Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2

by Bertolt Brecht

  POLLY loudly: But it looks more and more like Tibet.

  JESSE loudly: But we have been told that it is a pure war of defence.

  Then Galy Gay speaks the concluding verses on p. 76, after which Begbick comes downstage and says ‘Quod erat demonstrandum’. With the exception of this ending the Malik text of the scene is almost exactly the same as ours.

  10. In the Moving Train [11 in 1926 version].

  Like our scene 11 this was omitted from the Arkadia scripts, the 1931 production and the 1938 Malik edition, all of which ended with scene 9. In the 1950s Brecht restored it, using the 1926 text with small modifications of which the most significant was the insertion of the passage from ‘Now you’ to ‘used to say’ in Galy Gay’s speech on the Tibetan War (p. 66), with its indication that they are about to invade his wife’s home.

  The 1924/5 script contains two versions of the scene. In the first, which Brecht labelled ‘old waggon scene’ the setting is as now, but it opens with the three developing a photograph (presumably that of Blody and Hiobja). The dialogue approximates to ours as far as Galy Gay’s ‘If this train doesn’t stop’ (p. 65) after which Blody wakes up, sees the three defaulters and tells them to arouse Galy Gay:

  he’s got too good a conscience hey wake that man up i want to get a bit better acquainted with him man to man

  He tells the three to hand over their revolvers, but is scared off when Uriah dons his (Blody’s) bowler hat. Galy Gay then asks what has been going on, to which Kake (Jesse) replies:

  yesterday you got mixed up in some affair of a porter trying to sell an army elephant and being shot for it then you were taken ill and didn’t want to be who you were

  GALY GAY: who was i then?

  KAKE: you’re no better i see you were private jip but for quite a time you didn’t know it and kept talking about a grass hut and a wife and stuff like that and you’d entirely forgotten all about being a soldier

  They continue to confuse him about his identity, talking about his paybook and its description of him, the tattooing on his arms etc. Polly puts his head out of the window and is guillotined, then he does the same to Galy Gay and suggests that they all sing ‘the bilbao men’s song’, whose text however is not given. The soldiers go off to play cards, and Galy Gay asks ‘What is it that’s shaking so?’ (p. 64), after which the scene continues very roughly as now, but omitting the whole Fairchild episode and ending slightly differently, with the troops all singing ‘Tipperary’.

  The second version is headed ‘2 Waggon-scene’ and is close to our text as far as Galy Gay’s speech on the Tibetan War. Then Blody Five appears with a long monologue version of the self-castration episode (pp. 69-70), after which the rest is much as above.

  [Outside the Camp Signs of an Army on the Move]

  In this discarded scene from the 1924/5 script Jip appears to the tune of ‘Tipperary’ in search of the other three.

  BEGBICK: you’re in luck they’ve announced a big theatre performance for this evening to fish people’s money out of their pockets one of them is actually going to act an elephant calf which is a piece of pure malice on their part as he’s already been brought to his senses once by the sale of a phoney elephant the man’s called jerome jip you probably know him jip hurries on

  When Blody appears, full of threats, Begbick roars with laughter and pushes her cart past him. Fragments then suggest that prior to the writing of the second waggon scene (above) this was to have been the self-castration scene. In one Blody delivers his monologue carrying ‘a lamp a length of catgut and a breadknife’; another gives a shorter version as follows:

  BLODY: there’s nothing can be done to stop this sensuality which simply prevents you doing your duty the enemy is in your own house but the army which has so far earned nothing but glory cannot have its best men attacked by rot but even if there is no way of making your conduct sheet white once more at least a terrible example should be instituted

  since a strong unchastity originating in the womb

  hung my breadbasket ever higher and failed to

  respond to hard beds and unseasoned fare

  but often and repeatedly dragged me down among the animals

  i shall utterly etch away this excess and herewith

  shoot off my cock

  goes into the undergrowth

  [Theatre a Plank Stage beneath a Few Rubber Trees with Chairs Facing]

