Touch and Go, a Play in Three Acts

by D.H. Lawrence

Set in the Midlands, Lawrence's Touch and Go is a three-act play dealing with clash between capitalism and labor. In his attempt to organize miners Willie Houghton argues that capitalism is like a wheel-cart and labor is like the frog crushed beneath its wheels. "The essence of tragedy, which is creative crisis, is that a man should go through with his fate, and not dodge it and go bumping into an accident. And the whole business of life, at the great critical periods of mankind, is that men should accept and be one with their tragedy. Therefore we should open our hearts. For one thing we should have a People's Theatre. Perhaps it would help us in this hour of confusion better than anything." D. H. Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter whose works represent a reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In his writings Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct often apposing current social acceptance. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, described him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation."

Genres: Classics, Plays

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[البهلول أحمد مصطفى]

مسرحية "اللمس والرحيل: مسرحية من ثلاثة فصول" للكاتب د. هـ. لورانس، عمل مسرحي كُتب في أوائل القرن العشرين، ويعكس مشاعر ما بعد الحرب العالمية الأولى. تتناول المسرحية تعقيدات الصراع الطبقي، مع التركيز بشكل خاص على ديناميكيات العلاقة بين العمال ورأس المال داخل مجتمع تعدين، وتطرح تساؤلات حول جوهر الهوية الإنسانية بما يتجاوز الأدوار والتوقعات المجتمعية. يُقدّم المشهد الافتتاحي مجموعة من الشخصيات، من بينهم جيرالد بارلو وويلي هوتون، الذين ينخرطون في نقاش حول الحرية والرضا ومعاناة عمال مناجم الفحم، مما يُمهّد الطريق لصراعات تتمحور حول العدالة الاجتماعية وحرية الفرد. في بداية المسرحية، يتجمّع الناس في سوق قرية تعدين في منطقة ميدلاندز صباح يوم أحد. يُخاطب ويلي هوتون مجموعة من عمال المناجم، مُعربًا عن إحباطه من جهلهم بحريتهم ومستقبلهم. يرسم صورة قاتمة لمصيرهم المُحتمل كـ"عبيد مُرقّمين" في مُجمّع، مُثيرًا نقاشات حول الرضا بالوضع الراهن وضرورة العمل الجماعي. في هذه الأثناء، تُقدَّم شخصيات مثل جيرالد بارلو وأوليفر تورتون، مما يُنشئ علاقات وحوارات متشابكة تستكشف مواضيع شخصية واجتماعية وسياسية. تُهيئ هذه البداية نبرة مؤثرة، مُشيرةً إلى أن وراء الحياة اليومية لهذه الشخصيات صراعًا عميقًا من أجل الكرامة والهوية في ظل التصنيع والصراع الطبقي.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/djij8u...

[Perry Whitford]

I think D.H. Lawrence must have been a little giddy when he wrote the introduction to this play.

Incongruously published by Douglas Goldring’s <>People’s Theatre<>, a short-lived socialist company, Lawrence outlined his take on the struggle between Capital vs Labour, using some unusually ambivalent and absurdist arguments for a very real and concrete political question.
How else account for this attempt to describe what a People's Theatre meant to him?:

'People, ah God! Not mannequins. Not lords nor proletariats nor bishops nor husbands nor co-respondents nor virgins nor adultresses nor uncles nor noses. Not even white rabbits nor presidents. People.'

What little I have read of Lawrence before I am ready to accuse him of many things, but giddiness is not one of them. Neither is socialist. Fascist is nearer the mark. He's not the first name that comes to mind for any leftwing theater promoter looking to enlist a writer to fight in the corner for Labour. Lawrence liked the masters to be in control, and the crueller they were about it the better.

True to form the colliery master in Touch and Go, Gerald Barlow, is contemptuous and unflinching when the miners threaten to go on strike. This is his story, not theirs. His father before him was too soft with the men, Gerald has modernised the pit and dehuminised the workers, feeling nothing but scorn for their attempts to leverage control:

GERALD. They're trying every day. They just simply couldn't control modern industry—they haven't the intelligence. They've no life intelligence. The owners may have little enough, but Labour has none. They're just mechanical little things that can make one or two motions, and they're done. They've no more idea of life than a lawn-mower has.

The representative of Labour, going by the unlikely and uncomplimentary name of Job Arthur Freer, is clearly the villain, cosying up to Gerald in private, happily accepting a pocketful of expensive cigars, then turning on his master after he receives a beating from him.

A final confrontation is inevitable in the third and final act, it duly arrived, nothing of note occurred and the play simply stopped, as though there was a curfew on the theatre and the time was up. Gerald's friend Oliver did make a wishy-washy speech about Capital and Labour fighting over the same stick, but that hardly amounted to anything.

Reading the play a hundred years after it was written I couldn't help wishing that Lawrence would have written the ending he really wanted and had Gerald crush the strikers under his heal. At least that would have actually been an ending.

One thing I was glad of was that I finally got around to reading Women in Love a few months ago, which enabled me to see that the characters here were virtually the same people as the ones in that impressive and infuriating novel.

Which is to say they were nasty, contradictory animals for the most part.

[Bert Christie]

"Fair"

[Emil]

Dated in language but the argument still is valid.