The Long Road to War
The linen half-curtain, on which in the following the titles of the scenes are projected, opens and Mother Courage’s cart is rolled forward against the movement of the revolve.
The cart is a cross between a military vehicle and a general store. A sign affixed to the side of it says: ‘Second Finnish Regiment’ and another ‘Mother Courage, Groceries’. On the canvas Swedish pork sausages are displayed next to a flag with a price tag indicating ‘Four Florins’. The cart will undergo several changes in the course of the chronicle. There will be sometimes more, sometimes less merchandise hanging on it, the canvas will be dirtier or cleaner, the letters on the signs will be faded and then again freshly painted, depending on the state of business. Now, at the start, it is clean and richly covered with wares.
The cart is pulled by the two sons. They sing the second stanza of Mother Courage’s Business Song: ‘Captains, how can you make them face it – / March off to death without a brew?’ On the box sit dumb Kattrin, playing the Jew’s harp, and Mother Courage. Courage is sitting in lazy comfort, swaying with the cart and yawning. Everything, including her one backward glance, indicates that the cart has come a long way.
We had conceived of the song as a dramatic entrance, lusty and cocky – we had the last scene of the play in mind. But Weigel saw it as a realistic business song and suggested that it be used to picture the long journey to the war. Such are the ideas of great actors.
Once this was settled, it seemed to us that by showing the business woman’s long journey to the war zone we would be showing clearly enough that she was an active and voluntary participant in the war. But certain reviews and many discussions with persons who had seen the play showed that a good many people regarded Mother Courage merely as a representative of the ‘little people’ who ‘become involved in the war in spite of themselves’, who are ‘helpless victims of the war’, and so on. A deeply engrained habit leads the theatregoer to pick out the more emotional utterances of the characters and overlook everything else. Like descriptions of landscapes in novels, references to business are received with boredom. The ‘business atmosphere’ is simply the air one breathes and as such requires no special mention. And so, regardless of all our efforts to represent the war as an aggregate of business deals, the discussions showed time and time again that people regarded it as a timeless abstraction.
Too Short can be Too Long
The two stanzas of the opening song plus the pause between them during which the cart rolls silently along, take up a certain amount of time, too much time it seemed to us at first in rehearsal. But when we cut the second stanza, the prologue seemed longer, and when we prolonged the pause between the stanzas, it seemed shorter.
[…]
1
The business woman Anna Fierling, known as Mother Courage, encounters the Swedish army
Recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. Mother Courage introduces her mixed family, acquired in various theatres of war, to a sergeant. The canteen woman defends her sons against the recruiters with a knife. She sees that her sons are listening to the recruiters and predicts that the sergeant will meet an early death. To make her children afraid of the war, she has them draw black crosses as well. Thanks to a small business deal, she nevertheless loses her brave son. And the sergeant leaves her with a prophecy:
‘Like the war to nourish you?
Have to feed it something too.’
Overall arrangement
Recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. On the empty stage the sergeant and the recruiter are standing right front on the lookout, complaining in muffled voices of the difficulty of finding cannon fodder for their general. The city of which the sergeant speaks is assumed to be in the orchestra. Mother Courage’s cart appears and the recruiters’ mouths water at the sight of the young men. The sergeant cries ‘Halt!’ and the cart stops.
Mother Courage introduces her mixed family, acquired in various theatres of war, to a sergeant. The professionals of commerce and of war meet, the war can start. At the sight of the military, the Fierlings may hesitate for a moment as though afraid: the soldiers of their own side are also enemies; the army gives, but it also takes. Mother Courage’s ‘Morning, sergeant’ is spoken in the same curt, military monotone as his ‘Morning, all.’ Climbing down from her cart, she makes it clear that she regards showing her papers as a formality, superfluous among professionals (’All right, we’ll run through the whole routine’). She introduces her little family, acquired in various theatres of war, in a jocular tone: she puts on a bit of a ‘Mother Courage’ act.
The cart and the children are on the left, the recruiters on the right. Mother Courage crosses over with her tin box full of papers. She has been summoned, but she is also sallying forth to scout and do business. She describes her children from the other side of the stage, as though better able to take them in from a distance. The recruiter makes forays behind her back, stalking the sons, tempting them. The pivotal point is in the lines: ‘I bet you could use a good pistol, or a belt buckle?’ and ‘I could use something else.’
The canteen woman defends her sons against the recruiters with a knife. The sergeant leaves her standing there and goes over to the sons, followed by the recruiter. He thumps their chests, feels their calves. He goes back and stands before Mother Courage: ‘Why aren’t they in the army?’ The recruiter has stayed with the sons: ‘Let’s see if you’re a chicken.’ Mother Courage runs over, thrusts herself between the recruiter and her son: ‘He’s a chicken.’ The recruiter goes over to the sergeant (on the right) and complains: ‘He was crudely offensive’; Mother Courage snatches her Eilif away. The sergeant tries to reason, but Mother Courage pulls a knife and stands there in a rage, guarding her sons.
