History of English Literature II.

Lecture 10
PaedDr. Puskás Andrea, PhD.

Modern British Drama

During the 19th century melodrama dominated the British stage.
Melodrama – it offered a simple, moral view of life compatible with residual American
Puritanism
- the characters are black and white, either good or bad; the good people generally
bland, two-dimensional characters, live happily ever after; the villains are congenitally
evil, in the end they suffer for their misdeeds
- special effects and spectacular technical advances are typical – to promote
breathtakingly realistic spectacles such as shipwrecks, floods, fierce battles
- happy couples marrying, families reunited, evil punished – until the end of the 19th
century, the audience expected the restitution of order as the only conclusion
acceptable in its literature and drama

Modernism came to drama before any other art form. Its father was Henrik Ibsen (1828-
1906) in Norway, and its birth date was the production of his shocking play The Doll’s House
in 1878.
Ibsen depicted the social and domestic problems of the age.
From Ibsen on, the world of drama was irrevocably changed. Social dramas about problems
faced by contemporary middle-class people and performed for middle-class audiences
dominated serious modernist drama for more than a century.
G. B. Shaw was a significant milestone in the history of British drama – Shaw influenced a lot
of playwrights in the 20th century, especially naturalistic playwrights – he influenced John
Osborne, Edward Bond

John Osborne
(1929 – 1994)

The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed

English theatre.
In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored
many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His
personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was
notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on
behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his
own family, including his wives and children.
Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose
in the post-imperial age. He was the first to question the point
of the monarchy on a prominent public stage.

Look Back in Anger

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Plot summary:
Jimmy Porter is a loud, obnoxious man, rude and
verbally abusive to his wife, Alison. Alison comes from
an upper class family that Jimmy abhors and he berates
Alison for being too reserved and unfeeling. Jimmy is
college educated but works with a partner, Cliff Lewis, as
a street vendor operating a candy stall. Cliff lives with
Jimmy and Alison and is close friends with both. When
Jimmy pushes Alison while she is at the ironing board she
is burned. Alison visits her doctor where it is revealed that
she is pregnant. She asks him if it is too late to do
something about it but the doctor immediately tells her
never to mention such an idea. When Jimmy leaves for
work, Alison confides to Cliff that she is pregnant. She is
frightened of Jimmy's reaction to this news, and has not
told him. Jimmy is visited by his childhood nanny, Mrs.
Tanner, whom Jimmy loves and calls "Mom." Alison tries
to tell Jimmy of the pregnancy but is frustrated when
Jimmy insults her for being cool towards Mrs. Tanner. Alison tells Jimmy that her actress
friend, Helena Charles, is coming to stay at the flat. Jimmy hates Helena. In his anger, he
curses Alison for her cool demeanor, and wishes that she would have a child and that the child
would die so she could feel anguish to break her cool demeanor. Helena arrives, and when she
has had enough of Jimmy's bitterness toward Alison, she convinces Alison she should allow
her to call Alison's father, Colonel Redfern, to take her to the family home and leave Jimmy.
Jimmy then gets word that his nanny has had a stroke. Jimmy begs Alison to come with him
to see her but Alison goes with Helena to church. Jimmy visits his nanny in the hospital and is
convinced she is dying. Before Jimmy returns, Alison's father arrives and leaves with Alison.
Helena stays in the flat. Jimmy returns and Helena tells Jimmy that Alison is going to have a
baby. Jimmy says he does not care. When he calls Helena an evil-minded virgin, she slaps
him. Then they kiss and make love, locking Cliff from the flat. Jimmy and Helena live for a
while in the flat, apparently happy, with Cliff, while Alison stays at her family's home waiting
to give birth. Cliff begins to feel out of place, having been close to Alison but not Helena. At
the candy stall, Cliff tells Jimmy that he has decided to leave. He wants something better.
Jimmy has decided to get out of the candy business, too. Cliff says good-bye to Jimmy at the
train station and Jimmy tells him he is worth more to him than a dozen Helenas. Jimmy and
Helena enter a train station pub where they find Alison seated at a table alone. Jimmy leaves
and Alison tells Helena she lost her child in pregnancy. Helena feels that she has to leave
Jimmy. Helena returns to the flat and tells Jimmy she is leaving him because she cannot stand
the torment of their lives. Jimmy returns to the train station and finds Alison waiting to return
home. They talk of the lost child and Alison tells him she can never have children. Jimmy and
Alison reconcile.

