Authors: Bertolt Brecht
On the brightly lighted stage every detail, even the smallest, must of course be acted out to the full. This is especially true of actions which on our stage are glossed over almost as a matter of principle, such as
payment on conclusion of a sale. Here Weigel devised (for the sale of the buckle in 1, the sale of the capon in 2, the sale of drinks in 5 and 6, the handing out of the burial money in 12, etc.) a little gesture of her own: she audibly snaps shut the leather moneybag that she wears slung from her neck. It is indeed difficult in rehearsals to resist the impatience of actors who are in the habit of trying to sweep an audience off its feet, and to work out the details painstakingly and inventively in accordance with the principle of epic theatre:
one thing after another
. Even minute details are very revealing, e.g. the fact that when the recruiters step up to her sons and feel their muscles as if they were horses, Mother Courage displays maternal pride for a moment, until the sergeant’s question (’Why are they dodging their military service?’) shows her the danger their qualities put them in: then she rushes between her sons and the recruiters. The pace at rehearsals should be slow, if only to make it possible to work out details; determining the pace of the performance is another matter and comes later.
In pulling a knife, Mother Courage shows no savagery. She is merely showing how far she will go in defending her children. The performer must show that Mother Courage is familiar with such situations and knows how to handle them.
Mother Courage has her children draw lots
. Only by a mild tirade and by eloquently averting her face when Swiss Cheese draws his slip from the helmet – in other words by a slightly exaggerated display of impartiality (see for yourself, no sleight-of-hand, no tricks) does the actress show that Mother Courage knows she has been tampering with fate – otherwise she fully believes what she says, namely, that in certain situations certain of her children’s qualities and defects could be fatal.
Mother Courage predicts that the sergeant will meet an early death
. We discovered that Mother Courage had to turn around towards Eilif before stepping up to the sergeant to let him draw his lot. Otherwise it would not have been understood that she does this in order to frighten her warlike son away from the war.
The belt-buckle deal
. Mother Courage loses her son to the recruiter because she can’t resist the temptation to sell a belt buckle. After climbing down from the cart to bring the sergeant the buckle, she must at first show a certain amount of distrust by looking around anxiously for the recruiter. Once the sergeant, seizing the string of buckles, has
drawn her behind the cart, her distrust shifts to the area of business. When she goes to get schnapps for the sergeant, she takes the buckle, which has not yet been paid for, out of his hands; and she bites into the coin. The sergeant is dismayed at her distrust.
If the distrust at the beginning were omitted, we should have a stupid, utterly uninteresting woman, or a person with a passion for business but no experience. The distrust must not be absent, it must merely be too weak to do any good.
The recruiter must act out the scene where he removes the harness from Eilif (’women’ll be after you like flies’). He is freeing him from his yoke.
He has forced a florin on him; holding out his fist with the florin in it in front of him, Eilif goes off as if in a trance.
Weigel showed a masterful sense of proportion in playing Mother Courage’s reaction to the abduction of her brave son. She showed dismay rather than horror. In becoming a soldier, her son has not been lost, he is merely in danger. And she will lose other children. To show that she knows very well why Eilif is no longer with her, Weigel let her string of belt buckles drag on the ground and threw it angrily into the cart after holding it between her legs while sitting on the shaft for a few moments to rest. And she does not look her daughter in the face as she puts her into Eilif’s harness.
2
Before the fortress of Wallhof Mother Courage meets her brave son again
Mother Courage sells provisions at exorbitant prices in the Swedish camp; while driving a hard bargain over a capon, she makes the acquaintance of an army cook who is to play an important part in her life. The Swedish general brings a young soldier into his tent and
honours him for his bravery. Mother Courage recognises her lost son in the young soldier; taking advantage of the meal in Eilif’s honour, she gets a steep price for her capon. Eilif relates his heroic deed and Mother Courage, while plucking her capon in the kitchen adjoining the tent, expresses opinions about rotten generals. Eilif does a sword dance and his mother answers with a song. Eilif hugs his mother and gets a slap in the face for putting himself in danger with his heroism
.
