The Plays

Description

This first complete edition of Lawrence's plays contains eight full-length plays and two fragments. Six of the plays - A Collier's Friday Night, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, The Merry-go-Round, The Married Man, The Fight for Barbara and The Daughter-in-Law - were written between 1909 and 1913, the period when Lawrence was establishing himself as a writer. They are arguably among his very best early work. Yet Lawrence never saw a play of his own on the stage. Only two were performed in his lifetime, and only three were published: the play often regarded as his best, The Daughter-in-Law, remaining unpublished until 1965. Up to now, the plays have existed only in faulty or incomplete texts; this edition, drawn from Lawrence's own surviving manuscripts and typescripts, makes it possible for the first time to read and to stage Lawrence's plays as he wrote them. Published in two volumes.

"The edition provides complete texts of the plays based on careful scrutiny of the extant manuscripts and typescripts... The Introduction offers a wealth of interesting material... The new Cambridge edition of The Plays provides a model for scholarly publishing. It provides authoritative texts and everything else that the student of Lawrence's drama could require for a study of the plays." Nora Stovel, The Book Reviews