The Representation of war in the plough and the stars, heartbreak house and serjeant musgrave's dance

Abstract

The present dissertation examines the theme of war and its varying stage representations in Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (1926), George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (1919), and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959). The plays are – in this order – dramatisations of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, the First World War as experienced in Great Britain, and the aftermath of colonial wars from the perspective of the 1950s Britain. O’Casey, Shaw, and Arden lived throughout periods of war and violent upheavals, and have vehement opinions about Britain’s militarist and imperialist practices. Through their pacifist plays, they rendered on stage the savagery of war as it affected both soldiers and civilians. Thus, the theatre becomes the dramatists’ medium in the task of raising social and political consciousness, and advocating social change. Focusing on the contextual and the textual study of the above-mentioned plays, my research attempts to analyse the ways in which the plays’ thematic concerns have been effectively expressed by the playwrights through stylistic and dramatic devices. The aim is to show that each playwright uses the dramatic conventions of his time while incorporating innovative theatrical devices. O’Casey resorts to the Realistic / Naturalistic mode, and even the Expressionistic one in The Plough and the Stars. Shaw borrows his rhetoric from Ibsen and launches the “drama of ideas”, while Arden breaks away from Naturalism fairly decisively in Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance and moves towards a new, Brechtian mode, known as “ Epic Theatre”. This dissertation consists of four chapters: the first chapter provides the socio-political events from which the playwrights draw their subject-matter, as well as the theatrical background to the playwrights’ works. The second chapter deals with the thematic and the technical examination of O’Casey’s play. The focus will be on the Easter Week 1916 and its cruel aftermath, together with the props that O’Casey uses to stage the Easter Rising action. The third chapter examines the tremors and traumas raised by the First World War. The focus is first on Shaw’s representing of the initial tremors, then on O’Casey’s Expressionistic special effects in The Silver Tassie’s staging of the traumatic consequences of WWI. The last chapter is about the aftermath of colonial wars. It is an attempt to explore Arden’s anti-war profession of faith, the immorality of imperialism, capitalism, and colonial practices. Particular attention will be paid to Arden’s Brechtian devices. Finally, the conclusion examines the extent to which O’Casey, Shaw, and Arden succeed in treating the theme of war in their plays, while highlighting the mutual interdependence of content and form. This sheds more light on the playwrights’ ability to combine message with medium and strike a balance between entertainment and didacticism.