Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht, John Willett

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350178533
• eBook ISBN: 9781350178557
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

This new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine Hollander, which explores the following: * Contexts (Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin Michaelis)
* Themes (war; nature; capitalism)
* Dramatic devices (epic theatre)
* Production history and critical reception
* Academic debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist)
* Further study Widely regarded as Brecht's best work, Mother Courage and her Children was written in 1938-9 and received its premiere in Zurich in 1941. Mother Courage - a canteen woman serving with the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years War (1618-48) - follows the armies, selling provisions and liquor to the troops. Both her sons die in the war and her dumb daughter, Kattrin, is mortally wounded as she beats a drum to warn the town of Halle of an impending attack. Yet, all the while, Mother Courage continues her travels with her wagon, indomitably businesslike, calculating how she can make material profit from the war and turn conflict into capital.

Mother Courage and Her Children

Characters

Mother Courage

Kattrin, her dumb daughter

Eilif, the elder son

Swiss Cheese, the younger son

The Recruiter

The Sergeant

The Cook

The General

The Chaplain

The Armourer

Yvette Pottier

The Man with the Patch

Another Sergeant

The Colonel

A Clerk

A Young Soldier

An Older Soldier

A Peasant

The Peasant’s Wife

The Young Man

The Old Woman

Another Peasant

His Wife

The Young Peasant

The Ensign

Soldiers

A Voice

Scene One

Spring 1624. The Swedish Commander-in-Chief Count Oxenstierna is raising troops in Dalecarlia for the Polish campaign. The canteen woman Anna Fierling, known under the name of Mother Courage, loses one son.

Country road near a town.

A Sergeant and a Recruiter stand shivering.

Recruiter How can you muster a unit in a place like this? I’ve been thinking about suicide, sergeant. Here am I, got to find our commander four companies before the twelfth of the month, and people round here are so nasty I can’t sleep nights. S’pose I get hold of some bloke and shut my eye to his pigeon chest and varicose veins, I get him proper drunk, he signs on the line, I’m just settling up, he goes for a piss, I follow him to the door because I smell a rat; bob’s your uncle, he’s off like a flea with the itch. No notion of word of honour, loyalty, faith, sense of duty. This place has shattered my confidence in the human race, sergeant.

Sergeant It’s too long since they had a war here; stands to reason. Where’s their sense of morality to come from? Peace – that’s just a mess; takes a war to restore order. Peacetime, the human race runs wild. People and cattle get buggered about, who cares? Everyone eats just as he feels inclined, a hunk of cheese on top of his nice white bread, and a slice of fat on top of the cheese. How many young blokes and good horses in that town there, nobody knows; they never thought of counting. I been in places ain’t seen a war for nigh seventy years: folks hadn’t got names to them, couldn’t tell one another apart. Takes a war to get proper nominal rolls and inventories – shoes in bundles and corn in bags, and man and beast properly numbered and carted off, cause it stands to reason: no order, no war.

Recruiter Too true.

Sergeant Same with all good things, it’s a job to get a war going. But once it’s blossomed out there’s no holding it; folk start fighting shy of peace like punters what can’t stop for fear or having to tot up what they lost. Before that it’s war they’re fighting shy of. It’s something new to them.

Recruiter Hey, here’s a cart coming. Two tarts with two young fellows. Stop her, sergeant. If this one’s a flop I’m not standing around in your spring winds any longer, I can tell you.

Sound of a Jew’s-harp. Drawn by two young fellows, a covered cart rolls in. On it sit Mother Courage and her dumb daughter Kattrin.

Mother Courage Morning, sergeant.

Sergeant (blocking the way) Morning, all. And who are you?

Mother Courage Business folk. (Sings):

You captains, tell the drums to slacken

And give your infanteers a break:

It’s Mother Courage with her waggon

Full of the finest boots they make.

With crawling lice and looted cattle

With lumbering guns and straggling kit –

How can you flog them into battle

Unless you get them boots that fit?

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.

Captains, how can you make them face it –

Marching to death without a brew?

Courage has rum with which to lace it

And boil their souls and bodies through.

Their musket primed, their stomach hollow –

Captains, your men don’t look so well.

So feed them up and let them follow

While you command them into hell.

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.

Sergeant Halt! Who are you with, you trash?

The Elder Son Second Finnish Regiment.

Sergeant Where’s your papers?

Mother Courage Papers?

The Younger Son What, mean to say you don’t know Mother Courage?

Sergeant Never heard of her. What’s she called Courage for?

Mother Courage Courage is the name they gave me because I was scared of going broke, sergeant, so I drove me cart right through the bombardment of Riga with fifty loaves of bread aboard. They were going mouldy, it was high time, hadn’t any choice really.

Sergeant Don’t be funny with me. Your papers.

Mother Courage (pulling a bundle of papers from a tin box and climbing down off the cart) That’s all my papers, sergeant. You’ll find a whole big missal from Altötting in Bavaria for wrapping gherkins in, and a road map of Moravia, the Lord knows when I’ll ever get there, might as well chuck it away, and here’s a stamped certificate that my horse hasn’t got foot-and-mouth, only he’s dead worse luck, cost fifteen florins he did – not me luckily. That enough paper for you?

Sergeant You pulling my leg? I’ll knock that sauce out of you. S’pose you know you got to have a licence.

Mother Courage Talk proper to me, do you mind, and don’t you dare say I’m pulling your leg in front of my unsullied children, ’tain’t decent, I got no time for you. My honest face, that’s me licence with the Second Regiment, and if it’s too difficult for you to read there’s nowt I can do about it. Nobody’s putting a stamp on that.

Recruiter Sergeant, methinks I smell insubordination in this individual. What’s needed in our camp is obedience.

Mother Courage Sausage, if you ask me.

Sergeant Name.

Mother Courage Anna Fierling.

Sergeant You all called Fierling then?

Mother Courage What d’you mean? It’s me’s called Fierling, not them.

Sergeant Aren’t all this lot your children?

Mother Courage You bet they are, but why should they all have to be called the same, eh? (Pointing to her elder son.) For instance, that one’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Chronology
• Introduction
• Context
• Themes
• Dramatic devices: Epic theatre
• Production history
• Academic debate and critical reception
• Conclusion
• Further study
• MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN
• Editor’s Notes
• Appendix
• Copyright