Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics)

by Bertolt Brecht

  Courage and the chaplain hear a rumour that peace has broken out. The cook reappears. The fight for the feedbag. An old friend who has made a good thing of the war; Puffing Piet is unmasked. The downfall of Eilif, Mother Courage’s dashing son; he is executed for one of the misdeeds that had brought him rewards during the war. The peace comes to an end; Courage leaves the chaplain and goes on with the cook in the wake of the Swedish army.

  Overall arrangement

  Courage and the chaplain hear a rumour that peace has broken out. On the right stand an old woman and her son who have come from the city with all sorts of household goods to sell. It is early in the morning, and Courage, still half asleep, answers sulkily from the cart left. Then bells are heard from the right, the chaplain crawls out from under the cart where he has been sleeping and Courage sticks her head out of the cart. The bells seem to have made the old woman happy – not so Mother Courage.

  The cook reappears. The bells of peace bring all sorts of visitors. First comes – from the right like the rest – the cook, ragged, with all his possessions in a bundle. The chaplain is not pleased to see him, but Courage, who is braiding her hair, runs out to meet him and shakes his hand heartily. She invites him over to a wooden bench in front of the cart, while the chaplain goes behind the cart to put on his clerical garb. Amid the ringing of the bells they sit there almost like lovers, telling each other about the bankruptcy that peace has brought them.

  The fight for the feedbag. When the chaplain comes back – he stands in the middle of the stage like a last incisor in a toothless mouth – the cook begins to demolish him. Courage climbs into her cart to get her pack ready; she is going to sell the merchandise she bought when the chaplain promised her a long war. The cook starts unwrapping his feet because he means to stay, and the chaplain is obliged to beg him humbly not to drive him out. The cook merely shrugs his shoulders.

  An old friend who has made a good thing of the war; Puffing Piet is unmasked. Another visitor. Fat and asthmatic, walking with the help of a cane, the Countess Starhemberg, the former camp whore, enters, clothed in black silk and followed by a servant. She has dismounted from her carriage to call on Mother Courage. She catches sight of the cook, known to her as Puffing Piet, and angrily denounces him to Courage, who has difficulty in preventing her from attacking him with her cane.

  The downfall of Eilif, Mother Courage’s dashing son; he is executed for one of the misdeeds that brought him rewards during the war. When the women have left, the cook gloomily puts his foot wrappings on again and the chaplain relishes his triumph. Their conversation turns to melancholy recollections of the good old war days. Blown in by the bells of peace, soldiers with arquebuses bring in a richly dressed lieutenant – Eilif. His courage deserts him when he hears that his mother is not there. The chaplain gives him a swallow of brandy and, a clergyman once again, accompanies him to the place of execution.

  The peace comes to an end; Courage goes on with the cook, in the wake of the Swedish army. The cook tries to get Kattrin to come out of the cart so he can beg some bread from her. Courage comes running in, overjoyed. The peace is over. The cook does not mention Eilif’s death. With the cook’s help she packs her belongings into the cart and they go on without the chaplain.

  Advance preparation

  In her conversation with the chaplain in scene 6 Weigel very carefully laid the groundwork for her conversation with the cook in scene 8. She said ‘Nice fellow that’ a little more warmly and thoughtfully than required by her good-natured rebuff of the chaplain. Consequently in scene 8 she had an audience who knew what was what. This enabled her to take a dry, matter-of-fact tone with the cook. Knowing what it knew, the audience could be touched as well as amused that the subject of their love dialogue should be the fact that they were both ruined.

  The dignity of misery

  In the cockfight between the chaplain and the cook, Hinz as the chaplain obtained a powerful and natural effect when, suddenly throwing all arrogance to the winds, he begged the cook not to squeeze him out of his place with Courage because, having become a better man, he could no longer practise the clergyman’s profession. His fear of losing his job lent him a new dignity.

  Humiliations

  The cook too is capable of enduring humiliations. At the end of the dialogue in which he triumphs over the chaplain, he removes his shoes and foot wrappings like a man who has come to the end and goal of a long peregrination. Yvette finds him barefooted, which embarrasses the ageing Don Juan. After he has been unmasked and the chaplain has lectured him, he sorrowfully puts his footwear back on. The episode in which he begs Kattrin for food was played brilliantly by Bildt. His bundle slung over his shoulder, ready to hit the road, he first tapped his stick nonchalantly on the drum hanging from the cart. Talking into the cart, he uttered the words ‘pork’ and ‘bread’ in the tone of a gourmet and connoisseur: the starving cook.

  Good business

  Yvette Pottier is the only character in the play who strikes it rich; she has sold herself for a good price. She has been as badly disfigured by good food as Kattrin by her scar; she is so fat one has the impression that eating has become her only passion. She speaks with the accent of the Austrian aristocracy.

  […]

  War the provider

  Courage comes back from the village exhausted from running but overjoyed that the war has started up again. In high spirits she lets the cook relieve her of her pack. The prospect of good business will enable her to take the cook in. She speaks light-heartedly of the possibility of seeing her son again. ‘Now there’s war again, everything will work out all right’ [not in the final text]. She is going to ride over his grave.

  A detail

  While they are packing, Kattrin appears. She sees the cook staring at her scar, covers it with her hand and turns away. She has come to fear the light.

  Again in scene 11, when the soldiers drag her out of the cart, she holds her hand over her eye.

  9

  Times are hard, the war is going badly. On account of her daughter, she refuses the offer of a home

  The cook has inherited a tavern in Utrecht. Kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along there. The ‘Song of the Temptations of the Great’. Kattrin decides to spare her mother the need to make a decision, packs her bundle and leaves a message. Mother Courage stops Kattrin from running away and goes on alone with her. The cook goes to Utrecht.

  Overall arrangement

  Times are hard. The cook has inherited a tavern in Utrecht. In the early dawn of a stormy winter day Courage and the cook, both in rags, bring the cart to a stop outside a parsonage. The cook morosely unharnesses himself and admits to Courage that he means to go to Utrecht where he has inherited a tavern. He asks her to go with him. Sitting shivering on the shaft, Courage complains of the bad business situation: the war is no longer finding much to feed on.

  Kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along there. The cook interrupts the conversation between mother and daughter about the peaceful life in Utrecht, and motions Courage to step to one side with him (to the right, in front of the parsonage). Hidden beside the cart, Kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along.

  The cook and Courage sing the ‘Song of the Temptations of the Great’, While they sing their begging song, Courage desperately thinks over the cook’s offer, presumably her last hope of settling down.

  Kattrin decides to spare her mother the need to make a decision, packs her bundle and leaves a message. By the end of the begging song, Courage has made up her mind to decline the offer. She still goes into the parsonage with the cook for the sake of the soup. Kattrin comes in with a bundle and deposits her mother’s skirt with the cook’s trousers over it on the cart’s shaft.

  Mother Courage stops Kattrin from running away and goes on alone with her. Courage catches Kattrin just as she is about to steal away. She has brought a dish of soup. Feeding her as one would a child, she assures her that it has never occurred to her to desert the cart. She throws the
cook’s bundle and trousers out of the cart, puts herself and Kattrin in harness and starts off with her (behind the house, to the right).

  The cook goes to Utrecht. The cook sees that the women and cart are gone. He silently picks up his bundle and sets out on his way, right rear, to settle down in Utrecht.

  The cook

  In this scene the cook must not under any circumstances be represented as brutal. The tavern he has inherited is too small to keep three people, and the customers cannot be expected to put up with the sight of the disfigured Kattrin. That’s all there is to it. Courage does not find his arguments unreasonable. Weigel showed plainly that Courage thought the proposition over – she thinks every proposition over. This she did by looking over towards the cart during the first stanza of the begging song with an expression compounded of indecision, fear and pity.

  […]

  A detail

  In this scene, in which her arguments are rather thin, Courage spoke to her daughter as one speaks to a person who is hard of hearing. Her loud, slow delivery also gives the impression that she is speaking in the name of the cook as well, but without being at all sure of herself in this.

  Kattrin’s demonstration

  In laying out the trousers and skirt Kattrin tries to leave her mother a message explaining why she has gone away. But Hurwicz also indicated a note of resentment by glancing at the parsonage where her mother and the cook were presumably eating soup, then looking at her composition and stifling an uncanny, malignant giggle by raising her hand to her mouth before sneaking away.

  A detail

  While saying the words ‘Don’t you go thinking it’s on your account I gave him the push,’ Courage put a spoonful of soup into Kattrin’s mouth.

  […]

  The cook sets out for Utrecht

  Scenes of this kind must be fully acted out: Courage and Kattrin harness themselves to the cart, push it back a few feet so as to be able to circle the parsonage, and then move off to the right. The cook comes out, still chewing a piece of bread, sees his belongings, picks them up and goes off to the rear with long steps. We see him disappear. Thus the parting of the ways is made visible.

  10

  Still on the road

  Mother and daughter hear someone in a peasant house singing the ‘Song of Home’.

  The song in the Munich production

  A fine variation used in the Munich production: the song was sung with unfeeling, provocative self-assurance. The arrogant pride of possession expressed in the singing turned the listeners on the road into damned souls.

  Expression not wanted

  The two women enter, pulling the cart. They hear the voice from the peasant house, stop, listen, and start off again. What goes on in their minds should not be shown; the audience can imagine.

  A detail

  In one of the later performances Weigel, when starting off again, tossed her head and shook it like a tired cart horse getting back to work. It is doubtful whether this gesture can be imitated.

  11

  Dumb Kattrin saves the city of Halle

  A surprise attack is planned on the city of Halle; soldiers force a young peasant to show them the way. The peasant and his wife tell Kattrin to join them in praying for the city. Kattrin climbs up on the barn roof and beats the drum to awaken the city. Neither the offer to spare her mother in the city nor the threat to smash the cart can make her stop drumming. Death of dumb Kattrin.

