Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2
Page 39
At the end of the scene the script makes the friends appear without Jake to sing the ‘One means to eat’ etc. refrain. From now on however the order of the lines rotates. Thus it is now love first, followed by ring, drink and ‘Fourth means to eat all you are able’; then at the end of the next scene it is ring, drink, eating and love; then at the end of the boxing scene, when only Jim and Bill are left to sing it, drink, eating, love and ring, in that order; then finally when Jim is arrested at the end of the next scene it is back to normal, with the whole chorus singing ‘Now you can eat all you are able’ and so on.
Scene 14 [13 in script]
The script shows that this was originally to be considerably tighter and more realistic. Its opening stage direction is:
The word LOVE in huge letters on a background with, in front of it, right, the Mandlay [sic] Brothel with a queue of men lining up. The three friends join the queue. Erotic pictures are immediately shown on a canvas screen. Meanwhile Begbick’s voice is heard off.
Begbick’s and the men’s opening lines are as now, but the stage directions differ: the men ‘murmur after her’ and instead of the room getting dark ‘The men are getting impatient’ before their ‘Get to it soon!’ etc. From there on the rest of the scene is different. First Trinity Moses
steps out in front of the brothel.
We thank all you gents for the patience you’ve been showing.
I’m told that another three gents can shortly go in.
Experience will tell you: to savour love at its best
Every client needs a moment to rest.
Moses ushers out three gentlemen and lets three in. The others go on waiting. The three who have been ushered out rejoin the queue. Further pictures are shown, and Begbick’s voice is again heard.
BEGBICK:
Let the tips of your fingers
Stroke the tips of her breasts
And wait for the quivering of her flesh.
THE MEN murmur after her:
[the same words, then] ‘the men become impatient’ once more and repeat their ‘Mandelay’ chorus. Moses ‘reemerges from the brothel’ and again sings his four lines. Then
Moses ushers out the three gentlemen just admitted and lets in Jim, Bill and Joe, who have jostled their way to the front. The remainder are once again shown pictures.
BEGBICK’S VOICE:
Introducto pene frontem in fronte ponens requiescat.
THE MEN in frantic impatience:
Mandalay won’t glow forever below such a moon.
Hurry, the juicy moon is green and slowly setting.
The three friends are ushered out and step in front of the half-curtain, which closes.
They close the scene by singing the next round of the refrain.
This version of the scene, which omits the Crane Duet (p. 206), was originally set by Weill as shown in the revised 1969 edition of the piano score which David Drew has edited for Universal-Edition. In the script however there is also an alternative version marked ‘for the libretto’. Here, and in the piano score followed by A/K, the opening stage direction has the Men ‘leaning their backs against’ the platform and ‘sitting on a long bench’. The scene follows much as we have it, with the lights going up and down in the room until Jim and Jenny are discovered there and go into the Crane Duet. In the piano score of 1929 not only is the duet fully composed but everything before it (from the opening of the half-curtain at the start of the scene) is marked as an optional cut. Within this all Moses’s lines, the script’s stage directions showing the admission of three men at a time, and Begbick’s remark in Latin have anyway been omitted, leaving purely orchestral passages where Moses had been meant to sing. Thereafter the refrain ‘Get to it soon’ lost its last three lines in the printed versions (though we retain A/K’s rendering of them). Two other lines following Jenny’s ‘For nowhere’ (p. 207) and translated by A/K
So all true lovers are,
True lovers are, true lovers are
were likewise cut.
The Duet is thought by Drew to derive from one of Brecht’s love sonnets, in which case it could hardly be earlier than 1925; but no such poem is known. It was published as a poem in his A Hundred Poems (1951) under the title ‘The Lovers’. Weill’s setting dates from October 1929.