  This scene, only found in the 1924/5 script, is the performance subsequently detached to form the Elephant Calf. As far as the Sorrowing Mother’s Speech (p. 85) the text is almost word for word as now, except that it is Bobby Pall, not Jackie. Then Bak [Polly] says:

  you may even be able to move them to tears it’s the most moving bit if this goes over well perhaps i’ll stay in the theatre for life curtain rises the elephant calf has had to leave because it feels unwell after those great proofs the criminal will be even deeper in the toils so tell me o elephant calf’s mother something about thy son come deliver the sorrowing mother’s speech

  – which is differently worded. Then after the soldiers applaud and Uriah has told ‘Jip’ to ‘Get on stage!’ (p. 86):

  galy gay trots along the footlights eyes the three and hums it’s a long way as the soldiers cheer

  URIAH: oh for christ sake drop that nonsense

  BAK: he’s waking up he’s breaking through this damned notion of acting a singing elephant

  Then Polly makes his speech (p. 86) asking if he thinks ‘that this is thy mother?’

  GALY GAY: it’s a long way cheers

  URIAH: you’ve misappropriated army funds

  BAK: that’s the disease you suffer from aloud the elephant calf has been overcome by the confusions of a guilty conscience

  GALY GAY: get on with the play bak

  The ending, after the Soldiers’ ‘It’s a damned unfair business’ (p. 86), is almost exactly as in our text except that the final song is omitted and two further pages are included after ‘every decent human instinct’ (p. 90). The closing stage direction adds ‘to the singing of yes we have no bananas’.

  II. Deep in Remote Tibet Lies the Mountain Fortress of Sir El-Djowr [misnumbered 10 in the 1926 edition, which adds the direction ‘Columns of troops are marching along singing the Man equals Man song’.]

  Like scene 10, this was omitted after the 1926 edition and reintroduced by Brecht in the 1950s. He then replaced the MG by a ‘Kanone’, cut Blody Five’s entry (with his old catchphrase ‘Johnny, pack your kit’) and substituted Galy Gay’s speech starting ‘And I want to have first shot’ (p. 72). After Galy Gay’s call through the megaphone, too, the ending was different; the reference to the ‘friendly people’ from Sikkim once again dates from the 1950s. The verse comes from the conclusion of the Malik version of 1938, the final roll-call from that of 1926, which however ended with four marching off to the Man equals Man song and Polly calling back to the audience ‘He’ll be the death of us all yet’.

  In the 1924/5 script there were several versions of this scene. One is virtually as in the 1926 edition. Another, called ‘new last scene’ is set in ‘a dugout in tibet during an artillery bombardment’. Enter the three soldiers asking if they can ‘play a spot of pokker here?’ [sic]. Blody, now quite subdued, is there and when Galy Gay enters they all stand up. He complains about the noise:

  if all this warfare doesn’t stop soon i’m going to smash the place up explosion pokker demands total concentration above all how is one to bring off a decent royal flush with a din like this going on stop chewing your moustache sergeant

  BLODY: i’m very sorry i’m afraid i forgot

  In what seems the earliest version, marked by Elisabeth Haupt-mann ‘Summer 1925, Augsburg’, the setting is ‘canteen packing up towards morning signs of an impending move’, with Blody making all the troops except the machine-gunners do knees-bend. Jip arrives and is greeted, and a version of the first two-thirds of the present scene follows, as far as his exit (p. 74). Then there is a fragmentary ‘long thi
n subdued conversation in the cool half-light’ between Galy Gay and Begbick, who thinks of selling her canteen and coming to Tibet with him. There is a long discussion with Hiobja, then Blody summons Galy Gay and the scene breaks off.

