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    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd: "I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd: "I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd: "I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd: "I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."

    By D. H. Lawrence

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    About this ebook

    For many of us DH Lawrence was a schoolboy hero. Who can forget sniggering in class at the mention of Women In Love or Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Lawrence was a talented if nomadic writer whose novels were passionately received, suppressed at times and generally at odds with Establishment values. This of course did not deter him. At his death in 1930 at the young age of 44 he was more often thought of as a pornographer but in the ensuing years he has come to be more rightly regarded as one of the most imaginative writers these shores have produced. As well as his novels and of course his poetry - he wrote in excess of 800 of them he was also a very talented playwright. These works have not been given quite the attention they deserve. Here we publish 'The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateNov 19, 2013
    ISBN9781783946303
    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd: "I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
    Author

    D. H. Lawrence

    David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11th September 1881 in Eastwood, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands. Despite ill health as a child and a comparatively disadvantageous position in society, he became a teacher in 1908, and took up a post in a school in Croydon, south of London. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911, and from then until his death he wrote feverishly, producing poetry, novels, essays, plays travel books and short stories, while travelling around the world, settling for periods in Italy, New Mexico and Mexico. He married Frieda Weekley in 1914 and died of tuberculosis in 1930.

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    • 4/5
      Dank, dark, Northern angst set among miners. Lawrence's speciality. Mrs. Holroyd didn't marry for love and didn't find it in her marriage with the husband who humiliated her for his own amusement and beat her because she was his slave. But dawning happiness with another and the sudden fulfilment of wishing her brutish, brutal husband dead brought out the guilt in her. Years of ill-treatment fell away as she washed his corpse and all she could do was sob out her regrets and eulogise the dead.

      Silly cow.

    Book preview

    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd - D. H. Lawrence

    The Widowing Of Mrs Holroyd by D.H. Lawrence

    A PLAY IN THREE ACTS

    For many of us DH Lawrence was a schoolboy hero. Who can forget sniggering in class at the mention of Women In Love or Lady Chatterley’s Lover?   Lawrence was a talented if nomadic writer whose novels were passionately received, suppressed at times and generally at odds with Establishment values.  This of course did not deter him.   At his death in 1930 at the young age of 44 he was more often thought of as a pornographer but in the ensuing years he has come to be more rightly regarded as one of the most imaginative writers these shores have produced.  As well as his novels he was also a masterful poet and wrote over 800 of them.  Here we publish his plays. Once again Lawrence shows his hand as a brilliant writer. Delving into situations and peeling them back to reveal the inner heart.

    Index Of Contents

    Characters

    Act I

    Act II

    Act III

    Anthony Trollope – A Short Biography

    Anthony Trollope – A Concise Bibliography

    CHARACTERS

    MRS HOLROYD

    HOLROYD

    BLACKMORE

    JACK HOLROYD

    MINNIE HOLROYD

    GRANDMOTHER

    RIGLEY

    CLARA

    LAURA

    MANAGER

    TWO MINERS

    The action of the play takes place in the Holroyds' cottage

    ACT I

    SCENE I

    The kitchen of a miner's small cottage. On the left is the fireplace, with a deep, full red fire. At the back is a white-curtained window, and beside it the outer door of the room. On the right, two white wooden stairs intrude into the kitchen below the closed stair-foot door. On the left, another door.

    The room is furnished with a chintz-backed sofa under the window, a glass-knobbed painted dresser on the right, and in the centre, toward the fire, a table with a red and blue check tablecloth. On one side of the hearth is a wooden rocking-chair, on the other an arm-chair of round staves. An unlighted copper-shaded lamp hangs from the raftered ceiling. It is dark twilight, with the room full of warm fireglow. A woman enters from the outer door. As she leaves the door open behind her, the colliery rail can be seen not far from the threshold, and, away back, the headstocks of a pit.

    The woman is tall and voluptuously built. She carries a basket heaped full of washing, which she has just taken from the clotheslines outside. Setting down the basket heavily, she feels among the clothes. She lifts out a white heap of sheets and other linen, setting it on the table; then she takes a woollen shirt in her hand.

    MRS HOLROYD (aloud, to herself): You know they're not dry even now, though it's been as fine as it has. (She spreads the shirt on the back of her rocking-chair, which she turns to the fire.)

    VOICE (calling from outside): Well, have you got them dry?

    MRS HOLROYD starts up, turns and flings her hand in the direction of the open door, where appears a man in blue overalls, swarfed and greased. He carries a dinner-basket.

    MRS HOLROYD: You, you, I don't know what to call you! The idea of shouting at me like that, like the Evil One out of the darkness!

    BLACKMORE: I ought to have remembered your tender nerves. Shall I come in?

    MRS HOLROYD: No, not for your impudence. But you're late, aren't you?

    BLACKMORE: It's only just gone six. We electricians, you know, we're the gentlemen on a mine: ours is gentlemen's work. But I'll bet Charles Holroyd was home before four.

    MRS HOLROYD (bitterly): Ay, and gone again before five.

    BLACKMORE: But mine's a lad's job, and I do nothing! Where's he gone?

    MRS HOLROYD (contemptuously): Dunno! He'd got a game on somewhere, toffed himself up to the nines, and skedaddled off as brisk as a turkey-cock. (She smirks in front of the mirror hanging on the chimney-piece, in imitation of a man brushing his hair and moustache and admiring himself.)

    BLACKMORE: Though turkey-cocks aren't brisk as a rule. Children playing?

    MRS HOLROYD (recovering herself, coldly): Yes. And they ought to be in.

    She continues placing the flannel garments before the fire, on the fender and on chair-backs, till the stove is hedged in with a steaming fence; then she takes a sheet in a bundle from the table, and goes up to BLACKMORE, who stands watching her.

    Here, take hold, and help me fold it.

    BLACKMORE: I shall swarf it up.

    MRS HOLROYD (snatching back the sheet): Oh, you're as tiresome as everybody else.

    BLACKMORE (putting down his basket and moving to door on right): Well, I can soon wash my hands.

    MRS HOLROYD (ceasing to flap and fold pillow-cases): That roller-towel's ever so dirty. I'll get you another. (She goes to a drawer in the dresser, and then back toward the scullery, from which comes the sound of water.)

    BLACKMORE: Why, bless my life, I'm a lot dirtier than the towel. I don't want another.

    MRS HOLROYD (going into the scullery): Here you are.

    BLACKMORE (softly, now she is near him): Why did you trouble now? Pride, you know, pride, nothing else.

    MRS HOLROYD (also playful): It's nothing but decency.

    BLACKMORE (softly): Pride, pride, pride!

    A child of eight suddenly appears in the doorway.

    JACK: Oo, how dark!

    MRS HOLROYD (hurrying agitated into the kitchen): Why, where have you been, what have you been doing now?

    JACK (surprised): Why, I've only been out to play.

    MRS HOLROYD (still sharply): And where's Minnie?

    A little girl of six appears by the door.

    MINNIE: I'm here, mam, and what do you

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