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Unit 1 Background to the Play UNIT 1 BACKGROUND TO THE PLAY Structure Objectives Introd~~ction Britain in tlie 1950s 1.2.1 Tlie Economy 1.2.2 Tlie Welfare Stale and Social Change 1.2.3 Political Clia~iges 1.2.4 Tlie Inteniational Scene 1.2.5 Reactions in literature and Drama British Drama from 1890 to 1956 1.3.1 Two Lilies of Develop~ne~it 1.3.2 Realism/Naturalis~iion tlie Stage 1.3.3 Expressionistic Drama 1.3.4 Effects on Style and Characterization 1.3.5 Changing Subject Matter 1.3.6 Irish and Scottish Drama of tlie Period 1.3.7 American Drama and its Use of Tragedy Osborne 1 -4.1 Biograpliy 1.4.2 Tlie Plays Let Us Sum Up Glossary Questions Suggested Reading 1.0 OBJECTIVES Tlie objective of tliis unit is to provide an idea of the backgl.ound -- social, cultural and political -- against wliicli LookBack in Anger was written, as well as a broad outline of tlie immediately preceding and contemporary state of drama, leading LIPto a first look at tlie play itself. 1 .I INTRODUCTION Wliile studying this, or indeed ally play, a critical vocabulary with words such as 'theatre', 'drama', 'natul*aIist' and 'expressionist' (aniong others) is inevitably used. The two such ternis tliat will recur most often tli~*oi~glioutthese ilnits, 'theatre' and 'tlrama', are often ilsed interchangeably, but they need to be u~iderstoodas different aspects or components of tlie performance of a play. The 'theatre' is the space used for a performance (the stage, and by extension, tlie auditoriu~n)as well as tlie entire system tliat makes it possible for tlik performance to be produced and to com~iiiinicatemeaning to the audience. This 'system' lias visual and auditory components such as lighting, music, props and costi~liiesand also includes the conve~itionsaccording to wliicli tlie performers and the audience interact with each otliel.. These conventions are practices rather than hard and fast rules -- for example, one theatrical convention iiiay require tlie actors to behave as if tlie audience does not exist and they are not aware of being watched, while another may il~volvetheir addressing tlie spectators directly. 'Drama', on tlie other hand, refers to plays the~iiselves,that is to say, to fictions written or designed to be perfor~nedon stage, alld collectively to tlie elitire body of such fictions at any given time or place. As yo11 can see, the explanations given of both terms seem relevant only in tlie colltext of performance. Tliis need !lot be limited to stage performance and could as well be drama for tlie cinema, television or radio. Where then does the act of Look Back irt Allger reading or studying a play, as we are doing in these units, fit in ? Sollie theorists of drama answer tliat there are two kinds of dramatic text, the performance lest arid tlie written or literary text, and tliat these are entirely separate, almost ~~nrclatedentities. (This does not, of course, apply to those kinds of drama which are not written at all, snch as ~niineor i~nprovisedperformances). Witlio~it~iecessarily taking such an extreme position, we co~~ldsee tlie two texts as different versions of tlie same play, but - and this is important - since we shall only have to deal with the written version, keep the other performative one in mind. Drama is among tlie no st pitblic as well as tlie most immediate of the arts, since it is usually experienced collectively rather than in solit~~deand ~111liketlie novel 01' even the short story, it uses spatial represe~ltatio~iinstead of linear narrative. This means, as Martin Esslin points out, that action is all-importaiit in drama, wliicli is an interesting idea but might at first seem rather irrelevant when applied to a play like Look Back in Anger (henceforth LBA ) wliere speech certa'inly appears to predominate. This will be discussed in detail in Unit 3, so if we allow for the ~nolnelit that a stress on action does make most drama an effective tool of co~nmunicatioii,and if required of propaganda, we can appreciate tlie use made of dram by political systems, by social workers and activists (street plays are co~n~no~ilyused thus in India) and by religion (almost all drama originated in religious ritual). The idea that the theatre, because of its self-consciously illusory nature, in sonle way both reflects and sy~nbolizesthe 'real' world is a very old and widespread one. However., the relation between drama and society is complex, and liieans tliat instead of sirnply lnirrori~igor seeking to clia~igesocial conditions, plays are also shaped by them, so~netitiiesin ways of wliicll the dramatist riiay be illlaware at the ti~ne.This partly explairis wliy different forms of dram have been popular, and the