Mother Courage sells provisions at exorbitant prices in the Swedish camp before the fortress of Wallhof; while driving a hard bargain over a capon she makes the acquaintance of an army cook who is to play an important part in her life
. In this scene the movement occurs at the pivotal point (’You know what I’m going to do?’). The cook stops peeling his carrots, fishes a piece of rotten meat out of the garbage barrel and takes it over to the butcher’s block. Courage’s attempt at blackmail has failed.
The Swedish general brings a young soldier into his tent and makes a short speech commending him for his bravery
. A drumroll outside the tent announces the arrival of highly placed persons. It need not be clear whether the general drinks in order to honour the soldier or honours the soldier in order to drink. Meanwhile in the kitchen adjoining the tent the cook is preparing the meal. Courage stays right there with her capon.
Mother Courage recognises her lost son in the young soldier; taking advantage of the meal in Eilif’s honour, she get a steep price for her capon
. Mother Courage is overcome with joy at seeing her son, but not too overcome to turn Eilif’s reappearance to her business advantage. Meanwhile, the general gets the chaplain to bring him a spill to light his clay pipe.
Eilif relates his heroic deed and Mother Courage, while plucking her capon in the kitchen, expresses opinions about rotten generals
. At first the mother beams as she listens to the story, then her face clouds over, and in the end she throws her capon angrily into the tub in front of her. Resuming her work, she lets it be known what she thinks of the general; at the same time the general in the tent shows her son on the map what new deeds of heroism he needs him for.
Eilif does a sword dance and his mother answers with a song
. Eilif does his sword dance front stage near the partition between tent and kitchen. Mother Courage creeps up to the partition to finish the song. Then she goes back to her tub but remains standing.
Eilif hugs his mother and gets a slap in the face for putting himself in danger with his heroism
.
The bargaining over the capon between Courage and the cook served among other things to establish the beginning of their tender relationship. Both showed pleasure in the bargaining, and the cook expressed his admiration not only for her ready tongue but also for the shrewdness with which she exploited the honouring of her son for business purposes. Courage in turn was amused at the way the cook fished the chunk of rotten beef out of the garbage barrel with the tip of his long meat knife and carried it, carefully as though it were a precious object – though to be kept at a safe distance from one’s nose – over to his kitchen table. The actor Bildt played the scene brilliantly, making the cook, a Don Juan fired by budding passion, prepare the capon with theatrical elegance. This dumb show, it should be observed, was performed with restraint, so that it did not distract from the scene in the tent.
Bildt even took the trouble to acquire a Dutch accent with the help of a Dutchman.
[…]
The general was made into something of a cliché. Too much gruff bluster, and the peformance showed too little about the ruling class. It would have been better to make him an effete Swedish aristocrat, who honours the brave soldier as a matter of routine action, almost absently. If this had been done, his very entrance – he is drunk, supports himself on the guest of honour, and heads straight for the wine jug – would have been more instructive. As it was, one saw little more than rowdy drunkenness.
[…]
The general’s treatment of the chaplain is meant to show the role of religion in a war of religion. This was played rather crudely. The general has him bring the burning spill for his pipe and contemptuously pours wine over his coat; with his eyes on Eilif, the chaplain wipes the hem of his cassock, half protesting, half taking it as
a joke. He is not invited to sit down to table like the young murderer, nor is he given anything to drink. But what shows his position most clearly is the undignified way, resulting from the indignity of his position, with which he sits down at table and pours himself wine when the general leads the young soldier, in whose presence all this is enacted, to the map on the tent wall, thereby leaving the table unoccupied. This position is the source of the chaplain’s cynicism.
The brave son’s short sword dance must be executed with passion as well as ease. The young man is imitating a dance he has seen somewhere. It is not easy to make such things evident.
