2011.09.26 — A Sleep of Prisoners by Christopher Fry — finished

Christopher Fry.
A Sleep of Prisoners.
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1952.

★★☆☆☆

I found this to be an extremely difficult play to read. If A Sleep of Prisoners had been straight prose I'd have given it only one star. I think that I like what I think Fry was trying to do, but it just didn't quite work for me. I've been wrestling with pinpointing the source of my antipathy, and it comes down to basically three reasons.

The first is an inherently confusing structure. The four actors in the drama play their 'title' characters which are foot soldiers being held in a church, but while sleep-walking they also portray different figures from the Old Testament at different times and sometimes more than one them. Thus the various soldiers are at various times either awake or asleep but sleep-walk and sleep-talk, and in some cases interact physically.

This is the part I like in theory because the play takes on the confused structure of a dream and creatively turns the play itself into a series of dreams within dreams. Unfortunately that structure is inherently prone to confusion, amusingly very much like when trying to recall a multi-layered dream. Sadly Fry wasn't able to overcome that confusion, with me, and I found myself frequently and repeatedly unsure if the designated speaker was awake or asleep and personifying Abel or God. It was with growing frustration that I found myself frequently flipping back to see who was whom.

Branagh in The Lady's Not for Burning

It is probable that seeing the production would help keep the distinctions. However, and most importantly, the second failure was that Fry forced the language in a way that surprised me after my having read and seen two versions of his brilliant 'The Lady's Not For Burning'.

And he forced it in two ways, both of which added to the confusion. The first was in shrilly striving to be profound and rustic at the same time. Perhaps here he was trying to emulate Shakespeare's Feste from Twelfth Night, but failed.

Ben Kingsley's Feste

The other way that the language failed was in how nearly identical the four soldiers sounded to each other, whether awake or sleep talking a Biblical figure. I suspect that this may well have been a result of Fry trying to have all the characters say accidentally profound and even memorable things.

And here is the final reason: the meaning was heavy-handed and coloured unfavourably by an excessively sentimental existential angst. Let's see if this citation captures what I mean.

DAVID.                                          Oh, go
And discard yourself. G'night, Corporal Joseph Adams.

[ADAMS goes to his bunk.
MEADOWS turns in his sleep.
The church clock strikes a single note.

MEADOWS [asleep]. Who's that, fallen out? How many men?
How many? I said only one.
One was enough.
No, no, no. I didn't ask to be God.
No one else prepared to spell the words.
Spellbound. B-o-u-n-d. Ah-h-h-h …

[He turns in his sleep again.

It's old Adam, old, old, old Adam.
Out of bounds. No one said fall out.
What time did you go to bad?
Sorrow, Adam, stremely sorrow.

[CORPORAL ADAMS comes towards him,
a dream figure.

Adam, Adam, stand easy there.

ADAMS. Reporting for duty, sir.

MEADOWS. As you were, Adam.

ADAMS. No chance of that, sir.

MEADOWS. As you were, as you were.

ADAMS. Lost all track of it now, sir.

MEADOWS. How far back was it, Adam?

ADAMS [with a jerk of the head].
Down the road. Too dark to see.

MEADOWS. Were you alone?

ADAMS.                           A woman with me, sir.

MEADOWS. I said Let there be love,
And there wasn't enough light, you say?

ADAMS. We could see our own shapes, near enough,
But not the road. The road kept on dividing
Every yard or so. Makes it long.
We expected nothing like it, sir.
Ill-equipped, naked as the day,
It was all over and the world was on us
Before we had time to take cover.

MEADOWS. Stand at peace, Adam: do stand at peace.

ADAMS. There's nothing of that now, sir.

MEADOWS. Corporal Adam.

ADAMS.                      Sir?

MEADOWS.                         You have shown spirit.

ADAMS. Thank you, sir.
Excuse me, sir, but there's some talk of a future.
I've had no instructions.

MEADOWS [turning in his sleep]. Ah-h-h-h-h.

ADAMS. Is there any immediate anxiety of that?

[DAVID, as the dream figure of Cam, stands leaning on the lectern, chewing at a beet.

How far can we fall back, sir?

DAVID [smearing his arms with beet juice].
Have you lost something?

ADAMS. Yes, Cain: yes, I have.

DAVID. Have you felt in all your pockets?

ADAMS. Yes, and by searchlight all along the grass
For God knows howling. Not a sign,
Not a sign, boy, not a ghost.

DAVID.                               When do you last
Remember losing it?


ADAMS.                   When I knew it was mine.
As soon as I knew it was mine I felt
I was the only one who didn't know
My host.