For the 1931 Berlin production the first part of the scene, in its bowdlerised version, was restored and the duet cut instead. At some later point Weill decided that the duet would go best in the last Act, but he never prescribed a place for it and there is no evidence that he discussed the problem with Brecht. The revised piano score of 1969 suggests putting it in scene 19 in lieu of the spoken dialogue from Jim’s ‘Why, you’re wearing a white dress’ (p. 228) to Jenny’s ‘Kiss me, Jimmy’ (p. 229).
Scene 15 [14 in script]
Apart from the rotation of lines in the final refrain, and the effects of the musical setting, this scene has scarcely changed since the first script.
Scene 16 [15 in script]
In the script the stage direction omits all mention of playing billiards. Where our text has ‘MEN’ it has ‘JIM AND THE MEN’; the piano score and A/K however have a quartet of JIM, BILL, FATTY and MOSES. Their song ‘Mahagonny sure was swell’ is Mahagonny Song no. 2, which the script gives them to sing as printed in the Devotions, but without verse 2 and its refrain. In the piano score and our text verse 2 and refrain follow verse 1, while the refrain of verse 3 (‘Stay-at-homes do very well’) concludes the scene. For the Leipzig production however there was a cut from the first ‘But at least they saw the moon’ (p. 213) as far as Begbick’s ‘Time to settle the bill, gentlemen’ (p. 214), and this was accepted by the composer from then on.
Script and piano score (followed by Auden-Kallman) have Jim, ‘dead-drunk’, bawling the song ‘Pour cognac down the toilet and flush it’ (p. 215) which uses verses 1, 3 and 2 (in that order) of the poem ‘Tahiti’ which Brecht wrote about 1921. In the Men’s chorus that follows (‘Death now is nigh!’) and continues under the spoken exchange between Jenny, Jim and Bill, Auden and Kallman have written new text rather than repeat phrases as in Weill’s setting; the whole chorus then reads:
Death now is nigh!
Now black as pitch the sky
The white-caps high.
The dark draws in
And heaven is heaven with menace
Black, black as sin!
Black, black as sin
Black, black as sin
The menace of darkness draws in!
‘Stormy the night’, of which one quatrain follows, was first cited in In the Jungle of Cities (see Collected Plays 1, p. 451) and comes from the nineteenth-century ballad ‘Das Seemannslos’ (‘The Sailor’s Lot’), which Brecht evidently knew from his childhood. In the contemporary English version by Arthur J. Lamb it is known as ‘Asleep on the Deep’, and the corresponding quatrain there reads
Stormy the night and the waves roll high
Bravely the ship doth ride.
Hark! while the light-house bell’s solemn cry
Rings over the sullen tide.
Auden presumably did not know it, or it might well have been in his anthology The Poet’s Tongue. It was set to music by H. W. Petrie in 1895.
In the script Jenny’s solo ‘Let me tell you’ (p. 218) is headed ‘Jenny’s Song’. Besides some minor verbal differences it has a third verse, which was apparently never set, but goes:
I can’t go with you in future, Jimmy
Yes, Jimmy, it’s sad for me.
You’ll still be my favourite all right, but
You’re a waste of my time, you see.
I must use the little time that’s left me
Jimmy
Or I’ll lose my grip on it.
You’re only young once, and that’s
Not enough.
I tell you, Jimmy
I am shit.
Oh, Jimmy, you know what my mother told me …
– and so on as we have it. Thereafter the scene ends almost
immediately, thus:
BEGBICK:
Again I say:
Pay!
JIM says nothing.
BEGBICK:
Then let the police take him away!
– followed by Moses’s lines (p. 219) and then the refrain, this time by all the men, starting ‘Now you can eat all you are able’. This was cut by Weill (see the 1969 revised piano score).
A version of Jenny’s song, starting ‘When I put on my wedding dress’ is included in a fragmentary Threepenny Opera scene set in Polly’s room. It has a melody in Brecht’s notation.
