5
At first light, following a night of love, a happy Chen Teh is discovered outside a local teahouse. She is carrying a small sack of opium which she proposes to sell so as to raise the extra $200 needed to get her flier flying. In a kind of mime to musical accompaniment she and we see the opium smokers leaving the teahouse after a night of indulgence, lonely, stumbling, ravaged, and shivering. The sight of these wrecks brings her to her senses. She is quite incapable of buying happiness for herself by trafficking in such deadly poison. Sun will surely understand. He won’t reject her if she comes back to him empty-handed. Charged with this hope she hastens away.
6
Chen Teh’s hope has not been fulfilled. Sun has left her. In low dives he is drinking all the money raised by the sale of the shop. We next see Chen Teh in the yard, loading her few possessions on a cart. She has lost her little shop, gift of the gods. As she takes down her washing she becomes giddy, and a woman neighbour remarks mockingly that her fine upstanding lover has no doubt put her in the family way. The discovery fills Chen Teh with indescribable joy. She hails the pilot’s son as a pilot of the future. Turning round, she can scarcely believe her eyes when she sees a neighbour’s child fishing for scraps of food in the dustbin; it is hungry. The sight brings about a complete transformation in her. She makes a big speech to the audience proclaiming her determination to turn herself into a tigress for the sake of the child in her womb. That, it seems to her, is the only way to shield it from poverty and degeneracy. The only one who can help is her cousin.
Interlude
The water seller asks the audience whether they have seen Chen Teh. It is now five months since she vanished. Her cousin has grown rich and is now known as the Tobacco King. Rumour however has it that his prosperity is due to shady dealings. The water seller is sure he is pushing opium.
7
The Tobacco King, Chui Ta, is sitting in solitude in Chen Teh’s old but newly smartened-up shop. He has grown fat. Only his housekeeper knows why. The autumn rain seems to make him incline to melancholy. The housekeeper pokes fun at him. Is the master perhaps thinking about that rainy evening in the park? Is he still waiting for the pilot to reappear? The shop door opens and a decrepit individual comes in; it is Sun. Chui Ta is greatly agitated and asks what he can do for him. The ex-pilot brusquely refuses food and clothing. He wants just one thing: opium. Chui Ta, seeing in this unforgotten lover a victim of his own shady traffic, has just begged him to give up this suicidal vice when Wang the water seller appears with his regular monthly enquiry as to the whereabouts of Chen Teh. Reproachfully he informs Chui Ta that she herself told him she was pregnant, and swears that Chen Teh’s friends are never going to give up enquiring about her, for good people are both rare and desperately needed. This is too much for Chui Ta. Without a word he goes into the back room. Sun has overheard that Chen Teh is expecting a child. He at once sees an opening for blackmail. Then he hears sobs from the back room; undoubtedly it is Chen Teh’s voice. When Chui Ta reenters the shop Sun once again demands opium, and because Chui Ta refuses he goes off uttering threats. Chui Ta’s secret is on the verge of being discovered. He must get away. He is just leaving the shop and Szechwan when Sun comes back with the police. A quick search reveals Chen Teh’s clothing. The Tobacco King is taken away on suspicion of murder.
8
The water seller has a dream. The three gods appear to him and ask about Chen Teh. He is forced to tell them that she has been murdered by her cousin. The gods are appalled. During their entire trip across the province they failed to find a single other good person. They will return at once.
9
At the trial of Chui Ta the Tobacco King, which has aroused the entire neighbourhood, the three gods appear as judges. As it proceeds Chen Teh’s good works are universally lauded and Chui Ta’s misdeeds condemned. Chui Ta is forced to justify his harshness by his desire to help his unworldly cousin. He regards himself as her one genuinely disinterested friend. Asked where she is staying at that moment, he has no answer. When cornered he promises to make a statement if the court can be cleared. Once again with his judges he takes off his disguise: he is Chen Teh. The gods are horrified. The one good person they found is the most detested man in the entire city. It can’t be true. Incapable of facing this reality they send for a pink cloud and hastily mount it in order to journey back up to their heaven. Chen Teh falls on her knees, imploring them for help and advice. ‘How can I be good and yet survive without my cousin, Enlightened Ones?’ – ‘Well, do your best’ is the gods’ embarrassed answer. – ‘But I’ve got to have my cousin, Enlightened Ones!’ – ‘Once a month, that will do.’ And despairingly she watches her gods disappear into the sky, waving and smiling.
When the court doors are once again opened the crowd delightedly hails the return of the good person of Szechwan.
[From Werner Hecht (ed.): Materialien zu Brechts ‘Der gute Mensch von Sezuan,’ Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1968, pp. 100–106. This outline, doubtless made for Kurt Weill, corresponds to the ‘Santa Monica 1943’ version of the play, as discussed below, pp. 336ff.]
ALTERNATIVE EPILOGUE
This Szechwan, as you must have understood
In which one can’t survive and still be good
Has gone for ever. It had to disappear.
