Berliner Ensemble Adaptations

by Bertolt Brecht

  [BBA 983/71–72. The typescript is torn and partly illegible. “Haughton” for the hotel proprietor is presumably Farquhar’s Horton, but may have helped suggest the name Laughton for the potboy in the final version. Charles Laughton’s family were of course also in the hotel business.]

  Three notes

  a) Contradictions

  The field within which characters and plot move displays, inter alia, the following contradictions:

  An officer’s profession and vocation.

  An officer does his best to defend his own country, wherever he happens to be fighting, and to live off the country wherever he happens to be stationed; it too may be his own.

  He provides himself with local girls, irrespective whether he is in his own country or abroad.

  The conqueror gets himself conquered.

  The ruling class find that patriotism and egotism coincide.

  b) First scene

  War as a universal concern and as a private one. On arriving Captain Plume is told how Shrewsbury is reacting to its “military suitors.” Not many recruits have applied, but a girl has applied for the captain.

  The war however is distasteful to the captain, whose job it is to get recruits for it. He is throwing soldiers into a battle with civilians.

  Reluctant to fight as a soldier for civilian interests, the captain will transfer to civil life in the course of the story (thereafter to do his exploiting in England rather than America). Sergeant Kite’s report indicates a conflict of interests between the young people of Shrewsbury and the Crown.

  What sort of alienations are going to bring out these contradictions apart from an alienating style of acting?

  c) Captain Plume

  There is no reason why an English recruiting officer in a restoration comedy should be given any higher social status than, say, a traveller in wines in early twentieth-century Prussia. It was not what you might call a profession for the aristocracy, whose sons had regiments of their own by the age of eight. Plume is a farmer’s boy who has worked his way up by his native wit, possibly combined with courage, and has no need of fine manners. The story of the play requires him to be reasonably well-built, and no one in the audience need share Victoria’s feelings for him. Nor on the other hand does his rank have to be held against him. A subordinate, he is at the same time a plebeian.—As for his outward appearance: smartness or elegance of bearing should be avoided. Plume may wear a pretty uniform, but he neither poses as an aristocrat nor moves about like a flamingo.

  [BFA, vol. 24, pp. 417–18. Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, was once a traveller in wines.]

  Editorial Note

  Adapting Farquhar

  The main work on the adaptation seems to have been done in March and April, 1955, though the play was not produced till the following September. The first complete script in the Brecht Archive is marked “1955 brecht besson” in Brecht’s hand, which suggests that Elisabeth Hauptmann’s contribution came later. Initially the period of the play was to have been that of the Marlborough Wars, as with the original, while the heroine’s name Silvia was also to be retained. However, a number of major dramaturgical changes seem to have been decided on from the outset, to judge from Brecht’s early plans noting what he regarded as the main points of the story, some being Farquhar’s and some new ideas of his own. Thus, to take the original scene by scene, the following is a rough summary of how Brecht proposed to use it:

  I, 1. (Brecht’s scene 1.) Worthy was from the first made into a shoe manufacturer with a vested interest in recruiting, summarized in the phrase “soldiers for boots.” Plume’s previous knowledge of Silvia was more extensive in Farquhar; Brecht reduced it to a minimal recollection.

  I, 2. Melinda’s apartment. (Originally 2, shifted to 3.) Brazen’s letter is cut. Brecht’s first idea seems to have been to bring on Brazen himself here, but this was abandoned.

  II. 1 and 2. An apartment in Justice Balance’s house and Another apartment, (Run together to make scene 3, shifted to 2.) All reference to the death of Silvia’s brother—the occasion for a fine display of family indifference in the original—was omitted, also the exchanges between Plume and Silvia indicating a certain degree of previous devotion. At an early stage Brecht switched round the two halves of the composite scene so as to make Plume appear after Silvia’s exit.

  II, 3. The street. Included more or less intact in Brecht’s scene 4, though there seems to have been an original intention to make Pearmain the potboy and allow him, before his recruitment, to overhear Balance discussing the war casualties, possibly however in a new scene.

  III, 1. The market place. (Scene 5.) In the event, Brazen’s first appearance was brought forward merely by one scene. (Brecht originally thought of making him a sergeant who masquerades as an officer and is recognized by Balance, but this was dropped). The episode between Plume and Rose was observed by Silvia, who is not in Farquhar’s scene at all, and also by a new character, Lady Prude, in lieu of Balance. Prude, says a note, was to “complain to Balance about the decline of morality in Shrewsbury,” and later to take part in a “meeting of Shrewsbury notables” where she would denounce Plume and call for police action; this was effected in Brecht’s scene 9.