The play was a sociological phenomenon. Its production marks the real break-through of “the
new drama” into the British theatre.
- passionate dialogues, deliberately unglamorous depiction of everyday urban life
- Osborne’s characters are defined by their inability to act
- the proletarian Jimmy has no opportunities for changing the world, he is frustrated –
his frustration appears via his aggressive assaults on his pregnant wife
- having idealized Alison, Jimmy is incapable of appreciating her real qualities

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 - his violence drives her to return to her family, as well as (implicitly) causing her
miscarriage – this love/hate dependency is replayed with a substitute from Alison’s
circle, Helena
- Alison returns, in pain and unable to conceive any more children – trapping Jimmy in
a sterile and regressive childhood fantasy

The catchphrase of “angry young men” was coined based on the play  it started to be used
to describe Osborne and those of his generation who employed the harshness of realism in the
theatre in contrast to the more escapist theatre that characterized the previous generation.
The term “angry young men” – was coined by the press-officer of the Royal Court.
- Jimmy’s pride, cruelty, malice – he is presented with ambiguous irony

- strongly autobiographical base of the play: the dramatic situation reflects Osborn’s
marriage to the actress Pamela Lane

Look Back in Anger has a highly symbolic structure: the 4 main characters are divided based
on class system, in which sex equals status
- honest and male proletarians (Jimmy and Cliff) versus beautiful, but repressed or
immoral female gentry (Alison and Helena)
- social conflict

What does the title of the play mean?

Look Back in Anger  anger, looking back to the past, the untrue past of Britain, alienation
- the underlying theme of the play is that the idealized Britain, for which so many had
sacrificed themselves during the war years, was inauthentic – the Mother of
parliamentary democracy, the national cults of Royalty are all betrayals

It is always Sunday – this fact not only implies the missing spiritual centre in the characters’
existence, but also provides an image of stasis and displacement.
The circularity of action: the beginning of Act III mirrors the beginning of Act I (only instead
of Alison, Helen is taking her part).

Harold Pinter
(1930-2008)

In 2005, Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

An English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of
the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career
spanned more than 50 years.

His best-known plays:

The Birthday Party
The Homecoming
Betrayal
The Caretaker

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Notes on ‘The Caretaker’
1960, April – the opening of The Caretaker at the Arts Theatre Club  very successful
- Pinter’s plays are full of images – his repeated use of images e.g. a man reading a
newspaper or a magazine

Subject matter:
- dominance
- control
- victimization
- individuals isolated
- power structures
- changing alliances

 it’s a study of victimization – 3 types of victimization

a) mental  Aston (psychiatric history, controlled by society)
b) psychical  Mick (leather-jacketed, unpredictably violent e.g. breaks the statue of
Buddha)
c) emotional  Davies (elderly tramp, has no family, no home, no job, no friends, an outcast)

Pinter denied that characters were “symbols of anything”.

- focus on human relationships
- battle for positions

“… violence … an expression of the question of dominance” (Pinter)

Ambiguity
- uncertainty – Is Mac Davies really called Bernard Jenkins?
- Confusion of names  confusion of identities
- Aston – accepted by the audience as ordinary and average person (on the basis of his
charity, kindness, predictability) – he is not what he seems – he is accepted by society

Sociable accepted normality – reached by the electric shock treatment, which has left him a
mental cripple
- political oppression and control

Is what Aston is saying about the hospital treatment true?

