The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd
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D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11th September 1881 in Eastwood, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands. Despite ill health as a child and a comparatively disadvantageous position in society, he became a teacher in 1908, and took up a post in a school in Croydon, south of London. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911, and from then until his death he wrote feverishly, producing poetry, novels, essays, plays travel books and short stories, while travelling around the world, settling for periods in Italy, New Mexico and Mexico. He married Frieda Weekley in 1914 and died of tuberculosis in 1930.
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Reviews for The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dank, dark, Northern angst set among miners. Lawrence's speciality. Mrs. Holroyd didn't marry for love and didn't find it in her marriage with the husband who humiliated her for his own amusement and beat her because she was his slave. But dawning happiness with another and the sudden fulfilment of wishing her brutish, brutal husband dead brought out the guilt in her. Years of ill-treatment fell away as she washed his corpse and all she could do was sob out her regrets and eulogise the dead.
Silly cow.
Book preview
The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd - D. H. Lawrence
THE WIDOWING OF MRS HOLROYD
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS
by
D. H. Lawrence
Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
D. H. Lawrence
CHARACTERS
ACT I
SCENE I
ACT II
ACT III
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11 September 1885 at Eastwood, a small mining town in the North of England. He was a prolific novelist and poet, responsible for some of the finest modernist works of the twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Lawrence’s oeuvre reflects the unsettling effects of industrialisation and renewal, but all within the remit of individual concerns; the emotions, extemporaneity and character. Lawrence’s style, both as a novelist, but also as a literary critic, earned him many enemies and he suffered both in terms of personal reputation and professional status, especially during the latter half of his life. He was the fourth child of Arthur Lawrence, a working-class miner from Nottinghamshire. David Lawrence was an intellectually gifted child and attended the local Beauvale Board School, winning a scholarship to Nottingham High School in 1898. He left education in 1901 to become a Junior Clerk at a surgical appliances factory, but after contracting pneumonia and reputedly being accosted by a group of factory girls, Lawrence took time off to convalesce. During this period, he worked on his first short stories and the draft of a novel which was eventually to become The White Peacock. In 1908 Lawrence moved to London, where his poetry was noticed by Ford Madox Ford, the editor of The English Review, as well as the influential publisher William Heinemann. This support enabled Lawrence to publish The White Peacock (1910), his first major novel, followed by The Trespasser (1911); a novel based on the intimate diaries of a friend experiencing an unhappy love affair. It was at this time that he met Frieda Richthofen, a married woman with three young children. Richthofen and Lawrence embarked on a life-long romance and eloped to her parents’ home in Metz, Germany. The couple toured across Germany, over the Alps and into Italy – a journey during which Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers (1913), an intense portrayal of the grim actuality of working-class provincial life. This was the start of Lawrence’s controversial private sexual life; Frieda later accused him of a homosexual relationship with a Cornish farmer, William Henry Hocking. This was a shocking accusation for a man living in early twentieth century Britain, and caused a great deal of scandal. The accusation was not aided by the added suspicion of spying and signalling to German submarines off the coast of Cornwall. Lawrence’s next novel, The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed after an investigation into its alleged obscenity; a bleak vision of humanity, it depicted the reflections of four major characters on friendship, sexuality, art and politics. Unfit for war-time Britain, it remained unpublished until 1920. After constant harassment by the authorities, Lawrence was forced to leave Cornwall in 1917, given three days notice under the Defence of the Realm Act. He moved to Derbyshire, but soon escaped Britain to travel the world; Australia, America, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Italy and France. Lawrence spent the remainder of his life peripatetic and only returned to Britain for two short visits. He continued writing during this period, producing some of his finest works; The Lost Girl and Mr Noon as well as several travelogues. It was in Italy that Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). Published in Florence and Paris, it cemented Lawrence’s scandalous reputation. Although the author responded robustly and penned many short tracts and satirical poems against those ‘shocked sensibilities’, the novel was not published in Britain until 1960. Lawrence continued writing into his final days, despite rapidly declining health. He died on 2 March, 1930, at the Villa Robermond, France, from tuberculosis.
CHARACTERS
MRS HOLROYD
HOLROYD
BLACKMORE
JACK HOLROYD
MINNIE HOLROYD
GRANDMOTHER
RIGLEY
CLARA
LAURA
MANAGER
TWO MINERS
The action of the play takes place in the Holroyds’ cottage
ACT I
SCENE I
The kitchen of a miner’s small cottage. On the left is the fireplace, with a deep, full red fire. At the back is a white-curtained window, and beside it the outer door of the room. On the right, two white wooden stairs intrude into the kitchen below the closed stair-foot door. On the left, another door.
The room is furnished with a chintz-backed sofa under the window, a glass-knobbed painted dresser on the right, and in the centre, toward the fire, a table with a red and blue check tablecloth. On one side of the hearth is a wooden rocking-chair, on the other an arm-chair of round staves. An