Scene 17 [16 in script]
The script has Jim sitting shackled in a little cage, past which the chorus of the previous scene pass as they leave the stage. His solo is headed ‘Jimmy’s Aria’. In the piano score (followed by Auden/Kallman) he ‘lies in the forest, one foot chained to a tree’. For the Kassel production of 12 March 1930 the aria was shifted to the next scene, its place being taken by ‘Dreams have all one ending’ (now in our scene 11) from the penultimate scene. Weill found this made a more effective ending to the second Act, but for the Berlin production he reduced it to one verse only and reset it for chorus (or male chorus) leaving it in full in the penultimate scene.
Scene 18 [17 in script]
According to script and piano score this starts the third Act. The former specifies a projected title saying ‘Like the rest of the world’s law courts, that of Mahagonny sentences people if they are poor’. The first defendant then is Joe, who is charged in Moses’s words
With premeditated murder of 5 men
Done to test a newly purchased revolver.
Accused, you have destroyed
5 human lives in full bloom.
Then ‘Never yet’ etc., as now. Jim’s offence, however, is announced thus by Moses (p. 222):
Second, the case of Jim Mahoney
Indicted on account of
Three bottles of whisky and a bar-rail
He failed to pay for.
– ‘bar-rail’ being A/K’s substitute for Brecht’s word ‘curtain-rod’. In A/K (following the piano score) the courtroom is not specifically located in a tent, and the first defendant’s name is given (amended by them from Brecht’s Tobby Higgins to Toby throughout).
After Bill’s plea ‘Of all those hanging around’ etc. (p. 225) the script has the Men saying nothing, merely applauding and hissing. Moses, not Fatty, calls for ‘Your verdict, august tribunal’ (p. 226); while Begbick gives Jim four years in prison (rather than the four years’ probation of the final text) for the seduction of an unnamed girl. Auden/Kallman (following the piano score) omit Begbick’s sentence starting ‘In view of’ (p. 226) and add a stage direction at this point saying ‘On the backcloth is projected the “Wanted” poster that was seen at the opening of Act One’.
[Scene 19 in piano score only]
This was not in the script and was cut in the Leipzig production It consisted of the Benares Song, which Elisabeth Hauptmann wrote in English in 1926, and which in Auden/Kallman’s version goes thus. The original text is given in brackets where altered by them:
19
At this time a good many people in Mahagonny who wanted something different and better began dreaming of the city of Benares. But meanwhile Benares was visited by an earthquake.
Jenny, Begbick, Fatty, Bill, Moses and Toby enter in front of the screen [i.e. the half-curtain], seat themselves on high bar-stools and drink ice-water: the Men read newspapers.
BEGBICK:
There is no whiskey in this town
[‘whisky’ throughout]
JENNY:
No bar that doesn’t get us down.
[There is no bar to sit us down.]
FATTY, BILL AND MOSES:
Oh!
BEGBICK sentimentally:
Where is the telephone?
FATTY, BILL AND MOSES:
Oh!
JENNY urgently:
Is there no telephone?
[Is here no telephone?]
MOSES:
O God, so help me, no.
[Oh Sir, God damn me, no.]
FATTY, TOBY AND BILL:
Oh!
JENNY AND BEGBICK:
Let’s go, let’s go
[Let’s go to Benares]
To Benares where the sun is shining.
[Where the sun is shining.]
Let’s go, let’s go to Benares,
[Let’s go to Benares]
To Benares, Johnny, let us go.
[Johnny, let us go.]
BEGBICK:
There is no money in this land,
JENNY:
No boy that’s glad to shake your hand.
[There is no boy to shake with hands.]
etc., to:
BILL AND MOSES:
To Benares where the sun is shining.
BEGBICK
There is no prize here we can win,
[There is not much fun on this star.]
JENNY:
No door that lets us out or in.
[There is no door that is ajar.]
FATTY, BILL AND MOSES:
Oh!
BEGBICK sentimentally:
Where is the telephone?