content of plays lias varied so widely, at different times. Look for instance at the way in wliicli religious (in tlie specific sense of theological) concenis, though present in some of Shakespeare's plays, are certainly not a cliief area of interest in them, while a celitury earlier they llad forined tlie main subject matter of the ~noralityplays, and at the way iu wliicli his choice of distant of imaginary places- Bohemia, a~icientEgypt, tlie forest of Arden -as locales, changes with Restoration drama's usual setting in . contemporal-y London. Or, for an example nearer home, think of how the figure of the 'NRI' or the Indian brought up abroad, riow a co~n~no~iplaceof Hindi cinema (arguably a kind ofdrama), is largely absent fi-om the fil~iisof the 1950s when emigration was rarer. There is of course always the objection to sucli an eniphasis on the social in tlie treatment of drama with the argurnelit tliat a play is not some indepeudently occusring phenori~enabut is created by one or more persons arid can be rlla~iipiilatedand co~itrolledby them in a way that reality cannot be -- a fairly obvious point, but one that we do tend to lose siglit ofwhile placing the play in its social context. Having said that, however, I.tlii~ikit would be helpful to try and get some solet of picture of the time and place in wllicl~Osbosne both wrote and set LookBackin Alger, before we start our study of tlie play. Do fry and have the text read by the time you fi~iisli this unit so that you can rmake the required connections but while doing so please don't apply this extrinsic information too rigidly to tlie text by expectirlg tliat everything in the play will co~lforriito it. 1.2 BRITAIN IN THE 1950s It might be ~~sefi~lto begin with an observatiori whicli is interesting in that it conies from an Indian visiting England in 1955, on the eve of a general election. Nirad ' Chaudliary in A Passnge to Eltglund writes- For individuals, as for nations, doing well in life and doing sorilethi~igill life are co~itradictoryaims. Tlie real test for tlie Welfare State will be whether it has beer1 able to liierge the two ends, so far as they can be merged. But it seems to me that this very Backgroui;' i11ipo1-tantcondition oftlie Welfare State's success is diffic~lltof fulfilment in contemporary England. Tliis difficulty is not due to an absence of men with a will to do somethiog. The real trouble is that tliere is very little to do and it is very difficult to arrive at a clear perception of what to do. On tliis point, ever since the end of the war 1 liave liad a feeling that the E~iglisllpeople are in tlie closing stages of one qycle of tlieir existence and have not as yet entered on another. (A Passage to Englund , pp. 2 1 4-5) Despite the rather vague gerieralizatioli of its opening statelnelit , I tllillk the passage llelps to provide a sense oftlie ambivalence that came to prevail in British social atid political life in tlie first decade after the country's victory in the Second World War. This victory was followed by tlle coming to power in 1945 of a Labour government under Cle~iielitAttlee and the establish~ile~ltof tlle Welfare State wliich aimed to provide to its citizens social security and benefits such as health care, housing and old age pensions. The idealism attendant on tliis socialist, utopia11vision also resulted, in sollie quarters at least, from the perceptiori of Britain as beginning to leave beliilid ller imperialist past ( starting with tlie independence of India in 1947) though this was hardly as yet seen as an ongoing process. Tlie coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11 in June 1953 served as tlie occasion for a national celebration, particularly since tlie country saw itself as leaving behind the recent past of war, conflict, depression and poverty. Tliis optimism is evident in tlie phrase 'the new Elizabethan age', widely used at tlie time. J.B Priestley in 1934 described what lie saw as the co-existence of three Englands , "Old England, tlie country of the catliedrals and ~ni~iistersand Inallor houses and inns, of Parson arid Squire ... Nineteenth-Centi~ryEngland, the industrial .England of coal, iron, steel, cotton, wool, railways ... and New E~igland",tlle last of these influenced by American consumerism and egalitarianism and based on mass-production atid I I urbanization. The first two Englands, familiar to us from the ~lovelsof George Eliot and Dickens, were probably anachronisms by the 1950s, tliougl~remembered and mourned by people like Colo~lelRedfern wllotn Jilnlny compares to Priestley and I wlio ad~ilitsto being 'an old plant left over from tlie Edwardian wildenless' (LBA, 11,ii).
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