his characters. Shaw and his friend Sir James Matthew
Barrie both followed the tradition in the character portrayal that goes back
to Ben Jonson who too wished his plays to reach a wider audience. It must
be conceded here that often a given character, as revealed in the play proper,
is not quite the same as he is described in the separate character sketch.
Shaw’s art of characterization has invited diverse opinions from his

critics. If one group denounces his characters as ‘flat,’ ‘wooden, and ‘static’,
others treat them as ‘personified abstractions’ or as gramophone records for
playing on Shaw’s themes or “personified mental point of view” to use T.H.
Dickinson’s expression. The controversy arises when Shaw’s characters are
judged on the conventional principles without remembering that his drama
is a new kind of “the discussion dramas.” Being the drama of ideas it has
to be evaluated by its own canons and rules. In recent criticism Shaw’s art
of characterization is being praised and his skill in this area is duly
recognized. In The History of English Literature, E. Albert points out that
“after Shakespeare no English dramatist equals Shaw in the variety and
vividness of his characters” and then adds that “he has contributed many
memorable characters to the national heritage.” Desmond MacCarthy in his
article on Shaw comments, “What is true of Dickens – that his characters
are his own such as no other novelist could create – can also be said of
Shaw.” The variety of his characters is of that sweep that no two characters
are alike and each of his characters, being sharply individualized, belongs
to the play in which he or she appears. As a matter of fact, Shaw has drawn
them from all the strata of society and from all professions – kings, ministers,
politicians, and mechanics – representing the whole range of humanity. He
has drawn them even from different nations. Napoleon and Joan are French.
In Arms and the Man there are the Serbs and the Australians, the Russians
and the Bulgarians. Man and Superman has the Americans. The remarkable
195
qualities, which they share, are of vividness and individuality. Desmond
MacCarthy highlights these facts and says,
Shaw had the insight to enter into the minds of people,

to grasp their point of view, and to objectify them in the
expression of their personality, which accounts for the
whole range of his characters.
Shaw started with people and invented his plots only to project
them. He did not take the actual people as his models but he conceived
them in original manner and endowed them with the power to create their
own situations, which are full of all those confusions and huddles that
prevail in their natural living. Shaw at times handles them like a caricaturist
seizing upon their salient features and visualizing them through elaborate
stage directions which give account of their dress, personal appearance,
habits, manners, including their past history. The pen portrait of Ramsden
in the beginning of Man and Superman is a relevant illustration. He did
not hesitate even to create suitable dramatic situation for them to impart
them distinctiveness and studied their reactions and behaviour to those
situations. It is interesting to note that Shaw gives them enough rope to
evolve their own ideas and speak for themselves. C.B. Purdom rightly
assesses in his book on Bernard Shaw, that they often “present an argument
against what is assumed to be Shaw’s own point of view with utterly
unprejudiced freedom.” In Man and Superman Ramsden, Octavius, Tanner,
Ann, and even Straker have their own individual opinions and views; and
the dramatic interest arises from a clash between their respective views.
Tanner is the representative of the new thought, that is, the Shavian
philosophy, Ramsden is of the old school of thought; Octavius represents
the romantic attitude towards love and woman; and Ann the fury of the
creative Life Force, to take a few examples.
As A. Nicholl pointed out in his book, The British Drama Shaw’s
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characters are not emotionless but their emotions are subordinated to the
drive of the Life Force to attain a higher and better life. Shaw has given to
English theatre a new type of character that faces the conflict between human
will and human environment. Nicholl says :
Instead of timid heroines, we find intellectually daring

woman; instead of strong heroes, men lacking power
and self-will; inst ead o f fant ast ically mo d el
clergymen, ministers who feel more at ease in buff-
coat and jack boots; instead of impossible villains,
men who are themselves the tools of society.
Shaw’s special art of characterization reveals its strength in two ways :

(a) Shaw succeeds in evoking our interest and sympathy even for less attractive
characters like Mrs. Warren and (b) He gives psychological insight to them,
a “sort of sixth sense”, which adds another dimension to their personality, for
instance in the case of Joan.
Commenting on Shaw’s women characters C.B. Purdom says that his

world has a large place for women. “He honoured them showing in his plays
that they are not only loved, but respected, even feared.” Shaw has put women
on the high pedestal. In Shaw’s plays it is the women who take initiative not
only in love but in everything else as they are the driving force, rather than
instruments of the Life Force. To quote Purdom’s words, “Such a gallery of
remarkable women does not exist in the works of any other dramatist.”
Thus, Shaw’s characters are the essence of his plays. Let us study two
characters closely to understand his extremely ambitious play Man and
Superman.
(a) Ann Whitefield
Ann Whitefield is a young, graceful and perfect lady with very attractive
eyes and hair. She is the woman “to make men dream.” Shaw calls her “one
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of the vital geniuses” adding that she is not oversexed, which would be a “vital
defect, not a true excess.” Whether she is beautiful or not depends on individual
taste as she fascinates such different individuals as Ramsden, Octavius and
Tanner. None can deny that she is perfectly self-controlled, perfectly respectable,
fashionable, frank and impulsive. To Ramsden for whom she holds affection
and even slight contempt and calls him “Granny.” She is “a wonderful dutiful
girl.” He cannot remember when she expressed her own reasons to do anything
to please herself. She would always say “Father wished me to,” or “Mother
wouldn’t like it.” Such utterances have convinced him that she is totally selfless
and has a keen sense of duty. She is full of tender sentiments and helpless; she
even swoons in the presence of young men as is expected of the feminine, well-
bred young Victorian Womanly Woman. Octavius is deeply impressed and
easily deceived by her. Jack tries to enlighten him about her saying “Vitality
in a woman is a blind fury of creation. She sacrifices herself to do it : do you
think she will hesitate to sacrifice you?” He remains incredulous through out
because she is to him the “reality of romance.” The portrait of Ann as given
by Shaw shows that she is an emancipated woman and inspires confidence as
a person. She respects her sister Violet because she gets her way unlike her,
though that is not really true. The fact remains that she too manages to achieve
whatever she decides. For example, consider the event of her insistence on
getting married to Tanner – against her wishes. He is nearly terrified by her.
He crosses half Europe and goes to Spain only to escape her but it is to no
avail. She corners him in Granada and ensnares him into a marriage proposal.
As Hector Melone puts it, she tracked him, “at every stopping place; she is a
regular Sherlock Holmes.” Tanner is helpless in her hands, “a mere baby,” as
she herself puts it.
Jack Tanner later describes her as a liar, a bully, and a hypocrite –

as one who is utterly unscrupulous in using her personal fascination to make
men give her what she wants. To him she is “something for which there is
no polite name.” She has something of a coquette in her as she keeps up
198
a flirtation with Tavy though she has marked Tanner as her victim. Tanner
bewares Octavius for he was in the lioness’s mouth, “You are half-swallowed
already in three bites – bite one Ricky, bite two Ticky, bite three Tavy, and
down you go.” Mr. Eric Bentley sees her as a black spider out to trap the
male, use him for her purposes, and then devour him. She is anything but
the thoroughly average woman at heart and her methods are more virile
than feminine.
Shaw created such a character with a purpose, a programme in this

comedy, which is also a philosophy. Ann is an archetype of the Vital Woman.
If Jack preaches vitality, Ann practices it. She is not only Vital but also Vital
Genius. The great mission of her life is to find the right father for her children.
She feels that she has the responsibility to create a superior race for the future.
She manages to fascinate even her severest critic, Jack Tanner who finds her
to be a kind of female Machiavellian, using any and all means to fulfill her
destiny.
Despite the fact that she is a temptress, she is not wicked as Shaw
makes her an instrument of the Life Force and she plays her role beautifully
and that is the reason why most of the characters in the play are deceived
by her. She is totally dedicated to her role of the Vital Woman with a
mission. She tells him “All timid women are conventional, Jack, or else we
are so cruelly, so vilely misunderstood.” She exhibits great determination
and intelligence, which makes her have her heart’s desire. If one considers
that the basic theme of the play is the theory of creative evolution as its
title also indicates, then Ann is the typical female and feminine character
who does not “see any sense in destruction.” It proves that Ann is actually
unselfish who believes in the future of mankind, which is at stake and for
that she will not mind sacrificing the fortunes of a few individuals caught
in the present time. Shaw, through her character has demonstrated that if
there can be ‘everyman’ at the centre of the play then why should not
‘every-woman’ too occupy a similar place. She can be the wooer and the
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winner. Shaw has created an outstanding character through her who is a
type and an individual at the same time. Hence, it can be stated that, “Every
woman may not be Ann; but Ann is Every Woman.”
(b) Jack Tanner
G.B. Shaw describes the protagonist of the play, Man and Superman, as
“a big man with a beard, a young man of Olympian majesty more like Jupiter than
Apollo.” He is decently dressed not from vanity but from a sense of sophistication
in everything he does. He is “prodigiously fluent of speech” sensitive, restless and
excitable; an earnest man who would be lost without a sense of humour. Perhaps
it is his playful nature, which prompts him to talk constantly— something that often
makes him an object of laughter. Tanner is the most recognizably typical of Shaw’s
heroes. If some of the critics like A.C. Ward regard him “a timeless and ageless
figure” other critics have called him “the conventional fool in an intellectual
disguise.” In the play Tanner is the mouthpiece of Shaw’s philosophy and the entire
action of the play is seen from his point of view. It is he who expounds Shaw’s
philosophy of Life Force and is Ann’s proper counterpart in all respects.
Jack Tanner embodies the Shavian concept of Don Juan, the sixteenth
century libertine, but Shaw treats the concept dramatically and unlike the Don
Juan of tradition does not make his character vulgarly a libertine and a ravisher
of woman. Rather he is a Don Juan in the philosophical sense who preaches
the morality to repent and to reform. As Shaw himself explained his Don Juan
“is a man who, though gifted enough to be exceptionally capable of distinguishing
between good and evil, follows his own instincts without regard to the common
statute, or cannon law; and therefore, whilst gaining the ardent sympathy of our
rebellious instincts, finds himself in mortal conflict with existing institutions.”
To prove that his hero is a great prophet far ahead of the ordinary mortals,
Shaw provided as an appendix to his play Tanner’s The Revolutionist’s
Handbook. But, in the play he is neither heroic nor a genius; he never turns
his words into actions; it appeared as if Shaw wished to criticize many
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characters and ideologies through the persona of Tanner. He judges the false
conventions and beliefs, traditions and institutions and finds them actually
fading away. In this sense Shaw uses Tanner to purify the intellectual air by
clarifying the complex issues related to gender, Victorian smugness, hypocrisy,
including shallow romanticism. If he is represented as a revolutionary, he is
specially so about the institution of marriage, cult of respectability and the
romantic adoration of woman which he finds false and utterly meaningless.
Thus, Tanner represents what Shaw believes to be the true moral sense. It is
clearly revealed in the first long dialogue between Jack and Ann in Act 1. Shaw
manages to expound his theory related to the advancement of the race through
‘eugenics’.
Tanner reveals his intellectual strength through his wit and humour.
Apparently, he remains cool and unperturbed in the face of the insults and
accusations imposed on him by Ramsden and his sister but at a ripe
moment he manages to “beat off five reactionaries at once with his wit.
He frankly exposes Ramsden by stating that if he is ashamed of anything,
he should first be ashamed of accusing him without reading his book.
When Ramsden says, “I grow advanced every day”, Tanner retorts, “More
advanced in years, Polonius.” When the leader of brigand, Mendoza boasts
about himself stating “I am a brigand, I live by robbing the rich,” Tanner
replies, “I am a gentleman, and I live by robbing the poor.” It earns him
the respect and friendship of the chief of brigand.
However, there are two significant occasions when he falls short of

the expectations and cuts a sorry figure : First, when he fails to perceive that
Violet is already married and second, when, despite being extremely clever
and practical, he ironically does not realize his own state of affairs. It is his
chauffer Straker who has to tell him “he was a marked down victim.”
Shaw identifies Jack Tanner as high Priest of Vitalism and Life

Force. Being a man of superior intellectuality, Tanner is considered to be
the father of the Shavian Superman. In Shaw’s philosophy it is the marriage
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of the highly gifted man with a vital woman like Ann, who is urged on by
the blind fury of creation that would lead to the birth of the Superman. As
he is the proper man, Ann Whitefield rejects Tavy and chases Tanner. It is
significant to note that Jack holds friendship with idealistic Octavius and
even Ramsden does not protest when his engagement to Ann is announced.
• Bentley, Eric R. Bernard Shaw. 1947.
• Chesterton, Gilbert K. George Bernard Shaw. 1910.
• Fuller, Edmund. George Bernard Shaw : Critic of Western Morals.

1950.
• Henderson, Archibald. George Bernard Shaw : Man of the Century.

1956.
• Irvine, William. The Universe of GBS. 1949.

• Kaye, Julian B. Bernard Sh aw a nd t he Nineteen th Centu ry
Tradition. 1955.
• Kar an, K. K. Geo rge Bern ard Shaw and the Con cept of
Superman. 1989.
• Kaufmann, R. J. G.B. Shaw, A Collection of Critical Essays (20th
Century Views)
• Nethercot, Arthur H. Men and Supermen : The Shavian Portrait
Gallery. 1954.
• Pearson, Hesketh. Bernard Shaw : His Life and Personality. 1942.
• Purdom, C. B. A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw.
• Ward, A. C. Bernard Shaw. 1951.
*******
202
DRAMA - II UNIT - IV
FAMILY REUNION
INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAYWRIGHT
STRUCTURE
13.1 Objectives
13.2 Life of Eliot
13.3 Modern Poetic Drama
1.3.1 Main features of Poetic Drama
1.3.2 Poetry and Drama
1.3.3 Growth of Poetic Drama
1.3.4 Prominent Poetic Dramatists
1.4 Eliot’s Theory of Poetic Drama
13.5 Let Us Sum Up
13.6 Multiple Choice Questions
13.7 Answer Key

203
13.1 OBJECTIVES
In this lesson we will discuss the biography and the literary career of T.S.
Eliot. Further in the lesson we will discuss the theory of modern poetic drama in
general and Eliot’s theory of poetic drama with special reference to the play Family
Reunion.
13.2 LIFE OF ELIOT
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, on 26 Sept. 1888. His
father was in business there, and his grandfather was a Unitarian minister who had
much to do with the establishing of Washington University in St Louis. His mother
was also a writer, and her dramatic poems on Savonarola, edited by her son, indicates
an early source of Eliot’s interest in poetic drama. Afflicted with a congenital double
hernia, he was in the constant care of his mother and five older sisters. Left in the
care of his Irish nurse, Annie Dunne, who sometimes took him to Catholic Mass,
Eliot knew both the city’s muddy streets and its exclusive drawing rooms. He attended
Smith Academy in St. Louis until he was sixteen. During his last year at Smith he
visited the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and was so taken with the fair’s native villages
that he wrote short stories about primitive life for the Smith Academy Record. In
1905 he departed for a year at Milton Academy outside of Boston, preparatory to
following his older brother Henry to Harvard. Eliot’s attending Harvard seems to
have been a foregone conclusion. His father and mother brought the family back to
the north shore every summer, and in 1896 built a substantial house at Eastern Point,
in Gloucester, Massachusetts. As a boy, Eliot became an accomplished sailor, trading
the Mississippi River in the warm months for the rocky shoals of Cape Ann.
The Eliot family had come in the seventeenth century from East Coker, in
Somerset, to New England, and for many reasons it was natural that Eliot should go
to New England for his university education. He entered Harvard in 1906, when
Charles William Eliot was president, distant relative but, as some glancing references
make clear, not intellectually a very congenial figure to his namesake. He gave up a
sense of belonging to either region, that he always felt like a New Englander in the
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Southwest, and a southwesterner in New England his American World. Despite his
feelings of alienation from both of the regions he called home, Eliot impressed many
classmates with his social ease when he began his studies at Harvard in the fall of
1906. Eliot’s main academic interest was in philosophy, and though he wrote poetry
and was “Class Odist” of his year, he was not especially precocious as a poet. He
was caught up in the widespread interest in Oriental philosophy at Harvard, and tells
us that he was stopped from going further into it by a fear of losing his sense of
participation in the Western tradition. Like his brother Henry before him, Eliot lived
his freshman year in a fashionable private dormitory in a posh neighborhood around
Mt. Auburn Street known as the “Gold Coast.” He joined a number of clubs, including
the literary Signet. And he began a romantic attachment to Emily Hale, a refined
Bostonian who once played Mrs. Elton opposite his Mr. Woodhouse in an amateur
production of Emma. Among his teachers, Eliot was drawn to the forceful moralizing
of Irving Babbitt and the stylish skepticism of George Santayana, both of whom
reinforced his distaste for the reform-minded, progressive university shaped by Eliot’s
cousin, Charles William Eliot. His attitudes, however, did not prevent him from
taking advantage of the elective system that President Eliot had introduced. As a
freshman, his courses were so eclectic that he soon wound up on academic probation.
He recovered and persisted, attaining a B.A. in an elective program best described
as comparative literature in three years, and an M.A. in English literature in the
fourth.
A travelling fellowship took Eliot to Germany in 1914, and it was eighteen

years before he returned to America. In the fall he entered Merton College, Oxford,
to read philosophy. Meanwhile he had discovered the French symbolist poets,
especially Baudelaire and Laforgue, and had learned from them how to apply the
language of poetry to contemporary life. “The kind of poetry that I needed” he says,
“to teach me the use of my own voice, did not exist in English at all; it was only to be
found in French.” He learned much from the chief English study of these poets, Arthur
Symons’ The Symbolist Movement in Literature. His major poem, “The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock,” appeared in 1915 in Poetry, a magazine recently founded in
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Chicago, and a main outlet for the stream of new American poetry of which Eliot’s
work formed part. In the same year he married and settled in England, meeting Ezra
Pound and later Wyndham Lewis and James Joyce, and contributing to the magazines
and anthologies that Pound’s driving energy was establishing. His prose work was
an essay on Pound published anonymously in America in 1917. Prufrock and other
observations also appeared in 1917, showing the influence of Laforgue, most markedly
in the lunar symbolism and the use of ironic dialogue. In 1919 a second group of
poems appeared, and in the same year a collection of the two books, called at first
Ara Vos Prec and then simply Poems (1920). With this volume Eliot’s early poetry
was virtually complete.
A collection of early essays called The Sacred Wood, and including “Tradition
and the Individual Talent,” which outlined his “impersonal” theory of the poetic
process, appeared also in 1920. There followed three influential essays on Marvell,
Dryden and the metaphysical poets. In 1922 Eliot began his own periodical, The
Criterion, which he edited until 1939, the purpose of which was, he tells us, to
create a place for the new attitudes to literature and criticism, and to make English
letters a part of the European cultural community.
The first issue of Criterion carried The Waste Land, a long poem that Eliot
had been working on for some time, in its original form it is said to have run to over
eight hundred lines, then in consultation with Ezra Pound, who was accustomed to
editing other poets with the greatest confidence, it was cut to its present length. With
his poem and its successor The Hollow Men (1925), Eliot found himself, somewhat
to his Chagrin, the spokesman of a post-war attitude which found in his waste-land
imagery an “objective correlative” for its disillusionment, or what Eliot calls its
illusion of being disillusioned.
Eliot joined the publishing house of Faber and Gwyer, later Faber and Faber,
in 1925, and remains a director of the company. He returned to the United States in
1932 as a Professor of Poetry at Harvard, in which office he delivered the lectures
called The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. These were followed by a more
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doctrinaire series given at Virginia in 1933 and published as After Strange Gods.
During the nineteen-thirties Eliot’s critical writing became increasingly concerned
with what he calls “the struggle against Liberalism.” His later social criticism is
represented by two essays, The Idea of a Christian Society (1940) and Notes Towards
a Definition of Culture (1948), the former reflecting much of the spirit of that miserable
time between Munich and Dunkirk.
During the nineteen-thirties also Eliot wrote Four Quartets, so far the summing
up of his non-dramatic poetry. The first Quartet, “Burnt Norton”, was published in
1936; the last, “Little Gidding”, was completed while the Nazi bombs were falling
in London. Meanwhile his interest in drama, which began with Sweeny Agonistes
(1927) and continued in The Rock, had led to the writing of Murder in the Cathedral
(1935), a tragedy on the murder of Becket, and the Family Reunion (1939), with a
country-house setting in which the Furies of Aeschylus make a disconcerting
appearance.
Since the War Eliot has continued to live in England, with occasional visits
to America, chiefly of an academic nature. He has written little non-dramatic poetry,
apart from a collection of children’s verse, reminiscent of Edward Lear, Old Possum’s
Book of Practical Cats (1939). “Possum” is a nickname for Eliot, derived from the
preface to For Lancelot Andrews, and occurring in Pound’s Cantos. Eliot returned to
drama with the tragicomedy The Cocktail Party (1949), perhaps the most commercially
successful of all his plays. This was followed by two other comedies, The
Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). Both were produced at
the Edinburgh Festival and have had good runs, but have never equaled the popularity
of their predecessors. There has also been a steady series of critical essays, most of
them, as one would expect with an established writer, lectures given on special
occasions. These have been collected in a volume called On Poetry and Poets (1956).
In 1948 Eliot received two of the greatest honors a contemporary writer can obtain,
the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a few years later the
Hanseatic Goethe Prize. In 1947 his wife, who had been ill for some time, died and
in 1957 he married Valerie Fletcher, to whom On Poetry and Poets and The Elder
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Statesman are dictated. Besides, On Poetry and Poets, The Complete Poems and
Plays (1950), which contains the poetry and plays up to The Cocktail Party, and the
third edition of Selected Essays (1951) are essential for Eliot’s reader.
13.3 MODERN POETIC DRAMA
English poetic drama in the present century emerged as a revolt against

naturalism or the so –called Ibsenism of the Nineteenth century. The word ‘naturalism’
may be defined as an aspect of literary realism carrying its tendency to extremes i.e.
presenting the bare facts in minutest details which are most unimaginative and give
us an illusion of reality. Ibsen is said to be the originator, Strindberg the father, the
novelist Emile Zola, the preacher; as also Shaw, Galsworthy and H.G. Barker, the
followers of dramatic naturalism. Naturalistic playwrights, in response to the scientific
and humanitarian movement, introduced social themes like sex, marriage, divorce,
racial antagonism, relations between the rich and the poor, in industry, in philanthropy
and before law. Besides presenting a social picture in their plays, the playwrights
aimed at creating an illusion of reality, and, for photographic presentation on the
stage developed a technique which may be termed as ‘Ibsenism in the theatre’. English
poetic drama in the present century stood against the introduction of social themes
and vehemently opposed the conventions of the naturalistic plays, namely, a paramount
interest in social problems, photographic presentation on the stage, intellectualizing,
prosaic language and artificial narrowness of theme.
13.3.1 MAIN FEATURES OF POETIC DRAMA
Modern English poetic drama includes all plays whether written in verse or
in poetic prose, and presents an idealistic contrast to the drama of social criticism.
The naturalistic drama had become intellectual and sophisticated because it appealed
to the mind and reason more than to the heart and emotions. So, with the revival of
poetic drama, the emotional medium came in to prominence. Besides the emotional
quality, modern poetic drama appeared with the dominance of emotion over reason
and of lyricism over naturalism.
The main traits of modern poetic drama are many but may be mentioned here
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briefly. The first and foremost is the element of romance, because there is in them, in
general, an escape to Nature, a desire to Nature, a desire for novelty, the use of
simple language, the treatment of love and the use of the verse. Besides, there is no
observance of the three unities of Time, Place, and Action. Another important trait
which strikes us is the use of the supernatural in the poetic plays, as “all those
phenomena which cannot be explained by the known and accepted laws of Natural
Sciences” and which were richly used by Shakespeare in his plays in the form of
witches, ghosts, fairies, demons, prophecy, divination, dreams and astrology,
frequently appear on the page and the stage. Fate element is not far from the poetic
plays of to-day as there is a direct assumption that a conscious or unconscious
supernatural agent is gilding and shaping our actions. The avoidance of problems is
one of the essential traits of the present traits of the present poetic as “no social
problems worth mentioning obscure the horizon.” Modern poetic drama does not
seem to offer any philosophy of society. There is disappearance of intellectual quest
as the poetic dramatist tries to approach the people through the emotional medium
rather than the intellectual. Symbolism is also one of the distinguishable traits of
modern poetic drama as a number of poetic playwrights like Yeats, O’ Casey,
Bottomley, Flecker and others have made it in their plays. The most important trait of
modern poetic drama is that it is written in poetry or in poetic prose. The element of
dance, which is the visual element of performance and is closely associated with
drama, is also getting popularity in poetic drama. All these traits are abundantly
found in the prominent English poetic plays of this century, which provide a new
light and delight to the people.
13.3.2 POETRY AND DRAMA
Drama is said to be a representation of life on the stage. A dramatist does not

represent actual reality, but only emotional reality, for which poetic drama is the best
suited because it appeals to a deeper layer of emotional reality, whether its language
be verse or prose with poetic idiom. The main purpose of the play is to move the
audience by the action on the stage. A survey of poetic plays of the present century
shows that the poetic dramatists aim at representing emotional reality, and so the
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poetic plays are full of emotional atmosphere.
In order to accomplish this aim, the language of poetry or prose with poetic
idiom has been considered not only natural but also essential as a medium. The use
of poetry in drama is not something new, but as old as Greek literature.
For a number of reasons, drama written in poetry will always be preferred to

the drama written in prose. Prose drama concentrates itself on the outermost, whereas,
poetic drama deals with the innermost reality. Preferring poetic plays to prose plays
implies attaching greater importance to emotional and spiritual reality rather than to
ordinary appearances. In this context it may be said that prose is dull, intellectual and
the unintoxicating utterance of common experience, whereas poetry, being fermented
into meter and heady imagery, is interesting, emotional and has an intoxicating utterance.
The tendency of prose drama is “to emphasize the ephemeral and superficial; if we
want to get at the permanent and universal we tend to express ourselves in verse.”
Poetry is not merely formalization or an added decoration, it intensifies drama itself.
Modern poetic dramatists have made use of elements such as imagery, stage, sets,
dance, music, song and chorus which have helped to heighten the effect of ‘poetic
language’. Poetic has, thus, evolved against the naturalistic prose drama and against
the prose drama of social criticism.
13.3.3 GROWTH OF POETIC DRAMA
The origin of modern English poetic drama may be traced from the dawn
of the twentieth century. The growth of poetic drama has appeared in many
countries like America, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia, Ireland and
England. In America poetic dream revived in the hands of Eugene O’ Neill,
Maxwell Anderson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Archibald Macleish; in Belgium
Maurice Maeterlinck popularized it; in France the spirit of poetic drama was
kept alive by Edmond Rostand, Paul Claudel and Jean Giraudoux; in Spain, Italy
and Scandinavia poetic drama experiments started from the beginning of this
century; in England Stephen Philips became the chief exponent of modern English
poetic drama.
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English poetic drama in Ireland revived with the establishment of a new
National Theatre in 1901. Its revival took the form of a literary movement called the
Irish Revival by feelings of patriotism and was characterized by Yeats. This movement
also opposed naturalistic conventions and brought the remarriage of drama and poetry.
In fact the revival of poetic drama has taken the form of a literary movement like the
Renaissance and the Romantic Revival movements. It may be termed as the Poetic
Drama Revival Movement.
13.3.4 PROMINENT POETIC DRAMATISTS
W.B. Yeats is the father of the Irish Dramatic Movement and his objective
was to revive the poetic drama. He believed that poetry which is a spirit and
unassailable essence was present in the Irish peasants who treated common life in
the same manner as the people of the age of Chaucer, of Italian renaissance, of Greece
and of the Elizabethan period did. He further thought that this spirit revealed itself in
the living language which they alone still spoke, and in their love of heroic and
homely in legend and in daily life. His plays of allegory and mysticism, Peasant
Plays, Heroic Plays, and Plays for Dancers are all poetic ones and contribute a lot to
the development of poetic drama in the present age.
J.M. Synge is also a significant figure in the Irish Dramatic Movement. From
him begins the growth of poetic drama in prose- a prose beautifully picturesque,
expressive, emotional having poetic suggestion and other poetic qualities.
Sean O’ Casey is more popular as an expressionist, a realist and a prose-

writer than as a poetic playwright, and as such it may rather be seen very surprising
that his name has been included among the poetic drama revivalists. His plays develop
an excitement of Elizabethans and he can be called an Elizabethan reborn. Though
not a poet yet he has great love for poetry and colour.
Christopher Fry is a great poet playwright, word-fancier, and poetic drama

revivalist who has made a great contribution to the poetic-drama of the present century
by inventing ‘Comedies of Mood’ and ‘The Theatre of Words’. Fry has brought a
breath of fresh air into poetry and into the theatre by introducing a comic spirit in
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poetic drama. He believes in the ornamentation of language and so has treated verse
not only as the form of drama but also as its polish. He realizes the importance of
words in drama as they give us larger, or deeper experience of action, also have
sound value on the stage and help very much in conveying sense, feeling, tone, intention,
thought and image to the spectators.
T.S.Eliot’s share in the revival of English poetic drama is perhaps his greatest
contribution to the literature of this century. His poems and plays are close to
contemporary life and are of a very high standard. His winning of Nobel Prize for
English literature in 1948 on the occasion of his 60th birthday is the international
recognition of his superior literary output. He has considered verse as the most natural
and suitable medium for drama. His experimentation with the chorus in Murder in
Cathedral is praiseworthy. His plays have brought for us a return of the Renaissance.
13.4 ELIOT’S THEORY OF POETIC DRAMA
Eliot’s interest in drama is almost co-extensive with his interest in poetry and
criticism, the only difference being that during the early phase of his poetic career he
is preoccupied with the dramatic element in poetry, while in later years he is more
concerned with poetic drama as a medium of mass appeal. He found this medium
best fitted to the propagation of certain Christian and spiritual themes and ideas
aimed at producing a new insight in the secular audience of the modern industrial
age. His early preoccupation with the ‘dramatic’ was part of his crusade against
romantic solipsism, subjectivity and emotional excesses, in order to clear the ground
for the naturalism of the new poetry which the altered sensibility of our complex
civilization demanded.
Eliot was very well aware of two crucial facts i.e. the superiority of poetic
drama over prose drama; and the most insurmountable difficulties in the way of the
pioneers of poetic drama in a prosaic age of surface existence. Eliot was convinced
of the greatness of poetic drama as also of the ‘permanent craving’ for it implanted in
human nature. Yet he was equally alive to the great difficulty lying in the way of its
realization. As early as 1920 he wrote in an Athenaeum article, “The composition of
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a poetic drama is in fact the most difficult, the most exhausting task that a poet can set
himself, and- this is the heart of the matter- it is infinitely more difficult for a poet of
today than it was for a poet of no greater talent three hundred years ago”.
Eliot’s theory of poetic drama can be discussed under following headings:
(a) Poetry, theatre and audience: The ideal medium for poetry and the most direct
means of social ‘usefulness’ for poetry, is the theatre. He does not believe in
the several levels of classification of the audience like in the plays of
Shakespeare but in the sensitiveness of every auditor is acted upon by all
these elements of plot, character and conflict of character, words and phrasing,
rhythm and sensitiveness all at once, though in different degrees of
consciousness. He believes that poet naturally prefers to write for as large
and miscellaneous an audience as possible, and that it is the half-educated
and ill- educated rather than the uneducated, who stand in his way. He himself
should like an audience which could neither read nor write.
(b) The nature of poetic drama: It is possible that what distinguishes poetic drama
from prosaic drama is a kind of doubleness in action. He elaborated this point
in the “Need for Poetic Drama” – to work out a play in verse is to be working
like a musician as well as like prose dramatist; it is to see the thing as a whole
musical pattern. The verse dramatist must operate on readers on two levels at
once, dramatically with character and plot. The requirements for a good plot
are just as severe as for a prose play. It is fatal for a poet trying to write a
play, to hope to make up for defects in the movement of the play by bursts of
poetry which do not help the action.
(c) Nature and function of dramatic poetry: It is neither a mere decoration, nor a
display of seductive ostentation to divert the attention of the reader or spectator
from the more important aspects of the play. He has elsewhere analysed
passages from Othello, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet to show how the most
moving and beautiful verses are dramatic in significance, firmly rooted in
particular situation of the play. He goes on to observe that the Elizabethans
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freely mingled together prose and verse in one and the same play. But because
of the changed condition now it is advisable to avoid this practice and to rely
on verse alone to meet all the needs of the play.
(d) Search for the poetic medium appropriate to the modern poetic drama:
Eliot was very well aware of the necessity of discovering a medium fit
for the poetic drama he was striving to create for the theatre of his age. He
says, “We must find a new form of verse which shall be as satisfactory as
a vehicle for us as blank verse was for the Elizabethans”. The problem
before Eliot was twofold: avoidance of Shakespearean versification, and
bridging the gulf between the language of poetry and the living speech of
the people in contemporary society. But this poetry rooted in the living
speech of the people must strive towards the state of music, that is, towards
that intensity of expressiveness which can articulate those vague, indefinite
feelings.
(e) Character in poetic drama: According to Eliot a dramatic poet cannot create
characters of greatest intensity of life unless his personages, in their reciprocal
actions and behavior in their story are somehow dramatizing, but in no obvious
form, an action or struggle for harmony in the soul of the poet.
13.5 LET US SUM UP
In this lesson we have discussed in detail the life of T.S. Eliot. Next in the
lesson we have discussed the modern poetic drama along with its main features, the
difference between poetry and drama, growth of poetic drama and the prominent
poetic dramatists. Further in the lesson we have discussed Eliot’s theory of poetic
drama which is discussed under different headings like Poetry, theatre and audience,
the nature of poetic drama, Nature and function of dramatic poetry, Character in
poetic drama etc.
13.6 MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
A. What does the TS stand for in T.S. Eliot?
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a) Tom “Senior”
b) Tarquin Sutton
c) Thomas Stearns
d) Thomas Sigismund
B. Eliot began school at what prep school?
a) Smith Academy
b) Washington Academy
c) Becky Academy
d) The Andrea school for the blind
C. In what year did Eliot have a nervous breakdown and was forced to leave his
job in London?
a) 1955
b) 1908
c) 1934
d) 1921
D. Eliot is cremated at what Crematorium?
a) Golden Greens
b) Blue Lakes
c) Fiery Pits
d) Shambly Shamble’s
E. Eliot’s ashes were put interred at what church?
a) St. Mary’s
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b) St. Bonaventure’s
c) St. Michael’s
d) St. Thomas
F. T.S. Eliot, an American of a New England family adopted British citizenship

