Look Back in Anger
by John Osborne
Study Guide
Introduction
"That the play needs changes I do not deny: it is twenty minutes too long, and not even Mr. Haigh's bravura could blind me to the painful whimsy of the final reconciliation. I agree that Look Back in Anger is likely to remain a minority taste. What matters, however, is the size of the minority. I estimate it at roughly 6,733,000, which is the number of people in this country between the ages of twenty and thirty. And this figure will doubtless be swelled by refugees from other age-groups who are curious to know precisely what the contemporary young pup is thinking and feeling... It is the best young play of its decade."- Kenneth Tynan's review in the Observer, December 19, 1959
When Look Back in Anger opened in 1956 it brought a new force to the English theatre. London's West End was deluged with plays by authors such as Terence Rattigan, Noel Coward and Agatha Christie. Safe, commercial, full of witty dialogue, and absent of any content that was relevant to the lives of working class people living in England at that time. On May 8th, 1956, Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court Theatre as the third production of the newly formed English
Stage Company. The English Stage Company had been founded in 1955 to promote the production of new plays by contemporary authors. Osborne's protagonist, Jimmy Porter, captured the angry and rebellious nature of the postwar generation, a dispossessed lot who were clearly unhappy with things as they were in the decades following World War II. Osborn's play had a profound effect on British culture as it threw cold water in the face of a sleepy popular culture. All manner of writers, actors, artists, and musicians (including the Beatles) soon reflected the influence of Osborne's "angry young man."
The play's anti-hero, Jimmy Porter, is an educated, working class young man. He is unable to fit himself into a society that seems to have lost its direction. He lives in a scruffy attic apartment in a Midlands Industrial town. From this refuge he rages against his life, the world outside, and the people he knows. Filled with anger and rage he searches for a response, any response, from a world that seems not so much hostile, but actually indifferent. While his friend Cliff is able to shrug off his tirades, his wife Alison is reaching a breaking point. When her old friend Helena comes for a stay, Jimmy becomes even more aggressive, heaping abuse on Helena and Alison as representatives of the old order that are still clinging to power. When Alison can take no more and returns to her upper class parents, Helena- surprisingly- remains and seems to take on Alison's role. The questions for Jimmy, Cliff, Alison, and Helena are basic and universal ones: right, wrong, freedom, commitment. When Alison returns, each of them must sort out what they really believe and what they really want. They find that there are, indeed, no easy answers or choices.
About the Author
Born on 12 December 1929, in London, John Osborne changed the face of British theatre. He was deeply affected by his father's death from tuberculosis in 1941. Osborne used the insurance settlement to finance a boarding school education at Belmont College in Devon. Osborne could not focus on his studies and left after striking the headmaster. He returned to London and became involved in the theatre when he took a job tutoring a touring company of young actors. In 1956, Osborne's first London-produced drama, Look Back in Anger, shocked audiences and "wiped the smugness off the frivolous face of English theatre," as John Lahr put it in a New York Times Book Review article.
Look Back in Anger established Osborne, the struggling actor and playwright, as a leading writer for theatre, television and
film. So impressed was Laurence Olivier with Look Back in Anger that he commissioned Osborne to write a play for him. The result was The Entertainer, in which Olivier played Archie Rice, a struggling comedian, and the role resulted in one of his most famous performances. Both Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer were adapted as films. Following The
Entertainer, Osborne continued to have a productive career, writing seventeen more stage plays, eleven plays for television,
five screen plays (including Tom Jones, for which he received an Academy Award), and four books, including two volumes of autobiography.
Osborne died as a result of complications from diabetes on December 24th 1994 and is buried in the churchyard at Clun. After his death, playwright David Hare made a moving tribute to John Osborne saying, "It took the author's sudden death last Christmas and his burial in a Shropshire churchyard, just a few miles from the blissful house he shared with his beloved Helen, to wake his own country into some kind of appreciation of what they had lost".
Vocabulary List
“News of the World”- British newspaper featuring scandals. “Interfering With”- legal term for sexual assault.