Yet cities can be found much nearer here
Where doing good can be the end of you
While evil actions help you to win through.
Dear audience, if you live in such a town
Make sure it’s changed before it gets you down.
Earth has no happiness that can compare
With freedom to do good while you are there.
[Written about 1953. From Jan Knopf (ed.): Brechts Guter Mensch von Sezuan. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1982.]
Editorial Note
1 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST IDEA
It was not till the spring of 1939, around the time of the German annexation of Czechoslovakia, that Brecht began a serious attempt to write this play which he had been ruminating for so many years. Locating it for the first time clearly in China, and already calling it by its final title, he outlined first a five-scene, then an eight-scene plan, the second of which goes:
Prologue
1. The whore gets a tobacco shop.
2. Her cousin has to rescue it.
3. The whore falls in love.
4. The cousin has to foot the bill.
5. The whore’s one friend.
6. The whore’s marriage.
7. Suspicion
8. Trial
But soon this simple plot grew too elaborate, the cousin’s personality too simply bad, the whole play much too long. From Brecht’s journal it sounds as if such writing as got done that summer was patchy, and certainly no complete script of this version is known to have survived. It looks as though there was to have been a subsequently eliminated character called Feh Pung, a large-scale tobacco merchant who wished to squeeze the heroine and other small traders out of business; nor did either the landlady or the family of eight figure in the story, the former being replaced by a male landlord, while in lieu of the latter the two prostitutes of scene 2 had a more elaborate role. The barber, for his part, would have been rather more likeable, since he was to have helped the heroine combat the tobacco merchant. The names all through differed from those in our version and were changed at a relatively late stage. Thus Shen Teh/Shui Ta was Li Gung/Lao Go; the pilot Yu Schan or Schan Yu; the water-seller Sun; Mrs Shin at first Mrs Si; and the barber Kau or Kiau. Finally in September, at the time of the German invasion of Poland and the allied declaration of war, the work ground to a halt. Within a fortnight of summing it all up in the ‘Press Report’ printed on pp. 317 ff., Brecht was hard at work on Mother Courage instead.
2 THE FINLAND VERSION
He picked up the threads again the next spring, after moving to Finland in April 1940. ‘No play has ever given me so much trouble’, he noted in June after he and Margarete Steffin had b
een working on it concentratedly for some six weeks:
the material presented many difficulties, and in the (roughly) ten years since i first tackled it i made several false starts, the main danger was of being over-schematic. li gung had to be a person if she was to become a good person. as a result her goodness is not of a conventional kind; she is not wholly and invariably good, not even when she is being li gung. nor is lao go conventionally bad, etc. the continual fusion and dissolution of the two characters, and so on, comes off reasonably well, i think. the god’s great experiment of extending love of one’s neighbour to embrace love of one’s self, adding ‘be good to thyself to ‘be good to others,’ needed to stand apart from the story and at the same time to dominate it…
The first complete script in the Brecht Archive dates from this period, but as it is one of Brecht’s characteristic pasted-up typescripts, with many later additions and corrections stuck in and yet others written in by hand, much detective work will be needed before we know just what stages it went through. Originally the characters bore the earlier names (apart from Mrs. Si, who had already become Mrs. Shin), which Brecht at some point amended by hand. His journal suggests that this change was decided between August 9 and September 6, 1940, in other words at the last moment before he moved on to intensive work on Puntila. However, the addition of the three songs ‘Song of the Smoke,’ ‘Song of the Eighth Elephant,’ and ‘Trio of the Vanishing Gods on their Cloud,’ which were written in January 1941, suggest that the final amendments were probably made during that month. Thereafter it was re-typed and mimeographed, copies being sent to Switzerland, Sweden, and the U.S., with the text virtually as we now have it. Until the 1950s the play bore a dedication to Helene Weigel, Brecht’s wife.
The most elaborate of the ‘working schemes’ used for the play is reproduced on pp. 320–21. Its pencilled additions include Li Gung’s ‘Praise of the Rain’ in scene 3 (possibly the origin of the water seller’s song on p. 37) and a sketch for the ‘Song of the Defenceless of the Good and the Gods’ (p. 48 f.). The January revision too seems too have been concerned (to judge from a journal entry of the 25th) with ‘introducing a poetic element, a few verses and songs, this should make it lighter and less tedious, even if it cannot be shortened.’ Besides this variation of its texture and the changing of the names it seems that Brecht’s reworking of the draft completed the previous June concentrated on four main points: the treatment of the stocks of raw tobacco brought in by the family of eight, the exact details of Shen Teh’s borrowings and payments, the direct addressing of the audience, and minor questions of local colour: e.g., should the characters feed on bread and milk or on rice and tea? ‘i have taken care to avoid any element of folklore,’ he noted at one point. ‘On the other hand i don’t want people to make a joke of yellow men eating white french bread … that would be using china as a mere disguise, and a ragged disguise at that.’ What he was striving for rather, he said, was something equivalent to the imaginary London of The Threepenny Opera or the Kiplingesque Kilkoa of Man equals Man, both of which he considered successful ‘poetic conceptions.’