Costume: Eilif has a cheap, dented breastplate and is still wearing his frayed trousers. Not until scene 8 (the outbreak of peace) does he wear expensive clothing and gear; he dies rich.
During her angry speech about rotten generals Courage plucks her capon violently, giving the plucking a kind of symbolic significance. Brief bursts of laughter from the amused cook interrupt her blasphemies.
[…]
3
Mother Courage switches from the Lutheran to the Catholic camp and loses her honest son Swiss Cheese
Black-marketing in ammunition. Mother Courage serves a camp whore and warns her daughter not to take up with soldiers. While Courage flirts with the cook and the chaplain, dumb Kattrin tries on the whore’s hat and shoes. Surprise attack. First meal in the Catholic camp. Conversation between brother and sister and arrest of Siviss Cheese. Mother Courage mortgages her cart to the camp whore in order to ransom Swiss Cheese. Courage haggles over the amount of
the bribe. She haggles too long and hears the volley that lays Swiss Cheese low. Dumb Kattrin stands beside her mother to wait for the dead Swiss Cheese. For fear of giving herself away, Courage denies her dead son
.
During the whole scene the cart stands left with its shaft pointed towards the audience, so that those to the left of it are not seen by those on the right. Centre rear there is a flagpole, right front a barrel serving as a dining table. The scene is divided into four parts:
The surprise attack, The arrest of the honest son, The bargaining, The denial
. After the first two parts the half-curtain is drawn; after the third part the stage is darkened.
Black-marketing in ammunition
. Mother Courage enters from the left, followed by an ordnance officer who is trying to talk her into something. For a moment she stands front stage with him; after ‘Not at that price’, she turns away from him and sits down on a box near the cart, where Swiss Cheese is already sitting. The business is conducted in an undertone. Kattrin is called away from taking down the washing and goes behind the cart left with the ordnance officer. Courage has started mending Swiss Cheese’s pants; while working, she admonishes him to be honest. Returning from the other side of the cart, the ordnance officer takes him away with him. This and the following scenes have the tone of an idyll.
Mother Courage serves a camp whore and warns her daughter not to take up with soldiers
. Taking her sewing, Courage sits down with the Pottier woman. Kattrin listens to their conversation as she takes the washing off the line. After her song, Pottier, with a conspicuously whorish gait, goes behind the cart.
While Courage flirts with the cook and the chaplain, dumb Kattrin tries on the whore’s hat and shoes
. After some brief banter, Mother Courage leads her guests behind the cart for a glass of wine and they strike up a political conversation. After the inserted sentence ‘This is a war of faith’, the cook ironically starts singing the hymn ‘A stronghold sure’. This gives Kattrin time to try on Yvette’s hat and shoes.
Surprise attack
. The fixed point amid all the running and shouting of the surprise attack is the chaplain, who stands still and gets in everybody’s way. The rest of the arrangement follows from the printed text.
First meal in the Catholic camp
. The chaplain, now Mother
Courage’s potboy, joins the little family around the cooking pot; Swiss Cheese keeps slightly to one side; he wants to get away.
Conversation between brother and sister and arrest of Swiss Cheese
. The conversation between brother and sister takes place at the improvised dining table. When Kattrin sees the spy behind the cart, she tries to stop her brother from climbing into it. When Courage comes back with the chaplain, Kattrin runs towards her as far as the centre of the stage. Courage, the chaplain and Kattrin group themselves around the table, waiting for the Catholics.
Mother Courage tries to mortgage her wagon to the camp whore in order to ransom Swiss Cheese
. The chaplain runs to meet Courage; she is exhausted and he catches her in his arms in front of the cart. She quickly frees herself from his embrace, which has restored her strength a little, and starts thinking. Her plan is all ready when Pottier comes along with the colonel. Pottier leaves the colonel standing there, runs over to Courage, gives her the kiss of Judas, runs back to her cavalier, and then crawls avidly into the cart. Courage pulls her out, curses her, and sends her off with a push to negotiate over Swiss Cheese.