in?
a) 1927
b) 1910
c) 1915
d) 1920
G. Eliot became a director of the publishing firm of
a) Oxford University Press
b) Penguin Press
c) Orient Longman
d) Faber and Faber
H. Eliot was invested the order of Merit in the year
a) 1900
b) 1930
c) 1948
d) 1956
I. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature in
a) 1890
b) 1899
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c) 1920
d) 1948
J. Which king of the United Kingdom awarded Order of Merit for T.S. Eliot
a) Henry IV
b) George VI
c) Charles II
d) Henry II
13.7 ANSWER KEY
A. (c)
B. (a)
C. (d)
D. (a)
E. (c)
F. (a)
G. (d)
H. (c)
I. (d)
J. (b)
1. Discuss the theory of poetic drama.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
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_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. Give the main points of Eliot’s theory of poetic drama.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. Trace T.S. Eliot as a dramatist.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
1. A Companion to T.S. Eliot – David E. Chinitz
2. T.S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage- Michael Grant
3. Three Writers in Exile: Pound, Eliot and Joyce- Doris L. Eder
4. T.S. Eliot: A Critical Study- A.N. Dwivedi
*******
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FAMILY REUNION
DETAILED SUMMARY
STRUCTURE
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Objectives
14.3 Synopsis of the Play
14.4 Detailed Summary
14.5 Glossary
14.7 Let Us Sum Up
14.8 Answer Key
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14.1 INTRODUCTION
The play, The Family Reunion, is in two acts, each having three scenes.
There are almost no stage directions. Stage setting is very simple, as Part I requires a
scene of a drawing room and Part II of a library only. The originality of the play lies
in introducing a theme of contemporary life, with characters of a real time living in a
real world. In the play there are passages of great poetic beauty, and statements
which are the fruits of a lifetime devoted to poetry. T.S. Eliot gave primary importance
to solving the problem of versification, a rhythm close to contemporary speech. In
this connection he says, “Here my first concern was the problem of the versification,
to find a rhythm close to contemporary speech, in which the stresses could be made
to come wherever we should naturally put them, in uttering the particular phrase on
the particular occasion”. In choosing deliberately this theme of contemporary life,
and enabling the everyday ordinary characters to speak in verse by discovering a
rhythm close to contemporary speech, the playwright has rejected theory of dramatic
speech as propounded by Ibsen, who considers poetry as “the language of the Gods”.
Eliot thus has extended the scope of poetic drama in regard to the selection of theme,
plot, and characters.
The introduction of Eumenides in the play shows the interest of the playwright
in making use of the supernatural. In this respect he seems to adopt the device of
Shakespeare. The Eumenides are the symbol of the ‘powers beyond us.’ They neither
act nor speak, but simply appear or do not appear. These mysterious shapes called as
the Eumenides are in fact ghosts. They represent the presence of the supernatural
element in the play. Phrases like “The unexpected crash of the iron cataract”, “The
bright colour fades”, “The bird sits on the broken chimney” show the presence of the
element of superstition in the play.
The chorus in the play also reveals the mental state of characters. The chorus
here is no new personage, but some characters from the play itself. The choruses
contain beautiful passages of poetry and create an emotional atmosphere in the play.
The element of romance is also present in the scene where Harry and Mary talk
together and remember their past secret meetings in the cave by the moonlight near
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the river. The undercurrent of spiritual and religious suggestion in the play brings
about a spiritual awakening, which is one of the objects of the revival of poetic
drama in this century.
14.2 OBJECTIVES
Objective of this lesson is to study in detail the story of the well celebrated
play by T.S. Eliot named The Family Reunion, from the examination perspective.
This lesson will provide a synopsis of the play and deal with all the acts of the play
covering all the major incidents.
14.3 SYNOPSIS OF THE PLAY
The Family Reunion is a famous play by T.S. Eliot. In this play he has turned
from the religious theme to a domestic one. Amy, an unhappy widow of a country
squire, lives with her three sisters, two brothers of her deceased husband, and Mary,
a girl, whom she desired to marry her eldest son, Harry. Her object is to reunite the
family and keep it living. For this she has collected her sisters, brothers of her husband,
and she expects the return of her three sons- Harry, Arthur and John- on her birthday
anniversary. She directs everybody to welcome her son, Harry, who returns after
eight years and whom she wants to make master of Wishwood. Harry’s return to
Wishwood is an important event for her. It was eight years ago that he had left this
place with his wife, who never wanted to live with the family. She was a lady of
expensive habits and so she dragged Harry from country to country. He had begun to
dislike her. One cloudless night in his voyage from New York, he pushed her in the
Mid-Atlantic from the deck in order to get rid of her. Her death came to be considered
as either an accident or suicide but not murder. On account of this incident, Harry
returns to Wishwood in a disturbed state of mind. He feels ring of ghosts chasing him.
He meets everybody in the house, feeling always restless at enquiry about the incident.
Eumenides appear and make him excited and terrified. Amy sends him to his room
for rest where he finds everything unchanged. She makes every effort to see that the
past is forgotten and her old scheme of marrying Mary to Harry, and making him the
head of the family is fulfilled. But her scheme remains unfulfilled, as Harry does not
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give good response even when Warburton, the family doctor, interviews him after
dinner, to tell him of the ill health of his mother. Harry gets a little afraid at the
appearance of a sergeant, who simply comes to inform them of the accident of his
brother, John. He does not feel at home on account of the constant fear of being
exposed. Ultimately he talks to Agatha, his mother’s sister and confesses to her his
guilt of having pushed down his wife. She then tells him of certain facts about his
father, his mother, and about herself, which were kept secret from him throughout his
childhood. Harry learns from her that his father’s marriage, like his own, had little of
delight, that his mother felt lonely after her marriage and that in order to avoid her
loneliness she invited her younger sister to live with her. Agatha further told him that
she and his father had discovered one hot summer day, in a flash of ecstasy and
terror, that they loved each other. He also learnt that just before he was born, his
father attempted to kill his mother in order to get rid of her, but Agatha had stopped
him. After that two sons were also born and then the husband and wife parted by
consent. These facts help him to discover the reasons for the failure of his marriage,
and rid himself of his obsessive feeling of guilt. He finds that family affection is a
kind of formal obligation. The things he thought were real are shadows. Harry
ultimately is changed. He contemplates on sin and expiation. He begins to feel that
his obligation is not to his mother, but to God. He decides to leave all and become a
missionary. Amy, Mary, and others try to stop him, but he goes away with his old
servant Downing. Harry’s departure causes Amy’s death due to heart failure. The
play ends with the prayer of Agatha for peace to the soul of Amy. What the playwright
has written is not a story of the detection of crime and punishment, but of sin and
expiation. Harry is to expiate for his son and family curse. His departure is for his
own redemption and that of the departed, who may now rest in peace.
This play is of double-pattern, the outer drama consisting of a set of modern

characters grouped round a widowed lady, Amy, who, on her birthday, is waiting for
the return of her eldest son, Harry, after an absence of eight years. She wishes him to
marry Mary, a girl of her choice, and to settle at home as the head of the family in the
ancestral mansion significantly known as Wishwood. The inner drama, which centres
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round Harry, Lord Monchensey, flanked by his aunt Agatha and his childhood playmate
and sweetheart, Mary, is a story of sin and expiation based on the Aeschylean tragedy
of the pursuit of Orestes, the matricide, by the Furies who are, in the end transformed
into Eumenides, ‘the good angels’ or ‘kindly ones.’
14.4 DETAILED SUMMARY
Part I
(The scene is laid in a country house in the North of England)
Scene I
The opening scene is laid in the drawing room of Amy, mistress of Wishwood,
on an afternoon in late March. It is Amy’s birthday, when her absent eldest son,
Harry, heir to the estate, is expected to return home and his two younger brothers are
also due to join the party. Meanwhile the younger sisters of Amy-Ivy, Violet, and
Agatha with the brothers of her deceased husband- Hon. Gerald Piper, and Charles
Piper- and Mary, a young lady of thirty, daughter of a deceased cousin of the Dowager,
have gathered in the room at Amy’s invitation. The opening speech of Amy puts her
unhappy predicament in a nutshell:
I have nothing to do but watch the days draw out,
Now that I sit in the house from October to June,
O Sun, that was once so warm, O Light that was taken for granted
When I was young and strong, and sun and light unsought for
And the night unfeared and the day expected
And cocks could be trusted, tomorrow assured
And time would not stop in the dark!
She ends with, ‘will the spring never come? I am cold’. To this Agatha returns
significantly, ‘Wishwood was always a cold place, Amy’. The remaining characters
pick up the conversation and talk of going to the warm South, which Amy can never
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do, tied as she is, like themselves, to her familiar surroundings, ‘to the horses and
dogs and guns’. Violet comments in a strong tone on the ways of the people who go to
the South in search of health, if they are old, and for pleasures if young:
I would never go South,
Simply to see the vulgarest people-
You can keep out of their way at home;
People with money from heaven knows where
Charles and Gerald discuss the younger generation of the day and the latter turns to
Mary for confirmation, as she represents the younger generation. But Mary retorts in
a sour tone that she belongs to no generation. She goes away and Violet rebukes
Gerald for tactlessness in his behavior towards Mary, who is sore about her failure
to get a husband and she is ‘getting on for thirty’. To this Amy adds that Harry’s
marriage upset her and his expected return raised a hope which has made things more
difficult for her. But they must drop the subject hoping that ‘life may still go right’. It
is this hope that has kept her alive and enabled her to keep the family together. They
are all simply drifting on the current of time, and death will come to them bringing
merely a mild surprise, ‘a momentary shudder in a vacant room’. Only Agatha seems
to discover some meaning in death. Amy is gratified to think that Arthur and John, her
younger sons are sure to arrive in the course of the evening. It is really a special
occasion because after eight years they are going to be together for the first time. But
Agatha suggests that it will be painful for Harry to come back to Wishwood with the
weight of all that has happened in the interval:
I mean painful, because everything is irrevocable,
Because the past in irrevocable,
Because the future can only be built
Upon the real past.
‘He will find a new Wishwood’; and adaptation may be hard. Amy misses
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her meaning completely and tells Agatha that nothing has changed at Wishwood.
Agatha, however, goes on in a teasingly obscure phraseology:
I mean that at Wishwood he will find another Harry.
The man who returns will have to meet.
The boy who left. Round by the stables
…….he will have to face him-
And it will not be a jolly corner.
When the loop in time comes - and it does not come for everybody -
The hidden is revealed, and the spectress show themselves.
The persons around her are too obtuse to grasp the meaning of her oracular words,
and though Charles refers to Harry’s lost wife, he is at loss to know if the matter
should be alluded to or not in the presence of Harry. Amy tells him that it is much too
late to talk about the matter, and then informs the company in plain terms that the
death of Harry’s wife was a great relief to her, because she had never wished to be
one of the family; she wanted to keep Harry to herself just to satisfy her vanity:
She never wanted to fit herself just to satisfy her vanity:
But only to bring Harry down to her own level.
A restless shivering painted shadow
In life, she is less than a shadow in death.
… There can be no grief
And no regret and no remorse.
Harry is to take command at Wishwood
And I hope we can contrive his future happiness.
The irony is that situation arises from the fact that the remorse caused by the
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‘painted shadow’s death’ upsets all Amy’s plan about Harry’s settlement at Wishwood.
Agatha is the mouthpiece of author and it is she who unfolds the spiritual
dimension of the play. She has puzzled and tortured the mind of Harry ever since the
accidental death of his wife which he is apt to regard as his doing. The uncles and
aunts of Harry, however, are puzzled about past endurance and voice their confusion
in a chorus:
Why do we embarrassed, impatient, fretful, ill at ease,
Assembled like amateur actors who have not been assigned their parts?
Each of them is eager to withdraw into his or her private shell to avoid ‘the intrusion
of reality’ which he or she cannot endure.
The stage is now set for the entry of Harry, who appears suddenly
before them while his mother is talking about the time for the arrival of her son, John.
They welcome him warmly but he seems to be a person half in trance, and his first
utterance proclaims his state of mind:
How can you sit in this blaze of light for all the world to look at?
If you knew how you looked, when I saw you through the window!
Do you like to be stared at by eyes through the window?
Then he points out to a spot, saying, ‘Look there, look there:
Do you see them?’, and goes on muttering half to himself:
You don’t see them, but I see them,
And they see me. This is the first time I have seen them.
They were always there. But I did not see them.
Why should they wait until I came back to Wishwood?
Then becoming normal for a moment he turns to his mother and wishes her ‘many
happy returns’ of her birthday. Amy responds that she is glad that he has come home
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to take charge of Wishwood. His room is ready for his rest- Nothing has been changed.
Harry gives a perceptible start at hearing the last remark and rejoins promptly, ‘How
can you say that nothing is changed?’: ‘You all look so withered and young’. His
aunts and uncles now propose various schemes to make his stay at Wishwood
comfortable and his mother confesses to him that they have all been very kind and
considerate to her, and have suggested many changes which he has to think over,
because she is an old woman nearing her end.
Harry, however, is bewildered at this talk of time and change even though
they would have him believe that nothing has changed. They should come to the
point, or if they want to pretend that Harry is another person that they must have
conspired to invent, they should do so in his absence so that he may be less
embarrassed. He speaks to Agatha who tells him point-blank that if he wants no
pretences he should try at once to make them understand, what he says. Harry, however,
confesses that the task is not so easy as she thinks:
But how can I explain, how can I explain to you?
You will understand less after I have explained it.
All that I could hope to make you understand
Is only events; not what has happened
Cannot understand the unimportance of events.
And when Gerald starts talking about his own tough life, Harry replied:
You are all people
To whom nothing has happened, at most a continual impact
Of external events. You have gone through life in sleep,
Never woken to the nightmare. I tell you, life would be unendurable
you wide awake. You do not know
The noxious smell untraceable in the drains etc.

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In which all past is present, all degradation
Is unredeemable. As for what happens-
Of the past you can only see what is past,
Not what is always present.
Agatha, however, urges him to attempt an explanation in his own language without
stopping to debate whether or not it will be incomprehensible to them. Harry is in the
state of mind which he wished to escape by ‘pushing his wife down into the sea’, as
he believes. Harry further says that in his fit of violence he was laboring under the
conviction that she was unkillable and would always be with him, whatever he did.
Uncle Charles requests him to get rid of such strange fancies for the sake of his
mother and his own peace of mind. In his own past life there are many things which
often press heavily on his chest, but he (Harry) has no reason to reproach himself; his
conscience is clear.
To this Harry replies that what he is trying to explain goes deeper the ‘so-
called’ conscience: ‘it is just the cancer that eats away the self’:
It is not my conscience,
Not by mind, that is diseased, but the world I have to live in.
Two days after the event he lay ‘in contended drowsiness’ and then he began to dread
sleep, for,
She is nearer than ever
And they are always near. Here, nearer than ever.
Amy is alarmed and advises him to rest for the night; he will find Wishwood
brighter. Agatha, however, strikes a deeper note again; she herself is uncertain about
certain points. Harry leaves to take bath and his departure sets the bewildered tongues
of his aunts and uncles wagging about the nature of his sickness and the best way of
curing it. At last they suggest to his mother to call in Doctor Warburton to examine
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Harry; Amy sounds Agatha on the point, but the latter attaches little importance to the
medical aid:
It seems a necessary move
In an unnecessary action
Not for the good that it will do
But that nothing may be left undone….
As Amy goes out to ring up the Doctor, Charles proposes to question Downing,
Harry’s chauffeur and personal servant. The ladies protest but Charles is resolved to
find out the real source of Harry’s trouble. Downing informs him that her Ladyship’s
drowning was not a case of deliberate suicide, though she frequently talked about
committing it, perhaps only to frighten people. She was moody and often depressed,
and during the voyage his Lordship also was in the doldrums. He seemed to suffer
from repression and betrayed his nervousness about something likely to happen very
soon. He was in a rare fright about the well-being of her Ladyship. That evening they
were together as usual and Downing could see no sign of his Lordship’s hand in the
tragic event.
Scene II
This scene shows Mary and Agatha conversing about flowers and the guests
likely to be present at the dinner. Mary is surprised to learn that Dr. Warburton also
has been invited by Amy, though it is a family dinner pure and simple. She is afraid
she will have to sit between John and Arthur and put up with the latter’s Chatter as ‘a
gay spark’ of the town. Mary wants to get away from Wishwood and seek Agatha’s
advice on the point. Amy has always been a domineering person and has kept her in
the house simply for her son Harry, not because she was impressed by her worth, but
because she wanted to have a tame daughter-in-law without money. Harry married
against her will but Amy still stuck to her project and it seemed as if she killed
Harry’s wife by ‘willing it’.
Agatha informs her that she was present at the wedding without the knowledge
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of Amy, and knew Harry’s wife. She was a weak and timid young woman, frightened
of his (Harry’s) family and ready to fight them. It has all been unfortunate for Harry.
Mary confides to her that it is Harry’s return that has made her think of flight from the
place, but Agatha, assuming prophetic gestures, insists that she must not run away
because it is not the moment for making any decision:
The decision will be made by powers beyond us
Which now and then emerge. You and I, Mary,
Are only watchers and waiters: not the easiest role.
Agatha goes out to change for dinner, and Harry appears before Mary as if looking for
something. To Mary’s enquiry he says that he has been trying to see if anything in his room
has changed. When Mary informs him that his mother was anxious that his room be kept in
the same condition as it was when he left Wishwood, Harry expresses his disapproval of
‘this arresting of the normal change of things’. But it is quite like his mother: she has not
changed and this is why the changing of other people becomes so manifest at this place.
Mary tells him that nothing changes here, ‘and we just go on drying up, I suppose, not
noticing the change’. He says that it seems he will get rid of none of the shadows he
wanted to escape. At the same time other memories begin to return from his childhood.
He asks Mary if she was ever happy as a child at Wishwood. Mary replies negatively and
explains why she was unable to feel at home there: she did not belong to the place. And
when Harry puts the next question as to why neither of them could feel happy in their
childhood, she rejoins, ‘because it all seemed to be imposed upon us: There was never
any time to invent our own enjoyments’. Perhaps it was designed for Harry’, though the
nature of the design was not clear even to him. They exchange memories of childhood
experiences and Mary adds that as a child she ‘took everything for granted’, including the
stupidity of older people; but even now she ‘finds them difficult to bear’:
They are always assured that you ought to be happy
At the very moment when you are wholly conscious
Of being a misfit, of being superfluous.
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This is her own tragedy and she is sorry to trouble Harry with it. But Harry tells her
that there is a deeper tragedy perhaps not known to her:
The sudden extinction of every alternative
The unexpected crash of the iron cataract.
You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it.
You only know what it is not to hope…
Mary warns him that what he talks of may be a deception, a mere dream. Does he not
know that when one hope dies, another springs out of its death to fill vacuum? After
the death of his first hope he has decided to return to Wishwood, prompted perhaps
by a new hope. Harry replies:
The instinct to return to the point of departure
And start again as if nothing had happened,
Isn’t that all folly?
Mary suggests that what he needs to alter is something within him, which he can
change here or anywhere. But Harry exclaims that ‘the something inside him’ seems
to be incapable of being changed, and here of all places, he has felt it most acutely in
and around him:
Here and here and here- wherever I am not looking,
Always flickering at the corner of my eye,
Almost whispering just out of my earshot—
And inside, too, in the nightly panic
Of dreaming dissolution. You do not know…
Mary is disappointed and offers to go, but is stopped by Harry. The next moment she
turns to him and utters some home-truths: she says that the source of his disease is his
own trained heart:
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You attach yourself to loathing
As others to do loving: an infatuation
That’s wrong, a good that’s misdirected. You deceive yourself
Like the man convinced that he is paralysed.
Harry experiences a strange sensation on hearing the words of Mary, which seem to
be like ‘the distant waterfall in the forest, inaccessible, half-heard’. Stirrings of
feeling are felt by his cold heart, like those of new life in the spring season, the time
of re-birth.
Mary revives Harry’s childhood, and also revives the memory of their sweet
love which was nipped in the bud. Harry experiences the warmth of its ecstasy:
You bring me news
Of a door that opens at the end of a corridor.
Sunlight and singing.
But he is suddenly interrupted by the Eumenides who appear to warn him that it is
now too late to open the door to enter ‘the rose garden’. Mary is not able to see what
has distracted Harry: it means she cannot enter the world which has now become the
home of Harry’s spirit. He stares at them (his pursuers), rebukes them and utters his
hopeless predicament:
When I remember
They leave me alone: when I forget them
Only for an instant of inattention
They are aroused again, the sleepless hunters
That will not let me sleep. At the moment before sleep
I always see their claws distended
Quietly as if they had never stirred.
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Mary, however, assures him that he should depend on her and everything
will be all right. But Harry is occupied with his own thoughts. Harry now understands
that Mary cannot help because she belongs to another world and cannot enter his
own. He has to face his tormentors all alone, who are all the more dangerous because
they are ‘stupid’.
Scene III
Harry and Mary are joined by the chorus of uncles and aunts who are arranging
things for dinner. They are anxious to make Harry feel at home, and seek Mary’s
active co-operation in the matter. Mary says nothing and leaves the place to change
for the dinner. Amy’s voice is heard enquiring about Arthur and John and expressing
concern at their failure to arrive. Then addressing Harry she commands him to meet
Dr. Warburton, an old friend of the family who has broken an engagement for the
purpose. The doctor begins to talk of the old days of Harry’s childhood and of the
diseases he contracted from time to time. As they start chatting about illness and
restoration of health Harry is puzzled and utters the words of deeper import:
What you call restoration to health
Is only incubation of another malady.
The doctor mildly deprecates Harry’s pessimistic view, which is an insult to the
medical profession, but he confesses, at the same time, that he himself has outgrown
the optimism of his Cambridge days when he used to dream about discovering how
to do away with some disease or other. His forty years’ experience as a medical
practitioner has made him wiser and more sober in his outlook:
We’re all of us ill one way or the other;
We call it health when we find no symptom
Of illness. Health is a relative term.
He goes on unburdening himself of his interesting experiences as a medical practitioner,

and refers to his first patient who was murderer, suffering from an incurable cancer.
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At this Harry goes off at a tangent into his own world:
It is really harder to believe in murder
Than to believe in cancer. Cancer is here:
The lump, the dull pain, the occasional sickness:
Murder is reversal of sleep and waking.
Murder was there. Your ordinary murderer
Regards himself as an innocent victim.
To himself he is still what he used to be
…..He cannot realize
That everything is irrevocable,
The past is unredeemable.
The doctor prudently changes the topic and they (guests) decide with the consent of
Amy, to go to dinner without Arthur and John.
Part II
(The Library, after Dinner)
Scene I
The scene opens in the library, after dinner, and introduces Harry and Dr.
Warburton, who have met, in the words of the latter, for ‘a private conversation of a
confidential nature’ about the former’s mother. Harry reacts sharply to the Doctor’s
disclosure, and informs him of the dictatorial role his mother has always played in
his (and his brother’s) childhood. ‘The rule of conduct was simply pleasing mother:
misconduct was simply being unkind to her. Whatever was wrong was whatever
made her suffer, and whatever made her happy was what was virtuous’. This is why
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they all ‘felt like failures, before they had begun’. ‘mother never punished them, but
made them feel guilty.’
Dr. Warburton interrupts him to say that the present meeting is concerned
with the future of their mother rather than with her past. Harry tells him bluntly that
they cannot think of the past and future as separate units of time, and so far as he
himself is concerned, he is more interested in knowing about his father than about his
mother. He hardly remembers him because he was kept apart from him till he (the
father) went away. He never heard him mentioned, but he had felt that somehow he
was always present there. Now he wants to know where his father was when he left
Wishwood. Warburton is taken aback and urges Harry to leave the matter alone and
stop ‘probing for misery’. His ‘father and mother were never happy together, and
they separated by mutual consent, and he went to live abroad’. He was only a boy at
the time of his father’s death and cannot remember him. He does, however, remember
the day when the news of his father’s death arrived. It was a summer day of unusual
heat when he chanced to intrude into the company of his aunts, who were conversing
in whispers, ‘with sidewise looks that bring death in to the heart of a child’. Ever
since then the matter has been lying ‘shrouded in misery’, and if the Doctor fails to
enlighten him, he insists, he will have to ask Agatha about it.
Warburton implores him not to pursue the unpleasant matter, but to listen to
what he has to tell him about his mother. Harry at last agrees and Warburton proceeds
with the story of his mother’s actual state of health. She, of course, looks healthy,
vigorous and alert; as vital as ever. But it is only the ‘force of her personality, her
indomitable will, that keeps her alive’. ‘The whole machine has grown weak and is
running down’. Her heart is feeble and she can survive for some length of time only if
she is spared care and excitement. But a sudden shock will mean the end of her life.
She has kept herself alive for his (Harry’s) return to Wishwood to ‘take command at
it’. And for this reason, it is the most essential that nothing should disturb or excite
her. As an old friend of the family the Doctor advises Harry to keep in mind two
important needs and act accordingly: first, to keep his mother happy for the time she
has to live; and, second, to remember that the future of the family will rest upon him,
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as his mother thinks, because she has been sorely disappointed by Arthur and John.
Her hopes are all centered upon him.
Harry surprises the Doctor by asking him abruptly if his father, at his age
looked like him. And he has to answer him by saying that there was a striking
resemblance between the young father and his young son. But he realizes that Harry
has perhaps been sleeping and thus missed the drift of his talk about his mother. At
this point the servant appears to announce the visit of Sergeant Winchell to meet Lord
Harry. While the Doctor expresses his concern about the young brothers, Arthur and
John, Harry assures him that nothing can have happened to them because Sergeant
Winchell himself may not be real. The doctor, however, advises him to pull himself
together; soon Winchell enters and greets Doctor Warburton as if he were celebrating
his own birthday. All of a sudden Harry darts at the Sergeant, seizes him by the
shoulders and says to Warburton, ‘He is real, Doctor. So let us resume the
conversation’. Winchell thinks that Harry is simply repeating the old jokes of his
boyhood, but Harry’s words and gestures confirm his suspicion that his lordship is
not normal. Explaining his present mission to the company he says that Mr John has
had an accident, because of his rash driving crashing into a lorry drawn up round a
bed. Luckily he has escaped serious injuries and Dr. Warburton earnestly threatens
her to abstain from risking her life and to trust him once more to attend her personal
business on her behalf. Harry stands a mute witness to this foolhardiness on the part
of his ailing mother. Violet, then, enquires, if he is not sorry for his brother and not
aware of what it will mean to his mother. Harry replies in his usual way with what
may sound callous and unusual to the person around him:
I don’t think the matter can be very serious…
Cannot make very much difference to John.
A brief vacation from the kind of consciousness
That John enjoys, can’t make very much difference
To him or to any one else. If he was really conscious,
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I should be glad for him to have a breathing spell.
But John’s ordinary day isn’t much more than breathing.
Violet protests at this seeming callousness of Harry towards his brother and his lack
of consideration for his mother. Amy, who has been listening to all this, intervenes
with the remark that she is coming to think how little she has ever known, yet it seems
Harry is right and Violet is wrong. Amy comments interestingly, ‘You looked like
your father, when you said that’. The remark sharply reminds us of the Harry-Orestes
parallel, even though Harry at once becomes solicitous about his mother’s health and
peace of mind.
As Harry retires with his mother, the uncles and aunts start talking about
Harry’s strange behavior, which has made them all the more considerate towards
Amy. The conversation drifts to John and Arthur. Arthur is described as brilliant but
a reckless driver, and Ivy contrasts the brothers by saying that in their childhood
Arthur was always the more adventurous but John was the one who had the accidents,
just because he was the slow one. The recklessness of Arthur is causing anxiety and
they are worried on Amy’s account.
Harry enters to announce, ‘mother is asleep’: he wonders at the promptness

of old people to drop into slumber. Then, looking at his aunts and uncles, he bluntly
observes that they are, perhaps, holding the usual family inquest on the characters of
all the junior members or predicting minor disasters. They, however, are used to
thinking of each thing separately; make small things important so that everything that
they call normal may be important. But:
What you call the normal
Is merely the unreal and the unimportant.
He was also like that so long as he thought his own life to be an isolated ruin, a
casual bit off waste in an orderly universe. But he now perceives that his personal
disaster is just ‘part of some huge disaster which he cannot put in order’.
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Then the servant enters to inform them that there was a trunk call about Arthur.
They at once exclaim that it must concern some accident in which Arthur has involved
himself. But Agatha addresses Harry about the problem of personal suffering as part
of a general distemper and points to an effective solution:
We cannot rest in being
The impatient spectators of malice or stupidity.
We must try to penetrate the other private worlds
Of make-believe and fear. To rest in our own suffering
Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more.
Harry, however, prefers now to talk in concrete terms about the specters that are
pursuing him even in his native place:
I have a private puzzle. Were they simply outside,
I might escape somewhere, perhaps. Were they simply inside
I could cheat them perhaps with the aid of Dr. Warburton-
But this is too real for your words to alter.
…You don’t understand me.
It is clear that Harry is a victim of double sin, sin personal and sin general or
universal. They are now interrupted by Ivy who informs that the trunk call came from
Arthur in London. It seems he also has met with some accident, details of which have
already appeared in the evening paper. He says that he hasn’t got the use of his car so
he will be coming up in the morning. The evening paper is at last found and among its
contents is a brief paragraph reporting a collision resulting from reckless driving, for
which Arthur has been fined fifty pound and forbidden to drive a car for the next
twelve months. In self-justification Arthur has stated that he had thought it was all
open country about Abony Street. When asked why he did not stop when signaled by
the police car he said, ‘I thought you were having a game with me’. The uncles and
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aunts now speak as Chorus about the doom hanging over the old house:
In an old house there is always listening, and more is heard than is spoken.
And what is spoken remains in the room, waiting for the future to hear it.
And whatever happens began in the past, and presses hard on the future.
And we know nothing of exorcism
And whether in Argos or England
There are certain inflexible laws
Unalterable, in the nature of music.
This is another link which connects Harry’s story with its Greek counterpart.
And the ‘inflexible law’ which governs the stories is the biblical text that the sins of
the fathers shall be visited upon their children unto the third generation.
Scene II
The scene opens with Harry and Agatha in conversation. Harry talks of the
accidents and surprises which cause only momentary ripples on the surface of the
normal course of life at Wishwood. John is the only one of them who is likely to
make himself at home at Wishwood, content to make a dull marriage with some
woman stupider than himself’:
He can resist the influence
Of Wishwood, being unconscious, living in gentle motion
Of horses, and right visits to right neighbours
At the right times; and be an excellent landlord.
Agatha, however, shocks Harry out of his complacency by telling him that she can
guess about his ‘past and future’, but ‘a present needed to connect them, is missing.’
Harry expresses his eagerness to learn the meaning of his ‘past’ and ‘future’. At the
beginning of his puzzlement, eight years ago, he felt, at first, that sense of separation,
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or isolation, which was irrevocable, and which gives one the knowledge of eternity,
because it feels eternal while it lasts. That is one hell. Then the numbness came to
cover it:
That was the second hell of not being there.
The degradation of being patriot from myself,
From the self which persisted only as an eye, seeing.
All this last year…
Harry is attempting a diagnosis of a guilty mind, of the murderer of his girl,

who saw the world through the spectacles of his dreamy state of mind. He thought
foolishly that on his return to Wishwood, everything would fall into its place. But the
‘contaminating presences’ prevent it, and he has still to find out what their meaning
is. Agatha then informs him that his question has disturbed her deeper organization
which lies below the surface of her life as the efficient Principal of a Women’s
college. She will, therefore, enlighten him and she hopes to have the strength necessary
for the purpose. Harry has little doubt on his score:
I have thought of you as the completely strong,
The liberated from the human wheel
So I looked to you for strength. Now I think it is
A common pursuit of liberation.
Agatha now informs Harry that his father had the making of a cultivated country
squire; he did his strength beneath his usual weakness, the diffidence of a solitary
man. Where he was weak and Harry’s mother was strong, and he yielded to her
strength. Slowly and gradually his mother succeeded in making terms with Wishwood
until she took his father’s place and reached the point of complete identification with
Wishwood, each supporting the other. ‘A vacancy fell upon the house’:
A man and a woman
Married, alone in a lonely country house together

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For three years childless, learning the meaning
Of loneliness.
The speaker being the youngest sister of his mother came to Wishwood for a long
vacation from Oxford, where she was an undergraduate. She well remembers a
‘summer day of unusual heat’ for this cold country when she experienced the ecstasy
of first love with his father’.
He began secretly to think of plans and devices to get rid of Amy, who was
bearing him (Harry), her first child, in her womb. It was Agatha who stopped Harry’s
father:
I did not want to kill you!
What were you then only a thing called ‘life’
Something that should have been mine as I felt then
If that happened, I knew I should have carried
Death in life, death through lifetime death in my womb.
I felt that you were in some way mine!
That in any case I should have no other child. The story unfolded by Agatha
comes as flash of light to confused mind of Harry. Agatha, however, brings home to
Harry the profound significance of his vicarious sin and suffering, and the great duty
which has developed upon him:
What we have written is not a story of detection,
Of crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation.
It is possible that you have not known what sin
You shall expiate, or whose, or why. It is certain
That of knowledge it must precede the expiation…
It is possible that you are the consciousness of your unhappy family,
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Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.
Indeed it is possible. You may learn hereafter,
Moving alone through flames of ice, chosen
To resolve the enchantment under which we suffer.
A wave of happiness surges through Harry; it is a happiness which does not arise
from the fulfillment of a desire or abandonment of what is undesirable; it is born of a
different vision. But a weariness steals upon Agatha, the weariness of an old person
that comes at the beginning of action, distinct from the weariness of the young, which
comes at the end of it. Yet she is unhappy:
There’s relief from a burden that I carried,
And exhaustion at the moment of relief
The burden’s yours now, yours
The burden of all the family.
And I am a little frightened.
Harry confesses that he is now beginning to understand her and the other members of
his family. Family affection has been a kind of formal obligation: he had only to play
a part that was imposed upon him. And when he returned home after his long absence
he found another part, cut out and kept ready for him. But the strength of the people
designing his duty and function stifled his own decision. Now he has found out the
truth and can understand and sympathize with his mother. So Harry, like Thomas, has
got the better of his private shadows. Here follows the duet between Agatha and
Harry, who describe, in the formal language of ritual or incantation, the different
ways which they have travelled to gain liberation. Agatha, after a moment’s ecstasy
in the ‘rose garden’, walked away ‘down a concrete corridor in a dead air’:
I was only the feet: the unwinking eye,
Fixing the movement. Over and under.
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Harry on his part, had been drifting in a desert, round and round, amid a
swarm of putrescent corpses, as it were, till the chain broke and he was left under a
single eye above the desert. Agatha likens her movement to ‘walking through the
stone passages of an immense and empty hospital, passing barred windows until the
chain breaks’. The fog has cleared and a new understanding has given birth to a
strong love between Mary offered and the Eumenides sternly rejected.
Agatha reminds Harry that he has to go on a long journey to fulfill his expiation.
But the latter is not in a hurry to leave the place which has become so quiet. This is
the first time that he has been from the ‘ring of ghosts’ with joined hands that used to
pursue him. He feels a communication direct to the brain, a scent, quite unlike the
previous odour. The Eumenides appear before him at this juncture, but he faces them
bravely and tells them that they are outside him: this time they are real and therefore
endurable. They are ready to leave Wishwood and he will also be going with them.
They will have one journey to one destination. And should waste no more time.
The Eumenides disappear and Agatha goes to the window and steps into the
place they had occupied. Then she moves back into the room and in her normal voice
repeats the previous remark that Harry must go on his destined journey without further
delay:
Love compels cruelty
To those who do not understand love.
What you have wished to know, what you have learned
Mean the end of a relation, make it impossible.
Harry replies that he made a decision in a moment of clarity, and now he feels dull
again. He is still confused but he knows this much: there is only one way out of
defilement which leads in the end to reconciliation. So he must go. Agatha endorses
his decision- ‘you must go’, Amy enters at this point. She has overheard the words of
Agatha and rebukes her for her command to Harry to go away from the place where
he arrived only a couple of hours ago. Harry intervenes and tells his mother that his
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decision to leave the place concerns neither Agatha, nor anybody else in the family:
My advice has come from a different quarter,
But cannot explain that to you now. Only be sure
That I know what I am doing, and what I must do,
And that it is the best thing for every body-
But at present, I cannot explain it to anyone:
I do not know the words in which to explain it-
That is what makes it harder.
Amy enquires querulously as to why Agatha should know the reason for his
going, while she herself should not be allowed to know it. Harry replies that he does
not know if Agatha knows or how much she knows, for the knowledge she has must
have come from some other source. For the whole of the last year he has been in
flight from invisible pursuers, but now he has realized that all his life has been a
flight and that phantoms fed upon him while he fled. He has, however, discovered at
this moment the safe shelter where he can meet them. Thereupon, Amy exclaims, ‘So
you will run away’; and this time it is Agatha who replies in her own mysteriously
suggestive language:
In a world of fugitives
The person taking the opposite direction
Will appear to run away.
Amy is displeased with Agatha’s intervention, and Harry has to pacify her with his
explanation:
It is very hard, when one just recovered sanity,
And not yet assured in possession, that is when
One begins to seem the maddest to other people.

