Bury the Dead by Irwin Shaw (1936) is not only a stunning piece of theatre for its time, it is also an amazingly adaptable play. Bury the Dead is as relevant to today’s political climate as it was 70 years ago. The play’s stark staging and controversial message made it a memorable theatre piece for audiences in 1936, as well as through the years as it has been updated to fit the political climates of World War II, Vietnam and others.

Bury the Dead

• A Play By Irwin Shaw**

1936

Biographical Information on Irwin Shaw

Irwin Shaw, born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff, was born on the 27th of February 1913. He was born in the Bronx to Russian-Jewish immigrants, but spent most of his young life in Brooklyn. There is conflicting information on the circumstances of his name change, but Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff became Irwin Shaw either when he started college or his parents changed the family name when they moved from the Bronx to Brooklyn. Shaw attended Brooklyn College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1934.

While attending Brooklyn College, Shaw wrote for the school newspaper, thus beginning what would be a very long and well respected career as a writer. He began is affiliation with the theater as a scriptwriter and adapter for several popular radio shows, including Dick Tracy and Studio One. In 1936, just two years out of college, Irwin Shaw wrote his first play, Bury the Dead.

Irwin Shaw went on to become a respected playwright, novelist and screenwriter. Some of his most notable novels include The Young Lions, published in 1948, and Rich Man, Poor Man, which was published in 1970. In 1951 he published a novel entitled The Troubled Air on the rise of McCarthyism. Shaw also signed the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to reexamine the House Un-American Activities Committee convictions of John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo. He was falsely accused on being a communist and Hollywood black listed along with John Howard Lawson and many others. In 1951, no longer able to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he left the United States and moved to Europe where he lived and worked for 25 years. Over the course of his career he wrote many screenplays, including one for the 1958 film version of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms. Irwin Shaw died May 16th 1984, in Davos, Switzerland, at the age of 71.

History

After two preview showings in March, Bury the Dead was first produced on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in 1936. It opened April 18, 1936 and ran until July of that same year. Although the show had a short run, it made a big impact on those that witnessed it. It was produced by the Actors’ Repertory Company, staged by Worthington Miner and Walter Hart and produced by Alex Yokel.

Characters

Private Driscoll

Private Morgan

Private Levy

Private Webster

Private Schelling

Private Dean

Joan Burke

Bess Schelling

Martha Webster

Julia Blake

Katherine Driscoll

Elizabeth Dean

Generals One, Two and Three

A Captain, a Sergeant, and four infantrymen, employed as a burial detail

A Priest, a Rabbi. a Doctor

A Reporter and an Editor

Two Whores

Three Business Men

Setting

The setting is a battlefield where graves are being dug for soldiers just killed in an advance. The time is “the second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow night.”

Plot Summary

New York Times reviewer, Brooks Atkinson, describes the scene best in his review after witnessing the show in its original form, “Six privates who have been killed . . . refuse to lie down peacefully in the graves that their comrades have dug for them. They may be dead, as the medical officer carefully certifies, but they are still young, and they refuse to have their eyes packed with earth against the beauty of the world they have scarcely had time to see. The revolt of the dead alarms the generals, who do not know how to deal with it. They appeal to the dead men’s sense of honor. Finally, the wives, mothers and sweethearts of the dead appeal to them to lie back in their graves and let the war go on. But the dead have made up their minds, and will not be argued into cemetery submission; and in the last scene they shuffle out of the fresh dug trench and march silently and defiantly into the world to protest against the injustice that has been done to them. There is no army regulation that provides for burying dead men against their will.”

Staging

The traditional staging of the play includes a bare foreground, a platform upstage the length of the stage and a trench dug into that upstage platform. There are no props used in the staging and the set is dressed only with sandbags, both broken and whole, and some dirt scattered. The trench is hip height on the soldiers as they begin to rise so they are seen only from the waste up. The staging is intentionally sparse putting the focus on the soldiers themselves and the words of the play. The lighting is stark and angular. The costumes are a bit more lush and realistic, only to point out the stark haunting reality of war.

Criticism

Brooks Atkinson said of the play in his New York Times review, published April 20, 1936, “It ought to be boycotted by militarists, ammunition vendors and saber rattlers. For Mr. Shaw’s grimly imaginative rebellion against warfare is a shattering bit of theatre magic that burrows under the skin of argument into the raw flesh of sensation. He is a young man, a latter-day graduate of Brooklyn College, and his knowledge of the battlefields must have come at second hand. But his moral indignation is his own, and his dramatic virtuosity is extraordinary. What ‘Waiting for Lefty’ was to Clifford Odets, ‘Bury the Dead’ is to Irwin Shaw. The most tormenting war play of the year has come from a new man.”

He says of Shaw’s handling of the delicate subject matter, “In the creating of character and in the tone of the dialogue, ‘Bury the Dead’ voices the protest of youth with poignancy that is at once touching and heartening. It is not a glib play nor is it perfectly written, but it has eloquent powers of expression.”

Sources

Atkinson, Brooks. "The Play." The New York Times . April 20, 1936.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Shaw

Shaw, Irwin. Bury the Dead . New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1963.

http://www.ibdb.com/show.asp?ID=2302

http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=6464

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ishaw.htm

http://www.uta.edu/theatre/bury_dead.htm