  III, 2 and IV, 1. The walk by the Severn side. (Scene 8.) There seems to have been no intention to follow Farquhar in letting the two recruiting officers compete for Silvia’s military services. Brecht’s notes say: “Disguised as a young man, Silvia lets herself be recruited so as to be near Plume”; “Brazen confesses his war-weariness to Melinda” (not in Farquhar); and “Silvius [i.e., Silvia in male attire] steals the farmer’s daughter Rose away from Plume.” In the original the actual recruiting of Silvia only occurs when the justices order her into the army in the last act.

  IV, 2. It looks as if nothing from this scene was ever meant to be kept, since Lucy has no role in the adaptation qua maid to Melinda (whereas Farquhar here has her trying to blackmail her mistress), while the advancing of the duel eliminates the Worthy-Brazen quarrel.

  IV, 3. A chamber. Kite’s fortune-telling act played no part in Brecht’s plans, though part of the scene was in fact taken into scene 8.

  V, 1. An anteroom adjoining Silvia’s bedchamber. (Scene 10.) “A raid on the inn leads to the arrest of Silvius and Rose as lovers,” says an early note. In Farquhar the only other characters to appear here are Bridewell and Bullock; Plume, still ignorant of “Wilful’s” identity, is not present.

  V, 2. Justice Balance’s house. Once again, nothing in this scene, which brings the freshly arrested Silvia (still unrecognized) before her father, seems to figure in Brecht’s schemes, though there is a very approximate equivalent in Lady Prude’s reactions in the second half of scene 10, which also includes Rose’s reference to her bed-fellow as “the most harmless man in the world.”

  V, 3. Melinda’s apartment. Brecht’s notes suggest that he has no interest in Worthy except as a shoe manufacturer. However, a good part of the exchanges between Worthy and Melinda in his otherwise new scene 9 come from here.

  V. 4. The market place. Another scene of no dramaturgical use to Brecht, though Plume’s and Brazen’s discussion about how best to lay out twenty thousand pounds was taken into the otherwise new scene 7.

  V, 5. A court of justice. Incorporated in scene 12, as described below.

  V, 6. The fields. The mock-duel has been taken into Brecht’s scene 8. As for Lucy’s weakness for Brazen, like her whole role in the intrigue around Melinda it has gone.

  V, 7. Justice Balance’s house. Fused with V, 5 to make scene 12. Brecht’s interpretation of justice here follows the early note which says “Having just received the Pressing Act from London, Balance imagines he can go to work in a big way. The prisons being relatively empty, it is decided to fill them. This means going along with Lady Prude, Plume’s old enemy,” the ground for this now being prepared in the new scene 9, which makes the play’s relation to the Mutiny and Impressment Acts (promulgated when Farquhar himself was a recruitin
g officer in Shrewsbury) that much more explicit. The prisoners Workless and Miner are drawn from Farquhar (though he gives them no names), likewise the arrest of Bridewell. Silvia, however, is tried too in Farquhar’s V, 5, and sent into the army to the accompaniment of Plume’s reading of the Articles of War. She is only recognized and released in V, 7, after which, as one of Brecht’s notes puts it, “Brazen condemns Plume to civilian life.”

  In the “1955 brecht besson” script the references were originally to the battles of Marlborough’s time—Plume, for instance, was “the hero of Schellenberg” (i.e., Donauwörth, 1704)—but they have been amended, often in Brecht’s own hand, and remarks about America, the colonies, Boston harbour and so forth worked in (though by an evident oversight Kite’s list of heavenly bodies in scene 8 was left with “Dixmude, Namur, Brussels, Charleroy,” as in Farquhar, instead of the “Boston, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Philadelphia” of the final script). This version contains the twelve scenes in their final order, also the prologue and three of the songs: “When I leave you for the war, dear” from scene 8, “E.N. Smith” from the interlude after scene 11, and “Over the hills and over the sea,” though instead of concluding the play this was sung by Kite in scene 4, and in a version much closer to Farquhar’s original in the corresponding II, 3.

