The Old Tune
Encyclopedia
The Old Tune is a free translation of Robert Pinget
’s 1960 play La Manivelle (The Crank) in which Samuel Beckett
transformed Pinget’s Paris
ians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC
on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray
directed Jack MacGowran
(Cream) and Patrick Magee
(Gorman).
For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ
Beckett selected The Bluebells of Scotland, suggested by the bank of bluebells mentioned near the start of the play.
, which found Beckett's approval. In 1960 Pinget's play Lettre Morte was presented on a double bill with Krapp's Last Tape
at the Théâtre Récamier in Paris.
When Randolph Goodman interviewed the French playwright in 1967, Pinget explained that Beckett
This was not too much of a stretch as Pinget’s original was written in “highly colloquial
French” in the first place. Beckett already admired Pinget’s work – he had, for example, insisted that his friends. the Reaveys attend a performance of the French production on which he had been working – and “used to cite this play as an illustration of how important the proper use of music could be to a playwright, especially one who was cognizant of the importance of unifying the two disciples.”
“By transforming the French into Irish rhythmic prose, Beckett went beyond translation to make the play his own, although it is less elusive than the drama which constitutes his fully original work. It is easy to see what attracted him to the text, two men on the margins of society, facing isolation and semantic memory loss, which disrupts communication.”
The roar of an engine butts into their conversation, the first of many to come. They both bemoan the youth of today and remember a time before cars. Gorman remembers “barouche
s”. Cream recalls “broughams
”. They can’t agree over the make of the first car they actually did see: Gorman thinks it was a “Pic-Pic” but Cream insists it was a “Dee Dyan Button”. Each man extols his recollected details with utter conviction. They do, however, manage to agree upon the owner of the said vehicle, a vintner
called Bush.
The effect of modern life on the environment takes the men back to a particularly hot summer in 1895. Gorman talks about watering the roof with a garden hose
but Cream insists a hose would have been a luxury item
until after World War I
. Gorman accedes, acknowledging that his family didn’t even having running water
until 1925. They move onto the condition of modern garden
s especially the prevalent trend for erecting gazebo
s, the build quality of which they both find to be questionable.
Cream proposes they have a smoke, but can’t find his cigarette
s, accuses his daughter of going through his pockets, then comes across the packet. Neither man has a light however. They try to catch the eye of a passer-by but with no joy. Gorman asks Cream if he remembers the “black shag
” they used to get when they were in the armed forces
. He does. Predictably they begin to reminisce about the War.
Gorman says he enlisted in 1906 with “The Foot” at Chatham. He calls to mind a public house called Morrison’s. Cream says he must be mistaken, it was Caterham
and the pub was Harrison’s Oak Lounge; he is doubly sure of this because he used to take his wife there on holiday. Gorman gives way on the pub’s name but is still convinced it was Chatham. Cream refuses to cave, insisting that “The Gunners” were billeted at Chatham. The two become muddled. Cream is sure that Gorman is thinking about the mobilization
. It that were the case the place name would be Chester
which is where Morrison’s pub seemingly was.
They are both more alone than they want to admit, struggling to remember, fighting to find common ground and yet even when they seem to it turns into a new battlefield for these two but they keep soldiering on.
Gorman becomes nostalgic for the War: “[A]h those are happy memories.” Clearly Cream’s remembrances are not as ‘rose tinted’ though but he won’t even give in on this generality.
The roar of an engine distracts them and the next thing he knows Gorman has changed the subject: he is asking after Cream’s son, who is a judge
. The judge, it turns out, is plagued by rheumatism
, which in Gorman’s opinion is an hereditary disease
. Cream can’t agree saying that personally he has never been troubled by it. From all accounts Gorman is thinking about his own mother, even though he is doesn’t actually suffer himself either; his assertions are mere opinion presented as fact. He wonders though about a society that can build “atom rockets” and yet has still to discover a cure for rheumatic disorders.
He notes that Cream’s son has been in the newspapers recently concerning the “Carlton affair”. Cream corrects him. It was the “Barton affair.” Gorman is not convinced. He insists: “The Carlton affair, Mr Cream, the sex fiend
, on the Assizes.” Cream says his son works for the Circuit Court – which deals with civil, rather than criminal, cases – and tries to think of the name of the judge who has been presiding over this high-profile case but can’t. Gorman obviously is not well informed on legal issues and admits it; his only experience of judicial matters has been to witnesses his niece’s divorce
proceedings some thirty years earlier.
