ABSTRACT
The fiery strength active within Edwardian drama broke loose in the First World War. A surface was shattered to reveal territories of the brutal and the irrational, and force their acceptance. The setting is a dug-out near the German lines. The people are a young company commander, Stanhope; his officers; and Mason, the cook. In terms of colloquialisms, snatches of song, humour, peacetime reminiscences, moral laxity, courage and food, their talk distils the life-view of the 1914 war. Everything stands out against the war setting in rounded completion, like costumes before a black curtain. The only person fully conscious of this impingement of death on life is the protagonist Stanhope, who exists as a bridge, or medium, between the worlds of daylight existence and war, or death. War overstands the drama like the curse on the House of Atreus or the Ghost in Hamlet, fearful and fascinating.