  Besides Lady Prude, it introduced another new “notable” in the shape of Mr. Smuggler, the London banker, who was given rather more to do than in the final version. Thus in scene 11 he had to tell Plume and Kite of a city coup in wool which he claimed was as exciting as any military encounter, after which he gave Plume his card, saying, “If I can be useful to you at any time …” while in the last scene he recognized Brazen as his absconding cashier Jack. The butler Simpkins, however, figured on many pages of this version as “a servant,” with virtually nothing to say, though there are additions which build the part up slightly, and retyped pages which give him his name. The Mike-Lucy sub-plot too is barely started (Mike being called George and Maggie Minnie, which explains the use of that name in the scene 8 song); while the other two justices, Scale and Scruple, still make their unnecessary appearance as in Farquhar. As for Silvia, she has become (anachronistically) Victoria, but is still not recognized by Plume in the prison scene. Apparently it comes as a complete surprise to him when, as he starts to sign her release (as in Farquhar), she exclaims “Father, I can no longer deceive you. William, pardon your Victoria if she now tells the truth,” then goes on very much as on p. 318.

  The Worthy-Melinda relationship is left unresolved at the end of the play (Worthy in this version having actually enlisted under Plume in scene 9), and the two lovers only come together as the company takes its bow. The two scenes that differ most from the final text, however, are scenes 8, By the Severn, and 12, the concluding court scene. The first of these was evidently conceived as consisting of two settings “wooden bench by the copse” and “punt in the reeds,” which would have alternated on a revolving stage; also the blacksmith was an extra character called Flock, later to be merged with William. In scene 12, which showed the court and an antechamber, the sequence of episodes was as follows (showing their present order in parentheses):

  Balance with Melinda and Lucy (2)

  Plume invited to join the justices (1)

  Trial of Workless (9)

  Trial of Miner (5)

  Victoria pleads for Plume’s arrest and is recognized by Balance (6)

  Victoria with Balance and Plume in the antechamber (7)

  Lucy’s report to Brazen (4)

  Question of Plume’s and Victoria’s marriage (8)

  Balance instantly sentences five anonymous prisoners for having no visible means of support (—)

  Trial of prostitute, pimp, and pickpocket (3)

  George (Mike) and Bridewell sentenced (10)

  Plume accepts Victoria, hands his uniform to Brazen who reads the Articles of War (11)

  Balance sentences three unemployed men (—)

  Lucy gets George (Mike) discharged (12)

  Brazen marches off with recruits. Balance, Victoria, and Plume leave for the pheasant shoot (13)

  This left considerable changes to be made in the play before the present text was arrived at, notably the further development of the references to the American War of Independence and the repeated insertion of Kite’s catch-phrase about the Mississippi. The broad-shouldered man was introduced in scene 4 and the court scene, where it was decided to give more prominence to the crowd; hence the former’s comments, together with those of the wives, Jenny, Mrs. Cobb, etc. Simpkins the butler was further built up, possibly using elements from Charles Laughton’s Ruggles of Red Gap and a few Wodehouse recollections, to fill in the new American background (as by his account of the battle of Bunker Hill in scene 4) and at the same time perhaps to give a good if anachronistic role to the actor Wolf von Beneckendorff. Scene 6 in the billiard room was amended to start with yet another account of Bunker Hill, this time from the potboy, but this was then dropped. In scene 8 by the Severn the swan was introduced and the Mike/Lucy passages built up so as to show their sympathy for the colonists. Scene 10 (the bedroom scene) was likewise lengthened, showing inter alia that Plume recognizes Victoria. The songs were added to, initially by Melinda’s song (scene 3) and the second and third verses of “Over the hills and over the sea” in the last scene. Victoria’s song at the end of scene 6 came later, as did the Kiplingesque “Women of Gaa” (? Goa. Scene 11) and the first verse of “Over the hills.” Other late additions were the exchanges between Lucy and Mike (now surnamed Laughton) about their hotel in New York and its defence against the redcoats, and a number of Simpkins’ patriotic comments and interjections.

  Thus Brecht’s new scenes additional to Farquhar are: 6, the billiard room, which may derive from Brecht’s early note that “Silvius tries to find out how strongly Plume is committed to the military profession. Plume can’t imagine either himself or Silvius having any other”; 7 on the market place; most of 9, culminating in the meeting of notables; and 11 in prison. Significant points taken from the original include the personalities of Kite and Brazen together with much of the latter’s dialogue – for instance such expressions as “my dear” and “Mr. Laconic” – and his interest in Melinda’s twenty thousand pounds; likewise Balance’s warning against predatory captains [p. 257], the episodes with Rose (and her chickens) and Appletree and Pearmain, the cases of Workless and Miner in the last scene and, above all, the whole central notion of magistrates sending men into the army.

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  First published 2014

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