The Builders Arms- a pub. Subscription- a pledged donation. Yobs- rowdy young people. Sloth- laziness.
“Edwardian Twilight”- The period of the reign in England of King Edward VII. 1900-1914. Disenfranchised- powerless.
Croquet- a game played outdoors by the upper classes.
Marchbanks- In George Bernard Shaw's play Candida, Marchbanks is a younger man in love with an older woman. Sweet stall- a vending cart.
Sandhurst- British military training academy. Plundering- robbing.
Marquess of Queensbury- formal rules for the sport of boxing. Sycophantic- flattering: to win favor.
Phlegmatic- a cool or disinterested temperament. Pusillanimous- Having a small mind, cowardly. Beefcake- a muscular male.
Gristle- meat cartilage. Infallible- incapable of error. Avert- avoid.
Randy- lustful.
Boyo- playful, Welsh term to address a friend. Hippodrome- name of a theatre.
Poplar- a borough of London.
T.S. Eliot- famous twentieth century poet. Cesspool- a sewage collection pool. Guzzler- someone who drinks a lot. Genuflecting- bowing to the alter.
Sin-jobber- In a religious moral sense: someone who uses guilt to sway another person. Purgatives- that which cleanses or purifies.
“Auntie Wordsworth”- William Wordsworth, a famous poet. Phlegm- slime.
“throw down the gauntlet”- challenge to a duel. Reticent- reserved in speech.
Tart- a girl of loose morals. Wet- sentimental.
Coptic- a race of ancient Egyptians. Fortnums- a famous British store.
Market Harborough- a provincial town in England. Cochineal- a bright red dye made from a beetle. Warwickshire- a county in England.
Gelding iron- an instrument for castration. St. Pancras- a London railway station.
Eminent Victorians- Notable personalities of the Victorian era.
Synopsis
Act I
The scene is the Porters' one-room apartment in the Midlands, England on an early April Sunday evening. It is an attic room, furnished simply with a dressing table, a bed, a bookshelf, a wardrobe, a gas stove and a cupboard, a small dining table with three chairs, as well as two worn armchairs. This room is the home of Jimmy Porter, his wife Alison, and his friend Cliff Lewis, who has a separate bedroom across the hall. Jimmy and Cliff run a sweet stall nearby. The play opens with Alison at the ironing board and Jimmy and Cliff in easy chairs reading the Sunday papers. Jimmy's rails against the inertia of Alison and the inertia of the whole middle-class of England. He teases Cliff about being uneducated and ignorant. Jimmy begins to turn his tirade against Alison while snatching away Cliff's paper, and Cliff defends her while trying to get back his paper. The argument turns to who drank all of the tea, and who should make more, with comments on the quality of the paper interspersed. Cliff flirts with Jimmy's wife, kissing her hand and putting her fingers in his mouth, saying to Jimmy, "She's a beautiful girl, isn't she?" "That's what they all tell me," is all that Jimmy can say. Jimmy seems not to notice, or at least not to acknowledge, their flirtation.
Jimmy is depressed by their Sunday routine and says that their youth is slipping away. Jimmy begins a tirade against the state of the culture of the world, and kicks Cliff after he realizes that no one is listening. Jimmy then begins a fresh assault on Alison, who is visibly wearing down. It is revealed that Jimmy possesses not only contempt for her father, but for her entire family, including brother Nigel and her mother. He decrees that Alison is pusillanimous, which he defines as "wanting of firmness of mind, of small courage." "Behold the Lady Pusillanimous!" Jimmy shouts. Alison continues ironing, keeping her composure, but just barely.