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I is hard for you too, mother, it is indeed harder,
Not to understand.
As regards the destination of his journey, which his mother is anxious to know, he
himself is still unsettled. But he can only say that his destination is somewhere on the
other side of despair. His place in the family will be taken by his brother, John, who
is naturally framed for domestic life. But on him the ‘election’ has fallen and strength
enough has been given ‘to follow the bright angels’ to the place of sanity.
Scene III
Amy and Agatha confront each other, and this confrontation serves the dramatic
purpose of lifting the veil from the obscure family life of Amy of which we have been
given only a vague idea by Agatha’s brief revelation to tortured Harry. From this
point to the end of the play Amy remains the focus of our attention and sympathy. Amy
flings her biting accusation in to the face of Agatha- ‘Thirty five years ago you took
my husband from me. Now you take my son.’ And the latter gives the cutting home-
thrust, in return that she took away nothing that Amy had, and got ‘thirty years of
solitude, alone among women, in a Women’s college, trying not to dislike women’.
This provokes Amy still further into a bitter recital of her past woes:
The more rapacious, to take what I never had;
The more unpardonable, to taunt me with not having it.
She rightly observes that she had really taken what she (Amy) possessed; she would
have left her a memory to live upon. In the present case, however, she was left an
empty house, which she was obliged to plant with children in union with a husband,
‘a discontented ghost’, kept for the purpose for seven long , miserable years. Can she
imagine her ‘humiliation and chilly pretences in the silent bed-room?’ She forced
herself to do all this for the purpose of keeping Wishwood intact even after her
husband’s departure: she even invited her back for visits after he had left, so that
there might be no ugly rumours. She continues speaking, unmindful of Agatha’s sharp
rejoinder that even after the passage of thirty-five years she remains what she was
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before, ‘just as voracious for what you cannot have because you repel it’.
Amy goes on saying that she was busy, for the sake of Harry, preparing a
situation for them to be reconciled, in a bid to obliterate misery and waste of the past,
so that Harry may remember only his happy childhood at Wishwood and look up to a
successful future. But Agatha’s ‘fury of possession’, strengthened by ‘thirty years’
abstinence, has now deprived her of Harry also. Agatha reminds her that they have
‘no ground for argument’ because neither of them ever had a husband or a son. Amy,
however, goes complaining that it was Agatha who persuaded Harry to abandon his
duty, his family, and his happiness at the moment of success when she had felt assured
of this settlement and his happiness. She reiterates bitterly: ‘You who took my husband,
now you take my son’.
They are interrupted by Mary, who enters in a flurry to announce that Harry is
going away and must be stopped. Amy points to Agatha as the woman who has
persuaded him to go, against her own firm belief that Harry was not a weakling ‘as
his father in the hands of any unscrupulous woman’. Mary can try to hold him back,
but she will not succeed. It seems Agatha has ‘some spell which works from generation
to generation’. Mary desperately turns to Agatha for help in stopping Harry, because
he is in a great danger. She is urging it on the basis of something she has seen and
which others do not know. Agatha tells Mary:
We must all go, each in his own direction,
You, and I, and Harry. You and I,
My dear, may very likely meet again
In our wanderings in the neutral territory
Between two worlds.
Mary welcomes this offer to leave a place where she had actually led a death-in life,
though ‘it takes so many years to learn that one is dead’. Amy has been listening to
the whole talk and in the end throws down her cards in despair:
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So you will all leave me!
An old woman alone in a damned house,
I will let the walls crumble. Why should I worry…
It is no concern of the body in the tomb
To brother about the unkeep. Let the wind and rain do that.
Meanwhile Harry has entered, dressed for departure, and over heard his mother’s
lamentation. He tells his mother that she will always have Arhtur and John at
Wishwood, and John is ‘the destined and perfect master of Wishwood, and the
satisfactory son. So far as he himself is concerned he has his own course to pursue:
‘and he is safe from normal dangers.’ But he cannot account for his mission until he
comes back again. Amy, however, says prophetically, ‘If you go now, I shall never
see you again’.
The news of Harry’s departure perhaps to lead the life of a missionary has
filled his aunts and uncles with surprise and anxiety. They hurry together to spot
where Harry stands before his mother in all readiness for his journey. They express
their solicitude for his welfare and want him to explain to them the motive behind
his sudden decision to embrace the life of a missionary. Harry tells them that he
never said that he was going to be a missionary. He, however, cannot explain the
nature and occasion of his journey because they cannot understand even if they
believe it. They have not seen what he has seen and should make as little fuss about
his journey as possible. With these words he bids them good-bye and quit his
place.
It is a great shock to his mother, but it brings with it, as every tragic experience
does, a new insight into the reality of things. It has come too late for her to mend
matters, still she is glad that she has come by it:
I always wanted too much for my children,
More than life can give. And now I am punished for it.
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With these words she staggers towards her chamber supported by Gerald and
Violet. The company left behind witnesses the hurried entry of Downing, Harry’s
chauffeur, who comes for his Lordship’s cigarette-case. He finds it on the table
to go with it, when Mary urges him never to leave his Lordship. He informs her
that his long association with his Lordship has given him an inking into his mind
and on the strength of this he believes that his Lordship will not need him very
long. He always felt that whatever had happened to his Lordship was only a
preparation for something else. Most of us seem to live according to circumstances,
but with people like him there is something inside them that accounts for what
happens to them. So he seems to know beforehand what is going to happen to his
Lordship.
Agatha now warns him that he need not be upset if Harry’s behavior seems to
be unaccountable at times. He is every bit as sane, and sees the world as clearly, as
they themselves. It is only that he has seen a great deal more than that, and they have
seen them (‘presences’) too. Downing understands what she means because he also
has seen the ‘ghosts’ that haunted his master. But now he is convinced that there is no
harm in them (the Eumenides).
Downing hurries out and Ivy enters with a telegram from Agatha! ‘Regret
delayed business in town many happy returns see you tomorrow many happy returns
etc.’ And the full irony of the situation flashes across their minds as they hear Amy’s
voice, ‘Agatha, Mary, come; the clock has stopped in the dark!’ They are stunned
with this unexpected intrusion of death and speak in a chorus:
We understand the ordinary business of living…
But the circle of our understanding
Is a very restricted area,
Except for a limited number
Of strictly practical purposes
We do not know what we are doing.
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We do not know much about thinking.
What is happening outside of the circle?
The play closes with a final ceremony of exorcism of the curse. Agatha and Mary
walk slowly in a single file round and round a table, with the birthday cake and
lighted candles upon it. At each revolution they blow out a few candles, so that the
last words of their chant are spoken in the dark. They sing alternately and create a
solemn atmosphere. The chant is about the curse which comes to fruition slowly and
mysteriously at its desired moment, and the refrain is ‘Follow follow’. The charm is
completed by the final words of Agatha:
This way the pilgrimage
Of expiation
Round and round the circle
Completing the charm
So the knot be unknotted
The crossed be uncrossed
The crooked be made straight
And the curse be ended
By intercession
By pilgrimage
By those who depart
In several directions
For their own redemption
And that of the departed-
May the rest in peace.
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14.5 GLOSSARY
1. Eumenides – A name for the furies which means the “kindly ones”
2. Chorus – A group of persons singing in unison
3. Ecstasy- An overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful

excitement
4. Contemplate- look thoughtfully for a long time
5. Expiation - The act of making amends or reparation for guilt or

wrongdoing
6. Shudder – Tremble typically as a result of fear or revulsion
7. Alluded- Suggest or call attention to indirectly
8. Perceptible – able to be seen or noticed
9. Pretence- An attempt to make something that is not the case appear

true
10. Noxious- Very unpleasant
11. Predicament- A difficult or embarrassing situation
12. Deprecates- Express disapproval of
13. Shrouded- Cover or envelop so as to conceal from view
14. Indomitable – Impossible to subdue or defeat
15. Callousness- Insensitive or cruel disregard for others
16. Solicitous- Showing interest or concern
17. Putrescent- Undergoing the process of decay
18. Phantom- Ghost, spirit
19. Voracious - Wanting great quantities of food
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20. Obliterate- Wipe out
21. Abstinence- The practice of restraining oneself from indulging in

something
22. Reiterates- Say something again or number of times
23. Chauffeur – A person employed to drive a private or hired car
1. What was the occasion in Wishwood in the beginning of the play?
(a) John’s welcome
(b) Amy’s birthday
(c) Harry’s welcome
(d) Harry’s birthday
2. Who has love affair with Harry’s father?
(a) Mary
(b) Ivy
(c) Agatha
(d) Violet
3. Who was Mr Downing?
(a) Wishwood’s servant
(b) Family doctor
(c) Arhthur’s colleague
(d) Harry’s Chauffeur
4. Mary decided to leave Wishwood because:
(a) She was bored of Wishwood
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(b) Amy told her to leave
(c) She felt bad on her rejection by Harry
(d) Agatha told her she is misfit in Wishwood
5. Eumenides in the play are the:

(a) Supernatural waves
(b) Ghosts
(c) High beam rays

(d) Heavy storm
6. Amy accused Agatha of :

(a) Theft
(b) Adultery
(c) Incest
(d) Being mysterious
7. Who among the following was not Amy’s son?

(a) Harry
(b) David
(c) Arhtur
(d) John
8. Who among the following was not Amy’s sister?
(a) Mary
(b) Violet
(c) Ivy
(d) Agatha
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9. What was Harry’s final decision?
(a) To get married to Mary
(b) To become Wishwood’s master
(c) To shift to a new place
(d) To follow the path of salvation
10. Who among the following did not leave Wishwood?
(a) Agatha
(b) Harry
(c) John
(d) Mary
14.7 LET US SUM UP
In this lesson we have discussed the synopsis and the detailed summary of the
play, divided into two parts and different scenes. This lesson covers all the major
incidents of the play along with the multiple choice questions at the end of the detailed
summary.
14.8 ANSWER KEY
1. (b)
2. (c)
3. (d)
4. (c)
5. (a)
6. (b)
7. (b)
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8. (a)
9. (d)
10. (c)
1. What was Amy’s plan and what was her strength?
Ans. Amy is the most forceful person in Wishwood, living on the plane of will
alone. But will without spirit is like sensation without spirit, and Amy’s attempt to
will a design to which all must consent is wrecked by her inability to see beyond her
own schemes. Unmoved by physical disasters, she is crumpled completely by Harry’s
departure, which she regards as the greatest disaster. When her clock stops, she too
is still in the dark, and her party becomes her funeral. After her collapse, we are left
with the inescapable inference that these representatives of English aristocracy have
lost every advantage their age could confer. Deprived of even simple belief by their
sophisticated secularism, and shaken from their sophistication by their simple fear,
they are the hollow men and women.
2. Discuss the role played by Agatha, Mary and Downing in the play.
Ans. Occupying “the territory between two worlds” are Agatha, Mary, and Downing.
All three see the Eumenides. But they have not been elected to pursue the Vision, and
to his words give reluctant assent. However, because they know that revelation is
possible, they can help Harry towards his election. After he is beyond their assistance,
they will go each in his own direction to find what peace may be granted to those
who “shall not know the one veritable transitory power.” As part of the almost
geometric using and re-using of patterns, there is a parallel between Mary’s starting
life as a reacher and Agatha’s debut in that profession: disappointed in sexual love,
Mary will devote herself to the enlightenment of others, while learning the attitudes
of resignation that her aunt has already attained. As his name suggests, the valet-
chauffeur Downing is the common-folk counterpart of the two women, a demonstration
that spiritual flexibility is not a matter of intellect or class. Presumably because his
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vision is unhampered by involvement in the tangle of loves and hatreds, Downing
becomes awed of the Eumenides earlier than any of the others. Downing is to
accompany his master on the first leg of his journey.
3. What were the views of Harry’s Chauffeur, Mr Downing?
Ans. To his valet, Harry is a hero. Having been most low, he becomes most high by
accepting the election of the Eumenides to explore the meaning of the rose-garden
experience. When first confronted by these powers, he sees them as evil eyes, but
during the moment of illumination, he perceives them as the “final eye,” judicial and
benevolent. Having tracked himself down, Harry leaves his homeland with his will
made ready for the thousand natural shocks that an heir is heir to.
4. Discuss Harry and Agatha’s relation.
Ans. Harry’s attachment to Agatha resembles what the psychiatrist calls “transfer.”
Acting as analyst, she helps Harry to free himself of loathing. During this process, he
tries to release positive feelings, first with Mary, then with Agatha. In the former
instance, he is incapable of developing the emotion: he has never had the chance to
identify with a father figure, and therefore finds heterosexual relationships difficult
to enter; and second, he has been symbolically castrated by his traumatic experience.
Later, he reaches a high pitch of tenderness with Agatha, but at this time his super-ego
in the form of the Eumenides, remind him that this is not the way to divine union.
However, this exploration of the past cures Harry of his near schizophrenia.
5. Give the significance of Eumenides.
Ans. The Eumenides play their part in association with primitive blood-curse and
modern guilt, in another aspect entirely continuous with the first two they stand for
sin-consciousness. Harry becomes aware of the root of his unhappiness after their
final visit. He senses that the business of his life must become ascetic purgation.
Guilt vanishes but sin remains. By following the Eumenides, Harry leaves for a
triple salvation: to lift the doom on himself, on the house, and on the world. Hence,
what began as a primitive flight from fear is changed into a Christian pilgrimage of
penance, with pagan furies at the entrance and bright angels at the exit.
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1. In T. S. Eliot’s play, The Family Reunion, who are the Eumenides and what is
their role and significance?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. Give the summary of T.S. Eliot’s play The Family Reunion.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. Summarise the first part of the play in your own words.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. Christopher Fry and T.S. Eliot- Mahendra Pratap Sangal
6. The Plays of T.S.Eliot : A Critical Study- K.S. Misra
7. T.S. Eliot- Northrop Frye
******
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FAMILY REUNION
DESCRIPTIVE QUESTIONS
STRUCTURE
15.1 Objectives
15.2 Chronological Table of Events at Wishwood
15.3 Plot of the Play
15.4 Structure of the Play
15.5 Essence of the Action
15.6 Critical Study of the Play
15.7 Defects of the Play
15.8 Significance of Eumenides in the Play
15.9 Glossary
15.11 Let Us Sum Up
15.12 Answer Key

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15.1 OBJECTIVES
Objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the descriptive

questions of the play. This lesson will deal in detail with the questions like
chronological table of events at Wishwood and the critical study of the play etc.
15.2 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS AT WISHWOOD
1874 - Doctor Warburton was born and he claims to have had forty years of medical
experience supposing him to have qualified at the age of 25, he would have
been 65 by that time.
1939 - This accounts for his fatherly attitude towards Harry and indicates the sort of
make-up an actor playing Dr. Warburton should attempt.
1879 - Amy was born. Eliot made a miscalculation about the age of her eldest son
(Harry) and the date of her marriage. She accuses Agatha of having stolen
her husband thirty-five years before, which brings us to 1904; she was then
pregnant with Harry, her first child due in three months’ time, having been
three years childless before the birth of Harry.
1876 - Harry’s father, Lord Monchensey was born.
1880 - Ivy was born

1881 - Violet was born
1884 - Agatha was born

1900 1- Amy marries Lord Monchensey, Harry’s father
1904 - Agatha and Harry’s father fall in love on ‘a summer day of unusual heat’,
thirty five years before the play opens
1904 - The curse begins. Harry’s father plans to murder Amy
1904 - Harry born towards Christmas
1905 -6- John (Harry’s younger brother) born and Lord Monchensey deserted Amy
after two years
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1907 - Arthur (Harry’s youngest brother) born
1907-8- Lord Monchensey desertes Amy
1909 - Agatha becomes a don at a women’s college and Mary born
1910 - Lord Monchensey dies abroad
1927 - Mary becomes undergraduate at Agatha’s college
1929 - Harry engages Downing as his chauffeur
1931 - Last previous family reunion. It seems that Harry was still at Wishwood then,
but left during the year and married a wife, who ‘would never have been one
of the family’
1931 - Harry abandons Wishwood and marries
1931 - Harry becomes aware of the supernatural world
1932-8 - Mary remains at Wishwood dominated by Amy
1938 - Harry’s wife drowned on an Atlantic crossing
1938 - Harry thinks he pushed his wife overboard
1938 - Harry begins to feel himself pursued
1939 - Harry returns to Wishwood for his mother’s birthday and in a hope to escape
his pursuers finds them closer than ever before.
15.3 PLOT OF THE PLAY
This play is in two acts set in Wishwood, a stately home in the north of England.
At the beginning, the family of Lady Monchensey is assembling for her birthday
party. She is, as her doctor later explains, clinging on to life by sheer willpower:
I keep wishwood alive
To keep the family alive,
To keep them together,
To keep me alive, and I keep them.
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Lady Monchensey’s two brothers and three sisters are present, and a younger
relation, Mary, but none of Lady Monchesey’s three sons. Among other things they
discuss the sudden, and not to them wholly unwelcome, death at sea of the wife of the
eldest son Harry, the present Lord Monchensey.
Neither of the younger sons ever appears, both being slightly injured in motoring
accidents, but Harry soon arrives, his first appearance at Wishwood for eight years. He
is haunted by the belief that he pushed his wife off the ship. In fact Harry has an alibi for
the time, but whether he killed her or not, he wished her dead and his feeling of guilt is
the driving force in the rest of the play. Lady Monchesey decides that Harry’s state
warrants the discreet observation of the family doctor, who is invited to join the party,
ostensibly as a dinner guest. Mary, who has been earmarked by Amy as a future wife
for Harry, wishes to escape from life at Wishwood, but her aunt Agatha tells her that
she must wait:
You and I, Mary
Are only watchers and waiters, not the easiest role
Agatha reveals to Harry that his father attempted to kill Amy while Harry was
in her womb, and that Agatha prevented him. Far from being grateful, Amy resented
and still resents Agatha’s depriving her of her husband. Harry, with Agatha’s
encouragement, announces his intention to go away from Wishwood, leaving his steady
younger brother John to take over. Amy, despairing at Harry’s renunciation of
Wishwood, dies and Harry and his faithful servant, Downing, leave.
15.4 STRUCTURE OF THE PLAY
The play is partly in blank verse and partly in prose. Eliot had already
experimented with verse drama in Murder in the Cathedral, and continued to use the
form in his post-war stage works. Though the work has superficial resemblances to a
conventional 1930s drawing room drama, Eliot uses two devices from ancient Greek
drama. Firstly, Harry’s uncles and aunts occasionally detach themselves from the
action and chant a commentary on the plot, in the manner of a Greek chorus. Secondly,
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Harry is pursued by the Eumenides – the avenging Furies who pursue Orestes in the
Oresteia; they are seen not only by Harry but by his servant and the most perceptive
member of his family, Agatha.
The play is divided in two parts, each divided in three scenes. The first part
takes place in the drawing room, after tea, an afternoon in late March. The first scene is
used as an introduction of the persons Amy, Ivy, Violet, Agatha, Gerald, Charles, Mary
and Denman. They are talking about tonight, when a dinner is being held with the entire
family. They are also talking about Harry, whom they haven’t seen for eight years.
Before those years, something terrible had happened to Harry’s wife

and he thinks he is to blame. His wife was swept off the deck of a boat. Because
Harry thinks he has thrown her overboard, his family thinks he is not sane. But
now, eight years later, Harry is the only one who acts sane about it, his aunts Ivy,
Violet and Agatha are the ones who are making a fuss out of it. And that upsets
Harry. When the others notice Harry sees ‘persons’ that they don’t see, they really
begin to think Harry has gone crazy. It appears that these ghosts are from his
deceased wife, and he is haunted by them, at least he thinks he is. Scene two
describes a conversation between Harry and Mary, they talk about their youth
and Harry sees the ghosts again. Mary doesn’t see them and she feels sorry for
him. Scene three tells that everyone is preparing for dinner and that the guests are
worried about John and Arthur, who haven’t arrived yet. Part two takes place in
the library, after dinner.
In scene I, Dr. Warburton has a conversation with Harry, at advice of Harry’s

uncles and aunts. It’s about Harry’s mother. Warburton explains that Harry’s mother
gets her strength to live from her determination of keeping the family together, and
that she is very feeble at the moment. Then Sergeant Winchell appears with the message
that John has had an accident, but that it is nothing serious, just a concussion. Later
on, it appears that Arthur has also had an accident. In scene II, Harry asks Agatha for
the truth behind his parents and she is strong enough to tell him. She tells Harry that
his father was going to kill his mother while she was pregnant of him. Agatha stopped
Harry’s father just in time. When she is finished telling she sighs with relief and says
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that Harry is now the one who has to carry the burden. Scene III describes an argument
between Amy and Agatha, Amy is very angry with Agatha for taking away her son,
saying she first took her husband and now her son. Agatha explains that it was
inevitable and that they have to start their lives over again and leave the past behind
them. Harry realises he has to follow the ghosts and that they will lead him. Amy dies
at the end because she can take no more. The play ends with Agatha, saying that the
knot is unknotted, the cross is uncrossed and the crooked is made straight.
15.5 ESSENCE OF THE ACTION
Harry returns to Wishwood with a guilty of murder in his heart but his
conversation first with Mary and later with Agatha changed his heart and he comes to
understand that he must follow those angels, not flee from them. That change of heart
is the action of the play.
The play opens with a portrait of Wishwood, the dead end of an old family,
once wealthy and perhaps distinguished, but no longer so; except for Amy and Agatha,
hardly one of the gatherings of aunts and uncles shows the flicker of a living mind;
they have gathered neither in affection or dislike, but from a habit of family solidarity,
in obedience to Amy. Harry’s homecoming, however, not Amy’s birthday, is the true
cause of their assembling. Eight years have passed since they were last assembled.
Eight years before, Harry had married and left; and now he was coming back, a
widower, whose wife had died mysteriously at sea a year ago;
There is a purposeless torpor in the world of Wishwood. Its life has no

meaning beyond itself; it lives on in order to live on, under the simple and indomitable
will of Amy:
If you want to know why I never leave Wishwood
That is the reason, I keep Wishwood alive.
To keep the family alive, to keep them togher,
To keep me alive, and I live to keep them.
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She knows that they will all die; death will come to them and to herself, but only as a
mild surprise.
At the beginning of the scene with Mary, Harry tells her that all these years he
has been longing to get back to Wishwood, it would seem, but he is really in search
of his innocence, the rare happiness of moments in his childhood. Mary says that
their happiness had no freedom in it; it was all planned by Amy except for the hollow
tree. It was where she and Harry had fought the Red Indians, Arthur and John. But
later Amy had had the tree cut down, and replaced it with a neat summer-house to
please the children.
Harry feels hopeless but Mary suggests that he is still capable of hope; he
must have hoped for something in returning to Wishwood. She further says if Wishwood
had proved a cheat, perhaps the cheat was in himself. She says Harry needs to alter
something inside him. Her words gave some hope to Harry.
But, as he speaks the Eumenides make their presence felt. Mary, pretending
not to see them, draws the curtains to hide them from Harry. He was astonished to see
this. The glimpse of innocence and the hope she had given him seem to have been
extinguished; yet the Eumenides have signaled the first turning of the stair Harry has
to climb; there will be second turning after he has spoken with Agatha. Eumenides
were of no danger to Mary but they were there just to take Harry away from her. This
scene with Mary concludes the first half of the essential action; it has reminded
Harry of his innocence, so long threatened as to be almost lost.
The scene with Agatha concludes the second half of the action. Agatha’s
contribution is to show Harry the nature of love, a thing outside of his experience
then; for he is cursed to bear the lovelessness of his family. The love she is able
to teach him is of two kinds: the love of attachment- of man to woman- and the
love of detachment- of man or woman from all created beings - that leads to
divine union. It is Agatha who comes nearest to explaining their destiny; ‘What
we have written,’ she says, ‘is not story of detection - of crime and punishement,
but of sin and expiation’
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…It is possible
You are the consciousness of your unhappy family,
Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.
Indeed it is possible.
This change of heart of Harry and change of direction have happened before our eyes
in these two almost love scenes; they are the action of play. What happens before is a
preparation for them, what happens after is a rounding –off. Harry takes his departure
from Wishwood once more, and it kills Amy.
15.6 CRITICAL STUDY OF THE PLAY
Poetry is the most dominant and attractive part of the play and some critics
have praised it generously. Apart from the points raised by Eliot about the nature of
poetry which at places, ceases to be dramatic and in character, we may also notice
that in many of the poetic speeches, especially of the protagonist himself, the feeling
expressed is in excess of what the theme or the situation demands.
Harry has this tendency of hasty generalization and by the capacity for
discovering even in ordinary things food for deep, melancholy and morbid reflection.
When this tendency appears in Harry, the reader is forced to realize the core of truth
embedded in Eliot’s criticism. Harry is a young man of the modern age, when man
lives and suffers in isolation from the rest of the universe, and though he talks of
‘election’ he is not a saint like Thomas. So, Harry expresses the emotions generated
by his consciousness of his ‘supposed’ sin, we cannot but feel that his emotion is in
excess of the situation or of the object which has aroused it. ‘Voice’ of Harry is not
the ‘third voice’ of Eliot; he is simply the mouthpiece of creator.
Harry is also aware of her (his dead wife’s) constant presence, and his own
‘deadness’ to the world around:
The partial anesthesia of suffering without feeling
And partial observation of one’s own automatism.

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While the slow stain sinks deeper though the skin
Tainting the flesh and discoloring the bone.
Commenting on the nature of theme in this play Agatha has said:
What we have written is not the story of detection,
Of crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation.
This has given a Christian overtone to the play under which the sin of Harry’s father
has become a symbol of the original sin, and Harry himself a Christ-like figure who
has been ‘elected’ to redeem the family through personal suffering and sacrifice.
Agatha has already explained this to him:
You are the consciousness of your unhappy family,
The bird sent flying through the purgatorial falme. Indeed
It is possible, you may learn hereafter,
Moving alone through the flames of ice, chosen
To resolve the enchantment under which we suffer.
The fundamental theme of old myth and ritual is death and re-birth, a theme
which is easily traceable in the play. Thus, Wishwood, the doomed house has become
dead and its deadness is suggested by the pointed reference to its ‘coldness’; and
Amy, who has identified herself with the house, has been leading a kind of ‘death in
life’, from which she is released by her actual death in the end. Harry himself is half
dead and walks about pursued by ‘ghosts’: ‘In an over-crowded desert, jostled by
ghosts’. His explanation marks at once the renewal of his tainted self, the purgation
of his family and the transformation of the ‘grim spectres’ into ‘bright angels’.
15.7 DEFECTS OF THE PLAY
This play has been criticized on several counts and Eliot himself has analysed
its limitations with a liberal frankness that is disarming. In “Poetry and Drama” he
has referred to two serious structural defects of the play. The first was that he had
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employed far too much of the strictly limited time allowed to a dramatist, in presenting
a situation, and not left himself enough time and material, for developing it in action.
He had written what was, on the whole, a good first act; except that for a first act it
was much too long. When the curtain rises again the audience is expecting that
something is going to happen. Instead, it find itself treated to further exploration of
the grounds what must seem to the audience an interminable time of preparation, the
conclusion comes so abruptly that audience is not ready for it. This was an elementary
fault in mechanics.
Secondly, the author has failed to make proper adjustment between the Greek
story and the modern situation. In this respect the most glaring symptom is the
appearance of the Furies, which cannot be properly presented on the modern stage,
and whose appearance makes little contribution to the dramatic interest, except to
suggest the link between the modern story and the story of the matricide, Orestes, in
Aeschylus.
According to Eliot, a more serious evidence is that audience is left in a

divided frame of mind, not knowing whether to consider the play the tragedy of
mother or the salvation of his son. The two situations are not reconciled. He find
a confirmation of this in the fact that his sympathies now have come to be all with
the mother, except perhaps for the chauffeur, the only complete human being in
the play; and the hero now strikes as an insufferable prig. Many readers of the
play will endorse the preference of Eliot. Amy is long-suffering pathetic figure,
a victim of cruelty of her husband and of the irony of fate which changes her
birthday into her death-day, and which foils her desperate effort to bring about
the reunion of her family by holding the two sons back from the party, and driving
the eldest one away from his inheritance. In many respects she resembles her
counterpart in Ibsens’s Ghosts, the story of a tragic woman who makes a deliberate
and concerted effort to obliterate the dark past by keeping her son immune from
its contagion, but who finds in the end that the ghost of the past can be laid to rest
only by the sacrifice of her dear one, whose assured future has been the most
cherished desire of her heart.
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Eliot confesses that by giving so much attention to versification he was not able to
do justice to plot and character. He dispensed with the ‘Chorus’ in the conventional
sense but employed the strange device of using four minor figures, representing the
Family, sometimes as individual character parts and sometimes collectively as Chorus.
The device is unsatisfactory because the transition from the individual to the collective
part is difficult to accomplish.
15.8 SIGNIFICANCE OF EUMENIDES IN THE PLAY
The main dramatic action deals with the gradual and progressive liberation
of Harry Monchensey from his sense of guilt and defilement in a private, curse-
haunted universe. This liberation is brought about by the presence of certain
mysterious forces represented by the Eumenides. They appear to Harry on three
separate occasions; each time Harry perceives them with increasing clarity, the
appearances of the Eumenides coincide with the successive steps in Harry’s
liberation, marking out as it were the stages of his progress. Harry sees the
Eumenides as concrete entities for the first time when he returns to Wishwood.
Whatever hope he had of finding release from his sense of guilt is reduced to
despair under the gaze of his pursuers. This realization puts Harry in a state of
isolation which makes the entire universe seem corrupt and corrupting. This
deranging isolation breaks his contact with reality and projects him into a private
world without direction, purpose, or principle of conduct. Haunted by
hallucinations, Harry has no one to cheer him up. His family expects him to take up
routine as head of the household as though nothing had happened. Annoyed by their
pretense, Harry accuses his family of insensibility and tries to awaken them to his
suffering, without success. Thus, his first encounter with the Eumenides finds Harry
holding the hope that he can forget at Wishwood, and leaves him with the despairing
realization that he cannot.
During the next stage of his liberation, Harry gropes his way up from despair
towards freedom and illumination. He starts by fastening upon a question he had
asked himself earlier: why should the Eumenides wait until his return to Wishwood
to show themselves? His aunt Agatha, who does not believe his condition of mind
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can be explained by his professed crime, encourages him to explore the past as the
path to freedom. From this point on, Harry becomes pursuer and pursued. Where his
cousin Mary removes the illusion that he had once been happy at Wishwood, she
confirms his stirring suspicion that his present misery is somehow linked to the house.
The possibility of a romantic relationship glimmers for a moment in his mind as a
means of escape from his guilt and loneliness. At this moment, the Eumenides appear
to him again, this time to warn him away from his contemplated evasion. When Mary
pretends that there is nothing to see, Harry withdraws his confidence. But now he is
convinced that Wishwood holds part of the secret he seeks, and he decides to stay.
This decision to face the Furies and not to run from them is the second stage of his
liberation.
The third and final stage begins during his conversation with Dr. Warburton
and ends during his final duet with Agatha. Dr. Warburton provides fragments of
the puzzle, and Agatha fills in the missing links. She recalls her affair with his
father and his plans to murder the wife he hated. Harry asks, “In what way did he
wish to murder her?” This is apparently the overwhelming question. Up to this
point, whether or not Harry actually pushed his wife overboard is left vague. Now
when Agatha forces Harry to focus upon the event, to strip himself of his compulsive
habit of self-immolation, he begins to understand that he has imagined the murder
and then he accepted the objectification as true. Harry believes he has pushed his
wife. He does not call for help, or attempt to rescue her in any way. His recollection
of this extraordinary behavior-the event itself he has buried deeply in his
unconsciousness-convinces him that he is guilty. The wish has become the
overwhelming reality.
Agatha helps him to understand that his father’s desire to kill his wife
has repeated itself in him as a kind of mysterious family curse. The inheritance
for which he has returned turns out to be the knowledge of the past, and the
knowledge that the past may be redeemable. The truth frees him from his guilt.
As Agatha responds, Harry is carried away by his mounting excitement,
expressed in images of encounter. But the encounter is brief. Harry does not
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comprehend her meaning until the Eumenides appear for the third time. Now
Harry does not deny them. His rose-garden experience raises him to a state of
spirit. Surrounded by a sense of grace, Harry intuits the higher function of the
Eumenides by connecting their appearance with what Agatha has been trying to
tell him: “relief from what happened” comes not through evasion, but through
quest; not through rejection, but through the “awful daring of a moment’s
surrender.”
Illumined by this insight, Harry is released for action and suffering on a

higher plane; he accepts without fully understanding Agatha’s paradox, “To rest
in our own suffering/Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more.” When
Harry announces his decision to depart from Wishwood on the trail of the
Eumenides, his mother concludes that Agatha has persuaded him to become a
missionary and asks him to change his mind. Harry refuses the request, and departs
with Downing in pursuit of salvation. Soon after his departure, his mother
collapses, and the play ends as Agatha and Mary, in circular procession around
the cake intended for her, gradually extinguish the candles in a tenement service
for both of the departed.
The presence of these silent agents is felt by every member of the family as
a strange force working behind the scenes, assembling the group almost against its
will, exerting peculiar powers on Wishwood, appearing at strategic moments. But
only the characters with capacity for belief have the vision to recognize the higher
function of these spirits. These members of the family actually see what they sense.
They respond only to the tangible: and they feel the supernatural only as something
which troubles sleep. They try to avoid the reality that lies behind appearance in
Eliot’s haunted universe.
15.9 GLOSSARY
1. Crypto-Christian – Secret practice of Christian religion
2. Pagan – a term used by early Christians for populations of the Roman empire
who practiced polytheism
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3. Expiation – the act of making amends for guilt or wrong-doing
4. Cramping – inhibiting the development of
5. Benevolent – well meaning and kindly
6. Crass – showing no intelligence or sensitivity
7. Spiteful – showing or caused by malice
8. Fugitive – person who is fleeing from custody
9. Incarnation – descent from heaven of god, or divine being in human/animal form

on earth
10. Hasty – done with excessive speed or urgency
11. Morbid – unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects
12. Doomed – likely to have an unfortunate and inescapable outcome
13. Jostled - pushed
14. Grim – very serious or gloomy
15. Spectre – a ghost
16. Matricide – the killing of one’s mother
17. Prig – a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if they are superior
to others
18. Glimmer – shine faintly with a wavering light
19. Evasion – the action of evading something
1. To whom Harry wanted to become the master of Wishwood?
(a) Downing
(b) Arthur
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(c) John
(d) Charles
2. Amy was:
(a) A Rich lady
(b) A Dominating lady
(c) A Selfless lady
(d) A Weak-willed lady
3. Agatha was:
(a) A sensible and supportive lady
(b) A selfish lady
(c) A poor lady
(d) A weak-willed lady
4. Harry came back to Wishwood after how many years?
(a) Nine years
(b) Ten years
(c) Five years
(d) Eight years
5. Harry was feeling ___________ for his wife’s death
(a) Relieved
(b) Joyful
(c) Guilty
(d) Angry
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6. What was the reason for Harry to leave the Wishwood?
(a) He wanted to live an independent life
(b) His wife did not like his family, so they left
(c) His mother told him to leave the house
(d) His brother told him to leave the house
7. Who was Monchensey’s family doctor?
(a) Dr. Warburton
(b) Dr. John
(c) Dr. Charles
(d) Dr. Arthur
8. Who decided to kill Amy while Harry was in her womb?
(a) Agatha
(b) Charles
(c) Ivy
(d) Mr. Monchensey
9. Who rescued Amy when she was about to get killed?
(a) Ivy
(b) Violet
(c) Agatha
(d) Mr. Monchensey
10. The Family Reunion consists of __________ element.
(a) Humorous
(b) mythical
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(c) Supernatural
(d) gothic
15 .11 LET US SUM UP
In this lesson we have discussed in detail various aspects of the play. Lesson
begins with the chronological events in the Wishwood followed by critical study of
the play which covers the questions of theme, root idea, defects etc of the play.
Further, in the lesson we have given multiple choice questions for a deeper and clear
idea of the play.
15.12 ANSWER KEY
1. (c)
2. (b)
3. (a)
4. (d)
5. (c)
6. (b)
7. (a)
8. (d)
9. (c)
10. (c)
1. How does the feeling of guilt play an important role in the play?
Ans. Eliot’s interest in present time is reflected in the play’s examination of the
nature of psychological guilt, its effect upon people in general and an individual
in particular living in the modern world. The concrete embodiments of the guilt-
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sense, the Eumenides reveal themselves for the first time at Wishwood because
it is the locus of the guilt. The origin of wretchedness lies in the unhappy bondage
of Harry’s parents. Guilt about his homicidal wish drives Harry’s father into
exile, while her feelings of guilt separate Agatha from the family. Harry is left to
the care of a mother who clutches and dominates him. Out of his position as the
possessed, he develops a strange morality-being good is pleasing mother, being
bad is hurting her. He feels guilt for resisting her and out of his guilt, feels a
desire to be punished; therefore, he misbehaves in order to be chastised and
therefore purged of his guilt. The chastisement in turn intensifies his hostility,
which culminates in an act of open defiance: he marries a girl instead of the
woman whom his mother intends for him. The mother feels strong homicidal
impulses towards the intruder. To punish herself for these impluses, the mother
devotes her life to the purposes of Wishwood and eventually becomes strong.
Harry is affected by these tragedies. Never having known love, he expresses the
opposite impulse towards his wife, who has become a surrogate for his hostility
towards all women. Dependent himself, when he finds her to be the same, his
hostility deepens into a desire to get rid of her. He quite readily holds himself
guilty in the accident, for he has come to regard himself as an outcast predestined
to crime. This fantasy so absorbs him that he loses contact with reality. In these
terms, the Aeschylean curse may be interpreted as a streak of family neuroticism
which Harry inherits: the desire of both parents to kill somehow descends upon
the son with such intensity that need becomes indistinct from deed.
2. What is the purpose of the play?
Ans. This play has three major purposes of writing: To restore poetry as the natural
language of drama; to renew through drama a sense of reader’s involvement with
Good and Evil; and so with religious experience and intuition. The vision of reality
that Eliot wished to show was a Christian vision, as his whole development as a poet
and thinker proves; yet he also wished to avoid the direct mention of Christianity.
The Family Reunion was designed to be a crypto-Christian play, with unfamiliar
spiritual symbols and pagan overtones, to convey his veiled Christian messages that
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could not be discounted as Christian in advance. To find a basis for his crypto-
Christian theme, Eliot turned from Chekov to Aeschylus, the first of the great poets of
the Athenian stage. In his splendid trilogy, the Oresteia, there were to be found in the
things which poetry, the religious vision of guilt and expiation, man’s involvement,
through a family curse, with the forces of Good and Evil, and a spiritual way out of a
cycle of murder, by the discovery of a supernatural dimension and the intervening of
gods. Eliot took a family curse with a double murder as his central image, and expiation
at the end. The curse seem to arise from natural causes and yet lead towards a
supernatural solution. The spiritual violence in the guilt of murder would naturally
call for a heightened excitement of language.
3. Give the root idea of the play.
Ans. This play is a kind of living death in Wishwood and its cramping routine, in
which nothing is ever to be changed, and over which there hangs an unspoken curse.
It is one aspect of England in little; its highly respectable occupants are the landed
gentry, whose males are benevolent, but crass (Uncle Gerald and Uncle Charles) and
whose females (Aunt Ivy and Aunt Violet) are spiteful and sinisterly. Faced with
reality in terms of their nephew Harry and his deep trouble of soul, they can only
write him down as mad, in utter incomprehension. The picture offered in the play
shows plainly that the meaning has gone out of life. A listless and exhausted society
can find nothing to do but go on as before through endless cycles of time, with all
vision of reality and purpose extinguished.
Arising from this basic idea, there comes a gradual sense of remedy for it, faint
at first, but growing stronger and more painful with the development of the play. It is the
remedy of withdrawal from the love of world and of giving up your will into the will of
God. In the play Harry’s father mediated the murder of his wife Amy; and their son
Harry, believes himself to have killed his wife and actually does kill his mother at the
end of the play by leaving Wishwood, the family home. Harry like Orestes is pursued
by the Eumenides and almost his first remark in the play is taken from the mouth of
Orestes: Can’t you see them? You don’t see them, but I see them, and they see me. This
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play shows the inevitability of a man’s wish to murder his woman:
I knew a man once did a girl
Any man might do a girl in
Any man has to, needs to, wants to
Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.
Harry’s father had sought to murder Amy, his wife; Harry’s wife disappeared
overboard on an Atlantic crossing; Harry could not rid himself of the obsession that
he had pushed her over. The remedy for the nightmare, for the murderous spiritual
fugitive, does not lie in flight but in detachment. It means surrendering self to the will
of God. It is the meaning that will drive Harry out into the wilderness at the end of
The Family Reunion; but what first gave that meaning to mortal human life was the
Incarnation.
Harry Monchensey at an earlier stage is in the spiritual development when