DAVID.      Poor overlooked
Old man. Allow me to make the introduction.
God: man. Man: God.

[PETER, the dream figure of Abel, is in the organ-loft fingering out ''Now the day is over'.

ADAMS. I wish it could be so easy.

DAVID. Sigh, sigh, sigh!
The hot sun won't bring you out again
If you don't know how to behave.
Pretty much like mutiny. I'd like to remind you
We're first of all men, and complain afterwards.
[Calling.] Abel! Abel! Hey, flock-headed Peter,
Come down off those mountains.
Those bleating sheep can look after themselves.
Come on down.

PETER.             What for?

DAVID.                            Because I said so!

PETER [coming down]. I overlooked the time. Is it day or night?

DAVID. You don't deserve to inherit the earth.
Am I supposed to carry the place alone?

PETER. Where will you carry it?
Where do you think you're going to take it to,
This prolific indifference?
Show me an ending great enough
To hold the passion of this beginning
And raise me to it.
Day and night, the sun and moon
Spirit us, we wonder where. Meanwhile
Here we are, we lean on our lives
Expecting purpose to keep her date,
Get cold waiting, watch the overworlds
Come and go, question the need to stay
But do, in an obstinate anticipation of love.
Ah, love me, it's a long misuse of breath
For boys like us. When do we start?

DAVID. When you suffering god'sbodies
Come to your senses. What you'll do
Is lose us life altogether.
Amply the animal is Cain, thank God,
As he was meant to be: a huskular strapling
With all his passions about him. Tomorrow
Will know him well. Momentous doings
Over the hill for the earth and us.
What hell else do you want?

PETER.                               The justification.

DAVID. Oh, bulls and bears to that.
The word's too long to be lived.
Just if, just if, is as far as ever you'll see.

PETER. What's man to be?

DAVID.                         Content and full.

PETER. That's modest enough.
What an occupation for eternity.
Sky's hollow filled as far as for ever
With rolling light: place without limit,
Time without pity:
And did you say all for the sake of our good condition,
All for our two-footed prosperity?
Well, we should prosper, considering
The torment squandered on our prospering.
From squid to eagle the ravening is on.
We are all pain-fellows, but nothing you dismay,
Man is to prosper. Other lives, forbear
To blame me, great and small forgive me
If to your various agonies
My light should seem hardly enough
To be the cause of the ponderable shadow.

DAVID. Who do you think you are, so Angel-sick?
Pain warns us to be master: pain prefers us.
Draws us up.

PETER.          Water into the sun:
All the brooding clouds of us!

DAVID.                                  All right.
We'll put it to the High and Mighty.
Play you dice to know who's favoured.

PETER. What's he to do with winning?

DAVID.                                           Play you dice.
Not so sure of yourself, I notice.

PETER. I'll play you. Throw for first throw.
Now creation be true to creatures.

ADAMS. Look, sir, my sons are playing.
How silent the spectators are,
World, air, and water.
Eyes bright, tension, halt.
Still as a bone from here to the sea.

DAVID [playing]. Ah-h-h-h!

ADAMS. Sir, my sons are playing. Cain's your man.
He goes in the mould of passion as you made him,
He can walk this broken world as easily
As I and Eve the ivory light of Eden.
I recommend him. The other boy
Frets for what never came his way,
Will never reconcile us to our exile.
Look, sir, my sons are playing.
Sir, let the future plume itself, not suffer.

PETER [playing]. How's that for a nest of singing birds?

ADAMS. Cain sweats: Cain gleams. Now do you see him?
He gives his body to the game.
Sir, he's your own making, and has no complaints.

DAVID. Ah! What are you doing to me, heaven and earth?

PETER. Friendly morning.

DAVID [shaking the dice]. Numbers, be true to nature.
Deal me high,
Six dark stars
Come into my sky.

[He throws.

Blight! What's blinding me
By twos and threes? I'm strong, aren't I?
Who's holding me down? Who's frozen my fist
So it can't hatch the damn dice out?

PETER [shaking and throwing].
Deal me high, deal me low.
Make my deeds
My nameless needs.
I know I do not know.
... That brings me home!

[DAVID roars with rage and disappointment. (10-15)

This is typical of the entire play. Forced but false earthy wisdom, and dialogue that makes all the characters sound the same, even when they come from The Bible. I was very disappointed.

But curious to see a production, to see how someone approaches the problems of staging this play. And to see how the presence of individuals acting the play helps to distinguish the dialogue and make it less heavy with sentimental angst.