  The version marked ‘second ending’ starts with Jip arriving as in the discarded ‘outside the camp’ scene above. The three enter, and Blody hobbles out of the undergrowth to introduce the real Jip, who is promptly knocked down by a hook to the chin from Galy Gay. Then comes ‘Widow Begbick’s canteen in the grey half-light. Noises outside of packing up and moving off.’ Confronting his friends much as on pp. 71-73, Jip curses them and is given Galy Gay’s old paybook. Then Blody appears and marches the three off to the ‘Johnny-wet-his-pants-wall’, where they are shoved into an anthill. Left alone with Begbick, Galy Gay orders ‘a few cocktails and a cigar’, and her approach to him (p. 74) follows. They are thinking of going to Tibet together as business partners; however, Blody summons him. Hiobja tells him she knows something discreditable about Blody, which makes Galy Gay slap Begbick’s bottom and say they will get to Tibet all right. Blody then appears ‘laughing horribly’ and asks Galy Gay who he is:

  GALY GAY: A man. Named Jeraiah Jip. And Man equals Man, my lad. But not a man equals not a man.

  With that he gives Blody a stare, opens the window and asks the world what makes Lionel Fairchild, a sergeant in the Indian Army, speak so softly and prance like a stilt-walker.

  Suppose that in a rice-field near the Tibetan frontier, unobserved by other men but observed by a young girl, a man tears out his legendary sensuality by the roots with the aid of a penknife. Suppose he bellows like a donkey bellowing. Sergeant Blody Five, Human Typhoon, what’s it like when you bellow?

  SOLDIERS laugh louder: Go on, Typhoon, bellow!

  BLODY FIVE bellows: Man equals Man. But Blody Five equals Blody – his voice goes into a shrill falsetto – Five.

  SOLDIERS roaring with laughter: He’s chopped off his manhood! He’s castrated himself!

  Galy Gay bares his teeth in a smile and sits down. The laughter spreads backward until it is as though the whole Indian Army were laughing. Exit Blody Five, swept away by the laughter. A soldier in the window points at him.

  SOLDIER: That was the Human Typhoon. And here – indicating Galy Gay – sits Jeraiah Jip who blasted him into Abraham’s bosom as you might say. He’ll be the death of us all yet.

  Dance. Military music. It’s a long way to Tipperary.

  THE THREEPENNY OPERA

  Texts by Brecht

  ADDITIONAL SONGS FROM ‘THE BRUISE’

  Second Part

  After Mr Peachum and his friend Macheath have left, Mr Brown sings these stanzas to the ‘Mac the Knife’ tune:

  Oh, they’re such delightful people

  As long as no one interferes

  While they battle for the loot which

  Doesn’t happen to be theirs.

  When the poor man’s lamb gets butchered

  If two butchers are involved

  Then the fight between those butchers

  By the police must be resolved.

  Third Part

  As they drive up in four or five automobiles the gang sing:

  SONG TO INAUGURATE THE NATIONAL DEPOSIT BANK

  Don’t you think a bank’s foundation

  Gives good cause for jubilation?

  Those who hadn’t a rich mother

  Must raise cash somehow or other.

  To that end stocks serve much better

  Than your swordstick or biretta

  But what lands you in the cart

  Is getting capital to start.

  If you’ve got none, why reveal it?

  All you need to do is steal it.

  Don’t all banks get started thanks to

  Doing as the other banks do?

  How did all that money come there? –

  They’ll have taken it from somewhere.

  And Mr Macheath walks with a light step in the direction of the West India Dock … bumming a few new verses to an instantly obsolete ballad:

  How’s mankind to get some money?

  In his office, cold like snow

  Sits the banker Mac the Knife, but he

  Isn’t asked, and ought to know.

  In Hyde Park behold a ruined

  Man reclining in the sun

  (While down Piccadilly, hat and cane, just think about it)

  Strolls the banker Mac the Knife, and

  God alone knows what he’s done.

  Fourth Part

  CLOSING VERSES OF THE BALLAD

  So we reach our happy ending.

  Rich and poor can now embrace.

  Once the cash is not a problem

  Happy endings can take place.

  Smith says Jones should be indicted

  Since his business isn’t straight.

  Over luncheon, reunited

  See them clear the poor man’s plate.

  Some in light and some in darkness

  That’s the kind of world we mean.

  Those you see are in the light part.

  Those in darkness don’t get seen.