After a minute's relative peace listening to a concert on the radio, Jimmy abruptly shuts it off, claiming Cliff's paper and Alison's ironing are making too much noise. He begins yet another harangue of how noisy women are and yells at the church bells when they interrupt him. Cliff, in at attempt to lighten the mood, playfully wrestles with Jimmy and and they accidentally push over Alison at the ironing board, burning her arm. Alison finally snaps, ordering Jimmy out of the room while Cliff bandages her arm. They discuss the awful state of Alison's marriage. She acknowledges that it seems like it's always the things that, for other marriages, are easy, that she and Jimmy can never get right; they can never just agree and move on without having some sort of bickering or needling. Alison reveals that she is pregnant. She is afraid to tell Jimmy lest he think she planned it. Cliff holds Alison and Jimmy comes back into the room.
There is teasing and play as Jimmy reestablishes himself, and Cliff goes out for cigarettes. Left alone, Jimmy shows a more vulnerable side after admitting that he burned her on purpose. They kiss and begin role-playing an odd private game of “squirrel and bear”. Cliff comes back in with news of a telephone call from Helena Charles for Alison, and she leaves to take it. Jimmy tells Cliff that he hates Helena and begins to search through Alison's handbag and discovers a letter from her mother which she has hidden to avoid his arguments. Alison comes back in and announces that Helena is coming to stay for a while. Jimmy launches his most shocking diatribe yet. He tells Alison that if she were to have a child and if that child would die, then she might suffer enough to become a human being.
Act II, Scene 1
It is evening two weeks later. Alison is getting ready to go to church and Helena is preparing a salad for their afternoon tea. Jimmy is in Cliff's room practicing jazz on his trumpet. Jimmy's friend Hugh and Hugh's working-class mother, who provided the money needed to start the sweet stall, are discussed. Alison talks of being cut off from the kind of people she had always known. She also tells Helena about living with Hugh and how savage he was. She relates how Hugh decided to go abroad to write a novel, and how Jimmy argued with Hugh that he should stay home to take care of his mother. Alison says that she believes that Hugh's mother blames her for his leaving. She also reveals to Helena that she still hasn't told Jimmy that she is pregnant. Helena tells Alison that she needs to get out of this situation before Jimmy kills her.
Cliff and Jimmy come in for tea and Jimmy learns that Alison plans to go to church with Helena. Jimmy then launches into an attack on the Church, the Establishment in general and Alison's mother in particular. He tells of how Alison's upper class mother tried to keep them apart and of their pathetic wedding day and his getting sick in the vestry. He yells at Alison that her mother should be dead, and berates her for not coming to her mother's defense. Helena tries to intervene, saying that she will slap his face if he comes any nearer. Jimmy stops her cold by telling her that he has no problem with slapping her back and asks her if she had ever seen anyone die. He then tells of keeping his father company as he lay dying for months and says he "learnt at an early age what it was to be angry angry and helpless." ―
Helena excuses herself to finish getting ready for church. Jimmy continues berating Alison, who finally snaps, saying, “All I want is a little peace” Jimmy then tells Alison that she will want to come back to him someday and that he wants to be there to watch her suffering. Helena returns and tells Jimmy that he has a phone call downstairs. Jimmy leaves, saying; “Well it can't be anything good, can it.” Helena tells Alison that she has telegraphed Alison's father to come and take her home. Jimmy returns and says Hugh's mother has had a stroke and he will go to London to be with her. He tells Alison he needs her to go with him. She leaves to go to church with Helena.
Act II, Scene 2
It is the following evening and Colonel Redfern, Alison's father, has arrived to take her back home. Redfern spent his whole career in the colonial service in India. He sees some right on Jimmy's side and was horrified by Alison's mother's brutal attempts to prevent her from marrying Jimmy. He bemoans the state of affairs in England, saying that he “can't understand why the sun isn't shining anymore.” Helena comes in followed shortly by Cliff. Helena will stay one more night so she can attend an audition nearby. Alison asks Cliff to give a letter to Jimmy. Alison and her father leave, followed shortly by Cliff, who gives the letter to Helena to pass on to Jimmy. Jimmy comes back, having watched Hugh's mother dying. He reads Alison's letter in disbelief. He can't understand why she can't be honest and had to make a “polite emotional mess out of it.” Helena tells him Alison is pregnant and Jimmy says he doesn't care. He has watched Hugh's mother die and has no pity for Alison. He turns on Helena calling her an "evil-minded little virgin." She slaps his face; then, as he cries in despair, she kisses him passionately.