They begin to talk about families. Cream’s grandson, Herbert – the judge’s son – died in infancy; his daughter has two daughters of her own though. It’s at this point Gorman learns that Cream’s wife has been dead for twenty years. Gorman gets confused about the names of Cream’s daughters, Daisy and Bertha, and where Bertha and her husband live. Gorman thinks they live near the slaughterhouse
but Cream says Gorman must be thinking of the man’s brother, the nurseryman
. This contradicts what he himself said earlier when he referred to Bertha’s husband, a man called Moody, as a nurseryman. He also now states she has two sons, one of which he calls Hubert confusing the boy with Herbert the boy his son, the judge, lost in infancy. He can’t remember the name of his other grandson.
Footsteps approach and Gorman tries to get them a light, unsuccessfully again.
The conversation shifts onto financial matters. Gorman has always believed that Cream’s daughter, whom he mistakenly calls his daughter-in-law, had “private means
” but it seems not; despite advise to invest in land, all the money had been put into the bank and lost during the War. Cream jokes that one day people will be building on the moon, which causes Gorman to wonder if Cream is “against progress.” He says not but thinks it lunacy
to waste resources on the moon and can envisage nations fighting over it in years to come.
For some reason this reminds Cream of his father. Gorman says he knew him to be a straight-talking man. He tries to remember when the man sat on the town council
and plumps for 1895, “the year of the great frost”. Cream corrects him, it was 1893, the year he’d just turned ten. Gorman doesn’t object and proceeds with his recollection of the time Cream’s father “went hell for leather for the mayor
”, a man called Overend, which he now asserts was in April 1896 despite Cream insisting that his father didn’t join the council till January 1897. Gorman then says that the event he was referring to must have been instigated by another person altogether. It transpires the incident didn’t involve the mayor at all; rather it was something to do with a local butcher
, Oscar Bliss.
This causes the men to reminisce over people they used to know in the past: Helen Bliss, the butcher’s daughter; Rosie Plumpton, now deceased; Molly Berry; Eva Hart, whose brother married Gertie Crumplin who, in her day, had been a “great one for the lads”; Nelly Crowther, the daughter of Simon and Mary, who died in an explosion in a car along which injured a soldier, John Fitzball; John’s aunt, “the high and mighty” Miss Hester, and her niece, Miss Victoria, who was due to marry an American and who had a brother – the aforementioned John – who died of injuries sustained from the explosion a year or two later.
Throughout their conversation the roar of engines has continually interrupted them. Cream has had enough and prepares to go, aware that he’s keeping Gorman from his work. Gorman persuades him to stay and starts looking for his cigarettes. Cream says he should start his barrel organ again which he does. For a few moments it fights with the street noise and then rises triumphantly at the end of the play.
, who had a similar upbringing to his, and the verbal excesses of Seán O'Casey
, whose background could hardly have been different, to transform Pinget’s original work into a pastiche
, if not a parody
of the whole Irish comic tradition of linguistic stereotyping; the Irishman as caricature
.
In 1934, Beckett, in a review of O’Casey’s Windfalls, which includes two one-act plays, writes:
Gorman and Cream’s worlds are crumbling around them just as their pasts and memories are doing. Their speech is colloquial, their outlook parochial. The modern world is passing them by – literally – motor vehicles and the young on the street. Despite Beckett’s conscious efforts to gaelicise the work the themes at its core are universal. Gorman’s line, “You had to work for your living in those days, it wasn’t at six you knocked off, nor at seven neither, eight it was, eight o’clock, yes by God,” could be slipped almost unnoticed into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch
– made famous by Monty Python
– or just as easily Neil Simon
’s The Sunshine Boys
.
