Set between 1860 and 1880, four deserters bring the body of a dead soldier back to his home town, a mining community in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by snow. Their leader, Serjeant Musgrave, plans to hold the town at gunpoint and confront its people with the realities of warfare. Arden's play questions the military principle of "Obey or suffer" and the cruelty and futility of war. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1959.This volume contains expert notes on the author's life and work, historical and political background to the play and a glossary of difficult words and phrases.

The original version of Wesker's imaginiative reworking of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. With notes and commentary by Glenda Leeming.

Margaret Drabble is a writer whose subject matter and technique have developed profoundly since the early sixties: this book draws together the different aspects of her narrative practice, and looks at the increasing flexibility of her narrative methods, both in terms of the kind of narrator used and in the structuring of plot events. The often distanced and ironic narration is discussed, and shown to reinforce Drabble’s recurrent themes – themes that include the effect of early family influence and heredity on free choice, the inexorable pressure of social changes, and the role of accident in destabilizing the confident individual. In the later novels people move in a world where they and others may be victims of a callous society, but may equally be guilty of condoning or promoting society’s worst trends. This study describes how narrative increasingly becomes ambiguous, offering then withholding support for the behaviour of the characters, and challenging the reader to think again.

Margaret Drabble is a writer whose subject matter and technique have developed profoundly since the early sixties: this book draws together the different aspects of her narrative practice, and looks at the increasing flexibility of her narrative methods, both in terms of the kind of narrator used and in the structuring of plot events. The often distanced and ironic narration is discussed, and shown to reinforce Drabble’s recurrent themes – themes that include the effect of early family influence and heredity on free choice, the inexorable pressure of social changes, and the role of accident in destabilizing the confident individual. In the later novels people move in a world where they and others may be victims of a callous society, but may equally be guilty of condoning or promoting society’s worst trends. This study describes how narrative increasingly becomes ambiguous, offering then withholding support for the behaviour of the characters, and challenging the reader to think again.

'Miss Delaney brings real people on to her stage...she is busy recording the wonder of life as she lives it' Kenneth Tynan, Observer A Taste of Honey became a sensational theatrical success when first produced in London by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958. Now established as a modern classic, this comic and poignant play, by a then nineteen-year-old working-class Lancashire girl, was praised at its London premiere by Graham Greene as having 'all the freshness of Mr Osborne's Look Back in Anger and a greater maturity.' It was made into a highly acclaimed film in 1962. The play is about the adolescent Jo and her relationship with her irresponsible mum, Helen, the Nigerian sailor who leaves Jo pregnant and Geoffrey, the homosexual art student who moves in to help Jo with the baby. It is also about Jo's unshakeable optimism throughout her trials. This story of a mother and daughter relationship (imitated in many other modern British plays since), set in working-class Manchester, continues to engage new generations of audiences.

Set between 1860 and 1880, four deserters bring the body of a dead soldier back to his home town, a mining community in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by snow. Their leader, Serjeant Musgrave, plans to hold the town at gunpoint and confront its people with the realities of warfare. Arden''s play questions the military principle of "Obey or suffer" and the cruelty and futility of war.Serjeant Musgrave''s Dance was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1959.This volume contains expert notes on the author''s life and work, historical and political background to the play and a glossary of difficult words and phrases.

Set between 1860 and 1880, four deserters bring the body of a dead soldier back to his home town, a mining community in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by snow. Their leader, Serjeant Musgrave, plans to hold the town at gunpoint and confront its people with the realities of warfare. Arden's play questions the military principle of "Obey or suffer" and the cruelty and futility of war. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1959.This volume contains expert notes on the author's life and work, historical and political background to the play and a glossary of difficult words and phrases.

The original version of Wesker's imaginiative reworking of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. With notes and commentary by Glenda Leeming.

Margaret Drabble is a writer whose subject matter and technique have developed profoundly since the early sixties: this book draws together the different aspects of her narrative practice, and looks at the increasing flexibility of her narrative methods, both in terms of the kind of narrator used and in the structuring of plot events. The often distanced and ironic narration is discussed, and shown to reinforce Drabble’s recurrent themes – themes that include the effect of early family influence and heredity on free choice, the inexorable pressure of social changes, and the role of accident in destabilizing the confident individual. In the later novels people move in a world where they and others may be victims of a callous society, but may equally be guilty of condoning or promoting society’s worst trends. This study describes how narrative increasingly becomes ambiguous, offering then withholding support for the behaviour of the characters, and challenging the reader to think again.

Margaret Drabble is a writer whose subject matter and technique have developed profoundly since the early sixties: this book draws together the different aspects of her narrative practice, and looks at the increasing flexibility of her narrative methods, both in terms of the kind of narrator used and in the structuring of plot events. The often distanced and ironic narration is discussed, and shown to reinforce Drabble’s recurrent themes – themes that include the effect of early family influence and heredity on free choice, the inexorable pressure of social changes, and the role of accident in destabilizing the confident individual. In the later novels people move in a world where they and others may be victims of a callous society, but may equally be guilty of condoning or promoting society’s worst trends. This study describes how narrative increasingly becomes ambiguous, offering then withholding support for the behaviour of the characters, and challenging the reader to think again.

'Miss Delaney brings real people on to her stage...she is busy recording the wonder of life as she lives it' Kenneth Tynan, Observer A Taste of Honey became a sensational theatrical success when first produced in London by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958. Now established as a modern classic, this comic and poignant play, by a then nineteen-year-old working-class Lancashire girl, was praised at its London premiere by Graham Greene as having 'all the freshness of Mr Osborne's Look Back in Anger and a greater maturity.' It was made into a highly acclaimed film in 1962. The play is about the adolescent Jo and her relationship with her irresponsible mum, Helen, the Nigerian sailor who leaves Jo pregnant and Geoffrey, the homosexual art student who moves in to help Jo with the baby. It is also about Jo's unshakeable optimism throughout her trials. This story of a mother and daughter relationship (imitated in many other modern British plays since), set in working-class Manchester, continues to engage new generations of audiences.

Set between 1860 and 1880, four deserters bring the body of a dead soldier back to his home town, a mining community in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by snow. Their leader, Serjeant Musgrave, plans to hold the town at gunpoint and confront its people with the realities of warfare. Arden''s play questions the military principle of "Obey or suffer" and the cruelty and futility of war.Serjeant Musgrave''s Dance was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1959.This volume contains expert notes on the author''s life and work, historical and political background to the play and a glossary of difficult words and phrases.