- the image of himself that Aston presents can be seen as a
performance
- he presents himself as a brain-damaged person  after
this Davies starts to feel that he is superior to his
benefactor  he commits himself to an alliance with
Mick
- once Mick stops supporting Davies, Davies is alone,
isolated
- a cruel game

The role of the PAST

Aston: You’ve got to have a good pair of shoes.

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Davies: Shoes? It’s life and death to me. I had to go all the way to London in these.
(p. 13)
Davies: Can’t wear shoes that don’t fit. Nothing worse.
(p. 14)
- interaction of the past upon the present
- is the past important? – is it true / false / real / imagined?
- It becomes the constructive element of a person’s present existence

Language

- it is reduced to such a point that it becomes comic – absurd

- repetitions, talking about unimportant, pointless topics, things
- the naming process – Pinter’s obsession of playing with names, giving a name to
everything (Davies – if you want to stay in this house, you must have a “name” – you will
be “the Caretaker”)
- language cannot be trusted

- aggression, violence, the irrational

- an outside agent (intruder?) breaks the warmth and established security of a single room
- arbitrary and irrational events within an ordered artistic structure
- warmth, comfort of the room  coldness of the outside world
- the room – isolated from the outside, it is protected, closed, however there are also inner
destructive forces

- Pinter’s obsession with parental, brother – sister, brother – brother relationships

- 2 brothers (Aston and Mick) – never seen on stage together – just at the end + 1 tramp  is
it a family?

- possessions, wanting to ‘possess’ – a pile of unused, unnecessary, useless, broken objects

on stage – damaged toaster, bucket, Buddha statue, etc. – does it have a meaning? Is
Aston a Buddhist?
- the obsession of the world to collect objects
- we do not know anything about the background of the characters, about their motives

Pinter – came from a Jewish family

- his use of a tramp in The Caretaker was seen as derivative of Waiting for Godot, so Pinter
became identified with the Theatre of the Absurd,  Martin Esslin lists Pinter as a
follower of Beckett and Ionesco – later he changes his opinion
- the manipulation of language is linked to state violence
- his dramatic world is always firmly grounded in contemporary society

- satirizes a materialistic society that defines people in terms of their possessions, distorts
relationships into a competition for illusory wealth
- what may appear funny, viewed superficially, is simultaneously inhuman in terms of what
the characters are experiencing
- the comedy becomes a test of sensitivity that condemns those who laugh

- essential pessimism
- social commentary

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- power structures

“…dealing with…characters at the extreme edge of their living, where they are living pretty
much alone” (Pinter)

“As far as I’m concerned, The Caretaker is funny, up to a point. Beyond that point it ceases to
be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it.” (Pinter)

“Pinter’s aim is to make the audience re-evaluate their assumptions about themselves, and
hence to question the society of which they are representatives.” (Christopher Innes)

Tom Stoppard
(1937-)

Sir Tom Stoppard, (born Tomáš Straussler; 3 July

1937) is a Czech-born British
playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written
prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding
prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast
of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing,
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays
for Brazil and Shakespeare in Love, and has received one Academy Award and four Tony
Awards. Themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom pervade his work along
with exploration of linguistics and philosophy. Stoppard has been a key playwright of
the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his
generation
In 1939, Stoppard left Czechoslovakia as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation.
He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946. After being educated at schools in
Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a
playwright. He has been married twice, to Josie Ingle (1965–1972) and Miriam
Stoppard (1972–1992), and has two sons from each marriage, one of whom is actor Ed
Stoppard.

Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead
It is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom
Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival
Fringein 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of
two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The action of Stoppard's play takes place mainly "in the wings" of Shakespeare's, with brief
appearances of major characters from Hamlet who enact fragments of the original's scenes.
Between these episodes the two protagonists voice their confusion at the progress of events of
which—occurring onstage without them in Hamlet—they have no direct knowledge.
- the subject of Stoppard’s play is theatricality – the protagonists are audience, they also
were costumes

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- they are very similar to Vladimir and Estragon – however, they are not waiting for Hamlet
as Vladimir and Estragon were waiting for Godot  the problem in Ros. and Guild. is not
that Hamlet does not come, but that Ros. and Guild. are not able to escape Hamlet

“the character doesn’t interest me very much”

(Tom Stoppard)

“All Stoppard’s early work tends towards comic cartoon, dominated by grotesque situations
and the brilliantly worded bubbles coming out of people’s heads.
(Jim Hunter)
ROS: What are you playing at?
GUIL: Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.