There is a clear contrast between O’Casey’s linguistic pyrotechnics and the limited,
impoverished lives of the characters that utter his rich hyperbole
; the result is both comic and tragic but it is clear that Beckett is in his debt. There is a touch of personal nostalgia here too: Beckett makes specific reference to the "Dee Dyan Button," the first car that Cream and Gorman ever saw, which was actually the De Dion-Bouton
; Beckett's father was the first to own one in Ireland. It is the kind of detail Mercier and Camier
could easily have squabbled about on their trek through and round about Dublin.
Critics tend to by-pass the piece, treating it as Beckett-lite, which in many ways it is, but it also demonstrates something of a nostalgic looking-back from Beckett’s own point of view, not simply to the Dublin he once knew but to a style of writing that he would never return to again after this year, 1960, the same year he completed his own Happy Days
.
If ever John Donne
had in mind some specific “emergent occasion” then this was probably the last thing he would have thought of: two men, each waiting for their own particular “bell [to] toll”, each “an island, entire of itself” shouting across the strait to another man on another island barely able to hear a word the other is saying.
5.17, (March-April 1961) and first presented off-Broadway
at the Royal Playhouse, New York
on 23 March 1961, directed by Steve Chernak with Sly Travers (Gorman) and Jack Delmonte (Cream).
The play was not well received, apart from a review in The Village Voice
by John Talmer:
The play did not die however.
Robert Pinget
Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...
’s 1960 play La Manivelle (The Crank) in which Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
transformed Pinget’s Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
ians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray
Barbara Bray
Barbara Bray was a British translator and critic.An identical twin , she was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, where she read English, with papers in French and Italian...
directed Jack MacGowran
Jack MacGowran
John Joseph "Jack" MacGowran was an Irish character actor, whose last film role was as the alcoholic director Burke Dennings in The Exorcist. He was probably best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.-Stage career:...
(Cream) and Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee (actor)
Patrick Magee was a Northern Irish actor best known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as his appearances in horror films and in Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.-Early life:He was born Patrick McGee in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern...
(Gorman).
For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ
Barrel organ
A barrel organ is a mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated...
Beckett selected The Bluebells of Scotland, suggested by the bank of bluebells mentioned near the start of the play.
Background
In 1957, Pinget, who at the time was close friends with Beckett, undertook a translation of Beckett's radio play All That FallAll That Fall
All That Fall is a one-act radio play by Samuel Beckett produced following a request from the BBC. It was written in English and completed in September 1956. The autograph copy is titled Lovely Day for the Races...
, which found Beckett's approval. In 1960 Pinget's play Lettre Morte was presented on a double bill with Krapp's Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...
at the Théâtre Récamier in Paris.
When Randolph Goodman interviewed the French playwright in 1967, Pinget explained that Beckett
- “offered to put my play into English. As he only translates his own material, I considered his offer a great kindness. Beckett wanted to set the scene of the play in Dublin and turn my Parisians into Irishmen; I gave him my permission to do so. It is a model translation.”
This was not too much of a stretch as Pinget’s original was written in “highly colloquial
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
French” in the first place. Beckett already admired Pinget’s work – he had, for example, insisted that his friends. the Reaveys attend a performance of the French production on which he had been working – and “used to cite this play as an illustration of how important the proper use of music could be to a playwright, especially one who was cognizant of the importance of unifying the two disciples.”
“By transforming the French into Irish rhythmic prose, Beckett went beyond translation to make the play his own, although it is less elusive than the drama which constitutes his fully original work. It is easy to see what attracted him to the text, two men on the margins of society, facing isolation and semantic memory loss, which disrupts communication.”
Synopsis
The play opens to the sound of street noises. An old organ grinder, Gorman, is having a fight with his equally dilapidated barrel organ. It plays for a bit, he thumps it; it plays a few bars more and then it gives up the ghost. He curses, fiddles with the workings and gets a bit more life out of it. As he manages this, he hears another’s voice calling him. It is his old friend, Cream, whom he has not seen in years. Cream, a widower, had been living with one of his daughters, Daisy, but since her death, he has moved in with the other, Bertha. Gorman’s wife is still alive. Both men are in their seventies: Gorman, by far the more inquisitive of the two, is seventy-three; Cream is seventy-six.The roar of an engine butts into their conversation, the first of many to come. They both bemoan the youth of today and remember a time before cars. Gorman remembers “barouche
Barouche
A barouche was a fashionable type of horse-drawn carriage in the 19th century. Developed from the calash of the 18th century, it was a four-wheeled, shallow vehicle with two double seats inside, arranged vis-à-vis, so that the sitters on the front seat faced those on the back seat...
s”. Cream recalls “broughams
Brougham (carriage)
A brougham was a light, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage built in the 19th century. It was either invented for Scottish jurist Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, or simply made fashionable by his example...