Act III, Scene 1
It is early Sunday evening several months later. Jimmy and Cliff are seated in their armchairs reading the Sunday newspapers, as usual, and Helena is at the ironing board. They talk about a newspaper article and Jimmy starts taunting Helena about her religious views. Helena asks him if they can't go one day “without tumbling over religion or politics.” The men then go into a music hall routine and Helena joins in. Jimmy and Cliff do a song and dance and end with playful wrestling. Cliff's shirt gets dirty and Helena leaves to wash it. Cliff tells Jimmy that he is going to move out. When Helena returns with his shirt, Cliff leaves to hang it over the gas fire in his room. Helena tells Jimmy that she loves him and has always wanted him. Jimmy starts making plans to sell the sweet stall and start over fresh with Helena. They agree that the three of them should go out for the evening when the door opens and Alison enters, looking very ill. Jimmy leaves the two women looking at each other, saying to Helena, “Friend of yours to see you.”
Act III, Scene 2
It is moments later. There is the sound of Jimmy's trumpet from across the hall. Alison has suffered a miscarriage. She says she doesn't know why she came, that she doesn't want to cause a breach between Helena and Jimmy. Helena says that it is all over between her and Jimmy, that she realizes that what she has been doing is wrong, and she can't live with that. She calls Jimmy in and tells him she is going to leave. Jimmy berates her saying, “They all want to escape the pain of being alive. And most of all from love.” Helena leaves and Jimmy berates Alison for not sending flowers to the funeral. He remembers their first meeting and says, "I may be a lost cause, but I thought if you loved me, it needn't matter." Alison cries and says she has found strength in the humility of not having been able to protect her unborn child. She is in the mud now, groveling. Jimmy, unable to bear her complete emotional breakdown, comforts her. They enter into their game of bear and squirrel saying, “poor squirrels” and “poor, poor bears.”
Criticism
Terry W. Browne
Browne holds a Ph.D. in theatre and is the author of the book Playwrights’ Theatre, which is a study of the company that first produced Look Back in Anger. In this essay he discusses elements that made Osborne’s play important when it was first produced and why it remains a dynamic play today.
When Look Back in Anger opened in 1956 it brought a new force to the English theatre. It was written in the prevailing form of a three-act well-made realistic play, a form that had existed for at least eighty years. The fact that the play was somewhat clumsy in its construction and needed editing was not lost on the critics, even those who championed the play as a major breakthrough in English drama and a new hope for English theatre. Not only that, but Look Back in Anger has received many revivals and has continued to speak to audiences, to hold their attention, and even to shock them. Although the form was not innovative, this clearly is no ordinary play.
The subject matter of twentieth-century English theatre until 1956 had been polite, perhaps witty, and even elegant and glittering in the use of language; however, it did not speak to the concerns of the nation, either young or old. It was a theatre of diversion, a theatre careful not to upset the illusions of its middle-class audience, a theatre that had lost all relevance to life as it was in fact being lived in post-World War II England. John Osborne changed that. As Kenneth Tynan said in the Observer on December 19, 1959: “Good taste, reticence and middle-class understatement were convicted of hypocrisy and jettisoned on the spot.” They were not jettisoned in polite, or even comedic, political or social analysis; they were jettisoned by an articulate, educated, furious young man who pointed out what his contemporary world was really like. It was not the world of egalitarianism and idealism that had been envisioned by the socialist intellectuals. It was a dreary world in which, as Jimmy says, “There aren’t any good, brave causes left.”
