Brecht Collected Plays: 6
Good Person of Szechwan; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui; Mr Puntila and his Man Matti
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Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.
This sixth volume of Brecht's Collected Plays contains three plays he wrote while in exile during the early stages of the Second World War. In Brecht's famous parable The Good Person of Szechwan, the gods come to earth in search of a thoroughly good person. No
one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of
gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a
tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in
a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a savage satire on the rise of Hitler, wittily transposed to gangland Chicago. Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written in 1940 during Brecht's exile in Finland, Puntila is one of his
greatest creations, to be ranked alongside Galileo and Mother Courage.
A hard-drinking Finnish landowner, Puntila suffers from a divided
personality: when drunk he is human and humane; when sober, surly and
self-centred. The play contains some of the best comedy Brecht wrote
for the theatre.
The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theater director. An influential theater practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble-the post-war theater company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel-with its internationally acclaimed productions.
More by Bertolt Brecht
John Willett
Translated by
John Willett (1917-2002) was the greatest English language authority on Brecht the writer and man of the theatre. The foremost translator and editor of Brecht's drama, poetry, letters, diaries, theatrical essays and fiction, Willett produced a dozen volumes for Methuen Drama on the greatest modern German writer.
Ralph Manheim
Translated by
Ralph Manheim (b. New York, 1907) was an American translator of German and French literature. His translating career began with a translation of Mein Kempf in which Manheim set out to reproduce Hitler's idiosyncratic, often grammatically aberrant style. In collaboration with John Willett, Manheim translated the works of Bertolt Brecht. The Pen/Ralph Manheim Medal for translation, inaugurated in his name, is a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation. He himself won its predecessor, the PEN translation prize, in 1964. Manheim died in Cambridge in 1992. He was 85.
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