”. They can’t agree over the make of the first car they actually did see: Gorman thinks it was a “Pic-Pic” but Cream insists it was a “Dee Dyan Button”. Each man extols his recollected details with utter conviction. They do, however, manage to agree upon the owner of the said vehicle, a vintner
Vintner
A vintner is a wine merchant. You pronounce it like this In some modern use, in particular in American English, the term is alsoused as a synonym for winemaker....
called Bush.
The effect of modern life on the environment takes the men back to a particularly hot summer in 1895. Gorman talks about watering the roof with a garden hose
Garden hose
A garden hose is a flexible tube used to carry water. There are a number of common attachments available for the end of the hose, such as sprayers and sprinklers...
but Cream insists a hose would have been a luxury item
Luxury good
Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and associated with affluence.The concept of luxury has been present in various forms since the beginning of civilization. Its role was just as important in ancient western and eastern empires as it is in modern societies...
until after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Gorman accedes, acknowledging that his family didn’t even having running water
Tap water
Tap water is a principal component of "indoor plumbing", which became available in urban areas of the developed world during the last quarter of the 19th century, and common during the mid-20th century...
until 1925. They move onto the condition of modern garden
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...
s especially the prevalent trend for erecting gazebo
Gazebo
A gazebo is a pavilion structure, sometimes octagonal, that may be built, in parks, gardens, and spacious public areas. Gazebos are freestanding or attached to a garden wall, roofed, and open on all sides; they provide shade, shelter, ornamental features in a landscape, and a place to rest...
s, the build quality of which they both find to be questionable.
Cream proposes they have a smoke, but can’t find his cigarette
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
s, accuses his daughter of going through his pockets, then comes across the packet. Neither man has a light however. They try to catch the eye of a passer-by but with no joy. Gorman asks Cream if he remembers the “black shag
Shag (tobacco)
Shag, also known as rolling tobacco and loose tobacco is fine-cut tobacco used to make self-made cigarettes by hand rolling the tobacco into rolling paper or injecting it into filter tubes. It got its name from the finely cut strands appearing like 'shag' and was originally considered poor quality...
” they used to get when they were in the armed forces
Armed forces
The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...
. He does. Predictably they begin to reminisce about the War.
Gorman says he enlisted in 1906 with “The Foot” at Chatham. He calls to mind a public house called Morrison’s. Cream says he must be mistaken, it was Caterham
Caterham
Caterham is a town in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. The town is geographically divided into two sections: Caterham on the Hill and Caterham Valley - the main town centre. The town lies close to the A22, a few miles south of Croydon, in a valley cut into the dip slope of the North Downs...
and the pub was Harrison’s Oak Lounge; he is doubly sure of this because he used to take his wife there on holiday. Gorman gives way on the pub’s name but is still convinced it was Chatham. Cream refuses to cave, insisting that “The Gunners” were billeted at Chatham. The two become muddled. Cream is sure that Gorman is thinking about the mobilization
Mobilization
Mobilization is the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Prussian army during the 1850s and 1860s. Mobilization theories and techniques have continuously changed...
. It that were the case the place name would be Chester
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
which is where Morrison’s pub seemingly was.
- By “The Foot”, Gorman may mean, the Irish GuardsIrish GuardsThe Irish Guards , part of the Guards Division, is a Foot Guards regiment of the British Army.Along with the Royal Irish Regiment, it is one of the two Irish regiments remaining in the British Army. The Irish Guards recruit in Northern Ireland and the Irish neighbourhoods of major British cities...
, one of the regimentRegimentA regiment is a major tactical military unit, composed of variable numbers of batteries, squadrons or battalions, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant colonel...
s of foot guardsFoot Guards-British Army:The Foot Guards are the Regular Infantry regiments of the Household Division of the British Army. There have been six regiments of foot guards, five of which still exist. The Royal Guards Reserve Regiment was a reserve formation of the Household Brigade in existence from 1900-1901...
in the British ArmyBritish ArmyThe British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
. - The “Gunners” could refer to The Royal Artillery.