3 ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST SCRIPT
To resume this 1940–41 script scene by scene, the chief points of interest are:
Prologue
Dated by Brecht June 11, 1940 and followed by a photograph of a Chinese water carrier.
1
Here as elsewhere the rice distributed by Shen Teh was originally milk. Sacks of tobacco are brought in by the ‘elderly couple’ on p. 13, also by the grandfather and the niece. The ‘Song of the Smoke’ (p. 19) was inserted with the title ‘Song of the impoverished family.’ The verse ‘They are bad’ was likewise a later addition (p. 15).
2
The details of Mrs. Mi Tzu’s demand for the rent in advance (p. 28) were added to the script, as was the passage with the old woman (p. 30). All sums were originally in yen, not silver dollars.
3
At the start Brecht cut eleven lines in which young prostitute told Shen Teh that her family had seven sacks of tobacco with which to restart in business, and asked her to look after them. Thereafter the rain, Shen Teh’s references to her tame crane, her speech beginning ‘There are still friendly people’ (p. 36) and the verses ‘In our country’ (p. 35) and ‘How rich I am’ (p. 36) were all later additions to the script. The verse ‘Hardly was a shelter’ in the ensuing interlude (p. 40) was originally at the end of scene 1, where it was spoken by Shen Teh.
4
The episode where the two old people lend Shen Teh the rent money (pp. 44 f.) was certainly reworked, if not actually added to the script. The passage where Shen Teh hands the money to Mrs. Yang, proposes to sell her tobacco stocks and wonders how to raise a further $300 (from ‘Of course you can have those now’ on p. 47 to ‘a pilot has got to fly, that is obvious’ on p. 48) appears to be an addition too.
5
In various schemes for the complex finances of this scene it appears that Mrs. Mi Tzu was to buy not only the shop but also the sacks of tobacco left by the family of eight, who would then be reluctant to claim them. This was cut on the script. Brecht also deleted an appearance of the old woman early in the scene to inquire about her loan, substituting instead the exchange between Sun and Shui Ta (p. 53); both versions stress that there was no agreement in writing. Notes made after the change of names show Brecht concerned to reconcile Sun’s more ‘hooligan-like’ features with his genuine keenness for flying. At that stage his boasting about his hold over Shen Teh was primarily intended to impress Mrs. Mi Tzu, not (as now) Shui Ta. The barber, too, was at this point to suggest turning his empty houses into a tobacco factory for the general benefit of the neighbourhood.
6
Brecht added Sun’s references to the ‘gremlins’ (p. 64 f.) and the mention of the old couple (on p. 66). Shen Teh’s demand that Sun repay the $200 is not in this script, and only appears in that of the Zurich production.
7
The first six lines, with their further mention of repayment, are not in the script. Shu Fu’s gift of the blank cheque (p. 74) is not in the working plan, and it appears that the whole ending of the scene, with its installation of the factory in Shu Fu’s sheds, was extensively worked over. Previously this development was to have been left to scene 8, while the sacks (subsequently bales) of tobacco would already have been sold in scene 5. The script specifies that Shen Teh’s big verse speech on p. 75 should be accompanied by the music of the ‘Song of the Defencelessness of the Good and the Gods’, which would continue softly after its end. Her little rhyme about ‘A plum off my tree’ (p. 76) was added in revision.
8
Though the scene is dated May 21, 1940, the ‘Song of the Eighth Elephant’ (p. 88) was added in January. Most of the indications that Mrs. Yang’s remarks were to be addressed to the audience were likewise additions.
9
Bears the dates May 23 and June 17 and seems to have been scarcely revised since.
10
Dated Helsingfors, May 29 and June 17, 1940, but bears signs of considerable subsequent reworking. Shen Teh’s big speech (pp. 107 ff.) looks like a separate insertion, and the reference to her as ‘strong, healthy and well-built’ (p. 109) is added in Brecht’s hand. Originally on this script the scene ended with ‘Once a month: that will be enough’ (p. 110), followed by the final quatrain. The gods’ trio, initially with a slightly different first verse, was added in the January revision.
The epilogue is not included in this script, whose finally amended version is otherwise to all intents and purposes the same as the final text used in our edition.
4. THE ZURICH SCRIPT OF 1943
For the play’s first production at the Zurich Schauspielhaus a duplicated script was made by the Reiss-Verlag of Basel. Sub-titled ‘A Parable by Bcrtold Brecht’, this again is very close to the final text, but includes a number of small dramaturgical changes due presumably to the theatre. Thus it runs most of the interludes into the immediately preceding scenes, puts
an intermission after scene 5 and makes the following cuts:
1
The sacks of tobacco previously brought by the elderly couple were omitted.
6
Cut from Sun’s ‘Why not?’ (p. 64) to the start of Mrs. Yang’s next speech (p. 65).