ABSTRACT
In this essay I’m interested in a persistent mark of modern literary theatre: violence off the stage. From Baron Tusenbach (shot in a duel in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Moscow, January 1901) to the equally philosophical, equally goaded Stephen Andrews (killed in a train crash in David Hare’s A Map of the World, London, January 1983), the corpses have piled up in the wings of our theatres. The carnage extends from Tennessee Williams eastwards to Maxim Gorky, and from Ibsen south to Lorca; nor does it respect political and stylistic boundaries. In 1949, to take the example of a good year, the first nights which went into the history books were those of Death of a Salesman, a liberal tragedy in demotic prose; The Cocktail Party, a high-Anglican drawing-room drama in verse; and the Brecht-Weigel production of Mother Courage, the moment of crystallization of epic theatre. The three evenings can have had little in common except that in each the onstage apprehension of an offstage death (Willy’s, Celia’s, Swiss Cheese’s) formed one of the show’s most decisive and famous moments.