- There has been a Naval BarracksBarracksBarracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
in Chatham since 1588 - From 1877 Caterham Barracks was a depot for the foot guardsFoot Guards-British Army:The Foot Guards are the Regular Infantry regiments of the Household Division of the British Army. There have been six regiments of foot guards, five of which still exist. The Royal Guards Reserve Regiment was a reserve formation of the Household Brigade in existence from 1900-1901...
regiments. - Dale Barracks, Chester is a purpose built InfantryInfantryInfantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
Barracks.
They are both more alone than they want to admit, struggling to remember, fighting to find common ground and yet even when they seem to it turns into a new battlefield for these two but they keep soldiering on.
Gorman becomes nostalgic for the War: “[A]h those are happy memories.” Clearly Cream’s remembrances are not as ‘rose tinted’ though but he won’t even give in on this generality.
The roar of an engine distracts them and the next thing he knows Gorman has changed the subject: he is asking after Cream’s son, who is a judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
. The judge, it turns out, is plagued by rheumatism
Rheumatism
Rheumatism or rheumatic disorder is a non-specific term for medical problems affecting the joints and connective tissue. The study of, and therapeutic interventions in, such disorders is called rheumatology.-Terminology:...
, which in Gorman’s opinion is an hereditary disease
Genetic disorder
A genetic disorder is an illness caused by abnormalities in genes or chromosomes, especially a condition that is present from before birth. Most genetic disorders are quite rare and affect one person in every several thousands or millions....
. Cream can’t agree saying that personally he has never been troubled by it. From all accounts Gorman is thinking about his own mother, even though he is doesn’t actually suffer himself either; his assertions are mere opinion presented as fact. He wonders though about a society that can build “atom rockets” and yet has still to discover a cure for rheumatic disorders.
He notes that Cream’s son has been in the newspapers recently concerning the “Carlton affair”. Cream corrects him. It was the “Barton affair.” Gorman is not convinced. He insists: “The Carlton affair, Mr Cream, the sex fiend
Sex and the law
In general, laws proscribe acts which are considered either sexual abuse, or behavior that societies consider to be inappropriate and against the social norms. In addition, certain categories of activity may be considered crimes even if freely consented to...
, on the Assizes.” Cream says his son works for the Circuit Court – which deals with civil, rather than criminal, cases – and tries to think of the name of the judge who has been presiding over this high-profile case but can’t. Gorman obviously is not well informed on legal issues and admits it; his only experience of judicial matters has been to witnesses his niece’s divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
proceedings some thirty years earlier.
They begin to talk about families. Cream’s grandson, Herbert – the judge’s son – died in infancy; his daughter has two daughters of her own though. It’s at this point Gorman learns that Cream’s wife has been dead for twenty years. Gorman gets confused about the names of Cream’s daughters, Daisy and Bertha, and where Bertha and her husband live. Gorman thinks they live near the slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse
A slaughterhouse or abattoir is a facility where animals are killed for consumption as food products.Approximately 45-50% of the animal can be turned into edible products...
but Cream says Gorman must be thinking of the man’s brother, the nurseryman
Nursery (horticulture)
A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to usable size. They include retail nurseries which sell to the general public, wholesale nurseries which sell only to businesses such as other nurseries and to commercial gardeners, and private nurseries which supply the needs of...
. This contradicts what he himself said earlier when he referred to Bertha’s husband, a man called Moody, as a nurseryman. He also now states she has two sons, one of which he calls Hubert confusing the boy with Herbert the boy his son, the judge, lost in infancy. He can’t remember the name of his other grandson.
Footsteps approach and Gorman tries to get them a light, unsuccessfully again.
The conversation shifts onto financial matters. Gorman has always believed that Cream’s daughter, whom he mistakenly calls his daughter-in-law, had “private means
Private income
Private income is either:* any type of income received by a private individual or household, often derived from occupational activities, or* income of an individual that is not in the form of a salary ....
