John Arden's anti-imperialist, anti-war play, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, An Un-historical Parable (1959) centers on the lives of a group of deserters led by the eponymous Musgrave featured in the title of the play. Musgrave and his followers leave a late-nineteenth-century military enterprise in protest of what they saw as disproportionate violence. The deserters end up in an impoverished town in the North of England.
The play's theme of the contagious nature of the madness that is violence is reflected in the following passage from Musgrave himself:
Join along with my madness, friend. I brought it back to England but I've brought the cure too—to turn it on to them that sent it out of this country—way-out-ay they sent it, where they hoped that only soldiers could catch it and rave!
One of Musgrave's followers, Attercliffe, reproaches Musgrave for returning to the violence from which they ostensibly fled, saying, "You swore their'd be no killing," to which Musgrave responds, "I did not." Attercliffe persists, noting that "You gave us to believe. We've done what we came for, and it's there we should have ended." But the play shows that violence, once it has begun, keeps spawning counter-violence.
Towards the end of the play, a woman in the town, Mrs. Hitchcock, reproaches Musgrave for having brought war to a town that was already in the midst of a strike and plagued by hunger and instability. She says, "You brought in a different war," meaning a war other than the struggle of people to feed themselves and their families. Musgrave does not accept responsibility: "I brought it in to end it," he says. Arden's point is that all wars are made under the pretense of bringing an end to war, and that none of them, in his view, succeed.
Monday, May 12, 2014
What are some important quotations in Serjeant Musgrave's Dance?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms that thrive in diverse environments (such as the ocean, the soil, and the human body). Various bac...
-
Note that these events are not in chronological order. The story is told by the narrator, looking back upon her life. The first notable even...
-
It seems most likely you are asking about Michael Halliday's theories of language. He argues children have seven main functions they use...
-
James is very unhappy on a number of occasions throughout the story, but he's especially unhappy with his life situation as the story be...
-
Under common law, any hotel, inn, or other hospitality establishment has a duty to exercise "reasonable care" for the safety an...
-
One of the plot lines in Pride and Prejudice is Mrs. Bennet’s plan to marry off her daughters, preferably to rich men. Throughout the novel...
No comments:
Post a Comment