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Drama since 1945
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of the two ‘occupations’, Brenton draws on epic theatre conventions:
this is theatre of war, but with a deeply human concern for history’s
victims. At the end of the play, we return to the aftermath of the
Romans’ departure from Britain, as the native characters try to identify
something, maybe mythical maybe real, that they can hold on to from
the nightmare of their recent past. As so often in British history, the
past they evoke reverberates with the name of King Arthur:
CORDA What poem you got then? In your new trade?
FIRST COOK ’Bout a King!
[A silence]
CORDA Yes?
FIRST COOK King. Not any King.
CORDA No?
FIRST COOK No.
CORDA Did he have a Queen, this King?
SECOND COOK Yes. [He hesitates] Yes, oh very sexy –
FIRST COOK Look let me do the meat, right?
SECOND COOK Oh yeah, I do the vegetables even when it comes
to fucking poetry.
FIRST COOK Actually, he was a King who never was. His Government
was the people of Britain. His peace was as common as rain or
sun. His law was as natural as grass, growing in a meadow.
And there never was a Government, or a peace, or a law like
that. His sister murdered his father. His wife was unfaithful. He
died by the treachery of his best friend. And when he was
dead, the King who never was and the Government that never
was – were mourned. And remembered. Bitterly. And thought
of as a golden age, lost and yet to come.
CORDA Very pretty.
MORGANA What was his name?
FIRST COOK Any old name dear. [To the SECOND COOK] What
was his name?
SECOND COOK Right. Er – any old name. Arthur? Arthur?
Brenton’s plays have often confronted political themes: from
Brassneck (co-written with David Hare, 1973) – a panorama of industrial
capitalism – and The Churchill Play (1974), a dystopian view of the