  Overall arrangement

  A surprise attack is planned on the city of Halle; soldiers force a young peasant to show them the way. An ensign and two soldiers come to a farm at night. They drag the peasants, still half asleep, out of the house and Kattrin out of her cart. By threatening to kill the peasants’ only ox they force the young peasant to serve as their guide. (They lead him to the rear; the party go out right.)

  The peasant and his wife tell Kattrin to join them in praying for the city. The peasant moves a ladder over to the barn (right), climbs up and sees that the woods are swarming with armed men. He comes down, he and his wife talk it over and decide not to endanger themselves by trying to warn the city. The peasant woman goes over to Kattrin (right front) and tells her to pray God to help the city. The three of them kneel down and pray.

  Kattrin climbs up on the barn roof and beats the drum to awaken the city. From the peasant woman’s prayer Kattrin learns that the children in Halle are in danger. Stealthily she takes the drum from the cart, the same drum she had brought back when she was disfigured. With it she climbs up on the barn roof. She starts drumming. The peasants try in vain to make her stop.

  Neither the offer to spare her mother in the city nor the threat to smash the cart can make her stop drumming. At the sound of the drum the ensign and the soldiers come back with the young peasant. The soldiers take up a position by the cart and the ensign threatens the peasants with his sword. First one of the soldiers, then the ensign moves to the centre to make promises to Kattrin. The peasant goes over to a log (left front) and chops at it with an axe to drown out the sound of the drum. Kattrin is victorious in the noise contest, the ensign starts to go into the house to set it on fire, the peasant woman indicates the cart. One of the soldiers kicks the young peasant and forces him to batter the cart with a plank, the other soldier is sent off for an arquebus. He sets up the arquebus, the ensign orders him to fire.

  Kattrin’s death. Kattrin falls forward, the drumsticks in her dropping hands strike one full beat followed by a feeble beat; for a moment the ensign is triumphant, then the cannon of Halle respond, taking up the rhythm of Kattrin’s drumbeats.

  Bad comedians are always laughing Bad tragedians are always weeping

  In sad scenes just as in comic ones precision must be combined with ease; the hand that guides the arrangement must be both firm and relaxed. The actors take their positions and form their groups in very much the same way as the marbles tossed into a wooden bowl in certain roulette-like children’s games fall into hollows, with the difference that in the games it is not decided in advance which marbles will fall into which hollows, whereas in theatrical arrangements there only seems to be no advance decision. And indeed the reason for the stiffness or heaviness that is so characteristic of sad scenes in the German theatre is that in tragedy the human body is unjustifiably neglected and so seems to be afflicted with muscular cramp. Which is deplorable.

  Kattrin’s two fears

  Kattrin’s dumbness does not save her. The war gives her a drum. With this unsold drum she must climb up on the barn roof and save the children of Halle.

  Conventional heroism must be avoided. Kattrin is ridden by two fears: her fear for the city of Halle and her fear for herself.

  ‘The dramatic scene’

  Audiences were especially stirred by the drum scene. Some explained this by saying that it is the most dramatic scene in the play and that the public likes its theatre dramatic rather than epic. In reality the epic theatre, while capable of portraying other things than stirring incidents, clashes, conspiracies, psychological torments and so on, is also capable of portraying these. Spectators may identify themselves with Kattrin in this scene; empathy may give them the happy feeling that they too possess such strength. But they are not likely to have experienced such empathy throughout the play – in the first scenes, for example.

  Alienation

  If the scene is to be saved from a wild excitement amid which everything worth noticing is lost, close attention must be given to alienation.

  For example: if the conversation of the peasants is swallowed up by a general hubbub, the audience will be in danger of being ‘carried away’; then they will fail to take note how the peasants justify their failure to act, how they fortify each other in the belief that there is nothing they can do, so that the only remaining possibility of ‘action’ becomes prayer.

  In view of this, the actors in rehearsal were made to add ‘said the man’ or ‘said the woman’ after each speech. For example:

  ‘“Sentries are bound t
o spot them first,” said the woman.’

  ‘“Sentry must have been killed,” said the man.’

  ‘“If only there were more of us,” said the woman.’

  ‘“Just you and me and that cripple,” said the man.’

  ‘“Nowt we can do, you’d say …” said the woman.’

  ‘“Nowt,” said the man,’ and so on.

  Kattrin’s drumming

  Kattrin keeps watching what is going on down below. Consequently her drumming breaks off after the following sentences,

  ‘Jesus Christ, what’s she doing?’

  ‘I’ll cut you all to ribbons!’

  ‘We got a suggestion could do you some good.’

  ‘With a mug like yours it’s not surprising.’

  ‘We must set the farm on fire.’

  Detail in tempestuous scenes

  Such scenes as the one where the peasant tries to drown the noise of Kattrin’s drumming by chopping wood must be fully acted out. As she drums, Kattrin must look down at the peasant and accept the challenge. In tempestuous scenes the director needs a certain amount of stubbornness to make miming of this sort last long enough.