John Osborne

This article, at the outset, lays focus on the theme of alienation, internal conflict and hostility experienced by Jimmy Porter in John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger by examining how the character, Jimmy is furious with life, friends and his wife, alienating himself from the society, religion and women. It concludes, by stating that of all the modern dramatists, John Osborne has been gifted with the credit of dramatizing the insecurity and alienation felt by the younger generation by effectively picturing the loneliness of the central character Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger. What is generally held is that the drama, more than the other arts, is most directly influenced by the spirit of the age and the modern dramas are nothing but the cultural product of a new pattern of society that emerged in the wake of the World War – II, which reduced Britain from the position of a great imperial power to that of a second class power. This is evidently pointed out in the lines that follow: ‚In Hungary; the people rebelled against their Russian – imposed Government and Russia put down the revolt in a good old – fashioned imperialist way by sending in tanks, while the rest of the world looked on and did nothing. In the Mediterranean, the Egyptian Government announced that it was taking over the Suez Canal, up to then owned and

The thirty years following the Second World War was a period of radical change politically, socially and economically. The post war years marked the height of three contravening concepts: disenchantment, aspiration and optimism for an age that promised to bring Britain out of the shadow it had buried itself in since the somewhat ambiguous victory of 1945. With its great contribution to the war, the United States of America eclipsed Great Britain and it became increasingly evident that Britain was no longer an imperial power. Even off the world stage, Britain had become a country of contradictions, projecting a veneer of unity, optimism and growth whilst hiding the reality of the new British society that consisted of division, damaged infrastructure, massive debts and a declining industry that was reliant on the American government to make economic recovery. This essay will be assessing the level at which the changing condition of Britain, from the fighting optimistic fifties to the elitist eighties, is conveyed through the male characters in High Windows, Look Back in Anger and London Fields.

Starting from John Osborne’s negative reaction to theatre critics’ and journalists’ perception of "Look Back in Anger"’s idiosyncratic language as “angry”, as well as their perception of the protagonist Jimmy Porter as a representative of the Angry Young Man movement, this paper considers sarcasm as one of the key aggressive rhetorical devices used in the language of the play. Osborne thought that the specific, even revolutionary rhetoric of his play was in most cases misunderstood and wrongly conveyed in theatre adaptations as “angry”, which made the performance lose the edge that the language of the play had the potential for. "Look Back in Anger" provides an insight into the Porters’ lower-class mundane dailiness, charged with verbal aggression and intertextual allusiveness stemming from deeper political, historical and social issues of mid-twentieth-century Britain. This paper focuses on Jimmy Porter’s prevalent use of sarcasm as a weapon in his personal battle, by taking John Haiman’s "Talk Is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language", to illustrate how the language of "Look Back in Anger" coincides with Haiman’s conclusions on the theoretical and applied characteristics of sarcasm in contemporary society.

Keywords: theatre, verbal aggression, sarcasm, intertextuality.

John Osborne writes his historically political play, "A Patriot for Me" in 1965 – in the critical decade which saw the end of stage censorship –, focusing on a significant double agent during the First World War, Alfred Redl. The play sheds light upon the intriguing correlation between the nature of espionage and attributions to and connotations of male homosexuality in the early twentieth century. Conforming his behaviours to the traditional roles of masculinities under the gaze of military officers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the protagonist Redl reflects the illustration of marginalised male gender roles within the order of hegemonic masculinities. In addition to emphasising the play’s significant role in the process of the abolishment of censorship in 1968, the aim of this paper is to scrutinise the relationship between homosexuality and treachery within the institute of espionage by relating these issues to Alfred Redl’s life.

Using James Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a framework, the present paper aims at discussing the position of the artist and his role in two post-war British plays; namely, Osborne's The Entertainer, and Hare's Teeth 'n' Smile. Unlike Joyce's novel which deals with the creative evolution of Stephan Dedalus into an artist, the plays under study deal with the gradual disintegration of the main characters/artists that stand for the disintegration of society and culture at large.

The first performance of Look Back in Anger in 1956 ushered in a new period of British theatre, and its success established the previously unknown John Osborne as a new playwright of the first rank. Contrary to popular perception, Look Back was not Osborne's first play to be performed, and two of his early plays had already enjoyed professional productions. Copies of the scripts, thought to have been lost, were rediscovered in the British Library in 2008, and are presented for the first time here.
The Devil Inside Him (1950) was the 21 year-old Osborne's earliest attempt at a full-length play, and concerns a young Welshman, Huw, at odds with the hypocrisy and imaginative poverty of his community. It was re-written with help from Osborne's then-lover, Stella Linden.
Personal Enemy (1955) was written with Anthony Creighton with whom Osborne later collaborated with on Epitaph for George Dillon. Set in small-town America during summer of 1953 - at the height of the anti-communist witch-hunts - the play tells the story of a family torn apart by a country's political, and sexual, paranoia.

This essay carries out a brief and yet thorough analysis on the relationship between Epic Theatre (Piscator and Brecht, with references to Szondi's work) and British Drama (with particular reference to Shelagh Delaney, Edward Bond and Sarah Kane). It is possible to see an evolution in this relationship: from a complete adhesion to Brecht's principles to the creation of a very large gap with the German author. This study is in Italian but can be translated, if asked.

Despite their different time periods and social, economic and political changes in the society, these three plays have anger, violence and alienation in common and so, the desire to convey these feelings to their audience yet in different forms.

• comparing and contrasting the works
• focusing particularly on contextual/historical background and theatrical/aesthetic features