readers meet him in The Family Reunion; for here we are not witnessing a martyrdom but
a conversion. He was full of guilty before arriving to the Wishwood and at Wishwood he
catches a glimpse of a long-lost innocent happiness again in his talk with Mary, and of a
life of self-denying love in his talk with Agatha, and these are the catalytic agents that
change the fugitive from guilt in to the follower of a vocation and set him on the hard path
of detachment that leads into the ‘wilderness’. It is the crisis of life that we are shown, the
redirection of his will; martyrdom and even sanctity may lie before him; but they are not
shown in the play.
4. Give the significance of Eumenides in the play The Family Reunion.
5. Critically analyse the play The Family Reunion.
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4. T.S. Eliot: A Critical study- A.N. Dwivedi
5. Christopher Fry and T.S. Eliot - Mahendra Pratap Sangal
6. The Plays of T.S.Eliot : A Critical Study by K.S. Misra
******
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FAMILY REUNION
CHARACTERS
STRUCTURE
16.1 Objectives
16.2 Flow Chart of the Characters
16.3 Female Characters in the Play
16.4 Male Characters in the Play
16.5 The Chorus
16.6 Eumenides
16.8 Let Us Sum Up
16.9 Answer Key
16.1 OBJECTIVES
The objectives of this lesson are to acquaint the learners with the major and
minor characters of the play. The art of characterization of the play will be observed
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through the detailed study of the characters. There are some fourteen characters in the
novel and we will attempt to discuss all of them.
16.2 FLOW CHART OF THE CHARACTERS
Ivy (sister) Agatha (sister)
Amy (Mother) Downing (Chauffeur)
Gerald Piper
Violet (sister) Harry (Paternal Uncles)
Charles Piper
Mary (distant cousin)
Dr. Warburton – Family Doctor
Wishwood – Monchensey’s house
16.3 FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
Amy
• Amy, Dowager Lady Monchensey, an old member of the English aristocracy.
• She is determined to preserve the family estate, Wishwood, as it has always

been and use it as a means to keep the family together.
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• Like most people who are used to giving orders, she believes that her desires
eventually will be fulfilled, in this case her wish that her oldest son will
return to take over the estate and marry her ward.
• As she dies, she begins to see that she has been living in an unreal world;
some of the things happening around her then begin to make sense.
Agatha
• Agatha, Amy’s sister.
• Many years prior to the action of the play, Agatha fell in love with her sister’s
husband but convinced him that he must not murder Amy because of her
pregnancy.
• At the time of the play, Agatha is making her first visit to Wishwood in thirty
years.
• She is the only one of the characters who wants to make peace.
• She initiates Harry into the spiritual awakening or consciousness of his

election.
• Agatha is like a guardian angel who constantly guides him against worldly
temptations.
• She protects Harry from his mother’s well-laid trap to have him as the future
head of the family.
• She has the clearest understanding of the course of action in which they are
all involved.
Ivy
• The eldest of the Wishwood Aunts.
• She is very conscious of the reduced circumstances in which she has to live-
the family money being mainly spent on Wishwood- but determined to maintain
her dignity and reserve, and even to assert authority and opinion- Harry ought
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to get a new gardener: Mary does not know how to arrange flowers.
Disapproval is perhaps her favorite emotion.
• She likes to think that the younger generation is undoubtedly decadent.
• Eliot has managed to make her both comic and colourless, a faded, spinsterly
mob, not without a certain inner pathos, if one considers the death-in-life she
must have lived.
• Her chief dramatic purpose is to show her utter incomprehension.
Violet
• She is more genteel and opinionated than Ivy.
• She believes herself more intelligent than Ivy however, and this appears in
so far as she is ‘more malicious in a harmless way,’ as Amy says.
• She is ready to believe that Harry’s wife had been drinking and that her death
was providential.
• She is even more censorious of ‘vulgarity’ than Ivy.
Mary
• She is thought to be ‘getting on for thirty’ and feels she has missed her life and
belongs to no generation.
• A remote cousin of Amy’s, she has been brought to Wishwood by her as a

wife of Harry.
• They suited Mary, but in vain. This has not embittered her; she seems kind,
intelligent and good, though at heart deeply unhappy; she has remained at
Wishwood because there seemed nothing else to do.
• Now, at Harry’s return she revives; her arranging of the flowers is symbolic
of this.
• Her scene alone with Harry rises lyrically in to a love-scene, and Harry’s
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feelings for her as a woman are awakened; but he is not to be let off so easily.
• Mary is left alone, disconsolate but understanding, at the end of the play, and
faces the drear possibility of life as a female don, so vividly described by
Agatha.
• She asks Agatha to help her to become one, though she fears it is the most
sympathetic character in the play.
• Harry injured himself by marrying a woman unsuited to him, whom he did not
love. He married her to escape Amy and her plots for his future, particularly
her plot to marry him to Mary. This was bitter for Mary and helps us to
understand why she must leave Wishwood at last.
v She cannot face being in the same house as a man she loved who cared so
little for her. Agatha tells her not to run away.
v She says her courage is no more than fear and pride.
16.4 MALE CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
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Harry, Lord Monchensey
• Harry, Lord Monchensey, Amy’s son.
• Having returned home for the first time in eight years, he finds his family still
trying to deny any change in the world.
• While he was gone, he had murdered his wife, and he is currently searching
for some satisfactory way of life.
• In the few hours that he spends at Wishwood, he finds that the ghosts that have
been following him are not his at all, but his father’s, and that he is really
pursuing them.
• He soon leaves to seek out the deeper reality that he has just glimpsed.
• He is a sick soul, who passes through a paroxysm of instantaneous conversion.

He has a mysterious nervous inheritance from his father’s un-love for, and the
attempts to murder his wife; certainly he sees the world and himself saturated
with moral evil, and certainly he departs at the end of the play to seek out
some form of aesticism.
• He remains graceless and dislikeable, thinking only of himself and his family
guilt and his sense of defilement.
• His sin of pride is as monstrous as lack of love; he sneers at his uncles and
his brothers; he is brutally lacking in imagination for the rest.
• There is never a word of sympathy from him for the wife he claims to have
murdered, or for the pitiable horror of her death, her last instants of sinking
alone and helpless, in the cold Atlantic night; he feels no sorrow, he expresses
no repentance, asks no forgiveness; he remains under the curse of lovelessness,
of hardness of heart.
Charles Piper
• The warmest, kindest and least stupid of the chorus of Aunts and Uncles.
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• A bachelor clubman of the old school like horses, dogs and guns in the country.
• He believes that younger generation neither knows nor cares what it is drinking
and eating, he thinks he can help Harry to restock his cellar.
• He has considerable worldly wisdom and some true self-knowledge.
• He understands that it was Harry’s wish to get rid of his wife that makes
Harry believe he killed her.
• He understands that Violet is worried about her status as Amy’s sister.
• As for Harry’s strange behavior, he thinks he might be able to understand it, if

it were explained to him; but he isn’t sure that he wants to do so. Some
fancies are dangerous and it is bad to indulge in them.
• He prides himself on being capable of being shocked, but at the end admits he
does not feel safe, and confesses he is still capable of feeling surprise.
• This is a sign that his imagination is still alive, and it fits in with this general
benevolence.
• He is certainly surprised that Harry should want to become a missionary; no

member of the family had ever been a missionary before.
Gerald Piper
• A retired Anglo-Indian Colonel who prefers the East where there are better
servants and an incomparable climate.
• Like Violet he despises commerce and those who draw their livelihood from
aero plane shares, but unlike her he approves of the younger generation.
• He has some kindly-intended conventional wisdom; the family should be

cheerful and make Harry feel what has happened doesn’t matter, after all
Harry has taken his medicine; let him marry again and better.
• According to him, if Harry is to become a missionary in the tropics, there is

nothing wrong with tropical climates and nothing wrong with missionaries.
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He himself has had an eventful life, in tight corners on the North-West Frontier;
he can cope with the dangers he feels able to understand; but Harry’s behavior
alarms and mystifies him.
Downing
• He combines stolidity with imagination, and efficiency with devotion; he

prefers attending to Harry’s car, that it may be ready for his departure
though he has only just arrived, to a friendly gossip with Mrs. Packell in
the kitchen.
• He is one of the sane and trustworthy characters.
• Downing’s account of what happened on the liner is instinctively accepted by

them.
• He is one of the three who, apart from Harry, is privileged to see Eumenides;
the others are Mary and Agatha.
• Downing sees them even before Harry does; these three love Harry; if then
the Eumenides are only seen by the eyes of love.
Arthur and John
• These characters never appear, but are useful invention for the creation of a
touch or two of a comedy and minor suspense.
• Their witless irresponsibility freshens up the play and creates a kind of

eagerness for their entry.
Doctor Warburton
• He was family doctor of Monchensey family.
• He was concerned about Amy’s health.
• He tried to convince Harry to not to leave Wishwood.
• He was ignored by Harry.
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16.5 THE CHORUS
• The chorus is collectively more self-aware and imaginative than anyone of

its components.
• They know themselves to be deeply embarrassed, on the edge of experience

beyond their capacities at Amy’s command, confronted by the unfamiliar.
• They know a feeling of incompetence and of guilt at a moment when what is

private may be becoming public.
• They know themselves to be afraid of all that has happened and of what may
be about to happen.
• They even know that the past is about to happen and future has been long
since settled.
• They know, in short, that they can insure against fire, but not against the act of
God.
16.6 EUMENIDES
• Eliot used the once-famous myth of Oresteia as the basis of his play in respect
of four of its main ideas.
• There is the idea of a protagonist (Orestes) bearing the guilt of his family, and
contributing to it by the murder of his mother; he is then driven by the
Eumenides to seek the gods for help.
• There are the Eumenides, who in Aeshchylus also change their character;
they begin as Furies, thirsty for vengeance upon the blood-guiltiness of
Orestes.
• The first element that Eliot has taken over from the classics for his own
Eumenides.
1. What is the name of the house of Monchensey?
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(a) Wishfort
(b) Wishwell
(c) Wishwood
(d) Wishness
2. How is Mary related to the Wishwood House?
(a) She is the daughter of Wishwood house
(b) She is Harry’s distant cousin
(c) She is the mistress of Wishwood
(d) She is the maid- servant of Wishwood
3. Who is the Chauffeur of Harry?
(a) Arthur
(b) John
(c) Warburton
(d) Downing
4. Who among the following is not a member of Wishwood?
(a) Amy
(b) Violet
(c) Downing
(d) John
5. Lord Monchensey was in love with:
(a) Agatha
(b) Amy
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(c) Ivy
(d) Violet
6. Harrry’s wife has died :
(a) By Consuming poison
(b) By Drowning in the sea
(c) By Hanging herself
(d) Of fever
7. At the end of the play Harry decided to:
(a) Become the Lord of Wishwood
(b) To start a new job
(c) To get married to Mary
(d) To go on a path of salvation
8. Why John and Arthur did not come to Amy’s birthday party?
(a) They were not interested in coming
( b) They were not invited
(c) They met with an accident
(d) They fell ill
9. Mary, a distant cousin of Harry was a:
(a) Shy girl
(b) Spinster
(c) Greedy girl
(d) Dishonest girl
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10. Mary was in love with:
(a) Harry
(b) John
(c) Arthur
(d) Downing
16.8 LET US SUM UP
In this lesson we have discussed many characters which describe the intended
reunion of the family living in Wishwood. We have a flow chart of characters to
give a clear picture to the learners about the character’s relation to one another. We
have also differentiated the male and female characters of the play. Further we
have discussed the chorus and the supernatural element that is, the Eumenides in
the play. This is followed by the multiple choice questions on the characters of the
play.
16.9 ANSWER KEY
1. (c)
2. (b)
3. (d)
4. (c)
5. (a)
6. (b)
7. (d)
8. (c)
9. (b)
10. (a)
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1. Compare and contrast the character of Amy and Agatha.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. Elaborate the character of Mary.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. Discuss the role of Eumenides in the play.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
4. Compare and contrast the character of Charles Piper and Gerald Piper?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. How are the characters Agatha, Harry and Mary are related to one another?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
6. Discuss the character of Amy as a dominating lady.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
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7. What is the role of Ivy and Violet in the play?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
8. What is the role of the chorus in the play The Family Reunion?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. Christopher Fry and T.S. Eliot- Mahendra Pratap Sangal
6. The Plays of T.S.Eliot : A Critical Study- K.S. Misra
******
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DRAMA - II UNIT - V
WAITING FOR GODOT

SAMUEL BECKETT
STRUCTURE
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Objectives
17.3 Beckett’s Life and Work
17.1 INTRODUCTION
Samuel Beckett is famous for his concept of Theatre of Absurd. This

lesson will introduce the learners with his life, technique and works.
17.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint learners with the life and
works of Samuel Beckett.
17.3. BECKETT’S LIFE AND WORK
Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906-1989) was born at Foxrock, near Dublin
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(the capital city of Ireland). He was the second son of a quantity surveyor.
Although Ireland is predominantly Catholic, Beckett was brought up as a
Protestant by a mother whom he himself later described as “profoundly
religious.” He received his education at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen.
After his school education, he joined Trinity College, Dublin, where he read
English, French, and Italian languages. After completing his college education
Beckett taught for two terms in Belfast (a famous city of Northern Ireland).
Around the year 1928 he moved to Paris (capital of France) where he worked
as lecteur d’ anglais (lecturer in English) at the Ecole Normale Superieure.
It was during the same year of 1928 that Beckett met James Joyce (the most
famous novelist of Ireland during the Modern Period between 1914 and
1945). He formed with Joyce a lasting friendship. His first published work
was an essay he wrote on Joyce in 1929. Beckett also assisted Joyce with
the translation of the “Anna Levia Plurabelle” section of Joyce’s famous
novel (his last), Finnegans Wake, into French language.
Beckett’s first short story, “Assumption,” appeared in Transition

(1929). The very next year, in 1930, he returned to Ireland and took up
a job as lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin. However, he resigned after
four terms. He soon embarked on five unsettled, solitary years in Germany,
France, Ireland, and England, before settling permanently in France. During
this period, aided by a small annuity, Beckett reviewed, translated, and
published poems in various periodicals. Around the same time he also
wrote a study of Proust (1931). In 1934 came out Beckett’s first collection
of short sto ries under the title More Pricks than Kicks, which are
interconnected and are derived from the episodic novel called A Dream
of Fair to Middling Women (written in 1932, but published posthumously
in 1992). Then came out a number of full-length novels. One of these,
Murphy (1938), is a grimly entertaining Irish evocation of London life.
Beckett’s famous trilogy (a sequence of three novels, namely Molloy,
Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, was in every sense the most radically
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inno vat ive fict io nal st atement o f t he 1950’s. The edit io n bo re t he
announcement that the three novels had been “translated from the original
French by the author.” All the three novels of the famous trilogy are
int erio r mo no lo gues or solilo quies, desolate, terminal, o bsessio nal,
irradiated with flashes of last-ditch black humour. For instance, Malone
Dies opens with the characteristic sentence “I shall soon be quite dead
at last in spite of all.” Similarly, the last volume trails away with “…
where I am, I don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
Beckett’s highly distinctive, despairing, yet curiously exhilarating voice

reached a wide audience and public acclaim with the Paris performance in
1953 of En attendant Godot (published in 1952). The English version,
Waiting for Godot (1955), also made a great impact. From this time onward
Beckett became widely known as a playwright associated with the Theatre
of the Absurd, whose use of the stage and of dramatic narrative and symbolism
revolutionized drama in England and deeply influenced later playwrights,
including Pinter, Fugard, and Stoppard. It seems imperative at this stage to
speak of what came to be known at the time “the New Theatre,” carrying
associate names such as the Theatre of the Absurd, the epic theatre, etc. Let
us first acquaint ourselves with more important “Theatre of the Absurd,” with
which is also associated the name of Edward Albee, an American dramatist
whose play Who Is Afraid of Virginia Woolf has been very popular in the
entire English-speaking world.
The Theatre of the Absurd, as a term, is generally used to describe the

work of a number of European and American dramatists of the 1950’s and early
1960’s. As the term itself indicates, the function of this theatre was to give
dramatic expression to the philosophical notion of the “absurd”. This notion
received widespread diffusion following the publication of Albert Camus’s Le
Mythe de Sisyphe in 1942. To consider the world as something absurd is to
acknowledge its fundamentally mysterious and indecipherable nature. This
acknowledgment is frequently asso ciated with the feelings o f lo ss,
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purposelessness, and bewilderment. To these feelings the Theatre of the Absurd
gives extensive expression, often leaving the observer baffled in the face of
disjointed, meaningless, or repetitious dialogues, incomprehensible behaviour,
and plots which deny all notions of logical or realistic development. This
recognition of the fundamentally absured nature of human existence also provided
dramatists with a rich source of comedy, well illustrated in two early plays–
Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna (1958) and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
(1955). Significantly, Absurd drew abundantly on popular traditions of
entertainment, on mime, acrobatics, and circus clowning. By seeking to redefine
the legitimate concerns of serious theatre, it played an important part in extending
the range of contemporary drama after World War II. Amongst the dramatists
associated with the Theatre of the Absurd are Arthur Adamov, Edward Albee,
Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Gene Genet, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter.
As mentioned earlier, Beckett’s reputation soared with the staging of his

Waiting for Godot at the small Arts Theatre (in London) in August 1955. The
play’s success in London cannot simply be put down to a yearning for innovation
on the part of a theatre-going intelligentsia. The play contained clear echoes
of a truly alternative, but often despised, British theatrical tradition, that of
music-hall comedy. Beckett’s contribution was that in his hands the tradition
had been transformed by a sparse, but definite, musicality and by a dialogue
rich in literary resonance. Beckett’s reputation was strengthened by his later
work for the theatre. Some of the plays of the later period include Endgame
(1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1960), and Happy Days (1962). He wrote some
innovative plays for the radio also, and had one foray into cinema as well.
Novel or drama, radio or cinema, the peculiar mark of Beckett’s genius–
innovation–always came out as the most striking feature of his compositions.
He had, indirectly, discarded the old theatre, and demolished it, too. The
theatre in Europe could not, remain conventional after him. He made the play
something altogether different, which, they universally acknowledged, expressed
the postmodern, contemporary spirit. Beckett became a symbol of postmodernism.
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Let us have a close look, now, on what Beckett had done with the theatre in
Europe.
Beckett was consistent in his use of drama as an extension activity of

his wider interest in the gaps, the jumps, and the lurches which characterize
the functioning and the malfunctioning of the human mind. When Freud came
in the beginning of the twentieth century, he had questioned reason and
rationality, logic and logicality as the basis for the functioning of the human
mind. He had declared outdated the Greek concept of mind. But his
psychological theory still retained some room for cause and effect sequence
in human conduct, in the functioning of the human mind. For instance, if an
emotion is repressed, it (logically) gets released in distorted or violent form.
The conscious, subconscious, and unconscious, too, stand in relation to each
other, which is not less than a logic. But when Beckett came in the mid-
century, he took us beyond Freud and showed, through his dramatic as well
as narrative compositions, that the functioning of the human mind was totally
illogical, without having even the kind of relationship Freud established
between conscious and unconscious or subconscious, between Id and Ego,
etc. He took us further into the dark abyss of the human mind and showed
us something worse.
In his play–as much as in his novels–Beckett emphasizes that ideas,

phrases, images and minds overlap. We find that voices both interrupt and
inherit trains of thought begun elsewhere or nowhere. We also find, in his
dramatic as well as narrative works, that separate consciousnesses both impede
and impress themselves on one another. Beckett’s dialogue, for which Waiting
for Godot is particularly remarkable, is the most energetic, densely layered
and supple. No other writer of the time has been able to make his dialogue so
overloaded with meaning and significance. He made it a perfect idiom for the
expression of the true spirit of his times. Beckett’s comedy, whether visual,
verbal, ritual, or even, at times, slapstick is amongst the most subtle and
surprising. The set of Waiting for Godot may, for example, require simply the
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suggestion of “a country road” and “a tree”, Endgame may take place in a
“bare interior”; and the designer of Happy Days may be instructed to aim for
a “maximum of simplicity and symmetry” in the representation of an “expanse
of scorched grass rising centre to low mound.” However, the static baldness
of these visual statements serves both to counterpoise and complement the
animation of his verbal ones. When Beckett uses blindness, as he does with
Hamm in Endgame, his suggestion there is that one kind of deprivation may
alert audiences to the force of alternative ways of perceiving. This technique
or method of reducing scenery to the bare minimum and present character just
with one dimension is called reductionism or minimalism. However, he does
not play with minimalism or reductionism simply for the sake of the aesthetic
effects. In parallel to the work of certain Modernist architects and composers,
Beckett is actually exploring in this method the radical potential of the idea that
“less is more”.
Beckett’s concept of time, and its use in drama, was another striking
innovation he made for the New Theatre of his time. In Beckett’s dramatic
presentations, time-present is broken, inconsistent, and inconsequential. However,
in each play he allows for the intrusion of a past which is oppressively rich
in the larger inconsistencies of private and public history. He gives prominence
in his plays to the presence in the human mind of the involuntary, the untidy
and the quirky. And even memories negate linear concepts of time and of ageing
as much as they disturb old assumptions about “plot”. The structural principles
on which Beckett built both his plays and novels can be traced back to the
pattern of ideas he expressed in his critical essay on Proust, written in 1931.
In that essay Beckett insists, among other things, that Proust had contempt for
a literature that “describes”. He also affirms that “there is no escape from
yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us.” But
who had ever denied the role of past in shaping the present? Neither Freud nor
the Greeks, nor anyone in-between, had ever denied the interference of the past
in the present. Shakespeare’s ghost in Hamlet or Ibsen’s ghosts in his Ghosts,
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are glaring examples of this “affirmation.” Also, is there no logic involved in
this concept? Where goes Beckett’s illogicality, then, on which he relies so
much as an essential trait of the human mind? One cannot deny the presence
of logic in the way Beckett insists on the “must” role of the past into the
present. There is, indeed, a logic of sorts in his affirmation.
Beckett was also highly fascinated by what he saw as Proust’s concern

with the protective significance of habit: “Habit is a compromise effected
between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and
his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the
lightning-conductor of his existence.” Beckett’s own dramatic repetitions
and all reiterations, his persistent echoes and footfalls, emerge not from a
negat ive view of human existence, but from an acceptance of “dull
inviolability” as a positive, if minimally progressive, force. As his inviolable
and unsentimental Krapp also seems to have discovered, there is a path
forward available for exploring the resonances of the circumambient
darkness. From Homer to Shakespeare to Milton to Wordsworth to Arnold
to Eliot, no one has ever denied the presence in the human mind of this
“circumambient darkness”. The only difference one can clearly discern
between the great writers of the past and the gifted writers of the present
is that while the former, even as they gave expression to the real dark or
the negative, also offered the ideal light or positive, the latter stop at the
mere expression of the dark and negative.
Beckett’s Endgame is also considered next only to his Waiting for

Godot. Published in 1958, this one-act play gives dramatic expression to
frustration, irascibility, and senility. It is done through the play’s central
character, Hamm, a blind man, and his attendant Clov, and Hamm’s “accursed
progenitors,” who spend the action askance. His Krapp’s Last Tape, staged
in 1958, published in 1959, was actually written for the Irish actor Patrick
Magee. It is a monologue in which the shabby and aged Krapp attempts to
recapture the intensity of earlier days by listening to recordings of his own
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younger self. Another important work of Beckett is his play entitled Happy
Days, which was staged and published in 1961. It portrays a character named
Winnie, who is buried to her waist in a mound, but who is still attached to
the carefully itemized contests of her handbag. Equally typical of Beckett’s
style is his Come and Go, which was staged in 1966, but was published in
1967. It is a stark “dramaticule” with three female characters and a text of
only 121 words. Even more minimal than this play of a few words is Beckett’s
Breath (1969), which is a play that lasts only for 30 seconds. It consists only
of a pile of rubbish, a breath, and a cry. Very similar to these highly
experimental plays is his No I, acted and published in 1973. It is a very brief,
fragmented, disembodied monologue delivered by an actor of indeterminate
sex of whom only the “Mouth” is illuminated.
As mentioned earlier, Beckett also wrote for radio and television. Of

course, he more frequently wrote for the radio than for the television. Perhaps
he liked the audio more than the video. This preference may have been based
on his keen interest in speech and silence as habits of the human mind, as
well as ingredients of the human psyche. His television play, Ehjoe, remains
one of his memorable contributions. Versatile as Beckett was, he wrote not
only novels and plays; wrote only for theatre and print, for radio and television;
but also poetry. His Collected Poems was published, as usual, both in French
as well as in English in 1977. Beckett was awarded Nobel Prize for literature
in 1969. He did, of course, make contributions to novel and drama, if not to
poetry and criticism, of great historical significance. We cannot, however,
help saying that his contribution is largely technical. Unfortunately for
European literature, the tendency among writers after Flaubert has been to
make a mark in technical innovations. Flaubert’s dream to write a novel
without a subject has insisted, like the ghost in Hamlet, on the implementation
of its own text, a text without content, a text without context. The classical
ideal, which was last insisted upon by Arnold and Yeats, of writing literary
works on grand subjects or themes was declared dead and buried by the
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Modernist writers and critics.
No writer in our time has more insistently refused to comment on, or

explain, his own work than Beckett. Yet no writer in our time has provoked
a larger volume of critical comment, explanation, and exegesis in such a
short time. Why Beckett chose not to talk about his own work, he makes a
disclosure in one of his letters to Alan Schneider, which, quite unusually,
found their way into print in the Village Voice in March 1958. The relevant
portion of the letter in question reads as under :
…We have no elucidation to offer of mysteries that are all of

their making. My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no
jo ke intended) made as fully as po ssible, and I accept
responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches
among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.
Hamm as stated, and Clov as stated, together as stated NEC
tecum NEC sine te, in such a place, and in such a world, that’s
all I can manage, more than I could.
Backett’s reticence is, indeed, no mere whim. There exists, perhaps

inevitably, an organic connection between his refusal to explain his meaning
and the critics’ massive urge to supply an explanation. Thinking of this
situation relating to Beckett’s silence as to the meaning of his writings, one
is reminded of a scene from his own Endgame. The scene under reference
shows Hamm asking Clov, “We’re not beginning to…to… mean something?”
To this query Clov retorts, with a burst of sardonic laughter, “Mean something!
You and I, mean something! Ah that’s a good one!” It might be argued that
in the said correlation between the author’s silence and the critics’ verbosity
can be found one of those keys that unlock the whole phenomenon of Samuel
Beckett, his oveure, and its impact.
Beckett has made a few rare utterances about general considerations

underlying the work of creative artists in our time. The most important of these
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rare utterances is probably a set of three dialogues on modern printers. These
dialogues may or may not be a true record of conversations that took place
between Beckett and Duthuit, but they owe their published form to Martin
Esslin’s collection of critical essays, Samuel Beckett, in the Twentieth Century
Views Series. In discussing the work of painters, another time, who refuse to
look at the world “with the eyes of building contractors,” Beckett speaks of
an alternative as under :
…An art…weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be

able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing,
of going a little further along a dreary road…and preferring the
expression that there is nothing to express, no power to express,
no desire to express, together with the obligation to express….
Such is, therefore, the dilemma, the inescapable paradox of the

art ist in a world that lacks a generally accepted—and t o the art ist
acceptable—metaphysical explanation that could give his creation meaning
and equip him with immutable standards of truth and beauty. The problem
of the artist in the present time is that he does not have the benefit of
faith, religious or secular, his predecessors had. Consequently, he is left
to fend for himself, without intelligible purpose in a world that has been
discovered to be meaningless or purposeless. And yet the artist feels the
urge, a compulsive urge, to express himself. His problem is about the
subject of his expression. If the world is a void, an empty space, a
nothing, then what should the artist express? Hence, the artist in our time
faces a situation which is as absurd as it is tragic. At the same time, it
is a challenging situation, in which the artist can make an heroic attempt
to face this challenge of nothingness, and make, to quote Beckett, “of
t h is s u b miss io n, t his a d mis sio n , t h is fid elit y t o fa ilu r e, a n ew
occasion…and of the act, which unable to act, obliged to act, [the artist]
makes, an expressive act, even if only of itself, of its impossibility, of
its obligation.” Why, we have to ask, if there is nothing to express, no
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power to express, no desire to express, is there yet this inescapable
obligation to express?
Beckett, in the general remarks that precede his film script for Project
I, does throw a slight hint as to the possible direction from which a glimpse
of the answer to this question can be elicited. Beckett takes a cue from his
countryman, George Berkeley, and reiterates:
Esse est percipi [To be is to be perceived]. All extraneous

perception suppressed, animal, human, divine, self perception
maintains in being.
Search of non being in flight from extraneous perception breaking

down inescapability of self-perception.
In simpler language, self-perception is a basic condition of our being.

We exist because, and as long as, we perceive ourselves. Further, if it is true
that for the artist perception leads to the obligation to express what he perceives,
it follows that for the artist the compulsion to express his intuition of the world
is a condition of his very existence. As long as he exists he suffers the
predicament of the voice that drones through Cascando:
…story…if you could finish it…you could rest…you could

sleep…not before…oh I know…the ones I’ve finished…thousands
and one…all I ever did…in my life…with my life…saying to
myself…finish this one…it’s the right one…then rest…then
sleep…no more stories…no more words…and finished it…and not
the right one…couldn’t rest…straight away another…to begin…to
finish….
The artist, to be true to his vocation, must confine himself to the

faithful reflection of his changing self. Agreeing with Schopenhauer, Beckett
defines t he art ist ic pro cedure as “t he co nt emplat io n o f t he wo rld
independently of the principle of reason….”
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1. Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot, London : Calcler Publication, New

York : Riverrun Press, 1998.
2. Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist, London : Flamingo,

1997.
*******
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DRAMA - II UNIT - V
WAITING FOR GODOT

SAMUEL BECKETT
STRUCTURE
18.1 Introduction
18.2 Objectives
18.3 The Beckett Hero
18.1 INTRODUCTION
This lesson will introduce the learners to Beckett’s concept of the hero.
18.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the introduction
to the Beckett Hero
18.3 THE BECKETT HERO
In order to discover the Beckett hero, the character that stands at

the centre of his novels as well as plays, one has to go back to his first
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published fictional work. This work is a collection of short stories called
More Pricks than Kicks. In this work we find the image that figures
almost continuously in the novels as well as the plays, we find the character
round whom the Beckett world moves. The work in question relates the
adventures of Belacqua, and opens with the story called “Dante and the
Lobster”. The story’s opening is very significant for our present purpose,
which is as under :
It was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti of the
moon. He was so bogged that he could neither move backward or
forward.
Here is an image of perfect stasis that was to pursue, or pin down,

those creations that were to stand out in a remarkably individualized
manner. It is also not for nothing that the hero of the story is named
Belacqua. The Dante in the first story’s title provides the clue. This name
comes directly from the Purgatorio (a section of Dante’s great poem
Divine Comedy). Not much is known about this man in real life except
that he was a friend of Dante and was famous for making lutes as well
as for his indolence and apathy.
Beckett, being a keen student of Italian, for sure, knew Dante as well
as many. Besides, he seems to have been fascinated by this character in
Dante’s poem. Some of Dante’s lines are apparently reflected in the position
taken up by Beckett’s hero close to the end of the story called “A Wet Night.”
The hero’s following utterance states his position: “[he] disposed himself
in the knee-and-elbow position on the pavement.” It is interesting to note
here that even though Belacqua as a surname translates in English as
Drinkwater, the hero of Beckett’s story is just the opposite. The story’s title
“A Wet Night” has the double implication: It reflects the Night’s weather
condition as well as the opposite of “dry” in public house parlance. As the
story goes, Belacqua had been to a party where he knew that all he could
expect by way of drinks would be a selection from a symphony of soft drinks.
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So the hero braced himself in advance with stronger fare, for which he pays
the penalty on his journey back home. He comforts his aching feet by
throwing away his boots and walking bare-foot in the wet streets. He is then
assailed by stomach pains, forcing him double up more and more till finally
he creeps with his poor trunk parallel to the horizon. Here is the mode of
low motion that would be later repeated by Beckett’s heroes in the subsequent
novels and plays. In his latest work, Comment c’est, we are introduced to
a painful cyclical crawl, which seems to symbolize, among other things, the
slow progression of mankind.
In “A Wet Night,” however, Belacqua is shown to desist, out of

weariness, from this method of self-propulsion. Instead, he prefers the
position mentioned earlier, disposing himself in the knee-and-elbow position
on the pavement. It was in this very pose that Botticelli depicted Belacqua
in his drawing to illustrate this particular canto of the Purgatorio. The
character from Dante’s poem is shown in this drawing with his head between
his clasped knees and with one eye fixed on Dante and Kirgil. Belasque’s
pose in the painting suggests that he is too weary to raise even his head or
to join his indolent companions in their mockery of the two poet visitors.
The resemblance is stressed again in another story called “Ding Dong:”
“Being by nature…sinfully indolent, bogged in indolence, asking nothing
better than to stay put.” As is depicted in Dante’s great poem, the weary,
apathetic Belacqua says to Dante, “what use is there in climbing?” He
prefers to stay put. In the story by Beckett, the indolent Belacqua, fixed in
his purgatory of indifference, goes even further than his Dante prototype.
He consents to buy himself two seats in heaven. These seats are offered to
him in a public house by a shabby female with a face “brimful of light,
serene, serenissime.” “Seats in heaven,” she said in a white voice, “tuppence
a piece, four for a tenner.”
In the Purgatorio, the poet asks Belacqua whether he is waiting for a

guide to show him the way to heaven or whether he is still given to his old
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laziness. In reply to this question, Belacqua points out that since he omitted to
repent in time before he died, the heavens must wheel around him for the
whole length of his life before Peter would admit him. We find that Dante’s
lines are echoed by Beckett’s shawlie. Referring to the seats, Belacqua asks,
“have you got them on you?” Her answer is, “Heaven goes round.” She indicates
this by whirling her arm, “Round and round and round.” To this Belacqua
responds, “Yes, round and round.” But she modifies; she drops the as and
makes it, “Rowand, rowan, rowan, an’ rowan.” In Beckett’s penultimate story,
Belacqua dies on the operating table. The volume is concluded with a cynically
humorous account of his burial and the feelings of his wife and friend towards
the departed.
Belacqua as a Beckett creation may have breathed his last, but the
genius remains. As the story proceeds, we find, that Belacqua is not wholly
dead. He lives again in his friend Hairy who takes over, as it were, part
of the Belacqua character. In a way, it is a foretaste of what Beckett does
in confusing his characters, or rather fusing them into one character. Thus,
Belacqua turns up again, not as a living character, but as a term of reference
in Beckett’s next novel, Murphy. We find that the Dantesque figure rises up
in the hero’s mind when he has been derided by the chandlers as a possible
“smart boy” in their emporium and has looked in vain for somewhere to sit
down:
Murphy would willingly have waived his expectation of Ante-

purgatory for five minutes in his chair, renounced the lee of
Belacqua’s rock and his embryonal repose, looking down at
dawn across the needs to the trembling of the austral sea and the
sun obliquing to the north as it rose, immune from expiation until
he should have dreamed it all through again, with the downright
dreaming of an infant, from the spermarium to the crematorium.
He thought so highly of this post-mortem situation, its advantages
were present in such detail to his mind, that he actually hoped
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that he might live to be old. Then he would have a long time
lying there dreaming, watching the dayspring run through its
zodiac, before the toil uphill to paradise.
Belacqua is not mentioned in Beckett’s next novel, Watt. But the genre
is very much there in the novel’s hero. The weary Watt who would not show
any regret at a spit in the eye any more than if his braces had burst or he had
been bombed in his nether parts. But in his weariness he must rest. We find
ourselves back again to the familiar position:
The feeling of weakness was such that he yielded to it and

settled himself at the edge of the path, with his hat pushed back
and his bags beside him, and his knees drawn up, and his arms
on his knees, and his head on his arms.
The embryonal repose, typical of Beckett hero, we now know, stems

from Belacqua couched in the lee of his purgatorial rock. This repose shows
itself once more in Waiting for Godot. Rather tired with the game of trying
on his boots, Estragon tries to go to sleep. In this context, the stage directions
read as under: “His head between his knees.” The characters in this play
indulge in games to pass the time. In his subsequent novels, however, Beckett
leaves behind his humour we have seen in abundance in Waiting for Godot.
His interest in his game playing characters also declines. His protagonists in
these later works concentrate on their penible task of dying. In the opening
passage of Molly, for example, the narrator says that what he wants to speak
of are the things that are felt, “say my good byes, finish dying.” He remembers
“in the tranquility of decomposition the long confused emotion that was my
life.” Here one can hear the cynical echo of Wordsworth’s famous definition
of poetry as emotion recollected in tranquility. He sees in the gathering night
a lonely old man:
He hadn’t seen me…. The rock he probably saw. He gazed

around as if to engrave the landmarks on his memory and must
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have seen the rock in the shadow of which I crouched lik
Belacqua, or sordello, I forget.
As we have noticed, work after work, Beckett cannot rid himself of