In spite of the broadening of opportunities for university education, the old power structure based on “the old boy” network of school and family connections was still very much in place. The old power structure was cynical and bent on its own perpetuation. The Church of England was as much a part of the Establishment as the politicians and also seemed out of touch with the everyday realities of the people. For Jimmy, and for Osborne, the answers provided by the Church were a simple bromide that prevented people from looking at their lives and their society honestly. The “Bishop of Bromley” who is quoted by Jimmy may be a fictional person, but his call for Christians to help develop the H-Bomb was not fictional. John Osborne found a form that captured the unformed mood and discontent of the audience in 1956 England and gave it voice. Once the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) had shown a twenty-five minute segment of the play, that broad audience responded with letters asking to see the whole play. It is not enough simply to point out that people, especially young people, are discontent. The theatre must bring that reality to life in a memorable way. Jimmy Porter is a magnificent character, and the power of his invective is certainly memorable.
John Osborne said many times that his aim was not to analyze and write about social ills but rather to make people feel. Jimmy Porter is not a political activist: he is a man living day-to-day in a world in which feelings and imaginative response to others has been deadened by convention. Jimmy’s attacks are not against abstract ideas. He realizes what this world of dead ideas and moribund custom is doing to him and to those he loves. It is his desire to awaken them to feelings, to being truly and vibrantly alive, that drives Jimmy Porter. Look Back in Anger is a deeply felt drama of personal relationships, and it is because of that personal element that the play remains not only valid but also vivid to audiences today.
Jimmy’s main conflict is with Alison. While the marriage is a misalliance, it is not just that of a Colonel’s daughter marrying the rough-hewn commoner; it is the misalliance of someone who is alive and suffering to one who shuts off all suffering and sensitivity to the suffering of others to avoid the pain of life. They have been married for three years and their own routine has become deadening.
Jimmy’s first direct attack on Alison comes barely a minute into the play when he says, “She hasn’t had a thought in years! Have you?” Shortly after, he says, “All this time I have been married to this woman, this monument of non-attachment,” and calls her “The Lady Pusillanimous.” Alison’s cool remoteness extends even to their lovemaking. Jimmy says, “Do you know I have never known the great pleasure of lovemaking when I didn’t desire it myself. . . . She has the passion of a python.” He wants to awaken her to life, with all its pain. That his passion and despair lead him to excess is undeniable: he wishes her to have a child and to have that child die. He says, “If only I could watch you face that. I wonder if you might even become a recognizable human being yourself.” He later says he wants to watch her grovel in the mud. “I want to stand up in your tears, and splash about in them, and sing.”
To be alive is to feel pain. Certainly, the notion that suffering validates human existence is an idea that runs through world drama from the time of Sophocles. Moreover, Jimmy recognizes that Alison’s lack of emotional commitment to anything is draining him of his own zest for life. He tells of Alison’s mother doing all she could to prevent the marriage, “All so that I shouldn’t carry off her daughter on that old charger of mine, all tricked out and caparisoned in discredited passions and ideals! The old grey mare actually once led the charge against the old order well, she certainly ain’t what she used to be.― It was all she could do to carry me, but your weight was too much for her. She just dropped dead on the way.” Jimmy is fighting for his love and for his own inner life. He needs to break down Alison’s neutrality.
Alison does suffer the loss of her unborn child and she does return to Jimmy richer in the humility and pain of living. At the end of the play they have entered into their game of “bears and squirrels,” which Alison explained earlier was a place where “we could become little furry creatures with little furry brains. Full of dumb, uncomplicated affection for each other. A silly symphony for people who couldn’t bear the pain of being human beings any longer.” It seems doubtful that such a withdrawal from the world is likely to last, and it is likely that Osborne recognized the irony of the ending of the play when he wrote it. Jimmy’s anger is deep and it is not new or brought on by current circumstances, either in his domestic life or society at large.
At the age of ten, Jimmy watched his idealistic father dying for twelve months, and “I was the only one who cared!” He says, “You see, I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry angry and helpless. And I can never forget it.” Jimmy’s― source of pain and anger seem to come from the same source as that of John Osborne who, at an early age, watched his own father die of tuberculosis.
“Good plays change their meaning with time,” said critic Michael Billington in the Guardian after seeing the 1989 revival of
Look Back in Anger. It is a measure of its worth that even forty-two years after it premiered, the play still rings true and