Caryl Churchill
(1938-)

Female playwrights were absent from British theatre up until the late
1950s.
Churchill is usually seen as a highly political writer.
She is known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques
and feminist themes, dramatization of the abuses of power, and
exploration of sexual politics. She is acknowledged as a
major playwright in the English language and one of world theatre's
most influential writers. Her early work
developed Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of
‘Epic theatre’ to explore issues around gender and sexuality.

Her work is many times characterized as postmodern.

She also experimented with dance theatre.

Her major plays:

Cloud Nine
Top Girls
Her newest play: Love and Information (2012) - The play, featuring 100 characters and
performed by a cast of 15, is structured as a series of over 50 fragmented scenes, some no
longer than 25 seconds, all of which are apparently unrelated but which accumulate into a
startling mosaic-like portrayal of modern consciousness and the need for human intimacy,
love and connection.

Top Girls
It is a 1982 play about a woman named Marlene, a career-driven woman who is all about
woman success in business. As the play unfolds we find Marlene has left her 'poor' life, and
illegitimate child with her sister Joyce, in order to tread the path to 'success'. The play is
contemporary and examines the role of women in society and what being a successful woman
means.

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The play is set in the Britain of the early 1980s and examines the issue of what it means to be
a successful woman; initially using 'historical' characters to explore different aspects of
women's 'social achievement'. Churchill has stated that the play was inspired by her
conversations with American feminists: it comments on the contrast between American
feminism, which celebrates individualistic women who acquire power and wealth, and British
socialist feminism, which involves collective group gain. In addition, there is also a
commentary on Margaret Thatcher, the then Prime Minister, who celebrated personal
achievement and believed in free-market capitalism (Thatcherism). Marlene the tough career
woman is portrayed as soulless, exploiting other women and suppressing her own caring side
in the cause of success. The play argues against the style of feminism that simply turns
women into new patriarchs and argues for a feminism where women's instinct to care for the
weak and downtrodden is more prominent. The play questions whether it is possible for
women in society to combine a successful career with a thriving family life.

The play is famous for its dreamlike opening sequence in which Marlene meets famous
women from history, including Pope Joan, who, disguised as a man, is said to have
been pope between 854-856; the explorer Isabella Bird; Dull Gret the harrower of Hell; Lady
Nijo, the Japanese mistress of an emperor and later a Buddhist nun; and Patient Griselda, the
patient wife from The Clerk's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. All of these
characters behave like a gang of city career women out on the town and get increasingly
drunk and maudlin, as it is revealed that each has suffered in similar ways.
The stories of the historical women parallel the characters in the modern-day story. For
example, Bird, like Marlene, got to where she was by leaving her sister to deal with family
matters. Dull Gret's monosyllabic inarticulacy is comparable to Angie's. Some of these
parallels are emphasised by the actors doubling the roles of the historical and modern
characters.
The structure of the play is
unconventional (non-linear). In Act I,
scene 1, Marlene is depicted as a
successful businesswoman, and all her
guests from different ages celebrate her
promotion in the 'Top Girls' employment
agency. In the next scene we jump to the
present day (early 1980s) where we see
Marlene at work in the surprisingly
masculine world of the female staff of the
agency, in which the ladies of 'Top Girls'
must be tough and insensitive in order to
compete with men. In the same act, the audience sees Angie's angry, helpless psyche and her
loveless relationship with Joyce, whom the girl hates and dreams of killing. Only in the final
scene, which takes place a year before the office scenes, does the audience hear that Marlene,
not Joyce, is Angie's mother. This notion, as well as the political quarrel between the sisters
shifts the emphasis of the play and formulates new questions.