Belacqua. It is in character that Molloy is confused, that he may not rely on
his memory. There is no doubt of its persistence. However, it is equally clear
that there is an evolutionary process from Dante’s Belacqua to that of More
Pricks than Kicks. With every hero of Beckett there takes place a further
evolution. The embryo has haunted him to such an extent that in the final
novel of his famous trilogy, he tries, in a serious attempt at self-examination,
to find out who these heroes of his are: In the process he ranges over the
characters he has created—Murphy, Watt, Malone, Molloy, Mahood—and
picks on a new one whom he calls Worm. He wants to reduce them all to
silence. He wants to reduce himself also to silence. He even finds, for a
moment, solace in the thought of Worm. To be Worm means to be away from
the world, away from also all the other characters who have taken possession
of him and at last to think nothing, to feel nothing. For this is himself, himself
in embryo–literally in embryo. Several pages are devoted to the description
of womb life, that is life in the womb, if you can call it life. He would rather
not call it by that name. In that secure place he cannot even stir though he
suffers as a result. With his typical Beckettian irony he declares that “it
would be to sign his life-warrant to stir from where he is.” It is once again
Belacqua’s weary phrase: “What is the use of going up?”
The evolutionary process, too, in the case of Beckett heroes is as

strange as this stasis of being unborn. The normal process of evolution, associated
with progression, with a series of biological, or psychological, or philosophical
changes, does not take place in these characters. For there is no improvement
in the preceding position. In the world of Beckett’s work the hero, who began
his fictional creation as Belacqua, with his head on his knees, ends in Comment
e’est with his face in the mud. Beckett’s heroes are not always immobile like
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the one in L’Innommable who is permanently fixed in a contraption that turns
him into a menu-holder outside a restaurant. Sometimes, we find, they do move.
In fact, we see them, at times, setting out on journeys. Their pilgrimages are,
however, rather painful. Progress is very, very slow. Then, there are such
handicaps as lameness, blindness, even general debility to retard the pace of
locomotion. Molloy, for instance, sets out with the express goal to reach his
dying mother, but his movement is balked by his physical infirmity. He carefully
attaches his crutches to the frame of his bicycle which is to carry him to his
destination. But his machine fails him, leaving him with no choice but to crawl
on his belly, propelling himself by those very crutches which had been intended
to maintain his human uprightness.
Thus, not movement, but non-movement, or stasis, is an outstanding

mark of Beckett’s heroes. “Cette imertie immortelle” is how Beckett
himself makes obeisance to human beings immobilized. Yet the febrile
(feverish) argumentation of his characters distinguishes them by a dynamic
quality. It is not, in fact, less than a delirium with these characters. For
example, Malone, lying on his death bed, his brain battling with the
encroaching paralysis of his body, translates his terror to the reader when
his only contact with the outside world—his stick, on which he depends
for whatever little movement he can make–falls from his bed. Beckett’s
characters reveal themselves in such moments of agony. They do not, of
course, suffer happily. But they do suffer inevitably. They accept their
ignominious situation, the very insult of being in that situation, and turn
more and more to the haven of their minds. They find their being as much
in the mind’s solace as in its souillures. Just as Molloy sets out on a
journey, so there is a voyage of sorts in Beckett’s novel Comment c’est.
The journey is of sorts because the movement is reduced to the pace of
a crawl. It looks a miracle that the author can always find a fresh point
of departure. He seems to have probed existence to a brinkmanship of
nothingness, not only in bareness of plot, action, and language, but of
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morbid human endurance, only to poise in his next work even more
precariously over the chasm of chaos.
Here, in this novel, we are in a world devoid of norms of life. But

it is a world with sufficient life to make us aware of the human anguish,
of human pathos. The book is divided into three parts: “Before Pim,” “With
Pim,” and “After Pim”. A simulacrum of human being crawls in the mud
towards an unprescribed destination. The indication is that it is crawling
to reach Pim—an equally wretched creature. He comes up with him in the
novel’s second part, “With Pim”. The sole possessions of the narrator are
a tin-opener and a bagful of fish and sardine tins which are dragged along
on the journey. Pim is stabbed in the back with the tin-opener, and the
narrator writes words in blood with his nails on his body, hits him to make
him sing, to make him talk, or to make him stop talking. He leaves Pim and
painfully moves on to reach him with his face still in the mud. The world
pictured here is a world of tormentors and tormented in which characters
lose their identity as they move in the dark, in the vicious circle of attacker
and attacked. One can easily see in this drab symbolic dark the Beckett
perception of the wretchedness of the human race intent on wounding each
other as they move on murderously with their faces in the mud. Beckett sees
them as condemned characters, like those in Dante’s Purgatory, whose
thoughts are occasionally shifted from the limbo in which they have their
being by broken memories of another world that would appear to exist
above in the light. Doesn’t it remind us of our “simple” Wordsworth, who
speaks of “what man has done to man” and who shows us glimpses of the
“other world,” the world of light? In Beckett, as it does with every age,
the method and manner, the tone and tenor have changed. The subject is the
same as in Wordsworth, or anywhere in the masterpieces of world literature.
Beckett, too, has earned a place on that count, just as Wordsworth did, or
Shakespeare did.
So much has come out in criticism about the ambiguity of Beckett’s
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work. To his plays the critical reaction has generally been one of puzzled
dismay. Much of the confusion, of course, is to be credited to the critics
themselves, for it is their conflicting interpret ations, sometimes too
ingenious to digest. No doubt, the bare looks of Beckett’s language, its
utter simplicity, is often disarming. In fact, at first sight, it sounds quite
incompatible with the serious import of the situations it depicts. In a
sense, the medium and the matter seem at loggerheads with each other.
However, if one persists with the Beckett text, it soon becomes clear that
the sparse, bare vocabulary itself gives profundity to the statement on the
subject. For instance, if there are many meanings read into Waiting for
Godot, there is more to say which is the inevitable one. The very fact that
the text lends itself to a religious interpretation that spells hope, the
eternal expectation of a messiah, or its opposite the futility of such an
expectation, surely reflects the ambivalence of the human situation. Nothing
is clear cut. Nothing can be known absolutely. Now, if that is the matter
for the medium, the language, which is the medium, has to be, in consonance
with its matter. It has to be perforce, ambivalent. Hence the language of
Waiting for Godot is apt.
If one wishes to know the philosophical foundation of Beckett’s

work, which it decidedly has, one shall have to go even beyond Dante. Dante
reveals the seeds of the melancholy brood in Beckett’s work. Dante’s Belacqua
explains it all. But if we want to know the source of Beckett’s world-view,
we shall have to go as far back in history as the Sicilian rhetorician and
sophist who lived from 483 to 375 B.C. His name was Gorgias of Lentini.
His teachings, which Encyclopedia Britannica sums up, are as under :
1. That there is nothing, which has any real existence.
2. That even if anything did exist, it could not be known.
3. That supposing real existence to be knowable, the knowledge would be

incommunicable.
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In his argument about the last of these propositions Gorgias of Lentini
says that language is inadequate to convey ideas and that it is impossible for
any idea to be the same in different sounds. The above propositions of the
philosopher could be further simplified in a more popular idiom than the one
used in the above summary. In that case, the propositions would read as under:
1. Nothing is.
2. If anything is, it cannot be known.
3. If anything is, and cannot be known, it cannot be expressed in speech.
In Beckett’s work, we find, that the writer is engaged with the third
proposition of the ancient Cicilian philosopher. Speech, the written word,
is Beckett’s medium. It is the inadequacy of language, his medium, that
haunts him. How should one express the inexpressible is the question. He
makes the task more difficult for himself by opting to write about the
suffering creatures. His job is not to open windows on glorious dawns.
Beckett’s characters imply that so clearly. We can recall here just one of
them—the one who is only the simulacrum of a man with his head firmly
fixed in an iron collar. His function is to work as a signboard for a
restaurant. His vision is limited to the establishment to which his frame
invites attention. As a matter of fact, he does nothing, and he knows nothing,
but he exists all the same. Beckett underlines all along the inadequacy of
language, its inefficiency in communicating the feeling or thought he is
eager to express. Again and again, he challenges the value of his own
verbal descriptions, alleging their inaccuracy, offering another adjective, or
another verb, and finally dismissing them all declaring them as worthless
as the thoughts of which they are supposed to be carriers.
Beckett’s hero in Watt, a serio-comic novel, remains an enigma.

His journey to the house of Mr. Knott remains a mystery. One can notice
the novelist’s tendency towards pun in the very names of these two
characters. Watt and what, Knott and not, not only sound similar, they are
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meant to carry the meanings of the words with similar sounds as well. The
unfortunate hero, like Fielding’s Parson Adams in Joseph Andrews, suffers
all sorts of humiliations and indignities on his journey to the house of Mr.
Knott. The purpose of his quest, however, remains unstated and unknown,
perhaps unknowable. The same is the case in Waiting for Godot. Both the
works can be interpreted in religious terms. In both, there is a man
seeking (let us say) God but never succeeding in finding him, though he
wanders through his mansions. The interpretations of both Watt and Waiting
for Godot sound more convincing if we look at them in terms, not of
religion, but of the philosophy of Gorgias. From that angle, Mr. Knott
becomes the Novent or nothingness of the philosopher ’s first proposition.
Should it happen to exist then he cannot be known, conforming to the
second proposition. The third and final proposition makes it clear that his
existence cannot be expressed in speech or language. That is why Watt’s
language finally breakes down. He inverts the order of words, the order
of letters, but ends in incoherence.
The subject of reality is perennial in Beckett’s work. He understands

how Dante can condemn sinners to a limitless stagnation. To this Beckett
adds the bewilderment of his heroes when they become the victims of ill-
luck that brings them suffering. In Waiting for Godot, for instance, the same
character, Lucky, who has earlier in the play burst into incoherent eloquence
when commanded by Pozzo to “think,” has now become totally dumb.
“Dumb?” asks Vladimir, “since when?” and Pozzo replies :
have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time? It’s
abominable. When! When! One day, is that not enough for you
one day like any other day, one day he went dumb, one day I
went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one
day we’ll die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough
for you? (Calmer) They give birth astride of a grave, the light
gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
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In a lighter mood in Waiting for Godot itself Estragon says he is hungry :
Vla. Do you want a carrot?
Est. Is that all there is?
Vla. I might have some turnips.
Est. Give me a carrot. (Vladimir rummages in his pockets, takes out

a turnip and gives it to Estragon who takes a bite out of it.
(Angrily) it’s is a turnip.
Vla. O pardon. I could have sworn it was a carrot.
As is clear from the above, there is uncertainty of identification on all

sides. Estragon’s boots were black when he threw them away, but they are now
brown. Are you sure they were black, he is asked. “Well they were a kind of
grey.” “And these are brown?” querries Vladimir. “Well they are a kind of
green,” comments Estragon.
Examples of the unreality of the real are abound in the work of

Beckett. If anything exists, it cannot be known. The Cicilian sophist of the
fourth century B.C. can be said to have found in Beckett a disciple who has
given his philosophy concrete expression in literary terms, who has given it
an illustration in human terms. Beckett has done it not merely in drama, nor
in novel alone, but also in mime. It seems the writer turned to this form of
art to establish Gorgias’s third proposition that “if anything is and cannot be
known it cannot be expressed in speech.” Beckett seems to ask us to think
of Waiting for Godot, as not an isolated piece of inaction, or non-movement,
in a corner of France, or if you like Ireland, but as a cosmic state, a world
or life condition in which all humanity is involved. The author’s personality
is reflected in his heroes. It is obvious from his work that Beckett feels the
cosmic anguish and writes in pity. He does not hesitate to use irony and
humour to rub the reader’s nose into the mud in which he makes his creatures
crawl.
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1. Gontarski, S.E., Edinburgh Companion to Samuel Backett and the Arts,

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2014.
• Kalb, J., Backett in Performance, Cambridge : Combridge University,

Press, 1989.
• Gluck, Barbara, Backett and Joyce : Friendship and Fiction, London :

Bucknell University, Press, 1979.
*******
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DRAMA - II UNIT - V
WAITING FOR GODOT

SAMUEL BECKETT
STRUCTURE
19.1 Introduction
19.2 Objectives
19.3 New Theatre and Beckett
19.1 INTRODUCTION
Beckett’s concept of theatre was modern. He and other dramatists of

his kind felt that there is something seriously wrong with the world. This
lesson will introduce the learners to Beckett’s concept of new theatre.
19.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the concept
of New Theatre.
19.3 NEW THEATRE AND BECKETT
There seems much madness in the “modern” or “new” theatre, which

is associated with the name of Samuel Beckett. But there is also much
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method in this madness. There is something seriously wrong with the world,
feels Beckett as well as the other dramatists of his kind, in which the
modern man is born. Not that the world has changed. It has been the same
as ever. But the view of the world has changed, and changed drastically.
The view has always been changing. Man has been an explorer. He has been
discovering one fact after another about the world in which he is born.
More discoveries have been made, more radically the view of the world
has changed. From the ancient Homeric world-view to the medieval
Chaucerian world-view to the Elizabethan Shakespearean world-view to
the neo-classical Johnsonian world-view to the romantic Wordsworthian
world-view to the Victorian Arnoldian world-view to the modernist Eliotic
world-view to the Absurdist Beckettian world-view, there have been radical
and rapid changes in man’s perspective on life and world in which man is
destined to live between birth and death.
Ju ng , a p o s t - F r e u d ian p sycho lo g ist , s p ea k s o f a cla ss o f

schizophrenic and neurotic patients (those suffering from a certain disorder
of the mind, a form of madness) whose illness “seems to lie in their
having something above the average, an overplus for which there is no
adequate outlet.” He continues to elaborate on this to say, “We may then
expect the patient to be consciously or – in most cases–unconsciously
critical of the generally accepted views and ideas.” The impression one
gets in such cases is that somehow, as in the case of Hamlet or Herzog,
there is more wisdom in their madness than in the kind of sanity in which
the most men feel safe and secure. These patients are unable to find a
foothold in life unless they are able to integrate those ideas (or notions)
which can constitute the medium for their self-expression. As long as they
have not reached this point, they tend to vacillate (or swing) between
moods of inflated rebellion and of deep despair (or sense of failure).
Their disorientation seems to be an unconscious compensation for what
has been called a contemporary threat to the uniqueness of the individual.
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This threat of collectivization (or standardization or uniformization, or
globalization) has been described as the “illness” of our time, of the
period after World War I and thereafter.
In a letter to the drama critic George Steiner, Eugene O’Neill (an

American dramatist in the first half of the twentieth century) wrote that
the dramatist of the modern age has to reveal the root of the sickness of
his time. In his own words, this sickness of his (or our) time is “the death
of the old god and the incapacity of science and materialism to give a new
god to the still living religious instinct.” In O’Neill’s view, the task of
the dramatist of the present times was “to find a new meaning of life”
with which to allay man’s fear of death. This and other statements of the
kind that came out in a large number in the period after the end of World
War I in 1918, has to be viewed against the background of historical
development in recent times. A very brief account of this historical
development is: on one hand, there has been the collapse of old values
and notions; on the other hand, there have been sparkling discoveries and
inventions. These two opposing phenomena have driven modern man away
from his psychic roots. There has been thus, a sort of levelling down and
hollowing out of man’s mind, which has become a widespread phenomenon.
It is to this phenomenon that the modern dramatist like O’Neill had
perforce, to respond in his writings.
We have to further link up this phenomenon with certain philosophic

thought that developed in the recent times. For this development in the field
of ideas has had as much of bearing on the literature of the age (especially
on the writers like O’Neill and Beckett) as the phenomenon just described.
Ever since the warnings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (both German
philosophers of the recent times), a small minority in the field of art,
literature, and philosophy has been deeply influenced by an increasing
feeling of urgency about man’s self-estrangement in the modern world.
Now, combined with the psychology of Freud and Jung, this philosophic
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view of modern man came to have a tremendous impact on Western literature.
Of course, the reaction did not start in the field of drama. The beginning
was made by certain European novelists, such as Dostoevsky, Kafka and
Camus. A host of other writers, such as the more prominent Jean-Paul Satre,
Jaspers and Heidegger, who presented this “condition humane” of our time,
came to be labeled as “existentialists”.
What Jaspers says about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, regarded by

these existentialists their spiritual ancestors, is equally true of Beckett and
other dramatists of his dispensation. Jasper’s statement in question is as
under :
Their common effect to enchant and then disillusion, to seize and

then leave one standing unsatisfied, as though one’s hands and heart
were left empty – such is only a clear expression of their own
intention: that everything depends upon what the reader by his own
inner action makes out of their communication… they deny every
satisfaction.
This same technique, although in different degrees, can be said to be

characteristic of the most challenging contemporary dramatists, the most
outstanding of whom has been Samuel Beckett. Despairing of the validity
of any romantic, moralistic, sentimental, or philosophical interpretation of
the facts of existence, these dramatists present these facts to their audiences
in a deliberate nakedness and without any hints at truths or values in which
they may or may not believe. Thus, all of these authors, more so Beckett,
by refraining from committing themselves to any definite standpoint, created
a new style in the long tradition of dramatic art.
Although there has been, in the dramatic art, a great variety of subjects,
modes, and styles, it has always remained concerned with man’s relation to
the great archetypal powers which can determine his attitude to life. In times
of settled religious or moral beliefs, it has shown man as protected, guided,
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and at times even punished by these forces. However, in other epochs it has
shown the visible and tangible world, in which man fulfils his destiny, as
permeated by the demonic essences of his invisible and intangible being. In
what is called contemporary or post-modern drama (of the period after World
War II), a new, third orientation has crystallized in which man is shown not
in a world into which the divine or demonic powers are projected. Man is
shown instead all alone in a world with which it does not have any positive
or negative relationship. The world in this drama is rather alien. Man finds
it totally indifferent to his own destiny. It is projected only as a sort of void,
a vast nothingness.
The new form of drama forces the audiences out of their familiar
orientation, their routine complacency, of watching a tragic or comic story
with a sad or happy ending, expecting a catharsis of their emotions. In the
new theatre, the dramatist creates a vaccum between the story on the stage
and the audience in the seats. The idea is to compel those sitting comfortably
in their seats to experience something of their own, be it reawakening of the
awareness of archetypal powers or reorientation of the ego, or both. One of
the contemporary dramatists, Bartolt Brecht, has given this method or technique
the name of “alienation effect.” What it means is that the audience, the men
in the seats, are made to experience themselves the separation between them
and their surroundings, made to feel how indifferent the world is in which
they are living.
By far the most daring and profound dramatist associated with this new
theatre is Samuel Beckett. He has gone much farther than most of his
contemporaries in showing this new development or consciousness on the stage
or in the theatre. Instead of merely showing human existence in its unadorned
nakedness, he strips his figures so thoroughly of all those qualities in which
the audience might recognize itself that, to start with, an “alienation effect” is
created that leaves the audience mystified. That is to say, the vacuum between
what is shown on the stage and those sitting in the seats has become so
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unbearable that the audience are left with no alternative but either to reject and
turn away or to be drawn into the enigma of the play’s world in which nothing
reminds him of any of his purposes in and reactions to the world around him.
Significantly, all the novels of Beckett are mainly monologues, or rather musings,
of a solitary person, an unknown person. Similarly, the various figures that
Beckett puts on the stage in the theatre are also not really persons but figures
in the inner world.
Each of Beckett’s play or novel is an epitome of the absurd. True,

but at the same time, the author has chosen to present the absurd in a
language that also denies the absurd even as it expresses it. To show that
the world is absurd, that man is alone and in despair, automatically implies
the possibility of reason, companionship, and hope. Beckett, of course,
avoids this by following every affirmation with the corresponding negative.
He also does it by placing them both in the realms of humour noir. The
slow decomposition of Molly and Moran (two characters of Beckett in the
novel Murphy) is conveyed through a narrative that destroys itself. In the
process, a literary work, being a monument to language, results in the
negation of analysis difficult. Any attempt to interpret the author’s intention
or the work’s meaning is almost impossible. If we force an interpretation,
it will have to be by ignoring a great deal else of what we have read or
watched. In other words, our interpretation in that case can only be a
misinterpretation.
A key, or rather a method of approach, to a Beckett work can be

found in the author ’s own work, Murphy. It is one of his early works
which passed unnoticed when it was published. In this novel, the hero
ties himself to a rocking chair (In Joyce’s Dubliners also there is a
similar story). He does it in order to escape from the world in which,
as he fondly hopes, he does not belong. He goes to work in a mental home
(a symbol to designate the world). He finally dies by accident. He leaves
behind instructions that his remains are to be flushed down a privy. Molly
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and Moran are paralytics (a symbolic position to designate the condition
of human existence). They live in a world where dreams, imagination and
reality mingle, and where no decisions are required of them. They need
not kill themselves, for they are not perhaps alive. In a sense, they are
death-in-life figures (the kind of characters we come across in Eliot’s
The Waste Land). They are perhaps no more than shadows drifting across
the mind which creates them and which hardly belongs to anyone, not
even to the creator, the author. They may be driven by an iron necessity.
But their necessity is only the reverse of absolute freedom, of total
absence of meaning. In short, it hardly matters what they are or what they
do, what they remember or what they imagine. “And whether I say this
or that or some other thing, truly it matters little.” Beckett seems to say,
“Let’s say I have said nothing.” For indeed, strictly speaking, he has said
nothing.
Since Beckett is trying to say nothing, it is possible to repeat the

same or similar story, the story of meaninglessness. Pick up any play or
novel of Beckett and you read or watch the same or similar story. All of
his works tell or show the same story of men in quest of they know not
what. They are only doomed to wander. Waiting for Godot is the best
illustration. We do not know who is Godot. Nor do those who are waiting
for Godot. One of Beckett’s works, The Expelled, ends: “I don’t know
why I’ve told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps
some time I’ll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike
they are.” The reality that Beckett has tried to apprehend and which is
perhaps inexpressible, is the regio n of the perfect indifference and
undifferntiatedness of all phenomena (the third of those explained in the
Murphy). One is reminded of Lautreamont: “He who is about to sing the
fourth song is either a man or a stone or a tree.”
Of course, it does not mean that because negation is inevitably succeeded

by affirmation, Beckett proceeds dialectically. In fact, he is one of those
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writers who are not out either to prove or to disprove or to even describe
anything. He belongs rather to the class of those humourists who spend their
time making “a knife without a blade that has the handle missing.” In any case,
what colour is the void? What is the scale of values there? Are there any values
there at all? In Beckett, we seem to be dealing with a builder of ruins who
undermines his edifice at the very same time as he raises it. He does it so
thoroughly that we are left with nothing at all that can be seem, or heard, or
touched. What we are handed over is, in fact, no better than simply the
impression of a curve on the retina, the trajectory of disaster. Every work is,
in a sense, the story of a disintegration – either of the hero, or of time, or of
life. Here disintegration precedes all story – hero, time, and world appear in
it but as waves on the sea. No one has ever ventured so far in search of an
absolute that is a minus quality. Only Beckett and his contemporaries have
been engaged in the presentation of such a quest. And that has become the
distinct mark of the “New theatre.”
The technique that Beckett adopted for his drama was indeed unique.
It became the trade-mark of the New theatre. Note, how it works: we are
in the theatre. The curtain rises. We see a set that conveys nothing. No
scenery, no drawing room. There is only a road. Just “out of door,” rather.
The only specific object is a tree, and not much of a tree either. It is a
skeleton tree, stunted and without a single leaf. Two men are on the stage.
They are without age or profession, or family background. They have no
home to go to. Tramps, one may say in short. They seem, physically, rather
unscathed. One takes off his boots. The other talks of the Gospels. They eat
a carrot. They seem to have nothing to speak to each other. They only
address each other by two words, Gogo and Didi, which do not indicate any
identifiable names. They look first to one side, then to the other. They
pretend to go, away from each other. But they always return to each other
in the middle of the stage, to the only spot on the entire spread. It seems,
they cannot go away. It seems they are waiting for someone called Godot.
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We are told nothing about this entity, except that whoever he/it is, it/he
would not come. They may wait for any length of time. This entity is not
going to oblige them. This is made clear to these two as well as to us in
the seats right from the opening of the play.
So we are not surprised when a boy arrives. Didi is of the opinion

that it is the same boy who came yesterday. The boy, of course, arrives
with a message, which is : “Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come
this evening but surely tomorrow.” Then the light suddenly fails. It is
night. The two tramps decide to go away. But they appear at the same
spot the next day. As earlier, they show no sign of any movement. The
curtain falls. Earlier, two other characters have appeared on the stage.
The idea is to provide a diversion. One of these two is named Pozzo,
of flourishing aspect. The other is named Lucky, who is Pozzo’s decrepit
servant. Pozzo always drives along Lucky, his servant, in front of him
by means of a rope tied around his neck. Pozzo sits down on a camp
stool, eats a leg of cold chicken, and smokes a pipe. On the word of his
master ’s command, Lucky executes a few shambles by way of a “dance”.
He also gabbles an incomprehensible speech, which is made up o f
stammering and stutterings and disconnected fragments. This scene of
diversion or digression is enacted against the background of a twilight,
which was delivered to us by Pozzo in a highly coloured description. So
much fo r t he first act. The opening act, convent io nally meant fo r
expo sit io n, reveals act ually no t hing. It , o n t he co ntrary, mystifies
everything, all that we get to see on the stage.
Act II. The next day. But only technically. For it is in no sense a
“next” day. It is only another “tomorrow” of Macbeth’s “tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow” in a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing. At any rate, the decor is the same, except for one
detail: the tree now has four or five leaves. Didi sings a song about a dog
that comes into the kitchen and steals a crust of bread. He is killed and
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buried and on his tomb is inscribed: a dog came in the kitchen and stole
a crust of bread…and so on ad lib. Gogo puts on his boots, eats a radish,
etc. He doesn’t remember having been here before. Pozzo and Lucky
return. Lucky is dumb, Pozzo blind and remembers nothing. The same
little boy comes back with the same message: “MR. Godot won’t come
this evening but he’ll come tomorrow. No, the boy doesn’t know the two
tramps, he has never seen them before. Besides, perhaps, a mock-heroic
or farce on Shakespeare’s heroic “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”
there also seems a similar treatment of Yeats’s “Second Coming,” expecting
to arrive at the fall of a civilization. Hence, once more it is night on the
stage of Beckett’s new theatre. Gogo and Didi would like to try to hang
themselves – t he branches of t he t ree ought to be st ro ng eno ugh.
Unfortunately they do not possess a suitable bit of rope. They decide to
go away, as before, to come back again the next day. But as earlier, they
do not move. Once again the curtain falls.
The play, we know, is called Waiting for Godot. It lasts nearly

three hours, as the convention goes in the theatre. This in itself is
astonishing. The play holds for the whole three hours without a hiatus,
although it is made up out of nothingness. It also holds without faltering,
although it might seem to have no reason either for going on or for coming
to an end. The spectators are caught from beginning to end. They may feel
disconcerted at practically nothing, have no other property but that of
being there. Beckett’s play, no doubt, is not the first attempt in the history
of drama to dispense with the conventions of bourgeois theatre with
regard to action. But this play, decidedly, marks the culmination of those
attempts. No one, for sure, had taken so great a risk before Beckett. For
what Waiting for Godot deals with is the essential, without any beating
about the bush. Also, the means employed to deal with the essential had
never been so pared down, nor the margin for misunderstanding so narrow.
As for the plot of the play, that is summed up in four words, which occur
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over and over again like a refrain: “We’re waiting for Godot.” But it is
a senseless and wearisome refrain: no one is interested in this waiting:
as such it has no theatrical value. It represents neither hope nor longing
nor even despair. It is merely an excuse.
Until the advent of the New theatre it sounded reasonable to

suppose that if an artistic medium like the novel, for example, could free
itself from many of its traditional rules and adjuncts, the theatre at least
had to be more careful. A play, in fact, can only come into its real
existence by entering into an understanding with some sort of public. It
was supposed, therefore, that the public must be wooed, presented with
unusual character, kept interested by intriguing situations, caught up in
the meshes o f a plot, or jo lted out o f itself by a perpetual verbal
inventiveness related either to poetry or, on occasion, to mere frenzy.
What does Waiting for Godot offer to these expectations? To say nothing
happens in it would rather be an understatement. Besides, the absence
of plot or intrigue of any kind had been met with before. But here less
than nothing happens. It is as if we were watching a sort of regression
beyond nothing. As is generally the case with a Beckett play, the little
we are given to begin with, and which we thought so meager at the time,
soon decays under our very eyes. It disintegrates like Pozzo, who comes
back bereft of sight, dragged by a Lucky who is bereft of speech. It also
disintegrates like the carrot, which as if in mockery has dwindled by the
second act into a radish.
We see the same happening with the dialogue. Like the plot, this
too disintegrates. From beginning to end the dialogue is dying, agonizing,
at the end of its tether. It can be standing all the time on those frontiers
of dissolution inhabited by all Beckett’s heroes. Attempts are made to
create some sort of speech or dialo gue, but each time t he attempt
flounders: after a few uncertain exchanges they peter out, give up, admit
failure.
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1. Bianchini, Natka, Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America : The Legacy of

Alan Schneider as Bekett’s American Director, New York : Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015.
2. Bair, D., Samuel Beckett : A Biography, London : Vintage, 1990.
3. Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame : The Life of Samuel Beckett, London :

Bloomsbury, 1996.
*******
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DRAMA - II UNIT - V
WAITING FOR GODOT

SAMUEL BECKETT
STRUCTURE
20.1 Introduction
20.2 Objectives
20.3 The Play in Perspective
20.4 Let Us Sum Up
20.5 Self- Assessment Questions
20.1 INTRODUCTION
The lesson will introduce the learners to the perspective of the play and
the identity of Godot.
20.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the story
of the play.
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20.3 THE PLAY IN PERSPECTIVE
When Waiting for Godot came out in the mid 1950’s it created a great
stir, raised a fierce controversy as to its merit as art and its significance as
representation. The play was intriguing to the audiences as well as readers.
The reason for such a response was that in this play of Beckett practically
nothing happens, nothing is done, no development seems to take place, and
there is no beginning and no end. The entire action comes down to this: At
a cite where there is nothing but a tree, two tramps dawdle away their time
waiting for a rescuer from misery. Two strangers, consisting of a cruel master
and his half-demented serf, cross their path and leave again. At the end of
the first act, a messenger from the rescuer arrives. The message he brings is
that the rescuer cannot come today and will come tomorrow. In the second
act, the same situation of waiting continues. The other pair pass by once
more. This time, while the master has gone blind, the slave has gone dumb.
Both stumble and fall. The tramps help them on their way. The messenger,
too, comes again, and comes with the same message. Thus, everything remains
as it was at the beginning.
It is a play, one must notice, without a woman. The reader or the

audience look for some satisfaction, some turn of events, for the good or for
the bad, comically or tragically. But Beckett denies all satisfactions. Like the
pair of characters on the stage, perhaps the audience, too, are expected to
suffer in the very process of waiting. As waiting is the cause of suffering on
the stage, so it is in the seats. The two destitutes on the stage, Vladimir and
Estragon, are incapable of anything more than mere beginnings of impulses,
desires, thoughts, moods, memories, and impressions, and almost everything
that arises in them and sinks back into oblivion before it arrives anywhere.
Appropriately, they live in a state of twilight. Although Vladimir shows
greater awareness than Estragon, both remain in a state of inertia. They
belong to a category of people well-known in Paris as clochards, people who
have known better times and have often, as in the present case, originally
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been educated and cultured. They make a point of being rejects of destiny,
in love with their own position as outsiders.
We are shown how this pair of characters on the stage pass their time,
waiting for Godot. Comparing the past with the present, speaking of losing
heart, hinting at suicide, Vladimir say’s at the very opening of the play the
following:
We should have thought of it when the world was young, in the

nineties…. Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among
the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it’s too late.
They wouldn’t even let us up.
It becomes clear to us in no time that these two characters have the

capacity neither to live nor to die. Thus, opening and concluding theme of
the play is linked with their love of helplessness and of wishdreams which
they make no attempt to realize. All in all, their wish dreaming and their
playfulness blot out whatever serious moods come over them. A glimpse of
the dialogue between them would establish the point:
Vladimir. Suppose we repented…. Do you remember the gospels?
Estragon. I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they

were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very
look of it made me thirsty. There’s where we’ll go, I used
to say, there’s where we’ll go for our honeymoon. We’ll
swim. We’ll be happy.
Vladimir. You should have been a poet.
Estragon. I was. (Gestures towards his rags) Isn’t that obvious.
They are full of frustrations and resentments. They cling together

with a mixture of interdependence and affection. They ease their situation
by calling each other childish names, Gogo and Didi. In these respects, as
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well as others, they are like an old married couple who always want to
separate and never do so. Note, for instance, the following :
Vladimir. I didn’t get up in the night, not once!
Estragon(sadly). You see, you do better when I am not there.
Vladimir. I missed you…and at the same time I was happy. Isn’t

that a queer thing….
Estragon. And now?
Vladimir. Now? … (Joyous) There you are again… (indifferently)

There we are again… (Gloomy) There I am again.
Estragon. You see, you feel worse when I’m with you. I feel
better alone too.
Vladimir(piqued). Then why do you come crawling back?
Estragon. I don’t know.
This uninspiring symbiosis seems to show a concept of relationship

