Brecht Collected Plays: 1: Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England; & 5 One Act Plays

by Bertolt Brecht, John Willett (Editor), Ralph Manheim (Editor), Eva Geiser (Translator), Jean Benedetti (Translator)

Overview

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.





Volume One of Brecht's Collected Plays contains Brecht's first performed stage works. Baal is inspired by Brecht's student life in Augsburg and follows the life of a young poet on the rocky road to inspiration; Drums in the Night was written in response to Brecht's experience as a medical orderly in the aftermath of the First World War; and In the Jungle of Cities, set in Chicago, covers the downfall of a family that has moved from the prairies to the jungle of the big city - award-winning in its day, it was described by a leading German daily as the play that 'has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision'.



This volume also includes The Life of Edward II of England, a ballad-like adaptation of Marlowe's original, and five one-act plays The Beggar or the Dead Dog, Driving Out The Devil, Lux in Tenebris, The Catch and A Respectable Wedding in which the bourgeois proceedings take a hilarious turn for the unseemly.



The translators are Jean Benedetti, Eva Geiser and Ernest Borneman, Richard Grünberger, Michael Hamburger, Gerhard Nellhaus, Peter Tegel and John Willett. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408162071
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/07/2015
Series:	World Classics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists and theatre practitioners of the twentieth century whose work has had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera, The Life of Galileo, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and critical writings have had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.


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 (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.
Jean Benedetti was born in 1930 and educated in England and France. He trained as an actor and teacher at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, returning in 1970 as Principal of the College until 1987. His published translations include Brecht's Edward II and A Respectable Wedding and Georges Michel's A Sunday Walk. From 1979 to 1987 he was chairman of the Theatre Education Committee of the International Theatre Institute (UNESCO).

Table of Contents

Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England;&5 One Act Play: A Respectable Wedding, The Beggar or the Dead Dog, Driving out a Devil, Lux in Tenebris and The Catch.