The Brass Butterfly: A Play in Three Acts

by William Golding

Commissioned by the leading actor Alastair Sim (1900-1976) The Brass Butterfly was Golding's only original stage play. Starring Sim himself, and also the popular actor George Cole, it opened for a provincial pre-West End run in Oxford in early 1958 and premiered at the Strand Theatre in London in April. In his biography of Golding, John Carey describes it as 'a comic scherzo' dealing with the conflict between science and religion, transposed to the Greco-Roman world of antiquity.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Theatre, Classics

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Sir William Gerald Golding was an Engish novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.

As a result of his contributions to literature, Golding was knighted in 1988. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Reviews

[Haru · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a headache in making. By the end of this text I was just baffled. I would certainly not call this one of his finest works by a mile.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it, but I don't know why.

[Lukerik · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know when you pick up a book to have a look at it and don’t put it down until you’ve finished? The bookseller was not amused. I’d read two or three of Golding’s novels before and I think he’s an amazing writer, but bless him, dialogue is not his strongest suit. What piqued my interest was him working entirely with dialogue. Nothing to worry about here. Check out that opening conversation between Mamillius and the Captain and you can hear their contrasting tones so clearly.

I think this could be a very funny play if staged properly, but wasn’t laughing as I was trying to work out the intellectual architecture. I struggle with Golding at the best of times and miss a lot because he’s so bloody subtle and reading this was particularly difficult because of course I was standing up and people kept trying to get past me in the aisle looking for copies of Knowledge of Angels.

My best guess is that first you have a world divided into inside and outside. Inside is the villa and by extension Capri. The world itself runs on order and routine as exemplified by the Captain. This ordered world keeps intruding into the womb-like, death-like villa. Also coming into the villa are the old and the new. Old and new religions, pagan and Christian, as also old and new warfares. I think these five things, inside, outside, order, old and new are the five bright windows of Mamillius’s mind that he speaks about in the opening lines of the play. Or something like that anyway. As I say, I was standing up when I read it.

[Be C Laire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Golding wrote a play?! Wow. I started reading, and couldn't stop: clever, fast moving and funny. Golding expunged all the the tedious misunderstanding and stunted communication characteristic of Shakespeare that turned me against the medium. If all plays were this good, I'd read a lot more of them!

An emperor deals with the problem of his heir, and the legitimate son and the illegitimate son are in a conversation about, not loyalty to the emperor, but about their respective career aspirations (Edmund and Edgar can be put to rest forever, thank goodness!) An inventor struggles to communicate his vision of the future to the Emperor and his son(s) who are, predictably, more caught up in survival due to family infighting, and the persistent concern about Christians (which is, hilarious, characterized by a complete lack knowledge about the Christian belief system they consider to be so offensive.) There is a fantastic clash of competing ideologies - christian, pagan, and reason itself - for both solving problems - everything from how to survive the advancing army, the problem of succession, how to cause a woman to love you, and optimization of naval commutes, to how to live a good life - to interpreting events such as the great clash of fire and smoke that seriously dented the muscle of the invading army. There is also a hilarious rejection of labor saving technology (steam) on the basis that it would render slavery unnecessary - a benevolent Emperor, it seems, worries about employment for all echelons of the society he rules.

[Sol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Largely the same story as Envoy Extraordinary from The Scorpion God, I believe this came first. Some conversations have been lifted straight from here to there, others being edited and pared down, some entirely new. This also takes place in one spot, as opposed to the gardens and quay of the later story. The character of Euphrosyne has changed almost completely, being here a secret Christian to explain her silence, rather than a cleft lip. I'm curious as to why the Euphrosyne changes were made, or why Golding never wrote another play.

[Maddy TJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una obra peculiar, inicia de manera un tanto aburrida y sin sentido, sin embargo, plantea esporádicamente problemas filosóficos interesantes y bien hilados. El final es precioso y el último invento me parece excelente para rematar el libro.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Brass Butterfly" by William Le Queux

"Touch that button and you're a dead man!"

[Héloïse]

The only good thing about this book is how short it is

[Roy Saenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un cientifico le lleva una serie de ideas para nuevos inventos al emperador de Roma, para que este patrocine su fabricacion y asi cambiar el mundo.
En esta obra se expone como muchas veces las nuevas ideas son pasadas por alto, ya sea por ingenuidad, manipulacion del poder o confundida como actos divinos.
Le doy un 3.5. Como una buena comedia, deja una final feliz y satisfactorio.

A scientist brings to the emperor of Rome a series of ideas to develope a new inventions, manufacture it and so they could change the world.
This play expose how many times new ideas are unperceived, maybe by ingenuousness, power manipulation or confuse with divine acts.
I give it 3.5. As a good comedy it gives a happy and satifactory ending.