(friendship) which Beckett attributed to Proust; he “situates friendship somewhere
between fatigue and ennui.”
Thus, through this twilight world where these two clochards spend their
days occasionally remembering that they are waiting for their rescuer Godot
who never comes. The other two character move as a pair of eerie passersby.
They come from nowhere and are going nowhere. Also, they leave no trace of
their arrival. One of these two, the master, named Pozzo, looks like a brazen
idol. He is massive, smooth, and rigid. Always walking ahead of Pozzo, at the
far end of a long rope which Pozzo holds in his hands, is his emaciated and
anaemic slave who even has to carry the whip with which Pozzo beats him.
His name, ironically, is Lucky. Although they are apparently antithetical
characters, they do have one thing in common. Both of them are driven by a
desperate attempt to evade panic which would grip them if they lost their belief
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in what Pozzo stands for. Pozzo, we may recall, lives by monosyllabic orders
hurled at Lucky, without ever looking where Lucky is. No other will than his
own exists for him. Whatever he says or does means : The Universe is Me.
He destroys whatever might grow in time by not listening. He ignores urgency
by taking time to fidget with his pipe or his mouth spray. In the first act, we
see him indulging with relish in an almost impressive display of pessimistic
philosophy. But when we see him in the second act, his pessimism turns poetic,
although for a moment.
Lucky’s name carries a meaning with it. He is in the hands of a

master who is highly cruel to him, but he also masters his life, organizes
it for him. As we get to know, Lucky could once amuse and inspire Pozzo
by dancing and thinking. But his state of slavery has gradually put an end
to all that. His spark of spontaneity has died away. He has nothing left of
his original dancing except a slouch and a tooter. As for his thinking, it has
deteriorated into the endless repetition of meaningless words reminiscent
of the “world-salad” of schizophrenics. Pozzo, it seems, is the gruesome
product of the industrial society (more so of the post-industrial). This
“small bundle of subjective feelings and responses” may, at times, indulge
in self-pity. But he represses its fear with narcissistic pomposity: “Do I
look like a man who can be made to suffer?” Interestingly, and that is what
Beckett wants to underline, deep down beneath his mask of hardness there
lies in the person of Pozzo an unconscious nostalgia for lost values. He
says the following about Lucky:
Pozzo. But for him all my thoughts, all my feelings, would

have been of common things. (Pause. With extraordinary
vehemence) Professional worries! (Calmer) Beauty, grace,
truth of the first water, I knew they were all beyond me….
As against Pozzo, we can see in Lucky the destroyed contact with the
creative energy or spring of his being. As we go along, it becomes more and
clear that Lucky takes it for granted that only within the pattern of a sado-
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masochistic relationship between them (Pozzo and Lucky) lies his safety. In the
very first act, Pozzo reveals to us the dynamics of this relationship.
I can’t bear it…any longer (groaning, clutching his head) the

way he goes on…you’ve no idea–it’s terrible!...he must go…(he
brandishes his arm)…I’m going mad…(he collapses, his head
in his hands)…I can’t bear it…any longer….
And then a little later (sobering):
He used to be so kind…so helpful…and entertaining…my good

angel…and now…he’s killing me!
It is a sort of fixation between the two. They are a torture to each

other. And yet they cannot live without each other. For this mutual fixation
it is Lucky who has to sacrifice everything. He has sacrificed even his soul
and creativeness. What is more appalling is that he has accepted this misery
rather abjectly. He has accepted his slavery as a matter which concerns
nobody but Pozzo and himself. This is made clear by a minor incident in the
first act. Commenting on the voluntary slavery of Lucky, Pozzo says the
following:
Pozzo. But instead of driving him away as I might have done,

I mean instead of simply kicking him out on his backside, in
the goodness of my heart I am bringing him to the fair where
I hope to get a good price for him. The truth is you can’t drive
such creatures away. The best thing would be to kill them.
(Lucky weeps.)
Estragon. He’s crying.
Pozzo. Old dogs have more dignity.
In the usual Beckett reversal of reader or audience expectation, when

Estragon tries to wipe Lucky’s tears away with Pozzo’s handkerchief, Lucky
instantly kicks him in the shinbone.
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Sartre seems to be helpful here for our understanding of the peculiar
relationship between Pozzo and Lucky. In Sartre’s writings, plays and
novels, this relationship between master and serf is quite prominently
portrayed. In his view, the sadist attempts to make the other person totally
dependent on him, whereas the masochist sees basis of his own freedom
in the freedom of the other. Here, in Beckett’s play, while Pozzo is a
sadist, Lucky is a masochist. In this equation, each one is object to the
other, and there is no thou. It is not without significance that in the second
act of Waiting for Godot, Pozzo has become blind and Lucky dumb. In
fact, this is the only change that has taken place among the four characters
from act one to act two. We find that Pozzo’s hystical moments culminate
later in his shouts for help. However, he never realizes that he is defeated.
Neither does Vladimir, nor Estragon. It seems the essence of the play lies
in the fact that it has no climax, but only an inexorable leveling down.
Pozzo and Lucky get gradually drawn closer to the state of the two tramps.
Note, what Pozzo says in the first act:
I myself in your situation, if I had an appointment with a

Godin…
Godet…Godet…anyhow, you see who I mean, I’d wait till it

was black night before I gave up….
But in the second act, when the blind Pozzo and dumb Lucky leave,
Vladimir asks Pozzo : “What do you do when you fall far from help?” Pozzo’s
reply is : “We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.”
The play seems to make clear that the couple or pair of Pozzo and
Lucky is comparable to the collective pseudo-ego (in Freudian terms). The
play also seems to make clear that the couple or pair of tramps, Vladimir
and Estragon, represents features of the lost value. This value is hidden in
those who have “something above the average, an overplus for which there
is no adequate outlet.” The tramps seem to represent what the “civilized”
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world in our time has rejected, that which will have to come to the rescue
of a no longer valid normality. It is very well evidenced by their role in
the play. We can recall here the scene from second act in which the blind
Pozzo falls down and is not able to get up on his own. He calls out for help.
The two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, make attempts to assist him but all
in vain. While they make these attempts in between also keep forgetting that
the matter concerns them at all. However, in a flash of perception, Vladimir
suddenly realizes the human significance of the situation. What he says at
the moment is pertinent.
To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still
ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time,
all mankind is us, whether we like it or not –
This momentary awareness of the ego (“all mankind is us”), however,

slides back into what can be termed a dominant slogan: “In this immense
confusion, one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.”
Such utterances in the play are deliberate. The author seems to endorse
them, too. As early as 1931, Beckett, in his essay on Proust, had made a
similar sort of assertion: “Lazily considered in anticipation and in the haze
of our smug will to live, of our pernicious and incurable optimism, it [the
future] seems exempt from the bitterness of fatality: in store for us, not in
store in us.”
GODOT’S IDENTITY
As the title of Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot suggests, the play’s
theme centers on Godot. But who this Godot is, remains amenable to various
interpretations. All sorts of explanations have been offered as to the identity
of Godot. Whatever be the case, its significance is underlined all along the
play’s action. Let us see what happens with regard to this rather mysterious
figure of Godot! Right from the opening the play’s action is focused on this
figure. The only thing that happens in the first two acts is that the two tramps,
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Vladimir and Estragon, keep waiting for Godot. They receive his message at
the end of each act saying that he is unable to come today but he would come
tomorrow. One of the important things in these two acts is that the tramps
wait for Godot in the state of twilight. It is only occasionally lit up by a
fleeting vision of a saviour. The tramps experience vague fantasies of being
taken to Godot’s farm and being able to “sleep, warm and dry, with a full
stomach – on straw.” But who is this Godot, the saviour? He seems to be a
kind of distant mirage. At the end of each day (also, each act), a boy-
messenger arrives in his place with the promise that he will come tomorrow.
We do get some information on this mysterious figure in bits and pieces. To
begin with, we are told that Godot does not beat this boy-messenger, who is
a goatherd, but that he beats his brother, who is a shepherd. The tramps feel
uneasy about him. Whenever their meeting can take place with him, they will
have to approach him, they fear, “on their hands and knees.” They also cannot
stop waiting for him, because in that case, they fear, he will punish them. We
are given to understand a little more about the mysterious Godot in the next
act. At the end of the second act we hear two more items about him: Godot
does nothing; his beard is, probably, white.
From all these bits and pieces of information about the mysterious
Godot, one can easily conclude that the reference is to God. If we compare
the image of Godot created in the play with the image of God in the Bible,
the reference becomes all the more clear. His white beard identifies him with
the old-father aspect of God in the Bible. His irrational preference for one
brother recalls Jehova’s treatment of Cain and Abel. So does Godot’s power
to punish those who would dare to drop him. The discrimination between
goatherd and shepherd is also reminiscent of the Son of God as the ultimate
judge. As a saviour for whom Christians wait and wait, he might well be
meant as a cynical comment on the second coming of Christ. Similarly,
Godot’s aspect of doing nothing might be an equally cynical reflection on
man’s forlorn state. God, in any case, is supposed to do nothing. It is for man
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only, according to the Bible, to earn by the sweat of his brow. Besides, these
remarks are called “comical” by those who believe in God. Those men of
reason who do not believe in anything unknown, unseen, only heard, would
take these remarks as perfectly legitimate, proved by the facts of life. The
comment on the Christian civilization is very clear. Beckett’s satire is directed
against the western world, also against the whole of mankind, that keeps
nourishing, despite all the progress of science, its faith in something that is
neither here nor there. He, perhaps, takes it as a symptom actually of man’s
fear of death. Man wants to believe, desperately, that he is not born for death.
Hence, his creation of fictions about life after death. Religion, so to say, are
fictions, man’s own creation. It is, perhaps, also a social necessity, to make
living together of men possible, to make them fear wrong doings. When no
other fear works, the fear of God does.
But this is not all. We can go back to the discrimination between

goatherd and shepherd. Whereas Matthew (25, 35) says: “And he shall seat
the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left,” in the play it is the
shepherd who is beaten and the goatherd who is favoured. What the two
tramps, the only permanent characters on the stage in Waiting for Godot,
except from Godot is food and shelter. Since goats are motherly, milk-
providing animals, like the cow in India (buffalo was not there in ancient
India), the goatherd is to be favoured. In ancient times, even the male goat
among the deities, like Pan and Dionysus, have their origin in the cult of the
great mother and the matriarchal mysteries, only later to become devils. We
are told that once (there was a time) when Vladimir and Estragon had seen
Godot. But during their life span in the play they do not remember quite
clearly. The vague promises he seems to have given them (at that time)
are now treated with facetiousness born of doubt. In fact, Beckett seems
to make it appear as if, to these two tramps, God, Godot, and Pozzo were
sometimes merging into one blurred picture. Also, since these two had
seen the ancient times of faith and are now living in the times of doubt,
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they are obviously meant to be taken as archetypal, and not real, characters.
When in the second act, Vladimir and Estragon are talking about
God, Pozzo appears and is mistaken by Estragon for Godot. Here, the play
may be making a comment on the modern man’s relation to God, suggesting
that today religion is altogether based on indistinct desires in which
spiritual and material needs remain rather inextricably mixed up. Godot
is explicitly vague, merely an empty pro mise, correspo nding to t he
lukewarm piety and absence of suffering in the tramps. Waiting for Godot
has become a habit for these two (and, by implication, for all men).
Beckett calls this habit a “guarantee of dull inviolability…,” an adaptation
to the meaninglessness of life. “The periods of transition,” he continues,
“that separate consequtive adaptations…represent the perilous zones in
the life of the individual, dangerous, precarious, mysterious and fertile,
when for a moment the boredom of living is replaced by the suffering of
being.” At times, one suspects the possibility of such moments of transition
in the play, but Beckett takes great care never to let a transformation take
place. In a moment of lucidity, Vladimir tries to make Estragon participate
in his own fears about the question of salvation, damnation, or mere
death. However, Estragon remains unmoved by all these fears. Vladimir
even talks of the example of two thieves who were crucified beside the
saviour. He then ponders over the fact that only one of four Evangelists
mentions that one of the thieves was going to be saved. This is an obvious
reference to St. Augustine: “Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved.
Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.” There are passages of
dialogue in the play that bear out this particular thrust of Beckett’s
presentation in the play. Clearly, he seems to present us with a state in
modern man in which fear and fixation with an ancient deity are mixed
with doubt and bitterness on the one hand and with tired indifference on
the other. This looks highly probable when we remember other attempts
in modern literature (notably of T.S. Eliot) to confront modern man with
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the awareness of a spiritual void. This theme has been central to the
works of the existentialists. The passages expressing this mood belong to
the most poetic parts of the play. For instance, the following from second
act, when blind Pozzo is about to leave, Vladimir asks him to let Lucky
sing and think once more :
Pozzo. But he is dumb.
Vladimir. Dumb? Since when?
Pozzo. (suddenly furious). Have you not done tormenting me

with your accursed time? It’s abominable. When? When?
One day, isn’t that enough for you? One day like any other
he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go
deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the
same day, the same second, isn’t that good enough for
you?
And then, suddenly, comes a reference to the feminine. Pozzo,

turning visionary, adds: “They give birth astride of a grave. The light
gleams one instant. Then it’s night once more.”
Towards the end of the play, Vladimir sinks into a reverie in which
Pozzo’s vision re-emerges with significant additions. He rhetorically asks
himself :
Was I sleeping while the other suffered? Am I sleeping now?

Tomorrow, when I wake or think I do, what shall I say of
this day? That with Estragon, my friend, at this place, until
the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed with
his carrot, and talked to us? Probably. But in all that what
truth will there be?... (Pause) Astride of a grave and a
difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger
puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is
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full of our cries. But habit is a great deadner. At me, too,
someone is looking, of me, too, someone is saying: he is
sleeping, he does not know that he is asleep. (Pause) I can’t
go on! (Pause) What have I said?
Here, quite clearly, Vladimir becomes aware of two possible ways

of existence in this world. One awake. The other in a state of twilight.
He further realizes that he cannot go on – with what? With an existence
in which womb and tomb seem to fit together like two hemispheres
which are moved apart only for a moment to let in a ray of light.
However, very significantly, at this very moment of realization, when
Vladimir is just about to wake up to the reality of human existence,
Go do t’s bo y-messenger appears. His int errupt io n dest ro ys (like t he
caller on Coleridge destroys his vision of “Kubla Khan”) the process that was
just about to take place in Vladimir. Here, one of the functions of Godot that
becomes clear is that this mysterious figure must keep his dependents unaware,
unconscious, or ignorant. Interestingly, Godot’s messenger is equally ignorant.
He, too, knows nothing about Godot. The reference is obviously to the churchmen
who pose as messengers of God, more so the prophets and godmen who
proclaim to be so.
Carl Gustav Jung, we may recall here, speaking about God, gives
us a thesis that finds its echo in Beckett’s portrait of Godot in his play.
Jung’s thesis is: “The fact of God’s ‘unconsciousness’ throws a peculiar
light on the doctrine of salvation. Man is not so much delivered from his
sins…as delivered fro m fear o f t he co nsequences o f sin….” The
hopelessness of Vladimir ’s situation, after the arrival of the messenger,
is as grim as that of Pozzo’s vision of life as a flash between the womb
and the tomb. His flash of consciousness ends between his question
“What have I said?” and his relapse into the reliance upon the arrival
o f t he saviour, Go do t . Thus, Go do t o f Becket t’s; play remains as
mysterious and undefinable as the religions’ God is. The similarities
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between the two figures are obvious enough. In his invisibility, in his
unknownability, in his arbitrariness, in his all-powerfulness, Godot is,
decidedly, meant to act as God of mankind. Through the relationship
between Godot and the creatures in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot the
author has depicted not only the history of mankind but also the condition
humane. The largest theme for any literary work, more so for a play
which perforce has to be of shorter length, is dramatized by Beckett
through the simplest of plot, through smallest number of characters,
through the simplest form of language. Like Hemmingway’s prose, the
beauty of Beckett’s style is that the simpler it seems, the subtler it gets.
The only difference is that meaning in Beckett’s play has to be worked
out very much in the manner of a metaphysical conceit, for apparently
the comparison, or comparisons, is indirect and intriguing. The play, in
the process, gains allegorical dimensions. We do need to look into this
aspect of Waiting for Godot as well.
20.4 LET US SUM UP
In this lesson we have discussed the synopsis and detailed summary

of the play Waiting for Godot. The lesson covers all the major aspects of the
play and various critical perspectives associasted with the play. Further the
lesson throws light on the various prospects associated with the identity of
Godot.
Multiple Choice Questions :
1. As they wait for Godot, what does Vladimir become unsure of?
(a) what Godot looks like
(b) if they are in the right spot
(c) whether Godot actually exists
(d) if it is the right day
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2. What is the name of the misturated man who serves Pozzo?
(a) Fortunato
(b) Bingo
(c) Blaze
(d) Lucky
3. What does Estragon decide to leave for someone else?
(a) his boots
(b) his Bible
(c) his hat
(d) his pipe
4. How does Vladimir wish he and Estragon has committed suicide when they
had the chance?
(a) jumped from the Effel Tower
(b) stepped in front of a train
(c) taking all the pills in the house
(d) hung themselves
5. Where does Pozzo intend to sell his captive?
(a) at a farm
(b) to a slave ship
(c) at the fair
(d) in the town square
6. What idea sounds appealing to both Vladimir and Estragon?
(a) to part company
(b) robbing someone
(c) committing suicide
(d) to cease waiting
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7. What message from godot does the boy deliver?
(a) he has been delayed indefinately
(b) he will not be there this evening, but surely tomorrow
(c) the wall arrive before nightfall
(d) he no longer plans to come
8. What makes Estragon feel unwanted?
(a) Vladimir’s singing
(b) Pozzo’s dismissiveness
(c) Not having a job
(d) Godot’s delay
9. What is Vladimir’s opinion of people?
(a) they are ignorent apes
(b) all are touched in the head in the same way
(c) most are good hearted
(d) well meaning but misguided
10. Who or what are “clochands”?
(a) cultured people who have come to hard times
(b) a type of inedible fruit
(c) people who are easily duped
(d) who encampments
ANSWER KEY
1) (b)
2) (d)
3) (a)
4) (a)
5) (c)
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6) (c)
7) (b)
8) (a)
9) (a)
10) (a)
1. Who is Godot?
___________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
2. Explain Waiting for Godot as an absured drama.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
3. Relationship between Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
4. Discuss the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky from the post-colonial
perspectives.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
5. Estragon repeats “Nothing to be done”. Why?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
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6. In Waiting for Godot, what would Beckett determine is the meaning of human
life?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
7. Is Waiting for Godot a successful and complete play?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
• Cronin, A. Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist, London : Flamingo, 1997.
• Kalb J., Beckett in Performance, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,
1989.
• Ackerley C.J. and Gontarkski, S.E. (Eds.), The Faber Companion to Samuel
Beckett London : Faber and Faber, 2006.
*******
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DRAMA - II UNIT - VI
LIFE OF GALILEO
BERTOLT BRECHT
STRUCTURE
21.1 Introduction
21.2 Objectives
21.3 Brecht’s Life and Work
21.1 INTRODUCTION
This lesson will introduce the learners to Brecht, his life and important
works.
21.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the life and
works of Bertolt Brecht.
21.3 BRECHT- BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS
Brecht was born in Ausberg, Germany, near Munich in 1898 to a comfortable

middle class family and he enjoyed a fairly normal childhood. His father was a
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Catholic who worked in a paper factory and his mother a Protestant. Often sickly
and inattentive in school, he found early inspiration in the works of writers such as
Villon, Rimbaud and Wedekind and as a result produced a number of poems, songs
and play fragments during his youth. During these years he became friends with
Casper Neher who later designed many of the stages for Brecht. Later he served as
a medical orderly in a German military hospital during the First World War.
Then a stint at the University of Munich in 1919 where he wrote his first play Baal.
He was largely based in Munich till 1924, making important trips to Berlin in
between where he came into close contact with Herbert Ihering, a renowned
theatre critic and Helene Weigel, a Jewish –Austrian actress whom he later married.
During this period he wrote Drums in the Night (1919), In the Jungle of the
Cities(1922) as well as developed material for A Man’s A Man (1926).’ Drums in
the Night’ was his first play to be produced on the stage in September 1922 at the
Munich Kammerspiele. It was also staged in Berlin in the same year and proved to
be a turning point in Brecht’s career.
Brecht moved to Berlin in 1924 and stayed there till 1933 during the
golden age of the Weimar Republic where his reputation as a playwright
reached international fame.The Weimar Republic was the name given to the
political society of Germany between the end of World War I (1918) and
the rise of Hitler (1933). “The Weimar Republic, similar to the French
revolution of the eighteenth century, is both a primer and cautionary tale
about a Western, democratic and capitalist culture that extends itself too far
and descend s int o d ecad ence, chao s, hyperinflat io n, and u lt imat ely
totalitarian dictatorship.”(xv) It was during this period that Brecht turned
politically and intellectually to Marxism and published a ground breaking
collection of poems Hauspostille. In 1928, he wrote The Threepenny Opera
which premiered at the Theatre at Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin which became
the home theatre of Brecht’s theatre collective, The Berliner Ensemble(BE)
after World War II. The tremendous success of the play catapulted Brecht to
national and international fame. With the onset of the Great Depression in
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1929 the Weimar Republic disintegrated and Hitler and his Nazis rose to
power, with Hitler becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Brecht,
with pronounced Marxist leanings was on the short list of Nazi enemies and
fled into exile. In exile Brecht took up residence in various countries;
Denmark, 1933-1939; Sweden, 1939-1940; Finland,1940-1941; and the
United States, 1941-1947. Operating without a native language, stage, culture
or audience, Brecht nevertheless produced theoretical, theatrical, and poetic
work that hugely impacted his later career. It was in 1938-39 with the
beginning of World War II with the invasion of Poland by Hitler, Brecht
produced his great, mature works- Galileo, Good Person of Szechwan,
Mother Courage and her Children, The Messingkauf Dialogues, The
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. After the
end of the World War II he stayed in the United States for an additional two
years, waiting to see what would the situation be in Germany and whether
he would succeed in the American theatre and film industry or not. In October
1947, he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) which was investigating Communist and anti- American
activity. To the dismay of many, he did not invoke his right to testify, and
instead performed an ambivalent piece of political theatre, which in the
end left everyone confused. This was his swan song in America and he
embarked the following day for Switzerland.”(xvii)
Mother Courage premiered t o great applause in Berlin and t he

publication of A Short Organum for the Theatre in January 1949 reintroduced
Brecht successfully back into the orbit of the European theatre scene. Germany
was now a divided nation, the symbolic centre of the Cold War between the
United States and the Soviet Union, a situation that would not be resolved till
1990. (when Germany became a unified nation with the fall of the Berlin
Wall). Brecht settled in East Berlin, eventually founding his own theatre
company, the Berliner Ensemble in 1949. “In the last years of his life he
worked to bring all his theatrical work to the postwar audience, and at the
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same time attempted to negotiate the ambivalence of the Cold war. Beginning
in 1954, the BE undertook a series of guest residencies throughout Europe,
and it was these tours that thrust the BE and Brecht’s theatrical work back
into the international scene. He died in august 1956.” (viii). In the Introduction
to the classic Penguin edition of Life of Galileo Norman Roessler’s opinion
is important in the context of Brecht’s ouvre.
“Over the last fifty years, Brecht has continued to play the Socratic
gadfly, fascinating and irritating us at the same time. Epic theater, alienation
effects, gestus, anti- Aristotelian, mimesis, empathy, illusion, psychological
/so cial, dissonance- all t hese t erms(and mo re) co mprise the aest hetic
philosophy of Brecht… the Dialectical theatre in short- a term Brecht used
more and more at the end of his career. In short, dialectical theatre resists
a bs o lu t e s , e s se n t ia ls , a n d id en t ific a t io n s, a nd ins t e ad s ee k s o u t
contradictions, diversities, and multiplicities. Nothing is eternal, all is fluid,
and so, ultimately, all is changeable. In dialectical theatre, the writer, actor
and spectator are consciously and cognitively involved in the performance
they are collectively creating. This position stands in contrast to the main
tradition of Western performance, what Brecht referred to as the Aristotelian
tradition, in which one is asked to identify, empathize, and lose oneself to
t he illusion and myst ery o f t he performance. In his theat rical works,
especially his theoretical writings, Brecht explored this idea of dialectical
theatre…. Brecht left behind extensive aesthetic writings, contained in seven
volumes in the standard edition of his complete works in German, yet these
writings do not fo rm asystematic, or even consistent expression of an
aesthetic theory. What Brecht gives us in his theoretical and theatrical
writings are political and aesthetic puzzles, which are meant to stimulate
awareness and critical thinking, and which Brecht believed were necessary
and pleasurable endeavors within the human condition.” (xviii)
At the dawn of the twenty- first century, as the terrible landmarks of the
previous century (holocaust, world wars, the nuclear age) lose their immediacy
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and power, and the new century brings new monuments to our world (9/11,
Ethnic cleansing, global warming), we find Brecht, who seemed so absolutely
determined by the twentieth century and hence rendered null and void by the
end, to be even more relevant. For Brecht, although a product of the “dark
times” of the twentieth century, nevertheless was not imprisoned by the era that
he lived in. Brecht mediated his times through the grander lens of western
history, philosophy, and aesthetics; hence Brecht provides not just a conversation
with the twentieth century, but a dialogue that reaches back through Nietzsche,
Ibsen, Marx, Shakespeare, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Socrates and forward to
our current postmodern epoch. Moreover it is not a simple conversation Brecht
provides, but rather an elegant puzzle that includes the constant sting of the
irritating gadfly.” (xviii)

• Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre, by A. Robert Laurer’s Notes for SPAN
4184 (http:/faclty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.Rauer-1/Brecht.html).
********
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LIFE OF GALILEO
BERTOLT BRECHT
STRUCTURE
22.1 Introduction
22.2 Objectives
22.3 The Theme of the Play
22.1 INTRODUCTION
This lesson will introduce the learners with thematic concerns of the play.
22.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with various themes
of the play.
22.3 THE THEME OF THE PLAY
Galileo was born into an era of great cultural ferment, scientific

discoveries, religious upheavals and discovery of new lands. It was a period
of the zenith of the Italian Renaissance- which was a revival of the classical
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art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Renaissance literally meaning
rebirth saw a reintroduction of classical art following the ‘dark ages’ of
the medieval period. The Renaissance saw a revolution in the sciences,
medicine, philosophy and geography. The Renaissance produced some of
the greatest works of art, Italy being the vibrant centre of the revival. It was
home to the greatest of the geniuses of the humanist spirit- Da Vinci, Michelangelo,
Machiavelli, Petrarch and many more.
The Reformation- Martin Luther King (1483-1546) and later John Calvin
(1509-69) had already led a movement to purge the Church of its corrupt and
unchristian practices. Luther King, a former monk, attacked Catholicism for having
become too worldly and the clergy for having slipped into moral decadence and
for obscuring the tenets of Christianity with Paganism. Also the individual’s
experience of faith and God became more important than the ritual of the church
or the role of the clergy.
The New World- Ferdinand Magellan by circumnavigating the globe had

proved that the earth was round and not square with precipice on its edge as
thought earlier and Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America had ushered in
a new era of movement of people across the Atlantic. Inveterate travellers sent
back reports of new sights they saw, the new continents they discovered, and
new cultures they came across. Europe’s idea of the world changed dramatically
as it came in contact with new worlds and new ways of thinking. Also more
commercial transactions and trade overseas began.
The New Science- In 1543, Copernicus argued that the universe was
heliocentric with the sun at the centre of the universe as opposed to the Ptolemaic
theory which supported a geocentric universe, a theory endorsed by the church.
This meant that the earth was not the most important sphere in the universe.
Discoveries of new heavenly bodies and their motions upset the established thinking
of the crystal spheres as given by Aristotle. Francis Bacon encouraged empirical
research while Rene Descartes explored the forms and processes of human
thinking. The discovery of the circulation of blood by William Harvey and more
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detailed dissections revealed new truths about human anatomy.
Quest for knowledge- Reading ancient Greek and Latin texts, scholars
of this period began to think extensively about human nature and what we
now know as ‘The Humanities’ emerged during the Renaissance in man’s
quest for more knowledge about the human mind and the way we think.
Thinkers developed theories in philosophy, psychology and medicine to define
the meaning of being ‘Human’. Love for art and its aesthetics was seen as the
highest expression of culture and civilization. The invention of printing made
books easier to circulate thus leading to a more enlightened people.
The Counter Reformation- In response to the Reformation, The

Catholic counter reformation, called into being by the Council of Trent,
Emphasizes orthodoxy and fidelity to the true church. A new religious order,
called the Jesuits or the Society of Jesus arose to act upon these principles,
and stood at the vanguard of the battle with what they considered as Protestant
heresy.The Counter Reformation reinvigorated the Church and incited a great
wave of theological and religious energy. The Popes became more powerful
and influential: not just as leaders of the Roman Catholic Church but also as
secular leaders, controlling much of central Italy around their seat in Rome.
The Renaissance Popes, a colourful group, presided over an era of corruption
and worldliness within the Church and put an end to the liberality and leniency
of the Renaissance; its emphasis on religious orthodoxy, rigidly enforced by
the Inquisition engendered a clash between the Church and the emerging
scientific and astronomical revolution.
Galileo, with his telescope and study of astronomy figured at the centre
of this clash. The play sketches episodes from the life of Galileo Galilei (1564-
1642) from 1609 on through to 1637. “Standard Western history presents Galileo
as the quintessential Renaissance figure (born in the same year as Shakespeare)
and the Father of Modern Science who risked life and career to stand up to the
political authority of the day and usher in the Scientific Revolution.”(Life of
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Galileo-Ed. Richard Foreman). The opening scene shows Galileo in Padua in
the Republic of Venice, where he earns a meagre living through his teaching
obligations and devotes most of his time to research corroborating Copernicus’
theory of the heliocentric universe through his observations of the celestial
bodies using a newly made telescope. In 1619 he publishes his findings in The
Starry Messenger. The Starry Messenger would confirm in concise, accessible,
scientific form Copernicus’ theory given in ‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres’ of a heliocentric rather than a geocentric universe, the latter of which
was supported by the authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy and the Roman Catholic
Church. Brecht traces Galileo’s career from this ground-breaking moment
through his arguments with the mathematicians and philosophers in Florence
trying to convince them with arguments based on reason and precise mathematical
observations done by him. Asked to devote his time to less dangerous
endeavours by the papal authorities he keeps silent for eight years. “The papal
authorities accepted the heliocentric model, but asserted that the Church had
the power of when and how to disseminate this knowledge to the broader public,
and hence counselled Galileo to continue his work but keep his ideas to
himself.” When he learns in 1623 that the new Pope is now Cardinal Berberini,
a mathematician who had supported his theory earlier he believes that more
enlightened times have returned and he resumes his astronomical research into
the forbidden area of sun spots. During the next decade his doctrine spreads
among the common people undermining the earlier belief systems and faith. In
1632, with official papal sanction he publishes his Dialogue Concerning the
Two Chief World Systems; yet the reception of the text leads to a heresy trial in
1633, and he is forced by the Inquisition to recant his findings. The final scene
shows an embittered half blind Galileo under house arrest closely supervised
by the Inquisition and cared for by his unmarried daughter Virginia, who once
engaged to be married to Ludovico, suffers a broken engagement because of
Galileo’s heretical discoveries. His former disciple Andrea, disillusioned by
what he believes to be Galileo’s betrayal of science, visits him and on finding
that Galileo has secretly written the Discorsi, praises him recanting for the
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sake of science. But Galileo mercilessly condemns himself confessing that he
recanted because he was afraid of physical torture and he could have played
his role as a true scientist by facing the punishment. The play ends on a positive
note as Andrea crosses the border into a more liberal Holland with the Discorsi
safe with him.
The central theme of the play is not only the historical Galileo but the
rational man and his new ideas and the cultural, political and social challenges
they presented to the dominant authorities and what eventually led history to call
it ‘The Galileo affair.’ The play can be analysed on three levels: 1) Conflict
between faith and reason. 2) The socio- political considerations. 3) Its
significance in Brecht’s time.
1. Conflict between Faith and Reason –Brecht’s Galileo dramatizes the

warfare between faith and scepticism born out of reason. Faith is the foundation
of religion while doubt is considered the gateway to scientific truth. But
theologians and thinkers of Galileo’s time believed that the ultimate way to truth
was through faith. But Galileo found a new way to truth- through the way of
doubt and skepticism. He gave birth to a rational, experimental and inductive
method of making an inquiry and to prove through rigorous investigations and
observations the ultimate way to scientific truth. The telescope helped him to
corroborate what Copernicus had said that the universe was heliocentric and not
geocentric. Aristotle, Ptolemy and champions of the Biblical faith had long believed
that the universe was perfect and spotless and man was the centre of all creation.
Galileo sought to give an explanation of the limitations of the Ptolemaic-
Aristotelian- Christian world view. Ptolmy had worked out a geocentric system
of brilliant geometric precision- but his system of interlocking orbits grew more
complex and confused as astronomers strained to make their more modern
observations fit into a mistaken theory and in the 16 th century the theory began to
fall under attack. The first to question it was Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish
astronomer, whose work ‘On the Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs’ (published
after his death in 1543) proposed a heliocentric universe, in which the planets,
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including the Earth- orbited the sun (Helios). This more mathematically satisfying
way of explaining the solar system did not gain many supporters because the
available data could not wholly disprove the Ptolemaic system. But by the end of
the 16th century astronomers like Johhanes Kepler had begun to embrace it and
once Galileo began to observe the celestial bodies through his telescope the
Ptolemaic system was severely undermined. In the play in scene one an excited
Galileo tells Andrea his apprentice disciple, “For two thousand years people
have believed that the sun and all the stars of heaven rotate around mankind.
Pope, cardinals, princes, professors, captains, merchants, fishwives and school-
kids thought they were sitting motionless inside this crystal sphere. But now we
are breaking out of it, Andrea, at full speed. Because the old days are over and
this is a new time…. Our cities are cramped, and so are men’s minds.” He
further states that “what is written in the old books is no longer good enough …
because a vast desire has sprung up in man to know the reasons for everything-
why a stone falls when you let it go and why it rises when you toss it up.” In
scene three the caption reads: 10 January 1610. Using the telescope, Galileo
discovers celestial phenomena that confirm the Copernican system. Warned by
his friend of possible consequences of his research, Galileo proclaims his belief
in human reason.
January ten, sixteen ten
Galileo Galilei abolishes heaven.
Sagredo: Ten years ago in Rome they burnt a man at the stake for that. His
name was Giordano Bruno, and that is what he said.
Galileo: “Exactly. And that is what we can see. Keep your eye glued to
the telescope. Sagredo, my friend. What you are seeing is the fact that there is no
difference between heaven and earth. Today on 10 th January 1610. Today mankind
can write in its diary: got rid of Heaven.” (22)
On witnessing the moons of Jupiter Galileo concludes that Jupiter is not

attached to some crystal sphere as supposed by Aristotle.
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“Sagredo: What about the crystal sphere Jupiter is attached to?
Galileo: Yes, where has it got to? How can Jupiter be attached if other
stars circle around it? It’s not some kind of prop in the sky, some base in the
universe. It’s another sun.”(25)
In the Court of Florence Galileo puts forth his theory before Cosimo, the
Grand Duke of Florence and other theologians and mathematicians:
“Galileo: As your highness no doubt realises, we astronomers have been

running into great difficulties in our calculations for some while. We have been
using a very ancient system which is apparently consistent with our philosophy
but not, alas, with the facts.” Galileo then explains hoe the planets and stars
perform certain motions that cannot be explained by the Ptolemaic system. The
philosopher sitting there argues that “the universe of the divine Aristotle, with
the mystical music of its spheres and its crystal vaults, the orbits of its heavenly
bodies, the slanting angle of the sun’s course, the secrets of the moon’s tables,
the starry richness catalogued in the southern hemisphere and the transparent
structure of the celestial globe add up to an edifice of such exquisite proportions
that we should think twice before disrupting its harmony. “(p.37) When Galileo
says that “To believe in the authority of Aristotle is one thing, tangible facts are
another.” The philosopher’s rejoinder is: ‘Philosopher (grandly): If Aristotle
is going to be dragged in the mud-that’s to say an authority recognized not only
by every classical scientist but also by the chief fathers of the church- then any
prolonging of this discussion is in my view a waste of time. I have no use for
discussions which are not objective. Basta.(Brecht’s use of dramatic irony is
manifest in the use of the word ‘objective’. It is the philosopher who is not
open to new ideas but biased in his favour of Aristotle).
Galileo: Truth is born of the times, not of authority...”
Even when the Collegium Romanum has approved of his observations

The Holy Congregation does not bother to go into the details of Galileo’s findings.
He is given the liberty to take his research further and treat the doctrines in
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question mathematically in the form of a hypothesis because in the words of
Bellarmin, “Science is the rightful and much-loved daughter of the Church, Mr.
Galilei. None of us seriously believes that you want to shake men’s faith in the
Church.” but Galileo believes otherwise. When in an experiment he puts a needle
on paper and instead of sinking it floats his friend and lens grinder, Federzoni is
wonder struck.
“Federzoni: The needle’s floating, Holy Aristotle, they never checked up on

him!
Galileo: One of the main reasons why the sciences are so poor is that
they imagine they are so rich. It isn’t their job to throw open the door to infinite
wisdom but to put a limit to infinite error. Make your notes.”(71)
These new truths, radically different from the conventional truths

established by theologians and traditional Christian astronomers came as an
iconoclastic blow because Galileo declared that reason and scepticism rather
than faith could lead mankind to better destinations. The Christian Inquisition
felt Galileo’s claim to be a painful insult to the stronghold of Christian dogma.
They could not accept a scientific assault on its own theories of the universe.
The pressures of the age set in motion the historic confrontation between science
and religion, which culminated in the disastrous trial of Galileo in 1633. His
recantation brought an unprecedented halt to the progress of science but reason
did not die and scepticism and the spirit of scientific inquiry could not be
eliminated.
In the words of John Willett “first of all this (the play) is not only a hymn
to reason, but one that centres specifically on the need to be sceptical, no doubt.
The theme is one that recurs in others of Brecht’s writings of the later 1930’s –
for instance the poems ‘The Doubter” and ‘In Praise of Doubt”…. the notion of
Brecht that doubt and even self- doubt can be highly productive- that “disbelief
can move mountains ” as he later put it in the ‘Short Organum- is deeply engrained
in the play…”Galileo’s theory of Reason is reflected in the strong enlightenment
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metaphors and the light/darkness dichotomy throughout the play. One has to do
with ‘seeing’ in the sense of understanding, in contrast to mindless’ staring.
Mindless seeing is illustrated by the scientists in this Aristotelian tradition, who
refuse to look through Galileo’s telescope for fear of upsetting their own doctrines
so firmly ingrained. Such an attitude is representative of the old order and blind
belief; and it stands in opposition to unbiased observation and fruitful doubt. To
the wondering remarks of some philosophers and mathematicians where all this
might be leading, Galileo’s rejoinder is “Jupiter’s moons may not bring down
the price of milk. But they have never been seen before, and yet all the same they
exist. From this the man on the street can conclude that a lot else might exist if
only he opened his eyes…”
Does Brecht portray Galileo as a pragmatic rationalist or a coward? –