” but it seems not; despite advise to invest in land, all the money had been put into the bank and lost during the War. Cream jokes that one day people will be building on the moon, which causes Gorman to wonder if Cream is “against progress.” He says not but thinks it lunacy
Lunatic
"Lunatic" is a commonly used term for a person who is mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, unpredictable; a condition once called lunacy. The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".-Lunar hypothesis:...
to waste resources on the moon and can envisage nations fighting over it in years to come.
For some reason this reminds Cream of his father. Gorman says he knew him to be a straight-talking man. He tries to remember when the man sat on the town council
Town Councils in the Republic of Ireland
The term Town Council was introduced into Local government in the Republic of Ireland by the Local Government Act 2001. From 1 January 2002 the existing Urban District Councils and boards of Town Commissioners were renamed as Town Councils....
and plumps for 1895, “the year of the great frost”. Cream corrects him, it was 1893, the year he’d just turned ten. Gorman doesn’t object and proceeds with his recollection of the time Cream’s father “went hell for leather for the mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
”, a man called Overend, which he now asserts was in April 1896 despite Cream insisting that his father didn’t join the council till January 1897. Gorman then says that the event he was referring to must have been instigated by another person altogether. It transpires the incident didn’t involve the mayor at all; rather it was something to do with a local butcher
Butcher
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...
, Oscar Bliss.
This causes the men to reminisce over people they used to know in the past: Helen Bliss, the butcher’s daughter; Rosie Plumpton, now deceased; Molly Berry; Eva Hart, whose brother married Gertie Crumplin who, in her day, had been a “great one for the lads”; Nelly Crowther, the daughter of Simon and Mary, who died in an explosion in a car along which injured a soldier, John Fitzball; John’s aunt, “the high and mighty” Miss Hester, and her niece, Miss Victoria, who was due to marry an American and who had a brother – the aforementioned John – who died of injuries sustained from the explosion a year or two later.
Throughout their conversation the roar of engines has continually interrupted them. Cream has had enough and prepares to go, aware that he’s keeping Gorman from his work. Gorman persuades him to stay and starts looking for his cigarettes. Cream says he should start his barrel organ again which he does. For a few moments it fights with the street noise and then rises triumphantly at the end of the play.
Interpretation
Beckett draws heavily on the stylized language of John Millington SyngeJohn Millington Synge
Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...
, who had a similar upbringing to his, and the verbal excesses of Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
, whose background could hardly have been different, to transform Pinget’s original work into a pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, if not a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the whole Irish comic tradition of linguistic stereotyping; the Irishman as caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
.
In 1934, Beckett, in a review of O’Casey’s Windfalls, which includes two one-act plays, writes:
- “Mr O’Casey is a master of knockabout in this very serious and honorable sense – that he discerns the principle of disintegration in even the most complacent solidities, and activates it to their explosion."
Gorman and Cream’s worlds are crumbling around them just as their pasts and memories are doing. Their speech is colloquial, their outlook parochial. The modern world is passing them by – literally – motor vehicles and the young on the street. Despite Beckett’s conscious efforts to gaelicise the work the themes at its core are universal. Gorman’s line, “You had to work for your living in those days, it wasn’t at six you knocked off, nor at seven neither, eight it was, eight o’clock, yes by God,” could be slipped almost unnoticed into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch
Four Yorkshiremen sketch
The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch is a parody of nostalgic conversations about humble beginnings or difficult childhoods. Four Yorkshiremen reminisce about their upbringing, and as the conversation progresses, they try to outdo one another, their accounts of deprived childhoods becoming increasingly...
– made famous by Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
– or just as easily Neil Simon
Neil Simon
Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...
’s The Sunshine Boys
The Sunshine Boys
The Sunshine Boys is a play by Neil Simon that was produced on Broadway in 1972 and later adapted for film and television.-Plot:The play focuses on aging Al Lewis and Willy Clark, a one-time vaudevillian team known as "Lewis and Clark" who, over the course of forty-odd years, not only grew to hate...
.
There is a clear contrast between O’Casey’s linguistic pyrotechnics and the limited,
impoverished lives of the characters that utter his rich hyperbole
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally....