Mother Courage sees that her sons are listening to the recruiter and predicts that the sergeant will meet an early death. Again she goes over to the sergeant (’Give me your helmet’). Her children follow her and look on, gaping. The recruiter makes a flank movement, comes up to Eilif from behind and speaks to him.
When after some hesitation the sergeant has drawn his black cross, the children, satisfied, go back to the cart, but the recruiter follows them. And when Mother Courage turns (’I’ve got to take advantage’), she sees the recruiter between her sons; he has his arms around their shoulders.
To make her children afraid of the war, Mother Courage has them draw black crosses as well. The rebellion in her own ranks is in full swing. She runs angrily behind her cart to paint black crosses for her children. When she returns to the cart’s shaft with the helmet, the recruiter, grinning, leaves the children to her and goes back (right) to the sergeant. When the sombre ceremony is over, Mother Courage goes to the sergeant, returns his helmet, and with fluttering skirts climbs up on the seat of the cart. The sons have harnessed themselves, the cart starts moving. Mother Courage has mastered the situation.
Because of a small business deal, she nevertheless loses her brave son. But the sergeant has only been half defeated; on the recruiter’s advice, he offers to make a purchase. Electrified, Mother Courage climbs down from the cart and the sergeant draws her off left behind the cart. While the deal is in progress, the recruiter takes the harness off Eilif and leads him away. Kattrin sees this, climbs down from the cart and tries in vain to call her mother’s attention to Eilif’s disappearance. But Mother Courage is deep in her bargaining. Only after she has snapped her moneybag shut does she notice his absence. For a moment she has to sit down on the cart shaft, still holding her buckles. Then she angrily flings them into the cart, and the family, with one less member, moves gloomily off.
And the sergeant leaves her with a prophecy. Laughing, he predicts that if she wants to live off the war, she will also have to give the war its due.
[…]
The recruiters
The empty stage of the prologue was transformed into a specific locality by means of a few clumps of wintry grass marking t
he edge of a highway. Here the military men stand waiting, freezing in their armour.
The great disorder of war begins with order, disorganisation with organisation. The troublemakers have troubles of their own. We hear complaints to the effect that it takes intelligence to get a war started. The military are businessmen. The sergeant has a little book that he consults, the recruiter has a map to help him fight with geography. The fusion of war and business cannot be established too soon.
Grouping
There will be some difficulty in persuading the actors playing the sergeant and the recruiter to stay together and in one place until Mother Courage’s cart appears. In our theatre, groups always show a strong tendency to break up, partly because each actor believes he can heighten audience interest by moving about and changing his position, and partly because he wants to be alone, so as to divert the attention of the audience from the group to himself. But there is no reason not to leave the military men together; on the contrary, both the image and the argument would be impaired by a change of position.
Changes of position
Positions should be retained as long as there is no compelling reason for changing them – and a desire for variety is not a compelling reason. If one gives in to a desire for variety, the consequence is a devaluation of all movement on the stage; the spectator ceases to look for a specific meaning behind each movement, he stops taking movement seriously. But, especially at the crucial points in the action, the full impact of a change of position must not be weakened. Legitimate variety is obtained by ascertaining the crucial points and planning the arrangement around them. For example, the recruiters have been listening to Mother Courage; she has succeeded in diverting and entertaining them with her talk and so putting them in a good humour; so far there has been only one ominous circumstance: the sergeant has asked for her papers; but he has not examined them – his only purpose was to prolong their stay. She takes the next step (physically too: she goes up to the sergeant, takes hold of his belt buckle, and says: ‘I bet you could use a belt-buckle?’), she tries to sell them something, and that is when the recruiters spring into action. The sergeant says ominously: ‘I could use something else’ and along with the recruiter goes over to the sons at the cart’s shaft. The recruiters look the sons over as they would horses. The crucial point is accented when the sergeant goes back to Mother Courage, comes to a standstill before her, and asks: ‘Why are they dodging their military service?’ (The effect of such movements should not be weakened by having the actors speak during them.) If changes of position are needed to make certain developments clear to the audience, the movement must be utilised to express something significant for the action and for this particular moment; if nothing of the sort can be found, it is advisable to review the whole arrangement up to this point; it will probably be seen to be at fault, because the sole purpose of an arrangement is to express the action, and the action (it is to be hoped) involves a logical development of incidents, which the arrangement need only present.
On details
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.
A detail
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.
Pantomime
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.
Proportion
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.
Overall arrangement
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.