After the first world premiere of the play at Zurich Schauspielhaus, played soberly
by Leonard Steckel, one critic called the play “a Lehrstruck or a play for reading”
because of its lack of dramatic effect. What is not clear is whether Galileo recanted
out of cowardice or as part of a deliberate plan to complete his life’s work on
behalf of human reason and smuggle it out to the free world. This ambiguity was
part of the first version of the play, where Galileo has already been conspiring
with the stove- fitter to send his manuscript abroad in the penultimate scene even
before Andrea appears. It was only in the spring of 1944 that it again underwent
a re-consideration by Brecht. He noted in his diary;: ‘ Just because I was trying
to follow the historical story, without being morally concerned, a moral content
emerged and I’m not happy about it.g. can no more resist stating the truth than
eating an appetising dish; to him it’s a matter of sensual enjoyment, and he
constructs his own personality as wisely and passionately as does his image of
the world. actually he fails twice. The first time is when he suppresses or recants
the truth because he is in mortal danger, the second when despite the moral danger
he once again seeks out the truth and disseminates it. he is destroyed by his own
productivity. and it upsets me to be told that I approve of his publicly recanting
so as to be able to carry on his work in secret. that’s too banal and too cheap….g.
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threw all real progress to the wolves when he recanted.”(xxxii) Brecht himself
had underlined two points in connection with the play.
2. The Socio political considerations- some critics are of the opinion that
Brecht, though he adheres closely to the biographical facts and the general course
of the events covered in the years 1609 to 1637, he deliberately attributes some
motivations and beliefs to his main characters as unhistorical and draws an
anachronistic picture of Italian society of the 17 th century. In scene six the very
old Cardinal (a character in the play) is of the opinion that ‘this Mr Galilei
moves mankind away from the centre of the universe and dumps it somewhere on
the edge. Clearly this makes him an enemy of the human race. We must treat him
as such. Mankind is the crown of creation, as every child knows, God’s highest
and dearest creature...” Galileo has proved that the earth is just another star and
man is not the centre of the universe as supposed. The truth of the Copernican
system means not only an astronomical but also a social revolution. In the
traditional belief the Pope was the fixed centre of the social hierarchy, now
everybody is of equal importance …and the earth is rolling cheerfully around the
sun, and the fishwives, merchants, princes, cardinals and even The Pope are
rolling with it. The universe has lost its centre overnight, and woken up to find it
has countless centres, so that each one can now be seen as the centre, or none at
all.” This has also metaphysical consequences, since the revaluation of the
individual causes a devaluation of God’s authority... when his friend Sagredo
asks him where God’s place might be in this new solar system, Galileo’s answer
is : “within ourselves and nowhere.” In scene ten too the ballad singer sings
during the carnival procession:
Up stood the learned Galilei
(Chucked away the Bible, whipped out his telescope, took a quick look at the
universe.)
And told the sun ‘stop there.
From now the whole creation dei

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Will turn as I think fair
The boss starts turning from today
His servants stand and stare’….
Galileo’s truths have subverted the old social order and the idea of a
gentle Jesus. Doing as Jesus bid to turn the other cheek to your enemy for a blow
will not help now because:
“Obedience isn’t going to cure your woe
So each of you wake up, and do just as he pleases!”(81)
Galileo earns a new sobriquet- Galileo Galilei, The bible-buster! In

scene eight Galileo’s conversation with the little Monk is very interesting.
The Monk highlights the plight and everyday struggles of the common man
but says that even their misfortunes imply a certain order…His parents can
bear the toils because ‘They have been assured that God’s eye is always on
them- probingly , even anxiously-: that the whole drama of the world is
constructed around them so that they, the performers may prove themselves
in their greater or lesser roles…”(62) He further asks, “what would my
people say if I told them that they happen to be on a small knob of stone
twisting endlessly through the void round a second- rate star, just one among
myriads?”(62) And Galileo retorts, “Why does order in this country mean
the orderliness of a bare cupboard, and necessity nothing but the need to
work oneself to death? When there are teeming vineyards and cornfields on
every side? Your Campagna Peasants are paying for the wars which the
representative of gentle Jesus is waging in Germany and Spain…… If your
people were happy and pro sperous they could develo p the virt ues of
happiness and prosperity. At present the virtues of exhaustion derive from
exhausted fields, and I reject them. Sir, my new pumps will perform more
miracles in that direction than all your ridiculous superhuman slaving...”
(63) Galileo very clearly shows that the categorical opposition of the popes
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and the feudal classes to change is motivated by their interest in maintaining
the privileges of the ruling class. One way to maintain the status quo is to
keep the masses in a perpetual state of fear and ignorance. Galileo’s work
has brought him into daily contact with the draughtsmen, instrument makers,
lens grinders who are open to new ideas and use their common sense. And
accept new approaches. It is only the bigoted clergy and the ruling class –
people like Ludovico- who are not willing to accept new ideas. “In Galileo’s
opinion, however, the evils not teleological, but arbitrary and man- made.
It could be easily eliminated if the social hierarchy were changed and the
scientific inventions applied to the benefit of all rather than being exploited
by a select few. The Church, as a paradigm of secular power, is quite aware
of the explosive social implications. It successfully prevents the potential
consequences of Copernicus’ writings by first placing them on the index of
forbidden books, then by forcing Galileo to recant his confirming scientific
observations.”(Gaby Divay)
The Inquisitor convinces the Pope cleverly of Galileo’s responsibility in

the development of social awareness because he writes in the language of the
vernacular. “The people doubt everything… They start by wondering if the Sun
stood still over Gideon, then extend their filthy scepticism to the offertory
box…(He is afraid of losing the earnings through the offertory) with machines
they hope to work miracles…The abolition of top and bottom, for one. They are
needed no longer. Aristotle, whom they otherwise regard as a dead dog, has
said- and they quote this- that once the shuttle weaves by itself, masters would
need no apprentice and the lords no servants. And they think they are already
there. This evil man knows what he is up to when he writes his astronomical
works not in Latin but in the idiom of Fishwives and wool merchants.”(88) He
thus shows why it is necessary for Galileo to recant publicly. Galileo’s recantation
is in Federzoni’s words’ as if night fell again in the morning’ ; however in Galileo’s
final encounter with Andrea in the last scene there is a prospect of light, in
Virginia’s words, which allow hope for better times.
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3. Relevance of the play in modern times- in the Introduction of the
play’Life of Galileo’ (Penguin Classics) John Willett and Ralph Manheim thus
opine, “Not just one, but three crucial moments of our recent history helped to
give it its multiple relevance to our time: Hitler’s triumphs in 1938, the dropping
of the first nuclear bomb in 1945, the death of Stalin in 1953. Each found
Brecht writing or rewriting his play. Brecht all along was writing about attitudes
which he could understand and even sympathise with; it is a play which contains
very little element of caricature. This does not turn his Galileo into the self-
portrait it is sometimes alleged to be particularly by those who wish to present
Brecht as a ‘survivor’… Nor does it bear out the late Issac Deutscher’s
interpretation of the first version as an apologia for those who, like Brecht
himself, supported Stalin whilst disliking many aspects of his regime. … What
matters here is the overlaying of the original message, about the need at all
costs to establish and communicate the truth in defiance of authority. ..By turning
it back, finally into something on the meditation on the notion of a ‘new time,’
Brecht reemphasised another general theme of particular significance to himself.
Between 1929 and 1933, the German Communists thought that the Revolution
was around the corner, and men like Brecht were stimulated much as he describes
in his Foreword – The new age- that is something and is something that affects
everything, leaves nothing unchanged… Glorious is the feeling of beginning, of
pioneering; the fact of being a beginner inspires enthusiasm….At the end of
1930, however, he wrote “Terrible is the disappointment, says Brecht in the
Foreword, when the new time fails to arrive and old times prove stronger than
anyone thought. For what had actually arrived was the ‘dark times and the
confused notion of the old and the new.” And in this hope he was determined to
hold on to his old belief in the New, writing to Karin Michaelis in March 1942,
when the war was still going Hitler’s way, that ‘the time we live is an excellent
time for fighters. Was there ever a time when Reason had such a chance?’ It
sums up Galileo’s opening aria ‘Reason is not coming to an end but beginning.’
(First version of the play). The first version of the play is about science and
political repression, progress and retardation. The overall tone is optimistic.
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Galileo’s case is proof that progress cannot be upheld, that it can be only
temporarily suppressed. Galileo’s final monologue reinforces the progress
optimism and stresses science’s beneficial contributions to mankind, “I still
believe that this is a new age. It may look like a blood stained harridan, but if
so, that must be the way new ages look.” The second version of the play put
together in 1944-45 was a joint effort with Charles Laughton. This is what
Brecht wrote: “The atomic age made its debut at Hiroshima in the middle of
our work. Overnight the biography of the founder of the new system of physics
read differently. The infernal effect of the great bomb placed the conflict between
Galileo and the authorities of his day in a new, sharper light. We had to make
only a few alterations- not a single one to the structure of the play.” All changes
made endeavour to place the scientist’s responsibility concerning his inventions
and their application to the better or worse of mankind into the centre. Now it
is not the conflict between the progressive and reactionary forces, but the
question of the annihilation or existence of mankind that dominates the final
scene. The third version of 1953 was spurred by the atomic escalation and
Brecht’s increasing concern of its possible misuse. The development of the
hydrogen bomb and the Korean war led Brecht to make more revisions to the
play where the theme of ‘responsible science ‘ as opposed to ‘pure science’ is
further strengthened by the following important addition to Galileo’s dialogue.
“As a scientist I had a unique opportunity. In my day astronomy emerged into
the market place. Given this unique situation, if one man had put up a fight, it
might have had tremendous repercussions. Had I stood firm, the scientists could
have developed something like the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath, a vow to use
their knowledge exclusively for mankind’s benefit. As things are, the best that
can be hoped for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for any
purpose… I handed my knowledge to those in power for them to use, fail to
use, misuse… whatever best suited their objectives.”
4. The Recantation appears now in an entirely negative light and stresses

Galileo’s betrayal not only of science but also of a scientist’s social
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commitments: It is the beginning of separating science from its responsible
applications. Brecht illustrates this danger in a draft for a preface to the play:
“The bourgeois single out science from the scientist’s consciousness, setting it
up as an island of independence, so as to be able in practice to interweave it
with their politics, their economics, their ideology. The research scientist’s
objective is “pure” research; the product of that research is not so pure. The
formula e=mc2 is conceived of as eternal, not tied down to anything. Hence other
people can do the tying down, and suddenly the city of Hiroshima has become
very short- lived. The scientists are claiming the irresponsibility of machines.”
The dilemma and the debate still goes on.
• McNeill, Dougal, The Many Lives of Galileo : Brecht, Theatre and

Translation’s Political Unconscious, Born Switzerland : Peter Long
Academic, 2005.
• Willett, John, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht : A Study from Eight Aspects,
London : Methuen, 1959.
********
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BERTOLT BRECHT
LIFE OF GALILEO
STRUCTURE
23.1 Introduction
23.2 Objectives
23.3 The Structure of the Play
23.1 INTRODUCTION
Life of Galileo is based on the life of Galileo Galilei. This lesson will
introduce the learners with the adaption of Galileo’s life in fiction .
23.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with the structure
of the play.
23.3 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PLAY
Life of Galileo by Brecht is based on the real life of the seventeenth
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century astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei. The play is not in the classical
tradition because it does not follow any conventional norms. Brecht’s theory of
theatre is known as the ‘Epic Theatre’ which is an anti- illusionist theatre that
runs counter to the classical Aristotelian ‘Theatre of Illusion”. Older plays
traditionally aimed at conveying a sense of cohesiveness and unity and one of the
classical poetic laws to achieve this cohesiveness was through the three unities:
unity of time, unity of plot or action and unity of place. In the Aristotelian concept
the unities meant that a play should have only one single plot line, ought to take
place in a single locale and within one day (one revolution of the sun). The idea
behind the concept was to make a plot more plausible and to support Aristotle’s
concept of ‘Mimesis’ i.e the attempt to imitate or reflect life as authentically as
possible. This mimetic effect would make an audience succumb easily to the
illusion of the play as reality or at least something that could occur ‘like this in
real life’. This Classical concept was explained by the German writer Gustav
Freytag in his book ‘Die Technik des Dramas’(Technique of the Drama 1863),
wherein he describes the classical five act structure in the shape of a pyramid,
attributing a particular function to each of the five acts. Freytag’s pyramid can be
illustrated as follows:
Complicating Falling Action

Action (“retardierendes
(“erregendes Moments”)
Moment”)
Catastrophe
Introduction (“Katastrophe”)
(“Exposition”) Denouement
Climax Peripety
(“Peripetie”)
Act I contains all introductory information and thus serve as ‘Exposition’.

The main characters are introduced and by presenting a conflict the play prepares
the audience for the action in subsequent acts. The II act usually propels the plot
by introducing further circumstances or problems related to the main issue. The
main conflict starts to develop and the characters are presented in greater detail.
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In act III the plot reaches its climax. A crisis occurs where the deed is committed
that will lead to the catastrophe, and this brings about a turn (peripety) in the
plot. The IV act creates new tension in that it delays the final catastrophe by
further events. The V act finally offers a solution to the conflict presented in the
play. While tragedies end in a catastrophe, usually the death of the protagonist,
comedies are simply resolved, traditionally in a wedding or another type of
festivity. A term that is applicable to both types of ending is the French’
denouement. Prior to this Goethe and Schiller had jointly presented this point
of view in an essay ‘On Epic and Dramatic Poetry’. Goethe and Schiller said
that the epic poet presents the event as totally past while the dramatic poet
presents it as totally present. The epic poet relates what has occurred in calm
contemplation. The actor, on the other hand, represents himself as a definite
individual and the spectators participate in his action, partake of vicariously
of the sufferings of his soul and his body, share his vicissitudes and forget
their own personalities for a while. So involved is he in the action that his
imaginat io n gets silenced and he is no t allo wed to rise t o thoughtful
contemplation. It was against this theory that Brecht offered his counter theory.
Brecht found the drama of illusion with its catharsis through pity and terror,
abhorrent and fraudulent. He, the rationalist, demanded a theatre of critical
thoughtfulness. Catharsis, Brecht argued, would purge the audience of its
emotions but it would leave the theatre uninstructed and unimproved. The
audience, according to him should not be made to feel emotions; it should be
made to think. But the audience cannot think because of its emotional
involvement with the actors on stage. “At the centre of Brecht’s poetics is the
idea of alienating the audience from the actors presented on stage in order to
impede peo ple’s emot io nal involvement in and ident ificat io n with t he
characters and conflicts of the story (alienation effect or estrangement effect).
Instead, spectators are expected to gain a critical distance and thus be able to
judge rationally what is presented to them.”(Stephanie Lethbridge and Jarmila
Mildore). This estrangement o r ‘Verfremdung’ emphasises reason and
objectivity rather than emotion. This effect aims at making something strange,
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foreign, alienated, distant from us and the present moment; therefore the epic
theatre is strictly historical- it constantly reminds the audience that it is merely
getting a report of past events. Brecht’s epic theatre was also an antithesis of
Stanislavisky’s Realism and also Expressionism. Brecht believed that both
these concepts in theatre were incapable of exposing human nature and thus
incapable of provoking any change in society. Brecht’s intention was to make
the audience ruminate over, with critical detachment, the moral dilemmas
presented before them. The opposite of identification would be the maintenance
of a separate existence by being kept apart, alien and detached from the illusion
on stage.
Plot- Life of Galileo is a montage of independent incidents. It moves

from scene to scene by curves and jumps. There is a sudden shift in scenes.
Scene one starts in 1609 in Padua; then there is a gap of one year and Scene
Three starts in 1610; Scene Six starts in 1616 after a lapse of six years. Eight
years have passed by Scene Nine where Galileo is kept silent for eight years,
Scene Eleven starts in 1633 and it is followed by Scene Fourteen after a period
of nine years in 1642. Scene Fifteen uses the technique of flashback (analepsis)
which opens in 1637 where an embittered Galileo half- blind mercilessly
condemns himself for betraying science. The sudden shift in scenes also brings
out the human relations and social settings and social order of the time. For
instance, in scene Four Galileo is seen explaining his discovery of the motion
of planetary bodies and in the next scene we find him concerned about the
safety of his daughter Virginia and his housekeeper Mrs. Sarti because there is
an outbreak of plague in the city. The individual episodes are loosely knit and
despite the gaps in years there is an underlying unity by means of the repetition
of the theme, settings and motifs. Brecht tells in advance how the play will end
through the caption in the beginning of each scene, thus freeing the mind of the
audience from the distraction of suspense.
Characters- Brecht’s characters are morally divided beings neither

heroes nor villains but anti- heroes; we condemn them even as we approve of
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them. The characters are too complex to be wholly admired or wholly blamed.
They cannot be categorised as black or white but rather have a greyness that is
typically Brechtian. In the epic theatre there is no attempt to create fixed,
highly individualized dramatic characters. Neither is their weaknesses projected
as the tragic flaw or Aristotle’s ‘hamartia’ which leads to the catastrophic
downfall of the tragic hero. Rather the character emerges from the social function
of the individual and the specific set of circumstances in which they are placed.
Brecht’s Galileo is condemned for he betrays the tenets of science by recanting
what he has established as scientific truth. In scene Thirteen we find Virginia
praying that her father would recant before the Inquisition because she does not
want her father to die the way Bruno did but an exultant Andrea and Federzoni
embrace each other when the bell that was supposed to have proclaimed Galileo’s
recantation does not toll on the stipulated time.
“Andrea: He’s holding out.
The Little Monk: He’s not recanting.
Federzoni: No. Oh, how marvellous for us!
They embrace. They are ecstatically happy.
Andrea: So force won’t do the trick. There are some things it can’t do. So
stupidity has been defeated, it’s not invulnerable. So man is not afraid of death.
Federzoni: This truly is the start of the age of knowledge. This is the hour
of its birth. Imagine if he had recanted.”(93)
Even as they think that Man, so tormented, is lifting his head and saying ‘I
can live’, the bell of Saint Mark begins to toll and the crier proclaims Galileo’s
recantation. A petrified Andrea says loudly ‘Unhappy the land that has no heroes.’
And when he sees Galileo just then he calls him a’ Wine- pump! Snail-eater!’
Did you save your precious skin?’ referring to Galileo’s epicurean nature.
Suddenly Galileo from a champion of scientific truth has become a most odious
villain. Then in scene fifteen a grown up Andrea after almost nine years comes to
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inquire after Galileo’s health because Fabricius in Amsterdam had commissioned
him to do so, and still without any warmth for his former master, realizes the
enormity of the research that Galileo has done secretly with the results expounded
in his ‘Discorsi’ and his surprised reaction is-
“Galileo: I finished the ‘Discorsi’.
Andrea: What? The Disco urses Concerning Two New Sciences:

Mechanics and Local Motion? Here?”
When Galileo allows Andrea to take the manuscript that he has hidden
inside a globe Andrea reads it, Galileo urges him to ‘Stuff it under your coat’
does Andrea realize that his master had not deserted science. That alters everything
for him because in recanting Galileo hides the truth from his enemies, the clergy,
and Andrea says: “Even in matters of ethics you were centuries ahead of us.”
Galileo’s hands though stained were ‘Better stained than empty.’ Galileo’s
rejoinder is:
“Galileo: better stained than empty. Sounds realistic. Sounds like me.
New science, new ethics.” And Andrea changes his opinion about his master. He
says that ‘Science makes only one demand: contribution to science.’ But Galileo
in a long speech indulges in self- condemnation and tells Andrea that this new
science will be used to supress people by new impositions by the ‘princes,
landlords, and priests.’ He further laments, ”Had I stood firm the scientists could
have developed something like the doctors’ Hippocratic oath, a vow to use their
knowledge exclusively for mankind’s benefit….. What’s more, Sarti, I have come
to the conclusion that I was never in any real danger. For a few years I was as
strong as the authorities.”(105)
Some critics are of the opinion that in the delineation of Galileo’s character
Brecht wanted the audience to condemn Galileo for his cowardice and that Brecht
thought that science had suffered from Galileo’s recantation. Galileo is Brecht’s
anti- Christ, the god who failed humanity. He is not the hero of the traditional
drama where the protagonist faces death with fortitude. Brecht portrays Galileo
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as a man who is afraid of physical torture, an ordinary human being who is slave
to his bodily pleasures and his physical safety and not a larger than life character
who is an ideal hero. But in the opinion of Lionel Abel there was no need for
Galileo to have become a martyr, since his ideas, if true, would eventually be
accepted. Brecht’s Galileo is a genius and a rogue- a man interested in eating,
drinking and thinking. Thought to him is a physical activity- he has thinking bouts-
The mind according to Galileo ought to serve the body- “I don’t understand a
man who doesn’t use his mind to fill his belly.” In the words of A. Robert Lauer
“ What Brecht affirmed was the body, the human body in its warmth, its weaknesses,
its susceptibility, its appetites, its longing and its thought. Brecht’s best characters
are mainly passive, morally inconsequential, and inconsistent. They live by lies,
fraud and occasionally, by feats of thought.”
Dramatic Technique-The epic theatre uses long speeches, long pauses,

harsh lights, episodic plots, placards announcing the change of scenes, and
narrative forms which do not conform to the traditional narrative forms. Galileo
uses narrative form that takes past events as a material for dramatization.
Brecht’s dramatic technique is intended to create an effect of estrangement – a
cold, clinical sort of a detachment with the characters on stage. As Richard
Foreman in his foreword of Life of Galileo (Penguin Classics) mentions
“Brecht’s message was to believe in a kind of theatre in which the viewer
never abandons himself in a wash of feeling .This approach is echoed, of course,
in Galileo, where Galileo himself, under attack, urges men not to abandon
themselves to established habits of tradition or seemingly logical thought when
that logic is based on convention rather than freshly observed fact.” Various
elements like setting, costuming, props, blocking (the arrangement of characters
on stage), movement, gestures, intonation and pacing (the tempo and coordination
of performance) etc. make up the total spectacle.” The Aristotelian drama can
only be understood as a whole, while the epic drama can be cut into slices
which would continue to make sense and give pleasure. Decor, music and
choreography maintain their independence. They are autonomous elements which
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instead of pulling in the same direction as the words, enter into a dialectical
contrapuntal relationship with them. The music does not merely express the
mood of the words: it often stands in contradiction to them, comments on them,
or reveals the falsity of the sentiments that express. The epic theatre does not
use décor and music to produce a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of
art or an ideal work of art) with its diabolically strong narcotic and hypnotic
effect and concerted onslaught on the sense, but to destroy the illusion of reality.
The spectator of the dramatic theatre says “Life is like that.” The spectator of
the epic theatre says “Life does not have to be like that. There are options.”
According to A. Robert Lauer, another Brechtian technique of the epic theatre
was not to allow the identification of the actor also with the character; since
the actor does not intend to allow his audience to enter a world of illusion, he
too must keep himself away form that world. Therefore he must remain loose
limbed and relaxed and in control of his actions and his emotions. His way of
speaking is free from rhetorics or parsonic sing-song and all those cadences
which lull the spectators into a trance. The characters acting and reacting upon
each other form the basic unit of Brechtian theatre. The study of human relations
takes precedence over the study of human nature. And this is achieved through
Gestus-the correct stance, movement and tone of voice – as well as the
deportment, intonation and facial expressions of the actors on stage which
assumes greater importance than the inner turmoils of the characters.
As an epic play Life of Galileo is rich in arguments. Both Galileo and the
other characters particularly the men of the cloth make arguments to corroborate
their ideas. In scene four Galileo argues thus with the mathematicians:
“Galileo: Gentlemen, to believe in the authority of Aristotle is one thing,

tangible facts are another. You are saying that according to Aristotle there are
crystal spheres up there, so certain motions just cannot take place because the
stars would penetrate them. But suppose those motions could be established?
Mightn’t that suggest to you that those crystal spheres don’t exist? Gentlemen, in
all humility I ask you to go by the evidence of your eyes.”(38)
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Unlike traditional drama with its rhetorical outbursts or emotional
dialogues the arguments are presented with rationale and logic. It turns the
spectator into an observer and encourages him to ratiocinate.
Brecht also makes use of explanatory captions to tell the readers what
the scene that followed would be all about. Narrators are important to fill the
missing action. In the play Life of Galileo Brecht uses captions in a way that
invites the reader to consider the events involved and then to make their own
evaluation. Scene three, for example, begins with ‘January ten, sixteen ten:
Galileo Galilei abolishes heaven.’
Dramatic Irony- Dramatic irony involves a situation in a play or a

narrative in which the audience or reader shares with the author knowledge of
present or future circumstances of which a character is ignorant; in the situation
the literary character unknowingly acts in a way we recognize to be grossly
inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or expects the opposite of what we
know that fate holds in store, or says something that anticipates the actual outcome,
but not at all in the way the character intends.”(A Handbook of Literary Terms-
M.H. Abrams). Dramatic irony in the play is manifest when Virginia, Galileo’s
daughter says, “I need another astronomer other than my father Galileo to cast
my horoscope for my forthcoming marriage with Ludovico.” And it is because of
her father’s discoveries as an astronomer that Ludovico, afraid of societal
repercussions breaks off his engagement to Virginia, who later becomes a nun.
Another example of dramatic irony is seen the way Cardinal Barberini , himself
a mathematician, who initially supports Galileo’s findings, cannot bring himself
to defend Galileo, when he, Barberini , becomes Pope VIII in Vatican. The way
they spar with each other in scene seven in Cardinal Bellarmin’s house in Rome
where a ball is in progress:
“Galileo: The Scriptures….’He that withholdeth corn, the people shall

curse him.’ Proverbs of Solomon.
Barberini: ‘a prudent man concealtheth knowledge. ‘Proverbs of Solomon..
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Barberini: ‘He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city.’
Galileo: ‘But a broken spirit drieth the bones.”(Pause) ‘Doth not wisdom
cry?’(54)
Another example of irony is seen in Galileo’s remark in scene thirteen;

after his recantation a disillusioned Andrea expecting Galileo to become a martyr
to the cause of science rather than betray it, says. “Unhappy is the land that has
no heroes.” And Galileo answers, “Unhappy is the land that needs heroes.”
Brecht’s stage technique makes copious use of light on stage, the use of
only half- curtain and, unlike a Wagnerian performance, putting the orchestra on
stage. Titles appear before songs are sung. The musical items stripped bare the
conventional corpus of ideas. In scene ten in Galileo the caption reads ‘During
the next decade Galileo’s doctrine spreads among the common people. Ballad
singers and pamphleteers everywhere take up the new ideas. One such song
subverts the social hierarchy through the following song:
“So the circles were all woven
Around the greater went the smaller
Around the pace setter the crawler…
Up stood the learned Galileo
(Chucked away the Bible, whipped out his telescope, took a quick look at
the universe.)
And told the sun stop there…” (Life of Galileo 79)
The use of such songs interrupt the action and give the audience an
opportunity to reflect. These songs sort of comment on the given social realities.
In the epic theatre the stage designer gets considerable freedom as

he no longer has to give the illusion of a palace or a forest. But just to copy
reality is not enough. Reality needs not only to be understood but also
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recognised. So stage settings need to convey to the audience that it is in a
theatre and not the forest of Arden. The best approach is to show the
machines, the ropes and the paraphernalia. Everything is provisional in an
epic theatre. “The epic theatre is thus chiefly concerned with the attitudes
which the people adopt towards one another, wherever they are socio-
historically significant. The concern of the epic theatre is thus eminently
practical. Human behaviour is shown as alterable; man himself as dependent
on certain political and economic factors and at the same time as capable
of altering them. The spectator is given a chance to criticize human behaviour
from a social point of view, and the scene is played as a piece of history.”(A.
Robert Laeur) This is not to say that the epic theatre is not didactic; moral
arguments are there but they take a second place. Its aim is less to moralize
and more to observe. In the words of A. Robert Laeur, “The Brechtian theatre
is a theatre designed to arouse indignation in the audience, a dissatisfaction,
a realization of contradictions. It is a theatre supremely fitted for parody,
caricature, and denunciation, therefore essentially a negative theatre. That
is why Brecht’s plays conspicuously lack positive heroes, why the good
characters are invariably crushed and defeated.”
1. Squiers, Anthony, An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy

of Bertolt Brecht ; Revolution and Aesthetics. Amsterdam Rodopi, 2014.
2. Brecht, Bertolt, Life of Galileo. In Collected Plays : Five Trans. John

Willett. Ed. John Wellett and Ralper Manheim Bertolt Brecht : Plays,
Poetry and Prose, London : Methuen, 1980.
********
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LIFE OF GALILEO
BERTOLT BRECHT
STRUCTURE
24.1 Introduction
22.2 Objectives
24.3 Scene-wise Summary of the Play
24.4 Self-Assessment Questions
24.1 INTRODUCTION
Life of Galileo is a historical play that traces the life of physicist Galileo.
It also brings in the Renaissance context of the conflict between doubt and faith.
24.2 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this lesson is to acquaint the learners with scene wise
summary of the play.
24.3 SCENE-WISE SUMMARY OF THE PLAY
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy, on February 18 th,1564, to a
family of aristocratic lineage but average wealth. When he was seventeen his
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father, a wool merchant and a noted musician sent him to study medicine at
t he Universit y o f Pisa. Galileo , ho wever, so o n t urned t o a career in
mathematics. In 1589, he obtained a position of lecturer in mathematics at the
University making discoveries that challenged the then dominant theses in
physics, most notably the one that two objects, dropped from the same height,
fall at the same rate regardless of their weight. In 1592, he moved to the
University of Padua, where he would remain for more than fifteen years.
Meanwhile in the world of astronomy a great debate was raging between the
ancient system of Ptolemy, which placed the earth in the centre of the universe;(
it was also supported by what Aristotle had said as well as the Holy Church)
and the heliocentric universe of Copernicus which posited the sun at the centre
and the earth moving in an orbit around it. Galileo with his own version of
the telescope, already invented in Holland, started making his observations
and gathering proofs that advocated strongly the Copernican theory. The
Catholic Church, however, did not approve of a heliocentric theory because
it went against the scriptures and subverted God and his glorious creation. In
1616, the Church warned Galileo to refrain from publishing his theories as
they were a denial of the Christian doctrine. Galileo remained quiet for
almost a decade but continued his research and the ascension of a new liberal
Pope, Urban VIII. Himself a mathematician, encouraged Galileo to publish
the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 which openly
argued for the Copernican system. The Catholic Church, so far secure in its
Authority, could not accept a scientific assault on its own theories and
summoned Galileo before the Inquisition where he was forced to recant his
earlier statements and findings publicly and submit to the Church. Galileo
lived under house arrest for the last eight years of his life and still continued
to write; in 1638 he published his last work- a compilation of all his research
in physics and it was published in Germany. Galileo died in 1642 after having
gone blind in 1638.
The experimental play Life of Galileo traces the life of the historical
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Galileo but also brings in the Renaissance context of the conflict between doubt
and faith, between Church and free scientific inquiry and orthodox dogmas and
free thinking. Through fifteen scenes framed in an episodic structure Brecht
beautifully brings out the features of the epic theatre through the play.
Scene 1 shows Galileo with his young disciple Andrea in his ‘wretched’
study in Padua where he experimentally proves to Andrea how the earth moves
around the sun and not otherwise. Elatedly he explains the theory of the motions
of the planets to him, “For two thousand years people have believed that the sun
and all the stars of heaven rotate around mankind. Pope, cardinals, princes,
professors, captains, merchants, fishwives and school kids thought they were
sitting motionless inside this crystal sphere. But now we are breaking out of it,
Andrea, at full speed. Because the old days are over and this is a new time. For
the last hundred years mankind has seemed to be expecting something.” (6)
Mankind according to Galileo has a vast desire to know the reason of everything.
The discovery of new continents had reduced the vast oceans to ‘a little puddle’.
People found that what was written in the old books was no longer good enough.
Galileo then expounds on the flaws of the old ways thinking because a new age
of scepticism had started doubting the old doctrines. “for where faith has been
enthroned for a thousand years doubt now sits… That most solemn truths are
being familiarly nudged; what was never doubted before is doubted now.” An
excited Galileo tells Andrea.
This scepticism has created a social upheaval as well because the prelates
and princes are found to have the same ‘fat legs’ as the masses beneath their
aristocratic skirts and hauteur. An optimistic Andrea sings from a poet:
“O early morning of beginnings
O breath of wind that
Cometh from new shores!”(8)
Mrs. Sarti, Andrea’s mother reprimands Galileo for teaching her son
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blasphemies. The scene also introduces Ludovico Marsili who has been sent by
his mother ‘to have a looksee in the sciences’ because that is faishonable among
the scions of the aristocratic classes although all he is interested in is horses. He
mentions the new tube that is being sold in Amsterdam and that magnifies things
five times. Galileo, hugely interested, confirms the convex and concave lenses
used in the tube and immediately sends Andrea to the spectacle maker to fetch
him the lenses. The Procurator of the University arrives in the meanwhile and
informs Galileo that he cannot recommend his application for a raise in his salary
because mathematics does not attract many students. Galileo is reluctant to take
more tuitions as it doesn’t leave him time to pursue his research.
“Galileo: I teach and I teach, and when am I supposed to learn? He

also highlights the fact that his branch of knowledge is still avid to know. The
greatest problem still finds us with nothing but hypotheses to go on”(P.13).
The Procurator also eulogises about how in Padua even Protestants are
admitted to lectures and how as far as Holland, Venice is known for its
generosity even to astronomers who speak contrary to what is mentioned in
the scriptures. Galileo retorts by saying that it was the Venetian republic that
had handed over Bruno to the Church to be burnt at the stake for heresy and
“You make up for your attitude to the Inquisition by paying lower salaries
than anyone.” The Procurator informs Galileo that the citizens of Venice
have greatly benefitted by his discoveries in mathematics of calculating
compound interests or in geometry in land surveys and nobody would create
any difficulties for Galileo in his research. To which Galileo’s retort is that
he doesn’t get time to follow his intuitions and hunches which are very
important for his branch of science. “That way you muzzle the threshing ox. I
am 46 years old and have achieved nothing that satisfies me.’(6)
In scene 2 the telescope is brought in full regalia on a velvet cushion

in a crimson leather case in the great Arsenal of Venice in front of the Doge
and the senators where Galileo dedicates his spy glass to the Venetian
Republic although all that bowing and scraping to him is sheer waste of
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time. The Procurator highlights the wartime usage of the tube which would
help the Venetian Republic espy its enemies much before the enemies did
them which brings a loud applause from the citizens. (Brecht underscores
the irony that while a researcher scientist wants his inventions to be put to
the use of benefitting mankind the rulers or prelates want to use it for
defeating their enemies).
Scene 3- Galileo and his friend Sagredo are discussing the bright spots visible
on a crescent moon and Galileo opines that they are mountains. Sagredo is incredulous.
He questions: “On a star?” Galileo:.. “What you are seeing is the light spreading
down into the valleys from the topmost peaks.”(This light is symbolic of the dispersal
of Ignorance and spreading of the light of truth and knowledge. Twice in the play we
find reference to light.) Galileo further expounds the theory that both the moon and
the earth give off light but both of them are lit by the light of the sun.
“Galileo: What the moon is to us, we are to the moon. It sees us sometimes
as a crescent, sometimes as a half moon, sometimes full and sometimes not at all.
Sagredo: In other words, there is no difference between the moon and

