Random gleanings on John Arden

K S SIVAKUMARAN

Somewhere in the 1970s I had to study a play by a British playwright for examination purposes. He was John Arden. And the play in particular was Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance. Although the play had a Victorian setting, it had an impact on me for its implicit social commentary.

Substantiating critical observations were made by eminent critics about the play. The purpose of this piece is to understand drama through Arden’s writing. My gleanings are primarily based on an article by Katherine J Worth. Her subject was ‘Revolutions in Modern English Drama’.

John Arden, as we learn, was partial towards the old, popular, primitive forms of English drama. Apparently he used Brechtian techniques in his plays. Brecht, as you already know was himself a great dramatist and poet from Germany. Arden was a traditionalist. He liked the 19th century melodramatic plays.

Just a little about Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance: The main event in the play is the dancing of a wild soldier round the gallows where the skeleton of his dead comrade hangs. One may say it is an anti-war play. The murder and execution in the war is a reminder of the horrors of war. Arden was preoccupied with the gallows because they stand as a symbol of rough and doubtful justice.

The critic explains that Arden’s plays often have the ‘look of ballads expanded to epic size’. He uses ballads sung and spoken for a variety of effects often for sardonic purpose. His characters come out of action in the play and address the audience directly.

The play is set in a mining town in the north of England. It is winter. A sergeant and three soldiers descend on a snowy town. They want to recruit soldiers.

This is a façade. They are in fact deserters, and their leader is obsessed with a feverish mission to awaken his countrymen to the futility and cruelty of war.

A nightmare atmosphere prevails in the play. It would be better to know what Arden himself felt about his play. This is what we gather from his Introduction to the play:

As opposed to Naturalism, his play is Realistic. The play is designed to be ‘Stylized’ especially in regard to scenes and costumes. Exact date of the play is deliberately not given. Most probably it happens between 1860 and 1880. The soldiers are regulars they are displeased with their occupation.

The protagonist Musgrave is between 30 and 40 years. He is tall and somewhat commanding and sardonic and not humorous at all. There are three other characters: Attar cliff (50), Hurst (20) and Sparky (20). These soldiers are not intelligent. But they are blood-thirsty, quick tempered, handsome, cynical and tough. There are also characters like the Dragon Officer, the Mayor and the Parson. Most of them want to bully others. Besides these people there is Walsh who is a strong man, physically and morally. “He knows what he is and entirely impatient with those who are not simple-minded.”

An interesting character in the play is the landlady. Arden describes her thus:

“She is a larger immobile widow of about fifty. She sits behind her bar and watches everything that happens. She is clearly a woman of deep sympathies and intelligence, which she disguises with the normal north-country sombre pessimism.”

His description of another female character is that she provokes the men. “Her emotional confusion expresses itself in a deliberately enigmatic style of speech and behaviour. Her voice is harsh.”

In understanding a writer’s work we should first consider what the writer’s intention in writing his or her work and not consider that the ‘author is dead’. This is my point of view. So, what is the meaning of the play as John Arden meant it?

Says he: “This is not a Nihilistic play. Nor does it advocate bloody revolution. I have endeavoured to write about the violence that is so evident in the world, and to do so through a story that is partly one of wish-fulfillment.”

If we read this play objectively, we would find that we sympathize with the role of Musgrave. If we look deeply into the characters the women play and what the soldier Attercliff stands for we can see that there is a moral suggested through these characters.

When we study modern drama, we find that in the last century there were a few in the west who have had a bearing on the colonized world particularly in countries like India and Lanka where the middle classes that carried a legacy of colonialism got entangled with values and philosophies that were alien to our native cultures.

Let us conclude this piece with this observation: If Harold Pinter represents a British version of the Drama of the Absurd, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, John Arden attempted a new fusion of poetry and realism under the influence of Bertrolt Brecht.