FATTY, BILL AND MOSES:
Oh!
JENNY urgently:
Is there no telephone?
MOSES:
No, no, goddamit, no!
[As before, to end of refrain.]
FATTY, TOBY AND BILL:
Oh!
They find out from the papers about the earthquake in Benares. They jump to their feet in horror.
ALL SIX:
Worst of all,
[Worst of all, Benares]
Benares is now reported perished in an earthquake!
[Is said to have been perished by an earthquake.]
O my dear Benares,
[Oh my good Benares!]
Now where shall we go?
[Oh where shall we go?]
Scene 19 [18 in the script, 20 in the piano score and A/K]
The script has the opening stage direction as now, except that instead of an electric chair being made ready ‘On the right stands a makeshift gallows’. The white dress (p. 228) was black. Jim’s speech leaving Jenny to Bill (p. 229) had an extra line: ‘For he can live without fun’. Moses called ‘Ready!’ before they turned ‘towards the place of execution’ (p. 229), and then asked after the ‘One means to eat’ refrain:
Have you a last request?
JIM:
Yes.
I would like once again
To hear the girls sing
The song of the moon
Of Alabama.
The girls sing the Alabama Song as Jim mounts the gallows.
MOSES:
Have you anything else to say?
JIM:
Yes.
I would like
You all not to let my horrible death
Put you off living the way that suits you, carefree.
For I too
Am not sorry
That I did
What I wanted.
Listen to my advice.
He climbs on a bucket, and as they fasten the noose round his neck he sings
– all four verses of ‘Dreams have all one ending’ (as in our scene 11), after which Moses says ‘Ready!’ again, and there is a black-out. Then the half-curtain closes, and Jenny, Fatty, Moses and two unnamed Men come out and sing Mahagonny Song no. 3 (God in Mahagonny). It is arranged as in our text, except for the omission of verse 2 (Mary Weeman etc.), and in the script it concludes the scene.
In the piano score there is no repeat of the Alabama Song; so Jim’s speech ‘Yes./I would like/’ etc., now printed as prose, follows directly after Moses’s ‘Have you a last request?’. Auden/Kallman here substitute the following speech, based very loosely on the Versuche text:
JIM: Yes. At last I realize what a fool I’ve been. I came to this city believing there was no happiness which money could not pr
ocure. That belief has been my downfall. For now I am about to die without ever having found the happiness I looked for. The joy I bought was no joy; the freedom I was’ sold was no freedom. I ate and remained unsatisfied; I drank and became all the thirstier. I’m damned and so, probably, are most of you. Give me a glass of water.
Jim stands in front of the electric chair. During the following, he is being prepared for execution.
– the following being his singing of ‘Dreams have all one ending’. After it the piano score (which A/K again abandon here) ends quickly with:
Jim sits on the electric chair. They put the helmet over his head.
MOSES:
Ready!
Black-out.
‘God in Mahagonny’ then becomes the beginning of the following scene, where it is sung before the half-curtain by Jenny, Fatty, Bill, Moses and a fourth man.
Jim’s final speech of remorse (p. 232), which Auden and Kallman put in the place of the earlier ‘Yes. / I would like /’ etc., derives from a letter from Weill to his publisher dated 25 March 1930 (i.e. just after the Leipzig and Kassel performances) saying that some such speech was needed ‘for the understanding of the whole thing’; it was wrong for Jim to remain unrepentant.
When or why Brecht decided to shift ‘Dreams have all one ending’ back to scene 11 is unknown, though clearly it was before Versuche 2 (1930) went to press. For the Kassel performance Weill had moved it forward, but only to precede our scene 17 (q.v.), while for the Berlin production he decided it was needed in its original position.
The opening inscription is rather freely translated by A/K, who omit the final phrase cited on p. xxxii.
Scene 20 [19 in script, 21 in piano score, 22 in A/K]
In the script this is preceded by a projected inscription saying