|
''Under Milk Wood'' is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, commissioned by the BBC and later adapted for the stage. A film version, ''Under Milk Wood'' directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released in 1972. An omniscient narrator invites the audience to listen to the dreams and innermost thoughts of the inhabitants of a fictional small Welsh fishing village Llareggub ("(bugger all )" backwards). They include Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, relentlessly nagging her two dead husbands; Captain Cat, reliving his seafaring times; the two Mrs. Dai Breads; Organ Morgan, obsessed with his music; and Polly Garter, pining for her dead lover. Later, the town awakens and, aware now of how their feelings affect whatever they do, we watch them go about their daily business. ==Origins and development== When Thomas was staying at New Quay, Cardiganshire, in West Wales, one winter, he went out early one morning into the still sleeping town and verses came to his mind about the inhabitants. He wrote the account of this as a short story named "Quite Early One Morning" (recorded for BBC Wales on 14 December 1944 and broadcast 31 August 1945). He continued to work on the idea for the remaining eight years of his life. In 1931 a 17-year-old Dylan created a piece for the Swansea Grammar School magazine which included a conversation of Milk Wood stylings with Mussolini, Wife, Mr. Pritchard & Mr. Ogmore. In it are lines which are nearly identical to those that would later be found in Milk Wood. A year later in 1932, Dylan talked at length with his mentor and friend 'The socialist grocer of Brynmill', Bert Trick about creating a play about a Welsh seaside town. At Bert Trick's bungalow in Caswell, Gower in 1933 Dylan read an embryonic 'Under Milk Wood'. In an interview with Colin Edwards, Bert Trick recalls: "He read it to Nell and me in our bungalow at Caswell around the old Dover stove, with the paraffin lamps lit at night ... the story was then called Llareggub, which was a mythical village in South Wales, a typical village, with terraced houses with one ty bach to about five cottages and the various characters coming out and emptying the slops and exchanging greetings and so on; that was the germ of the idea which ... developed into Under Milkwood. (Dylan Remembered Volume 1, page 165) In "Quite Early One Morning" there are numerous ideas and characters that would be further developed for ''Under Milk Wood.''; for instance, the short story includes a 28 line poem, of which this is the fourth verse (the name and the final line reappear in ''Under Milk Wood''): :Open the curtains, light the fire, what are servants for? :I am Mrs. Ogmore Pritchard and I want another snooze. :Dust the china, feed the canary, sweep the drawing-room floor; :And before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes. Thomas wrote to his wife, Caitlin (about 23 May 1953, from the United States, on notepaper from the Poetry Centre), towards the end of a long letter:〔Paul Ferris (ed.), ''Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters''. Macmillan, 1985.〕 "I've finished that infernally eternally unfinished 'Play' & have done it in New York with actors." He had, in fact, promised to deliver the work on his arrival in New York on 21 April but had completed it in the afternoon of the day it was to be premiered, only after being locked in a room to finish it by his literary agent Liz Reitell the last lines of the script were handed to the actors as they were putting on their make-up. The same year, he read a part of the script in public for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at The Poetry Centre. Soon afterwards, with others, he sound-recorded a performance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, New York. On 9 September 1953, he delivered a full draft of ''Under Milk Wood'' to the BBC as he left for a tour of America, intending to revise the manuscript on his return but on 9 November 1953 he died in New York City. Thomas is reported to have commented that ''Under Milk Wood'' was developed in response to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as a way of reasserting the evidence of beauty in the world. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Under Milk Wood」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|