Scan barcode
A review by savaging
Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, Ralph Manheim, John Willett
5.0
The 5 stars are for the play Mother Courage and Her Children. The Life of Galileo, also in this volume, is a fine story about science and religion. But Mother Courage is spectacular.
The play takes place during the 30 Years War, a pointless and protracted bloodbath between Catholics and Protestants. Mother Courage makes a living as a small-beans war profiteer. She is powerful and dirty and cruel and cynical and beautiful and loves her children. She is maybe my favorite character from any play.
She sings at the end, still tugging along her cart:
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.
The play takes place during the 30 Years War, a pointless and protracted bloodbath between Catholics and Protestants. Mother Courage makes a living as a small-beans war profiteer. She is powerful and dirty and cruel and cynical and beautiful and loves her children. She is maybe my favorite character from any play.
She sings at the end, still tugging along her cart:
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.