BURY THE DEAD
[STAGE-PLAY]
Irwin Shaw’s play was first produced…
“Set in "the second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow night’… An outstanding Broadway
success of last season and the first play by its 23-year-old author, "Bury the Dead" is a fantastic,
furious antiwar drama in 18 scenes and with a cast of over 50. The play tells the story of six soldier
corpses who arise from their graves, in protest against wars and what wars stand for, and refuse
to be buried. Not until they have lived and have had their say about war, will they lie down. They
wander over the earth, the living dead.”
[George Ross, "In New York,” April 28, 1936] “Out of his hate of war, his contempt for war, he
has written an 80-minute drama, in blood-stained ink, in hot anger, in bitter mockery, that
surpasses any pacifist play of its kind that pleads for peace among the living, lest the dead arise.
“For that is the grim and ghoulish proposition of this brief and belligerent play. Let the dead rise
from the muddy cavities that swallow them gluttonously and protest their involuntary
martyrdom! Let them resist the spade that digs their graves and— But visualize for yourselves,
this monstrously bold fantasy of ‘Bury the Dead’—.
“Soldiers wearily digging a grave for slaughtered mates came upon six cadavers, honorably
discharged from this world by bullet, shell or poison gas, unready for interment, unwilling to lie
down, standing mutinously upright.
“There they stand—six mutilated corpses—at the rime of the waiting, yawning hole, murmuring
to the captain of the burial patrol: ‘Don’t bury us! We don’t want to be buried!’
“They will not lie down! Nor stir from their grisly resolution. They will not heed the captain’s
mortal orders or the generals’ commands. They will not stop their scandalous behavior to placate
public opinion in America nor be buried for the War Department, Congress or the church
deacons. And the dead will not be twisted into submission by the wails and woeful dirges of their
women. The dead of war will not be buried by the living! In fact, the dead insist upon living.
“Visualize these imaginative circumstances and agree that the idea is so original in conception,
so bold in sentiment, that it should have the making of a deeply gripping drama. Your
correspondent can only report, by way of assurance, that the first audience to see it was
profoundly moved, stunned by its impact and stirred by its force of eloquence…that it has been
the most widely discussed drama on Broadway this season, that its author has been hailed as a
dramatist of considerable power and promise.
“As for the author…this Irwin Shaw is said to be 23 years old, a resident of Brooklyn and a writer
of radio comedy skits for his bread and butter.”
[Dr. Alison Forsyth, University of Aberystwyth] “Irwin Shaw's 1936 play, Bury the Dead, has
enjoyed a new lease of critical appreciation since being revisited by the anti Iraq war performance
movement, Artists Against War, on the set date of 19/9/05. This movement grew out of an earlier
expression of anti war feeling in the form of The Lysistrata Project (which focused on the
reading/performance of the ancient play, Lysistrata by Aristophanes on a set date, 3/3/03).
Although not an obvious or accredited "adaptation" of Antigone, Shaw's play is a loose but very
obvious hermeneutic echo of the source text, and the myth upon which it was founded, as, in this
play, the dead quite literally will not stay buried while war rages on. This theme of incomplete
endings not only refers back to ongoing curse on the royal household at Thebes, but also the way
in which Antigone's original complaint continues to speak to us over the centuries.”
[NOTE: In the January 20, 1939 issue of Radio Times it was reported: “William Robson,
director of the Columbia Workshop, who produced this Sunday’s recorded feature, ‘Crosstown
New York’, is to visit Europe next month, and the BBC has invited him to produce a couple of
shows. We have already heard two of the Columbia Workshop’s programmes, Fall of the City and
Job to be done, and Robson will produce another, called Bury the Dead. This will be early in
March…”
[CHRONOLOGY]
(WEVD, NEW YORK)
[Friday—8:30-8:45 PM]
May 15, 1936 “Scenes from ‘Bury the Dead’”
(CJRC, WINNIPEG)
[Monday—7:45-?:?? PM]
September 28, 1936 “Bury the Dead”
[“…A number of scenes from ‘Bury the Dead’ will be broadcast… L. St.
George Stubbs, well known to Winnipeg as a champion of civil liberties,
will be guest speaker…”]
CHICAGO REPERTORY GROUP (WCFL, CHICAGO)
[Wednesday—8:30-8:45 PM]
November 10, 1937 “Bury the Dead”
THE COLUMBIA WORKSHOP (WABC, NEW YORK—CBS)
[Saturday—7:30-8:00 PM]
May 28, 1938 “Bury the Dead”
CAST: Edward Latimer, Frank Lovejoy, Arnold Moss, et al.
[Links]
[audio] “Bury the Dead,” The Columbia Workshop (May 28, 1938).
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