pulling down the roof
by Douglas Messerli
The Brechtian-like work, complete with songs (music by Dudley Moore), is
a cry for passivism in a time when British and American society were moving
full-blown into more and more international conflicts. The incidents which
sparked Arden's play occurred in 1958 when British soldiers killed five
innocent people in Cypress. By placing his play in a period of pre-Kipling
redcoat soldiery, however, Arden shifted the theme of Serjeant Musgrave's Dance into a timeless statement of anti-war
sentiment.
The four soldiers—murderers, robbers, and deserters—descend upon a small
Northern English town with vague motives. The locals, none too happy for their
appearance, are in the midst of a mine strike, and are fearful that the
soldiers have been placed in their town to keep order should their negotiations
break down into riot. The local authorities (The Parson, The Constable, and The
Mayor) see their arrival as a chance to get rid of the mining agitators, if
only Musgrave and his men are able to get them to volunteer into the army.
The first half of the play is taken up with the local's suspicions and
the military men's attempt to allay them. But Musgrave is not at all easy with
his own intentions at creating anarchy. A highly religious man, he believes
still in duty—even if that sense of duty has shifted to disobedience. Most
importantly, he is man of conscience, horrified by the death of a young friend
from the very town which they are visiting, a soldier whose skeleton is among
their processions.
In this atmosphere of suspicion and opportunism, things do not at all go
right. The soldiers waver in their obedience to the man they have nicknamed
"God." And their own desires, particularly their admiration for a
local "soldiers whore," Annie, get in the way of Musgrave's mission.
Although Hurst and Attercliffe spurn Annie's sexual attentions, the younger
Private Sparky lusts after her, and is even willing, so it appears, to desert
the deserters, asking Annie to hide him until they might run off together. The
other two, overhearing his intentions, try to prevent him, accidently killing
him on the point of his own bayonet.
Hanging the local boy Billy's skeleton from a plinth, Musgrave tries,
with weapons at the ready, to find volunteers for his anti-army. Annie,
however, reveals the murder of one of their own, as Musgrave's lofty intentions
begin to crumble, Hurst shouting at him: "You've pulled your own roof
down!" Suddenly loyal dragoons, called for in case of a riot, appear,
arresting the deserters.
The last scene reveals the imprisoned men, scolded by the innkeeper Mrs.
Hitchcock for their lack of understanding. The men's only hope is that when
they are hung, a seed from their actions may begin an orchard, that something
might grow out of their ineffective but well-meaning words.
In many respects, Arden's play is a brilliant statement locked away in
its own level-minded cynicism. The values it declares are perhaps admirable—a
complete shake-up of the militarist British world—but its hero, Serjeant
Musgrave, still a product of that world, is not strong enough in intelligence
and will to transform it. Arden may argue for a revolt against the class
system, but such a revolt can never occur, he reveals, through the principles
on which that system was based—God, duty, honor. Musgrave presents himself only
as another kind of God, not a true alternative to the system which destroyed
his own faith.
Los
Angeles, April 14, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment