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Alan Bennett: Anarchists of the Spirit

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Six Contemporary Dramatists

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Abstract

In a speech deleted from the final version of Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III (1991), the King makes an important observation which, Bennett says, is ‘the nearest I can get to extracting a message from the play’:

The real lesson, if I may say so, is that what makes an illness perilous is celebrity. Or, as in my case, royalty. In the ordinary course of things doctors want their patients to recover; their reputations depend on it. But if the patient is rich or royal, powerful or famous, other considerations enter in. There are many parties interested apart from the interested party. So more doctors are called in and none but the best will do. But the best aren’t always very good and they argue, they disagree. They have to because they are after all the best and the world is watching. And who is in the middle? The patient. It happened to me. It happened to Napoleon. It happened to Anthony Eden. It happened to the Shah. The doctors even killed off George V to make the first edition of The Times. I tell you, dear people, if you’re poorly it’s safer to be poor and ordinary.1

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Notes and References

  1. Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III (London: Faber, 1992), p. xx.

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  2. The Madness of George III, pp. xviii–xix.

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  3. The Madness of George III, p. 87.

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  4. Alan Bennett, Single Spies (London: Faber, 1989), p. 48.

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  5. Single Spies, p. viii.

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  6. Single Spies, p. 60.

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  7. I am grateful to Mr D. Vaisey, Librarian of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for this information.

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  8. Single Spies, pp. 58-9.

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  9. Single Spies, p. 37.

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  10. Single Spies, pp. 17-18.

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  11. Interview with S. Simons, transmitted 18 November 1982, BBC Radio Four.

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  12. Single Spies, p. ix.

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  13. Alan Bennett, Prick Up Your Ears: The Screenplay (London: Faber, 1987), p. ix.

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  14. Alan Bennett, Talking Heads (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1988), p. 39.

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  15. Objects of Affection, p. 209.

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  16. Objects of Affection, pp. 210-11.

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  17. Alan Bennett, The Writer in Disguise (London: Faber, 1985), p. 59.

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  18. The Writer in Disguise, pp. 71-2.

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  19. This shamelessly declarative mood is typical of moral revolutionaries in Bennett’s work; Mrs Sugden, Orton and Halliwell’s landlady in Prick Up Your Ears, is a case in point. ‘Do you notice I’m limping?’ she remarks innocently to them one afternoon,’ spilt a hot drink over my dress. My vagina came up like a football’ (Prick Up Your Ears, pp. 19-20).

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  20. Talking Heads, p. 10.

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  21. The Writer In Disguise, p. 37.

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  22. The Writer In Disguise, p. 41.

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  23. Alan Bennett, Office Suite (London: Faber, 1981), p. 8.

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  24. The Writer in Disguise, p. 43.

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  25. Talking Heads, p. 13.

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  26. Objects of Affection, p. 100.

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  27. Talking Heads, p. 53.

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  28. Talking Heads, p. 49.

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  29. The phrase is Bennett’s; Talking Heads, p. 7.

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  30. Alan Bennett, Two Kafka Plays (London: Faber, 1987), p. 104.

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  31. Two Kafka Plays, p. 115.

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  32. Two Kafka Plays, p. 123.

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  33. Two Kafka Plays, p. 116.

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  34. Two Kafka Plays, p. 126.

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  35. Two Kafka Plays, pp. 126-7.

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  36. Two Kafka Plays, p. 125.

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  37. Two Kafka Plays, p. 131.

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  38. Two Kafka Plays, p. 13.

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  39. Bennett discusses his feelings about Orton in the introduction to Prick Up Your Ears: The Screenplay.

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  40. Joe Orton, Orton: The Complete Plays (London: Methuen, 1976), p. 26.

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  41. Two Kafka Plays, p. 54.

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  42. Two Kafka Plays, p. 60.

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  43. ‘Reflections on the irrelevance of a Northern upbringing and of a number of other things to the business of being a writer’, broadcast 3 May 1976, BBC Radio.

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  44. Two Kafka Plays, p. 12.

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  45. Two Kafka Plays, p. 11.

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  46. Two Kafka Plays, pp. 67-8.

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  47. Two Kafka Plays, p. 55.

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  48. Two Kafka Plays, p. 60.

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  49. W.H. Auden, The English Auden ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber, 1977), p. 150.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow, UK

    Duncan Wu (Reader)

Authors
  1. Duncan Wu
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Copyright information

© 1996 Duncan Wu

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Cite this chapter

Wu, D. (1996). Alan Bennett: Anarchists of the Spirit. In: Six Contemporary Dramatists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25231-2_2

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