This is the first major book-length study for four decades to examine
the plays written by D. H. Lawrence, and the first ever book to give an
in-depth analysis of Lawrence's interaction with the theatre industry
during the early twentieth century. It connects and examines his
performance texts, and explores his reaction to a wide-range of theatre
(from the sensation dramas of working-class Eastwood to the ritual
performances of the Pueblo people) in order to explain Lawrence's
contribution to modern drama.
F. R. Leavis influentially labelled the writer 'D. H. Lawrence:
Novelist'. But this book foregrounds Lawrence's career as a playwright,
exploring unfamiliar contexts and manuscripts, and drawing particular
attention to his three most successful works: The Widowing of Mrs
Holroyd, The Daughter-in-Law, and A Collier's Friday Night. It
examines how Lawrence's novels are suffused with theatrical thinking,
revealing how Lawrence's fictions - from his first published work to the
last story that he wrote before his death - continually take inspiration
from the playhouse.
The book also argues that, although Lawrence has sometimes been
dismissed as a restrictively naturalistic stage writer, his overall
oeuvre shows a consistent concern with theatrical experiment, and
manifests affinities with the dramatic thinking of modernist figures
including Brecht, Artaud, and Joyce. In a final section, the book
includes contributions from influential theatre-makers who have taken
their own cue from Lawrence's work, and who have created original work
that consciously follows Lawrence in making working-class life central
to the public forum of the theatre stage.