; the result is both comic and tragic but it is clear that Beckett is in his debt. There is a touch of personal nostalgia here too: Beckett makes specific reference to the "Dee Dyan Button," the first car that Cream and Gorman ever saw, which was actually the De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton
De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer and railcar manufacturer operating from 1883 to 1932. The company was founded by the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton and his brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux....
; Beckett's father was the first to own one in Ireland. It is the kind of detail Mercier and Camier
Mercier and Camier
Mercier and Camier is a novel by Samuel Beckett.Written immediately before his celebrated 'trilogy' of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Mercier et Camier was Beckett's first attempt at extended prose fiction in French...
could easily have squabbled about on their trek through and round about Dublin.
Critics tend to by-pass the piece, treating it as Beckett-lite, which in many ways it is, but it also demonstrates something of a nostalgic looking-back from Beckett’s own point of view, not simply to the Dublin he once knew but to a style of writing that he would never return to again after this year, 1960, the same year he completed his own Happy Days
Happy Days (play)
Happy Days is a play in two acts, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. He began the play on 8 October 1960 and it was completed on 14 May 1961. Beckett finished the translation into French by November 1962 but amended the title...
.
If ever John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
had in mind some specific “emergent occasion” then this was probably the last thing he would have thought of: two men, each waiting for their own particular “bell [to] toll”, each “an island, entire of itself” shouting across the strait to another man on another island barely able to hear a word the other is saying.
Stage Productions
The play was adapted to the stage shortly after publication in Evergreen ReviewEvergreen Review
Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998...
5.17, (March-April 1961) and first presented off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
at the Royal Playhouse, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on 23 March 1961, directed by Steve Chernak with Sly Travers (Gorman) and Jack Delmonte (Cream).
The play was not well received, apart from a review in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
by John Talmer:
- “The daily critics have put it down and so I suppose it shall die, but The Old Tune, by Robert Pinget in a translation-adaptation by Samuel Beckett – more Beckett than Pinget I hazard – is a telling if slender piece of work. Death becomes it well: its subject matter is ageing and death, desuetudeDesuetudeIn law, desuetude is a doctrine that causes statutes, similar legislation or legal principles to lapse and become unenforceable by a long habit of non-enforcement or lapse of time. It is what happens to laws that are not repealed when they become obsolete...
and deliquescence. But also memory and fondness, loving and nostalgia – and the foolish-fondness of old men straining with weak memories, full of error, for the pictures and pleasures of the past.”
The play did not die however.
- Pinget’s original La Manivelle opened at the Théâtre de la Comédie, Paris. George Peyrou directed Georges Ader and Henry de Livry.
- In 1964 Beckett’s adaptation opened at the avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
Judson Poets’ Theater, New York. Peter Feldman directed Jerry Trichter and Sean O’Ceallaigh.
- The British stage version opened on 22 November 1964 at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill GateMercury Theatre, Notting Hill GateThe Mercury Theatre was a small theatre in Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill Gate, London, notable for the productions of poetic dramas between 1933 and 1956, and as the home of the Ballet Rambert until 1987.- History :...
. Alan Simpson directed Godfrey QuigleyGodfrey QuigleyGodfrey Quigley was an Irish stage, film and television actor.Quigley was born in Jerusalem where his father served as an officer in the British Army...
and Gerry Duggan.
- A version was presented on 5 January 1965 at the Traverse TheatreTraverse TheatreThe Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963.The Traverse Theatre commissions and develops new plays or adaptations from contemporary playwrights. It also presents a large number of productions from visiting companies from across the UK. These include new plays,...
, EdinburghEdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
with Leonard Maguire as Gorman and Declan MulhollandDeclan MulhollandThomas Declan Mulholland was a Northern Irish character actor who appeared in dozens of television shows and films....
as Cream, directed by Michael Geliot.
- And the play was still going strong twenty-two years later. “When [Stan] Gontarski staged it at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco … in 1986, Beckett reminded him:
-
- “Be sure Pinget gets full & visible credit. The Old Tune his vision not mine.”
External links
- The Old Tune itself (WAV file) as used by The Tübingen Anglo-Irish Theatre Grouphttp://www.anglo-iren.de/ – NOT The Bluebells of Scotland.