Cancelling Socrates (NHB Modern Plays)

By Howard Brenton

Today, Socrates is revered as the founding father of Western philosophy. But in 399 BC Athens, he was a pain in the neck.
The plague is over, democracy is (just about) restored, and everyone would like to get back to normal. How hard is it for one ageing firebrand to stop asking questions? It's time to shut him up...
Based on eyewitness accounts, Howard Brenton's Cancelling Socrates is a provocative and witty play about an uncompromising voice in dangerous times. It was premiered at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in June 2022, directed by the venue's Artistic Director Tom Littler.
'A rich play of ideas... Brenton's script combines the ancient and modern so well that everyday profanities sit next to talk of slaves (ever so subtly ironised) and big philosophical ideas to create sparky, bathetic moments... [there are] clear, clever parallels to today... arresting and fiercely intelligent' - Guardian
'Howard Brenton's [play] looks delightfully like Up Pompeii! and has plenty of smart things to say... a buzzy hive of intellectual activity, swarming with witty repartee... asking big questions about faith and existence, the individual and the state, with the lightest of touches... a resonant warning from antiquity' - Telegraph
'A fascinating chamber play, an inspired combination of ancient and modern, high-flown rhetoric and gutter speech' - The Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Jun 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781788505796

Howard Brenton

Howard Brenton was born in Portsmouth in 1942. His many plays include Christie in Love (Portable Theatre, 1969); Revenge (Theatre Upstairs, 1969); Magnificence (Royal Court Theatre, 1973); The Churchill Play (Nottingham Playhouse, 1974, and twice revived by the RSC, 1978 and 1988); Bloody Poetry (Foco Novo, 1984, and Royal Court Theatre, 1987); Weapons of Happiness (National Theatre, Evening Standard Award, 1976); Epsom Downs (Joint Stock Theatre, 1977); Sore Throats (RSC, 1978); The Romans in Britain (National Theatre, 1980, revived at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 2006); Thirteenth Night (RSC, 1981); The Genius (1983), Greenland (1988) and Berlin Bertie (1992), all presented by the Royal Court; Kit’s Play (RADA Jerwood Theatre, 2000); Paul (National Theatre, 2005); In Extremis (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2006 and 2007); Never So Good (National Theatre, 2008); The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists adapted from the novel by Robert Tressell (Liverpool Everyman and Chichester Festival Theatre, 2010); Anne Boleyn (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2010 and 2011); 55 Days (Hampstead Theatre, 2012); #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei (Hampstead Theatre, 2013); The Guffin (NT Connections, 2013); Drawing the Line (Hampstead Theatre, 2013) and Doctor Scroggy's War (Shakespeare's Globe, 2014) and Lawrence After Arabia (Hampstead Theatre, 2016). Collaborations with other writers include Brassneck (with David Hare, Nottingham Playhouse, 1972); Pravda (with David Hare, National Theatre, Evening Standard Award, 1985) and Moscow Gold (with Tariq Ali, RSC, 1990). Versions of classics include The Life of Galileo (1980) and Danton’s Death (1982) both for the National Theatre, Goethe’s Faust (1995/6) for the RSC, a new version of Danton’s Death for the National Theatre (2010) and Dances of Death (Gate Theatre, 2013). He wrote thirteen episodes of the BBC1 drama series Spooks (2001–05, BAFTA Best Drama Series, 2003).

Book preview

Howard Brenton

CANCELLING

SOCRATES

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production Details

Characters

Cancelling Socrates

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Cancelling Socrates was first performed at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London, on 2 June 2022, with the following cast:

Characters

SOCRATES, seventy

EUTHYPHRO, thirty-five

ASPASIA, seventy

XANTHIPPE, thirty

GAOLER, thirty-five

A DAEMON

Euthyphro doubles up as the Gaoler, Xanthippe as a Daemon

Place

Athens.

Time

April to May, 399 BC.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

Scene One: The Funnel Web

The Agora, Athens. Late April, 399 BC.

Crowded.

EUTHYPHRO, smoothed, respectably dressed, his hair well cut and oiled. He is relaxed, smiling and greeting people.

EUTHYPHRO. Yes yes, thank you for asking, he’s quite recovered, my wife too, thank you –

Turns and listens to someone else.

Absolutely, looking forward to it –

Listens, smiling, then shares laughter.

Oh, the flute player with the blue – she will? Well – more water with my wine this time, I think –

Laughter. Then someone of superior rank addresses him. He adopts serious concern.

But I sent a messenger to you this morning, perhaps he didn’t – anyway, it is the best of news, my ship’s been sighted, it’ll be at Piraeus tomorrow. (Listens respectfully.) Yes, reported to look fully laden. (Listens.) Yes, sir, the future, certainly.

He pulls himself erect, very satisfied with these encounters.

(Aside.) Public face, public space. To see to be seen. Normally, as if in normal times. What is civilisation? The art of living in cities. The cultivation of the good between us. And I love it so, as do we all. It is a duty to see and to be seen. After what we have been through – plague, war, the – unfortunate politics – to bounce back to normal. And do what is right by the gods. The one thing we can all agree on, surely, is that religious duty is all.

Enter SOCRATES. He has straggly grey hair, is reputably dressed and is barefoot. He radiates energy.

EUTHYPHRO has not seen him.

SOCRATES. Euthyphro, my friend!

EUTHYPHRO. Oh no, no, no, please not, no –

SOCRATES. Is all well?

EUTHYPHRO (aside). This is the nightmare of public places, meeting the oddballs in one’s clan.

He turns, a beamingly false smile.

Socrates!

SOCRATES. My dear, so good to see you, and looking so sleek.

EUTHYPHRO. And you, Socrates, looking so –

SOCRATES. – Still alive?

EUTHYPHRO. Absolutely!

SOCRATES. But I could be a corpse walking around, any signs of life a rhetorical trick.

EUTHYPHRO. Ha! – No, you’re one of the fittest men I know, despite your –

A gesture meaning ‘the way you dress’. SOCRATES shoots up a finger.

SOCRATES. Interesting! Can we prove we are alive? And not, say, ghosts in Hades, doomed to re-enact memories of life? Not alive at all, merely talking to ourselves?

EUTHYPHRO. Socrates, forgive me, at this moment I can’t get into a philosophical, er –

SOCRATES. Tangle? No, no, I twitch, I twitch.

SOCRATES claps his hands, laughs and they embrace.

I heard your little son was sick?

EUTHYPHRO. It was just a chest infection not the – . His mother had a touch of it too, but they are both well.

SOCRATES. Great to hear it. May youth forever bloom.

EUTHYPHRO. Ha! Yes.

SOCRATES is beaming at him.

(Aside.) Oh gods, gods –

But he beams back.

SOCRATES. So why are you outside the magistrates’ court, nothing serious I hope, on this beautiful day?

EUTHYPHRO. I have come to make a charge of murder.

SOCRATES. My dear! Against whom?

EUTHYPHRO. My father.

SOCRATES is shocked.