by Dylan Thomas
p. 59 The Sailor's Arms is always open, / Oh, Gossamer: The BBC typed MS 'Sailors' without underlining, and the italics are also missing in the Jones edition.
There is no textual authority for the dots of the Jones edition, or for its lower case 'oh'.
p. 59 Oh, Gossamer, open yours!: From here down to Mr Waldo's song was written and added in New York in October 1953.
waves, / wind blows, / bough breaks,: These are the forms and punctuation of TS, changed in the Jones edition without manuscript authority.
p. 59 [According music: Sound effects in TS are as here.
p. 59 FIRST DRINKER / SECOND DRINKER: There is no authority for the Jones edition's assigning these lines to 'A Drinker' and 'Cherry Owen'.
p. 60 Llareggub Hill, writes the Reverend Jenkins: There is no textual authority for assigning this passage to Eli Jenkins, as the Jones edition did, nor for the device of repeating 'Llareggub Hill'.
p. 60 chimbley sweep: There is no manuscript authority for the hyphen in the Jones edition.
p. 60 Black as the ace of spades: As seen in the holograph notebook page marked 'C' included in MS, this line, in what is there called 'Mr Waldo's Song', was
Black as a Blackamoor
which rhymed with the original line-but-one after it:
Since my husband went to war
Thomas interlined the new wording for these lines, as adopted here. This song was called 'Mr Waldo's Pub Song' in a Texas TS. MS had no punctuation except for the final exclamation mark and had a stanza break before the six-line refrain starting 'Come and sweep my chimbley'. The BBC typescript had no stanza break and provided punctuation, followed by Daniel Jones. We follow MS in regard to no punctuation and to separating the refrain. We have also chosen to mark with stanz-breaks the quatrain rhyme-scheme of what is essentially a ballad form.
p. 60 Oh nobody's swept: 'Oh', as in MS and TS, not the 'O' of the Jones edition.
the voyages of his tears,: The Jones edition omits the comma found in MS and TS.
p. 61 Curly Bevan's skull: We follow MS and TS in assigning this line to the narrator rather than, as the Jones edition does, to First Drowned.
p. 61 He plays alone at night to anyone who will listen: lovers, revealers, the silent dead, tramps or sheep.: This sentence is inserted in the Yale TS, not in Thomas's hand, but, we assume, on Thomas's authority. Roughly the same sentence is found in a Thomas list in the worksheets now at Texas, in which he gives thumb-nail sketches of various characters in the play.
p. 61 Who?: In the Yale TS Thomas added a marginal rehearsal note: 'Drunker'.
p. 61 Bach, fach: The Jones edition omits the comma found in MS and TS.
p. 61 sea-end: Hyphenated in MS and TS, but not in the Jones edition.
p. 62 for ever: MS and TS had 'forever'; we accept the emendation 'for ever' of the Jones edition.
p. 62 drunk in Milk Wood: MS had 'drunk in the dusky wood'; it was typed so at the BBC and was followed in the Jones edition, but Thomas changed it to 'Milk Wood' in the Yale TS.
p. 62 But it is not his name: In the Yale TS Thomas added a marginal rehearsal note: 'softer'.
p. 62 Mary Ann the Sailors who knows there is Heaven: The name in MS and TS is as here, and there is no manuscript authority for the 'a' of the Jones edition before 'Heaven'.
p. 62 bridebeds: MS 'bridebeds' was typed at the BBC as 'bridesbeds', which was followed in the Jones edition.
1. Elizabeth Reitell speaking on a BBC Third Programme feature (Portrait of Dylan Thomas, 9 November 1963), quoted in Cleverdon's The Growth of Milk Wood, p. 24.
2. See Under Milk Wood: Account of an Action to Restore the Original Manuscript, ed. J. S. Cox, The Toucan Press, Guernsey, C.I., 1969.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors wish to thank the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University Library; The Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas; the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia; and the libraries of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia and of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Thanks are also due to the following individuals who helped with encouragement or practical assistance at various turns: Paul Ferris, Malcolm Gerratt, Cathy Henderson and Hilary Laurie.
Grateful acknowledgments are extended to the British Academy and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for grants awarded for research work on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea on 27 October 1914, the son of the senior English master at the Grammar School there. On leaving school he worked briefly on the South Wales Evening Post before embarking on a literary career in London. There he quickly established himself as one of the finest lyric poets of his generation. 18 Poems appeared in 1934, Twenty-five Poems in 1936, The Map of Love in 1939, Deaths and Entrances in 1946 and In Country Sleep in 1952. Collected Poems 1934-1952 was published in 1952. Throughout his life Thomas also wrote short stories, his most famous collection being the autobiographical stories comprising Portrait of the the Artist as a Young Dog (1940). During the 1940s and early 1950s he also wrote film scripts, and features and talks for radio. Between 1950 and 1953 he went on four lecturing visits to America, and it was on the last of these that he completed his radio play for voices, Under Milk Wood. On 9 November 1953, shortly after his thirty-ninth birthday, he collapsed and died in New York City. He is buried in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, which had become his main home since 1949. On 1 March 1982 a memorial stone to commemorate him was unveiled in 'Poets' Corner' in Westminster Abbey.
Professor Walford Davies holds a personal chair in English Literature of the University of Wales. Formerly Senior Lecturer in English at St Anne's College, Oxford and then Director of Continuing Education at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, he is currently a visiting professor at various American universities. His other work on Dylan Thomas includes two critical studies of the poet and the following editions: Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings (1971); Dylan Thomas: New Critical Essays (1972); Deaths and Entrances (1984); and (with Ralph Maud) Collected Poems 1934-1953 (1988) and Under Milk Wood (1995). He is the editor of both the Selected Poems and Under Milk Wood in the Penguin Classic series (2000).
Ralph Maud is Emeritus Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. Among his previous works on Dylan Thomas are Entrances to Dylan Thomas's Poetry (1963), and the following editions: The Colour of Saying: an Anthology of Verse Spoken by Dylan Thomas (with Aneirin Talfan Davies, Dent, 1963), The Notebook Poems (Dent, 1989), The Broadcasts (Dent, 1991) and Wales in his Arms: Dylan Thomas's Choice of Welsh Poetry (1994). His Dylan Thomas in Print (Dent, 1972) is the standard bibliography.
Copyright 1954 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Copyright 2013 by Walford Davies
Copyright 2013 by Ralph Maud
All rights reserved.
Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information story and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published clothbound by New Directions in 1954.
First published as a New Direction Paperbook (NDP73) in 1957.
Issues in this now definitive edition as NDP1258 in 2013.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomas, Dylan, 1914-1953.
Under milk wood: a play for voices / Dylan Thomas ;
edited By Walford Davies and Ralph Maud ;
introduction by Walford Davies.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-811-22197-9
I. Wales—Drama. I. Title.
PR6039.H52U6 2013
822'.912—dc23
2013003014
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
BOOKS BY DYLAN THOMAS
AVAILABLE FROM NEW DIRECTIONS
Adventures in the Skin Trade
A Child's Christmas in Wales
The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas
The Doctor and the Devils
Eight Stories
The Poems of Dylan Thomas
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Quite Early One Morning
Rebecca's Daughters
Under Milk Wood