  [From ‘Die Beule’ in Brecht; Versuche, re-edition 1959, pp. 229 ff., and GW Texte für Film pp. 329 ff. This was Brecht’s proposed treatment for Pabst’s Threepenny Opera film, for which see the introduction (p. xiii). In the Second Part the police also sing the ‘Whitewash Song’ subsequently used in the Berliner Ensemble production of Arturo Ui. Excepting the re-use of the Mac the Knife ballad, there were no settings to these songs by Weill. Three of them also occur in The Threepenny Novel.]

  APPENDIX

  NEW CLOSING VERSES TO THE BALLAD OF MAC THE KNIFE

  And the fish keep disappearing

  And the Law’s perturbed to hear

  When at last the shark’s arrested

  That the shark has no idea.

  And there’s nothing he remembers

  And there’s nothing to be done

  For a shark is not a shark if

  Nobody can prove he’s one.

  THE NEW CANNON SONG

  1

  Fritz joined the Party and Karl the S.A.

  And Albert was up for selection

  Then they were told they must put all that away

  And they drove off in every direction.

  Müller from Prussia

  Requires White Russia

  Paris will meet Schmidt’s needs.

  Moving from place to place

  Avoiding face to face

  Contact with foreign forces

  Equipped with tanks or horses

  Why, Meier from Berlin is bound to

  End up in Leeds.

  2

  Müller found the desert too hot

  And Schmidt didn’t like the Atlantic.

  Will they ever see home? That’s the problem they’ve got

  And it’s making them perfectly frantic.

  To get from Russia

  Back home to Prussia

  From Tunis to Landshut:

  Moving from place to place

  Once they come face to face

  With nasty foreign forces

  Equipped with tanks or horses

  Their leader gives no lead because he’s

  Gone off for good.

  3

  Müller was killed, and the Germans didn’t win

  And the rats ran around in the rubble.

  All the same, in the ruins of Berlin

  They’re expecting a third lot of trouble.

  Cologne is dying

  Hamburg is crying

  And Dresden’s past all hope.

  But once the U.S.A.

  Sees Russia’s in its way

  With a bit of luck that ought to

  Set off a new bout of slaughter

  And Meier, back in uniform, might

  Get the whole globe!

  BALLAD OF THE GOOD LIVING OF HITLER’S MINIONS

  1

  That drug-crazed Reich Marshal
, who killed and jested

  You saw half Europe scoured by him for plunder

  Then watched him sweat at Nuremberg – and no wonder –

  Outbulging those by whom he’d been arrested.

  And when they asked him what he did it for

  The man replied: for Germany alone.

  So that can make a man weigh twenty stone?

  Don’t pull my leg; I’ve heard that one before.

  No, what made him a Nazi was just this:

  One must live well to know what living is.

  2

  Then Schacht, the Doctor who took out your money –

  The sheer length of his neck still has me baffled –

  As banker once he fed on milk and honey

  As bankrupter he’s sure to dodge the scaffold.

  He knows he won’t be tortured, anyway

  But ask Schacht, now he’s finally been floored

  Just why he joined the others in their fraud

  He’ll say ambition made him go astray.

  But we know what pushed him to the abyss:

  One must live well to know what living is.

  3

  And Keitel, who left the Ukraine all smoking

  And licked the Führer’s boots clean with his spittle

  Because he’d built the Wehrmacht up a little –

  Ask that tank expert why, he’ll think you’re joking.

  Sipping, he’ll say: I followed Duty’s call!

  So Duty made his casualties so great?

  No question of acquiring an estate:

  That kind of thing we don’t discuss at all.

  We get one. ‘How?’ ‘s a question we dismiss.

  One must live well to know what living is.

  4

  They all have great ideas in untold numbers

  And lay claim to the loftiest of wishes

  And none of them mentions the list of dishes

  But each of them has demons plague his slumbers.

  Each saw himself no doubt as Lohengrin

  Or Parsifal; so how was he to fail?

  Behind Moscow they sought the Holy Grail

  And just Valhalla crumbled, not Berlin.

  Their private problems all boiled down to this:

  One must live well to know what living is.

  NEW VERSION OF THE BALLAD IN WHICH MACHEATH BEGS FORGIVENESS