earth… Galileo: Apparently not..What you are seeing is the fact that there is no
difference between heaven and earth. Today is 10 January 1610. Today mankind
can write in its diary: got rid of heaven.”(22) Sagredo warns him of the
consequences of proclaiming such a heretical finding stating that in Rome the
Ecclesiastes had burnt Giordano Bruno for saying the same thing.
Galileo is quite aware of it and then gets extremely excited when he espies
the moons of Jupiter and concludes that if other bodies revolve around it, it
cannot be attached to a crystal sphere. This explanation leads him to conclude
that Copernicus and his lot were right while the whole world was against them.
Galileo has jeopardised the theory that the earth is the centre of the universe and
when Sagredo questions him “Then where’s God?” Galileo answers, ”Within
ourselves or nowhere.”
Sagredo points out that for seventeen long years Galileo had patiently
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taught the Ptolemaic system proclaimed by the Church to his students in Padua
even when he was sceptical about its authenticity. Galileo replies: “Because I
couldn’t prove anything.” Sagredo (incredulously): “And do you imagine that
makes any difference!”
Galileo: a tremendous difference. “Look Sagredo, I believe in Humanity,

which means to say I believe in human reason. If it weren’t for that belief each
morning, I wouldn’t have the power to get out of bed.”(27) But Sagredo doesn’t
believe that human beings are open to reason because if you scare them they
would believe you “But try making one rational statement to them, and back it up
with seven proofs, and they’ll just laugh at you.” Galileo contradicts him saying
that the common sense that human beings use in times of crises proves that they
go by reason ... and then he drops a pebble and says that no one can gainsay that
it doesn’t fall. “The lure of a proof is too great. Nearly everyone succumbs to it;
sooner or later we all do. Thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human
race.”(27)
Galileo then informs his friend that he is moving to the more affluent
court of Florence so that he doesn’t have to waste his time in earning a meagre
livelihood in Padua and there he would find more time for research and for
assembling the proofs for the Copernican hypothesis. Sagredo warns him that
Florence is run by monks to which Galileo says that even monks are not immune
to the seduction of proof. Sagredo tells him that whenever he watches his
friend gazing through the telescope he imagines that his friend is standing on
blazing faggots ... “I smell burnt flesh.” (He is afraid that Galileo would be
burnt for heresy just as Bruno had been). Galileo writes in very flattering
terms an application to the House of Medici stating that he wants to call his
new stars ‘The Medician stars.’
Scene 4 finds Galileo in Florence where he is visited by Cosimo,

the nine year old Duke of Florence, his Chamberlain, a mathematician, a
philosopher. Since Galileo is still at the University an inquisitive Cosimo
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climbs up to his study and Andrea and he get into a scuffle. Upon Galileo’s
arrival a disputatious argument ensues among Galileo, the mathematician
and the philosopher. In vain does Galileo try to convince them that the old
Ptolemaic system was full of faults and hence astronomers could not locate
the celestial bodies where in principle they were supposed to be? When the
philosopher tries to give his explanation in Latin Galileo insists that he use
the vernacular since Federzoni his lens grinder who in Galileo’s estimation
is a worthy scholar as well can understand what they are discussing. (Galileo
knew that only the use of the vernacular would open the doors of truth backed
by science, to the people). They are sceptical about the tube and what it
shows and even hint that Galileo is a fraud because they believe that he has
the stars painted on the telescope and he should not taint the great Medici
family by naming the stars after that illustrious family of Florence. Much to
Galileo’s dismay they leave without looking through the telescope and
co nfirm his findings because they wo uld no t mist rust what the divine
Aristotle had said.
Scene 5 opens with the scare of the plague epidemic spreading like wild fire.
But Galileo, undeterred even by the plague, carries on with his research although the
Duke has sent a carriage for him to leave the city. Galileo is afraid that if he leaves
all his observations of the past three months and the resultant proofs and notes
would go in vain. He entreats Andrea, Virginia and Mrs. Sarti to leave although
a reluctant Mrs. Sarti leaves too late for the plague has claimed her but she
survives the plague. A distraught Andrea, after having walked for three days
enters and Galileo shows him the phases of Venus and through a demonstration
proves that it is yet another planet with no light of its own.
Scene 6 opens six years later in the Hall of the Collegium Romanum in
Rome in the year 1616. The high Ecclesiastes, monks and scholars are all
assembled and mocking at Galileo’s findings in a deprecating manner.
“A Monk, (play acting) I’m getting giddy. The earth’s spinning round too fast.
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Permit me to hold on to you, professor.” (He pretends to lurch and clutches one
of the scholars).
The scholar: (following suit) Yes, the old girl has been on the bottle again.
(He clutches anot her).” (47) They are astounded and scandalized that
Christopher Clavius, Italy’s and the Church’s greatest astronomer has stooped down
to Galileo preposterous proposition that he look through the telescope and watch
the movements of the celestial bodies himself and confirm that the universe was
heliocentric. The very thin monk is angry because he says that these doctrines ‘
degrade humanity’s dwelling to a wandering star.’ And man himself is nothing
but another animal. The very old Cardinal declares Galileo to be the enemy of the
human race because he has moved mankind from the centre of the universe and
‘dumped him somewhere on its edge.’ He then pompously strides to and fro in an
excited state and uses vituperative words for Galileo, “ You want to debase the
earth even though you live on it and derive everything from it. You are fouling your
own nest. But I for one am not going to stand for that ... I am at the centre and the
eye of the Creator falls upon me and me alone. Round about me, attached to eight
crystal spheres, revolve the fixed stars and the mighty sun which has been created
to light my surroundings… In this way everything comes visibly and incontrovertibly
to depend on me, mankind, God’s great effort, the creature on whom it all centres,
made in God’s own image, indestructible and…(he collapses).” (Note the ironical
use of the word indestructible). Clavius enters and utters just two words, “He’s
right.” Leaving the others confounded and dumbfound. For Galileo it is not his
personal victory but the triumph of Reason.
The caption on scene 7 reads: “But the Inquisition puts Copernicus’s

Teachings on the Index”(March 5 th 1616).
A masked ball is in progress in the house of Cardinal Berberini where

Virginia is hailed as a great beauty and all the great aristocratic families have
gathered to have a nice time after the scare of the plague. Bellarmin is willing to
concede to those findings of Galileo that would help the mariners navigate the
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unknown seas but “We only disprove of such doctrines as run counter to the
Scriptures.”
Galileo: The Scriptures… ‘He that withholedth corn, the people shall
curse him.’ Proverbs of Solomon (Meaning thereby that one should not hold back
knowledge that is useful to people).
Berberini: ‘A prudent man concealeth knowledge.’ Proverbs of

Solomon.” (54)
Cardinal Berberini draws an extremely complicated elliptical course and

questions Galileo that if God had made such complicated motions of the celestial
bodies then how Galileo would justify his calculations. Galileo replies that God
would have constructed the human brain likewise, ‘so that they would regard
such motions as the simplest. I believe in men’s reason.’
Bellarmin: Men’s reason, my friend, does not take us very far. All around
us we see nothing but crookedness, crime and weakness. Where is truth?
Galilleo (angrily) I believe in men’s reason.”(55)
Bellarmin further puts forth the argument that since men cannot fathom the
complex vicissitudes of life, it is the onus of the Church to help men understand
them and therefore the Church and its advocates attribute such occurrences to
God and his greater plan. But now Galileo has put the very existence of God into
peril. Galileo now doubts that mankind may not only get the motion of the stars
wrong but the Bible as well. Bellarmin warns him that interpreting the Bible is
the responsibility of theologians and since the Holy Office had decided that the
doctrine put forward by Copernicus was ‘foolish, absurd, heretical and contrary
to our faith’ he must abandon his views of a heliocentric universe. Galileo
defies his hypothesis by stating that the Collegium Romanum had approved his
observations. Bellarmin wholeheartedly agrees with it but says that The Church
has permitted Galileo to explore but not to know. “You are also at liberty to
treat the doctrine in question mathematically, in the form of a hypothesis. Science
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is the rightful and much- loved daughter of the Church, Mr. Galilei. None of us
seriously believes that you want to shake men’s faith in the Church.” (57) (His
reference to the mask highlights the bigotry and hypocrisy of the advocates of
the Church). The scene ends with the Cardinal Inquisitor Quizzing Virginia
about her knowledge of astronomy to which she replies she is grossly ignorant.
He then launches forth into an elaborate explanation justifying the Ptolemaic
universe and hints that her father might need her when he would be required to
confess before their Father Confessor.
Scene 8 highlights a very scholarly and intense conversation between

Galileo and Fulgiano, the Little Monk wherein has decided to give up astronomy
because the decree of the Church has drawn his attention ‘to the potential dangers
for humanity in wholly unrestricted research’ and it is not the instruments of
torture that the Church could use but other motives that he sees that he wants to
renounce the study of mathematics, much as he is fascinated by the moons of
Jupiter. He draws Galileo’s attention to the trials and tribulations of the common
peasants like his parents. “They are badly off, but even their misfortunes imply a
certain order.” And it is through the Bible that the common folk derive their
strength to face the struggles of life uncomplainingly. “They have been assured
that God’s eye is always on them – probingly, even anxiously- that the whole
drama of the world is constructed around them so that they, the performers, may
prove themselves in their greater or lesser roles. What would my people say if I
told them that they happen to be on a small knob of stone twisting endlessly
through the void round a second- rate star, just one among myriads?” They have
been brought up to believe that their poverty and their struggles, their patience ,
their sweat is all justified by the Bible as virtuous and they would feel betrayed
and forsaken if they lost faith in an omniscient compassionate and just God.
A confounded Galileo brings home to him the fact that their penury is the result
of the wars ‘that the representative of gentle Jesus is waging in Germany and
Spain.’ Virtues in Galileo’s opinion are not an offshoot of poverty. The Little
Monk says that he keeps quiet so that he does not disturb the peace of mind of the
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less fortunate who accept their hard lot because they believe that God has ordained
it. Galileo tells him that the Church is showering him with gifts to keep his mouth
shut but he would not stoop to accept it. He then quotes the eighth satire of
Horace and says that truth cannot be twisted to suit the convenience of the Vatican.
Truth will win only through reason and reason will win only through people who
are prepared to reason. Galileo’s bundle of manuscript tossed to the Little Monk
proves irresistible and the physicist in him triumphs over the priest- an indication
that ultimately the Church might give in. But does it?
Scene 9 opens with Virginia and Mrs.Sarti preparing her wedding

trousseau while Andrea is making preparation for an experiment on floatation.
Mucius Fillipo, a former pupil of Galileo who because of the fear of the Church
has condemned the Copernican theory enters, and expresses his desire to justify
his condemnation to his master but Galileo turns him out by calling him a liar and
a crook. He says he doesn’t blame Mucius for obeying the Holy Congregation’s
decree of 1616. But someone who knowingly denies truth is not a fool but a
crook. Mrs. Sarti wants Virginia to have her horoscope cast by an astronomer
and Virginia informs her that she has already done so but ironically it is not
Galileo who has cast it. Galileo is so obsessed with his research that his daughter’s
happiness doesn’t figure much in his life. Such is the eminence that Galileo now
enjoys that even the Rector of the University, Mr. Gaffone who has brought an
important book for Galileo is reluctant to disturb him. He feels that ‘every moment
stolen from that great man is a moment stolen from Italy.’(68). And the book
which he has brought for Galileo has the dedication: ‘To the greatest living
authority on physics, Galileo Galilei.’ Andrea, Federzoni and the Little Monk
are discussing the forbidden topic of sunspots – a topic forbidden in Venice but
being discussed intensely in Holland, Paris and Prague. For the past fortnight
Andrea has been conducting experiments on sunspots and asks his teacher why
they are not investigating sunspots. Galileo replies that it is because he has kept
quiet that Rome has allowed him to get a reputation and he doesn’t want to go the
way Bruno did – roasted over a wood fire like a ham. Investigating the forbidden
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topic would mean opening the heretical topic of the heliocentric universe. Galileo
carries on with his experiment on floatation and proves the theory of Aristotle
erroneous that ‘Everything lighter than water floats and everything heavier sinks.’
by making an iron needle float on water by putting it on a sheet of paper. Ludovico,
long engaged to be married to Virginia enters, informs Galileo that his mother is
happy that Galileo is no longer venturing into forbidden areas of research, ‘those
sunspot orgies the Dutch have been going in for lately.’ Because the Pope fears
that it would start the debate of Ptolemiac versus Copernican theory again. Galileo
learns from him that the Pope is on death bed and that Cardinal Berberini was
most likely to succeed as the new Pope. Galileo expresses his optimism that if a
mathematician were to become the new Pope then, “Federzoni, we may yet see
the day when we no longer have to look over our shoulders like criminals every
time we say two and two equals four (72). He then puts a blunt question to
Ludovico whether he would marry Virginia without expecting Galileo to renounce
his profession. Ludovico replies that Virginia would have to take her place in the
Marsili Family pew in the Church and Galileo cannot go back on his word of
never discussing the doctrine of heliocentricity again. But Galileo now wants to
go back to his research on the sun spots because there wouldn’t be a reactionary
Pope any longer. Ludovico tells him, “IF His Holiness does die, Mr. Galilei,
irrespective who the next pope is and how intense his devotion to the sciences,
he will have to take into account the devotion felt for him by the most respected
families in the land.” He fears that the peasants working in his fields would be
upset if they found that the ‘frivolous’ attacks on the sacred doctrines of the
Church go unpunished. Galileo’s retort is that Ludovico is afraid that Galileo’s
findings might ‘stir up his peasants to think new thoughts. And his servants and
his stewards.’ Because now he is going to write in the language of the vernacular
and it is these people who work and toil day and night who would understand
‘that nothing moves unless it has been made to move.’ And not the people who
only see the bread on their tables but do not bother to find out how it is baked. An
angry Ludovico leaves breaking off his marriage to Virginia. Galileo, unperturbed,
decides to go ahead with his observations of sun spots and tells Andrea that
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even if they have to move at a snail’s pace and go over their experiments again
and again they would not lose hope and would establish the truth from all angles.
“So we shall approach the observat ion of the sun wit h an irrevocable
determination to establish that the earth does not move. Only when we have
failed, have been utterly and hopelessly beaten and are licking our wounds in
the profoundest depression, shall we start asking if we weren’t right after all,
and the earth does go round. ... But once every other Hypothesis has crumbled
in our hands then there will be no mercy for those who failed to research, and
who go on talking all the same.” (76)
In scene 10 we find that a decade has elapsed and during that decade
Galileo’s doctrine has spread among the common people gaining widespread
acceptance so much so that ballad singers and pamphleteers everywhere sing of
the new ideas. Many Italian guilds choose the theme of astronomy for their
processions during their carnivals. One Ballad singer sings about how in the
Bible it is said that God made the universe and then how He bade the sun to go
round the earth and how all creatures were to move round in their hierarchy in
obedience to the Bible. But:
Up stood the learned Galilei
(chucked away the Bible, whipped out his telescope, took a quick look at
the universe.)
And told the sun ‘Stop there.
From now the whole creation dei
Will turn as I think fair:
The boss starts turning from today
His servants stand and stare’.(79)
Galileo’s truths have undermined the social hierarchy and created an

upheaval in the orders. And they sing that “Obedience isn’t going to cure your
390
woe. So each of you wake up, and do just as he pleases.” Galileo is called the
‘Bible- buster!’
In scene 11 the year is 1633 and the Inquisition has summoned Galileo
to Rome. An interminable wait in the Medici Palace where the Grand Duke
Cosimo was supposed to have received Galileo and Virginia, makes Virginia
anxious and the cold shoulder that Gaffone gives him forces Virginia to ask
Galileo whether what he has written in his book is thought to be heretical.
Vanni, the iron founder for whom Galileo has designed a furnace enters and
warns Galileo that his name is being discussed upstairs in not too favourable
a light. He is being blamed for all the anti -Biblical pamphlets that are
circulat ing all o ver t he p lace. But he ensu res Galileo t hat all t he
manufacturers are in support of Galileo. “I’m not the sort of fellow that
knows much about the stars, but to me you’re the man who’s battling for
freedom to reach what’s new.” Vanni represents the new manufacturing class
who want to throw off the tyranny of the Scriptures and understand the
mechanisms of everyday work through the new found doctrines of motion.
All over Europe, he says, a new enlightenment has changed the course of
how peo ple t hink and how machines wo rk, and ho w human anat omy
functions, how money markets have come up, how commercial schools have
been founded and printed papers circulate news. It is only In Italy that such
freedom is curbed. But Galileo should not worry. “If anybody ever tries
launching anything against you, please remember you’ve friends in every
branch of business (83). When Galileo assures him that nobody is launching
anything against him Vanni is not so sure. He even offers Galileo his
travelling coach and horses should the need arise for him to escape because
he thinks Venice is a much safer place with fewer clerics to indict his work
as heretical. Galileo has confidence in the Grand Duke who is his former
disciple and the new Pope who is his friend. But when the Grand Duke does
not receive him he is not very hopeful now. He confides in his daughter his
desire to accept Sagredo’s invitation to spent a few days with him in Padua.
391
A puzzled Virginia asks him what the Cardinal Inquisitor is doing in Florence
and when Cosimo leaves without accepting Galileo’s books Galileo now is
not so sure of the confidence he has shown in Cosimo and Berberini. Just
when he tells Virginia of his plans to escape in a cart of wine barrels out of
Florence a high official summons Galileo to be interrogated by the Inquisition
in Rome. “The coach of the Holy Inquisition awaits you, Mr. Galilei.” (86)
Scene 12 opens in a room in the Vatican where an argument ensues

between Pope Urban VIII (formerly Cardinal Berberini) and the Cardinal
Inquisitor. (Brecht use of the noise of many shuffling feet is indicative of
how the advocates of the Church try to overwhelm the Pope). The Inquisitor
is afraid that the Pope will confront the gathering of learned doctors from
every faculty, representatives of every order and the entire clergy and
express his doubt s about what the Scriptures say. And when the Pope
confirms this The Cardinal Inquisitor tells him that it is not the multiplication
table that is the root cause of all doubt but that ‘a terrible restlessness has
d es c e nd e d o n t h e w o r ld . ’ H e is w o r r ied t h a t p e o p le n o w d o u b t
everything.“Are we to base human society on doubt and no longer on faith?”
He brings home the fact to the Pope that he has made powerful enemies in
Europe ... “And at this moment, just when Christianity is being shrivelled
into little enclaves by plague, war and the Reformation, a rumour is going
through Europe that you have made a secret pact with protestant Sweden in
order to weaken the Catholic emperor.” And it is because of this ‘wretched’
Florentine that everyone is gossiping about the phases of Venus and doubting
the ‘incontrovertible’ texts (in the Inquisitor’s opinion) being taught in
schools. “Given the weakness of their flesh and their liability to excesses
of all kinds, what would the effect be if they were to believe in nothing but
their own reason, which this maniac has set up as the sole tribunal?” The
Cardinal Inquisitor is more worried about this doubt being extended to the
offertory box in the Church. If the common man started finding logical
explanations for everything who would then fear God or hope for miracles?
392
(The Protestant movement was against the Papal indulgences and the money
squeezed out of the common people in the name of miracles or expurgation
of their sins). Navigators everywhere are demanding the star chats of
Galileo. The Pope’s argument is that the star charts are based on planetary
motions that Galileo has proved and it would be impossible to use the charts
without accepting his theories. “You can’t condemn the doctrines and accept
t he chart s.” When t he Card inal Inq uisit o r t ells Berber ini t hat he is
answerable to all the scholars waiting outside “Are all these people to leave
here with doubts in their hearts”? That he as their Pope is supposed to
resolve. The Pope answers that “After all the man is the greatest physicist
o f t h e ir t ime , t h e lig ht o f I t aly, an d no t ju s t a n y o ld c r a nk . ”
He has friends all over Europe to support him and if they ask him to retract
his truths the Church would be accused of being a ‘cesspool ‘of decomposing
prejudice’ and bigotry. No one should dare touch him. But the Cardinal
Inquisitor persists arguing that it wouldn’t require much efforts to push
Galileo to surrender to the Church. “He is a man of the flesh. He would
give in immediately” (p.89). The Pope rejoinder is that since Galileo has
not written anything out of keeping with what he had promised that ‘the last
word lay with faith, not science.’ The Cardinal Inquisitor tells him that the
book shows an argument between a stupid man, representing Aristotle and a
clever one, representing Galileo the Pope ultimately agrees that Galileo be
shown the instruments of torture and made to surrender to the Church and
the Cardinal Inquisitor says “that will be enough your Holiness. Instruments
are Mr. Galilei’s speciality.”
Line 4 of the epigraph in scene 13 begins on a note of reproach and regret:

“Of all the days that was the one
An age of reason could have begun.” (91)
Galileo after being interrogated by the Inquisition has been languishing

in prison for the past twenty four days. On the day of his hearing Federzoni,
Andrea and Fulganzio, the Little Monk are discussing whether Galileo would
393
recant before the pressures of the Inquisition or not. Andrea is worried that
The Inquisition would condemn Galileo to death and his Discorsi would never
get finished because Galileo would never recant. Virginia is fervently praying
that Galileo would not recant and thus be spared by the Inquisition. An individual
from the grand Ducal palace announces that “it is expected that Mr. Galilei
would recant around five o’clock at a full sitting of the Inquisition. The great
bell of St. Mark’s will be rung and the text of his recantation will be proclaimed
in public.”(p. 93). Andrea unable to bear this proclaims in a loud voice that it
was Galileo who had showed the world the truth about the celestial bodies and
Fulganzio says, “And no force will help them to make what has been seen
unseen.” It is five o’clock and Andrea cannot endure any longer. “I can’t wait
any more. They are beheading the truth.” The bell has not tolled yet and they all
embrace each other Andrea saying that force cannot do the trick. “So stupidity
has been defeated, it’s not invulnerable. So man is not afraid of death.” (93)
Federzoni: “this truly is the start of the age of knowledge. This is the hour of its
birth. Imagine if he had recanted.” Galileo, they think, has agreed to face death
gladly rather than betray science and truth. The Little Monk falls on his knees
thanking God and at this juncture the bell of St. Mark’s tolls proclaiming to all
and sundry that Galileo had recanted. The crier proclaims in public thus, “I,
Galileo Galilei, teacher of mathematics and physics in Florence, abjure what I
have taught, namely that the sun is the centre of the cosmos and motionless and
the earth is not the centre and not motionless.I foreswear, detest and curse,
with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, all these errors and heresies as also any
error and any further opinion Repugnant to Holy Church.” (94) A dazed and
confounded Andrea is only able to say, “Unhappy the land that has no heroes.”
Only Virginia is happy that her father has not been condemned to death.(Brecht
here shows the stage in darkness indicating the triumph of ignorance over
knowledge). Galileo enters but has undergone such a shocking change after the
trial as to be almost unrecognisable. When his pupils back away from him and
Andrea hurls abuses at him and asks for help to walk and a broken Galileo
answers, “Unhappy the land where heroes are needed.”
394
Scene 14 covers almost nine years from 1633 to 1642. Galileo old and
half blind lives under house arrest in the country near Florence looked after by
Virginia- a prisoner of the Inquisition till he dies. A monk keeps close
supervision on him and questions Virginia about everything Galileo does. He
confiscates whatever Galileo writes and calling Galileo an old fox doesn’t
believe when Virginia tells him that Galileo is not doing anything contrary to
instructions. Virginia writes down all the correspondence that Galileo has with
the archbishop who keeps asking for Galileo’s opinion every week on sundry
matt ers. Galileo dictates everything according to what the Bible says,
‘Especially as it seems wiser to encourage their (the rope makers’) faith rather
than their acquisitiveness,”( irony lies in every line he has dictated and he asks
his daughter whether the archbishop would read a suspicion of irony in it and
Virginia says the archbishop, a practical man, would be delighted. Their
dictation is interrupted by the entry of Andrea, now in his middle years, who
has come to inquire after Galileo’s health as the Dutch have asked him to do so
because he is leaving Italy and moving to a more liberal Holland for research.
Galileo having recognised Andrea’s voice sits motionless and when Virginia
asks him if she should send Andrea away tells her to bring him in. Andrea does
not answer when he questions him about his work on hydraulics but says that
Fabricius in Holland has commissioned him to inquire after Galileo’s health.
Galileo asks Andrea to tell Fabricius that he lives in ‘Corresponding comfort’
and the depth of his repentance has earned him enough credit with the Church
that they allow him ‘to conduct scientific studies on a modest scale under clerical
supervision.’
Andrea: “That’s right. We too heard that the church is more than pleased
with you. Your utter capitulation has been effective. We understand that the
authorities are happy to note that not a single paper expounding new theories
has been published in Italy since you toed the line.” (99) Even in countries
not under the dominion of the Church his recantation has caused such a setback
that Descartes in Paris’ shoved his treatise on the nature of light in a drawer.’
395
Andrea informs Galileo that Fulganzio too has given up science and ‘gone
back to the bosom of the church.’ Galileo then questions Andrea why he had
come to see him. Was it to unsettle him? Because even after living wisely
according to the Holy Church he still has an itch –a strong desire to pursue
his research in astronomy. Andrea answers that he has no wish to arouse
Galileo. Galileo then informs him that he has been writing again and has
finished the “Discorsi’. An astounded Andrea questions him “Here?” To which
Galileo replies that his masters are not stupid. ‘They realise that deeply
ingrained vices can’t be snapped off just like that.” So Galileo is allowed
pen and paper but whatever he writes is confiscated by them. Andrea is
disturbed and disappointed that the Discorsi in the hands of the monks while
the whole of Europe is slavering for it. Galileo then tells him that for the
past six months he has been risking the last pathetic remnants of his own
comfort and squeezing every moment of light that he can get to write a transcript
of the Discorsi. He then tells an astounded Andrea that the transcript is hidden
in the globe in his room and gives it to him saying that he knows it’s the
height of folly to part with it; ‘However, as I haven’t managed to keep clear
of scientific work you people might as well have it.’ Andrea cannot believe
his eyes when he leafs through the manuscript of the Discorsi. Suddenly his
attitude towards his former teacher undergoes a tremendous transformation.
He says, “This alters everything. Everything.” When Galileo questions,
“Really?” Andrea answers, “You were hiding the truth. From the enemy. Even
in matters of ethics you were centuries ahead of us.”(102) When Galileo asks
him to elaborate he says that Galileo chose to have stained than empty hands.
Andrea: So in 33 when you chose to recant a popular point in your doctrine I
ought to have known that you were simply backing out of a hopeless political
wrangle in order to get on with the real business of science.” He thus absolves
Galileo of any crime in recanting. But Galileo confesses that he recanted
because he was afraid of physical pain and says that there was no scientific
work that can only be written by one particular man. He welcomes Andrea to
the gutter calling him a brother in science and cousin in betrayal. Galileo is
396
now the seller and Andrea the buyer. One look at the manuscript and all his
curses turn into blessings. Galileo then launches into a long discourse about
science. “It deals in knowledge procured through doubt. Creating knowledge
for all about all, it aims to turn all of us into doubters.” But the feudal lords
keep the masses in ignorance and a haze of superstition for their own selfish
ends. The new scientific truths revealed the true colours of the tormentors to
the masses and these tormentors who had exploited science for their ulterior
motives, found themselves exposed and resorted to threats and bribery to
keep the masses quiet. “But can we deny ourselves to the crowd and still
remain scientists?” he questions Andrea. He further states, “To what end are
you working? Presumably for the principle that science’s sole aim must be
lighten the burden of human existence. If the scientists, brought to heel by
self-interested rulers, limit themselves to piling up knowledge for knowledge’s
sake, then science can be crippled and your new machines will lead to nothing
but new impositions.” Galileo voices his fear and concern about the chasm
between scientists and the common people becoming so wide that “your cry
of triumph at some new achievement will be echoed by a universal cry of
horror.” (Brecht here indicates the horror of the atomic bomb during the II
World War). He then chides and berates himself for having betrayed science.
“Given this unique situation, if one man had put up a fight it might have had
tremendo us repercussions. Had I stoo d firm the scientists co uld have
developed something like the doctors’ Hippocratic oath, a vow to use their
knowledge exclusively for mankind’s benefit.”(p.104-105). He regrets that
he has handed over his knowledge for those in power to misuse it. “I betrayed
my profession. A man who does what I did cannot be tolerated in the ranks of
science.” Galileo refuses to shake hands with Andrea when he extends his
saying, “You’re a teacher yourself now. Can you afford to take a hand like
mine?” Contrary to what Andrea says Galileo believes that a new age has
started because Andrea is going to escape into Germany with the truth under
his coat. The last word about it being a clear night symbolises the dispelling
of darkness and the triumph of light.
397
Scene 15 describes how Andrea crosses into Germany with the ‘Discorsi’
by leafing through it right under the noses of the guards. The guards believe that
if he had anything to hide he wouldn’t put it right under their noses. The ‘Discorsi’
crosses the Italian frontier into liberal lands and Andrea’s last words to the boys
discussing a witch and her spells is “There are a lot of things we don’t know yet,
Giuseppe. We’re really just at the beginning.” Portending a new dawn for science.
The play shows the coming of a new age.
Praise or condemnation of Galileo- Some physicist believed that

Galileo’s recantation of his teachings was sensible on the principle that this
recantation enabled him to carry on with his scientific work and to hand it down
to posterity. ‘The fact is that Galileo enriched astronomy and physics by
simultaneously robbing these sciences of a greater part of their social importance.
By discrediting the Bible and the church, these sciences stood for a while at the
barricades on behalf of all progress. .. The church, and with it all the forces of
reaction, was able to bring off an organised retreat and more or less reassert its
power.’ (Gaby Divay)
Galileo after his recantation (notes on the character of Galileo – Texts

by Brecht) – ‘His crime has made a criminal of him. When he reflects on the
scale of his crime he is pleased with himself. He defends himself against the
outside world’s impertinent expectations of its geniuses. What has Andrea done
to oppose the Inquisition? Galileo applies his intellect to solving the problem
of the clergy, which these blockheads have overlooked. .. his appetite for
knowledge feels to him like the impetus that makes him twitch. Scholarly activity
for him is a sin: mortally dangerous, but impossible to do without. ..Andrea’s
readiness to revise his damning verdict as soon as he sees the book means that
he has been corrupted. As to a lame and starving wolf, Galileo tosses him a
crust, the logical scientific analysis of the Galileo phenomenon. Behind this
lies his rejection of the moral demands of a humanity which does nothing to
relieve the deadlines of that morality and those demands….Once Galileo knows
that the book has set out on its journey towards publication he changes his
398
attitude again. He proposes that the book should be prefaced by an introduction
sharply condemning the author’s treachery. Andrea passionately refuses to pass
on such a request, pointing out that everything is different now; that Galileo’s
recantation gave him the chance to finish his immensely significant work. What
needs to be altered is the popular concept of heroism, ethical precepts and so
on. The one thing that counts is one’s contribution to science, and so forth. At
first Galileo listens to Andrea in silence then cuttingly and contemptuously
contradicts him drowning himself in a diatribe of self- abasement. Brecht ended
up blaming Galileo for having committed “the original sin of modern sciences”
‘By recanting, he states: “From the new astronomy, which deeply interested a
new class- the bourgeoisie – since it gave an impetus to the revolutionary social
current of the time, he made a sharply defined special science which- admittedly
through its very purity, i.e. indifference to modes of production- was able to
develop comparatively undisturbed, The atom bomb is both a technical and
social phenomenon, the classical end- product of his contribution to science
and his failure to contribute to society.” (126)
“Brecht all alo ng was writ ing abo ut at t it udes which he co uld
understand and even sympathise with: it is a play that contains very little
element of caricature ... what matters here is the overlaying of the original
message, about the need at all costs to establish and communicate the truth in
defiance of authority.” (xiii)
24.4 SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS :
Multiple choice/One word questions
1. Brecht’s theatre is known as ________.
2. The alienation effect is also known as ________.
3. Catharsis is __________
4. Brecht lived in the United States from________.
5. Peripety in Freytag’s pyramid refers to_______.
399
1. Define Catastrophe and Denouement.
2. What is meant by the tern Gestus in the Epic theatre?
3. How does Brecht define ‘Responsible science’ and “Pure science’?
4. Does Brecht make Galileo a hero or a Criminal?
5. Why is the Holy Church offended with Galileo’s findings?
6. What are the social implications of Galileo’s findings?
7. What was the Ptolemaic theory of the universe? How had Copernicus
disproved it?
8. Is Andrea justified in Galileo’s condemnation after he recants?
9. What in your opinion, is the real reason behind Galileo’s recantation?
10. Describe the argument between Pope Urban VIII and the Cardinal
Inquisitor.
11. Why is Galileo optimistic when Ludovico informs him that Cardinal
Berberini would be the new Pope?
12. What arguments does the Little Monk give that justifies the blind faith of
people in the scriptures?
13. Explain why Galileo believes that Reason will defeat faith.
14. Why does Andrea revise his earlier condemnation of Galileo in scene
14?
15. Elaborate upon the conflict between faith and reason in the play.
16. In the light of Bruno’s burning at the stake for heresy describe the power
that the Holy Church yielded in the seventeenth century.
17. Describe the role of Andrea and the Little Monk in the play.
400
18. In the light of the dialogue among Galileo, the philosopher and the
mathematician in scene 4, trace the bigotry of the age.
19. Trace the socio- political conditions of Europe in Galileo’s time.
• Life of Galileo, Penguin Classics, Ed. By John Willett and Ralph Manheim,
Penguin Books, USA. 2008. (All references and quotes have been taken
from this edition of the book).
• Basics of English Studies: An introductory course for students of literary

studies in English by Stefanie Lethbridge and Jarmila Mildorf. Developed
at the English departments of the Universities of Tubingen, Stuttgart and
Freiburg
• Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art by S. H. Butcher, Kalyani

Publishers New Delhi, 2011
• A Short History of English Literature by Pramod K Nayar, Foundation

Books, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 2009
• A Handbook of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt

Harpham, Cengage Learning India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 2009
• Elements of Literature by Robert Scholes, Nancy R. Comley, Carl H.

Klaus, Michael Silverman, Oxford University Press, 2003
• Brecht’s Life of Galileo: Socio-political Considerations by Gaby Divay,

University of Manitoba, Archives & Special Collections, e-edition,
February 2010
• Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre, by A. Robert Laurer’s Notes for SPAN
4184 (http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/Brecht.html)
*****
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Directorate of Distance Education

SELF LEARNING MATERIAL

Title of the Course : DRAMA-II Course Code : ENG 211

Course Coordinator : Teacher Incharge :

Lesson Writer : Proof Reading :

Dr. Sanjay Chawla Prof. Anupama Vohra

Prof. Bhim S. Dahiya

Prof. Manorama Trikha

Ms. Ujjala Devi

Dr. Jagruti Upadhaya

C Directorate of Distance Education, University of Jammu, Jammu 2018

Printed by : Sudesh PrintersJan. 2019/1000 Books

Dear Distance Learners

Welcome to English Semester II !

This co urse is devo ted t o t he develo pment o f Drama fro m

You are request ed t o read t he t exts of the plays prescribed in

Wish you good luck and success!

Prof. Anupama Vohra

Course Code : ENG 211 Duration of Examination : 3 hrs

Texts Prescribed (For Detailed Study)

UNIT - I Literary and intellectual background of drama Page No.

LITERARY AND INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DRAMA

1.1 Introduction: The Decline of the Theatre

1.3 The French Influence

1.4 Sentimental Comedy

1.5 Domestic Tragedy

1.6 The Stagecraft

1.7 The Melodrama

1.8 Let Us Sum Up

1.9 Self-Assessment Questions

1.10 Examination Oriented Questions

1.11 Suggested Reading

In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy

In this lesson, we shall discuss in detail the various characteristic features

1.3 THE FRENCH INFLUENCE

In Italy and in Germany, as in England and in Spain, the men-of-letters

How widely the ideal of tragedy upheld by the French dramatists

A flexible prose is plainly the fittest instrument for the comedy of

Clever as these Restoration comedies were and brilliant in their

Although the French theorists insisted on a complete separation of

1.4 SENTIMENTAL COMEDY

Thus t here came into existence a new dramat ic species, which

Sentimental Comedy is an 18th century dramatic genre which sprang

The best kno wn wo rk o f this genre is Sir Richard St eele’s The

Sent iment al co medy was a react io n t o t he bawd y rest o rat io n

At the opening night of Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift at Drury Lane Theatre in

If we needed proof of the temporary popularity of the ingenuous domestic

1.5 DOMESTIC TRAGEDY

Sentimental comedy influenced and became absorbed into a new genre

A domestic tragedy is a tragedy in which the tragic protagonists are

The ancient Greek theorist Aristotle had argued that tragedy should

In Britain, the first domestic tragedies were written in the English

Domestic tragedy disappeared during the era of Restoration drama, when

1.6 THE STAGECRAFT

With his practicality and his perfect comprehension of the conditions of

In this avoiding of the confusion resulting from frequent shifting of

A Theatre-poet Schiller was, even if Goethe was not; yet Schiller’s

In this first play Schiller’s stagecraft was primitive and unworthy; he

Dramatist as Schiller was by native gift, he was but a novice in the