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Brecht Collected Plays #6
Collected Plays: 6: The Good Person of Szechwan / The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui / Mr Puntila and his Man Matti
Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.
This sixth volume of Brecht's Collected Plays contains three plays he wrote while in exile during the early stages of the Second World War. In Brecht's famous parable The Good Person of Szechwan , the gods come to earth in search of a thoroughly good person. No
one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of
gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a
tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in
a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a savage satire on the rise of Hitler, wittily transposed to gangland Chicago. Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written in 1940 during Brecht's exile in Finland, Puntila is one of his
greatest creations, to be ranked alongside Galileo and Mother Courage.
A hard-drinking Finnish landowner, Puntila suffers from a divided
when drunk he is human and humane; when sober, surly and
self-centred. The play contains some of the best comedy Brecht wrote
for the theatre.
The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
This sixth volume of Brecht's Collected Plays contains three plays he wrote while in exile during the early stages of the Second World War. In Brecht's famous parable The Good Person of Szechwan , the gods come to earth in search of a thoroughly good person. No
one can be found until they meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of
gold. Rewarded by the gods, she gives up her profession and buys a
tabacco shop but finds it is impossible to survive as a good person in
a corrupt world without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a savage satire on the rise of Hitler, wittily transposed to gangland Chicago. Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written in 1940 during Brecht's exile in Finland, Puntila is one of his
greatest creations, to be ranked alongside Galileo and Mother Courage.
A hard-drinking Finnish landowner, Puntila suffers from a divided
when drunk he is human and humane; when sober, surly and
self-centred. The play contains some of the best comedy Brecht wrote
for the theatre.
The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
464 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2003
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About the author
Bertolt Brecht
1,581 books1,894 followersEugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 29, 2018
VI – As with the other volumes of the series, great intro (for 1940-41 here, during his exile in Finland) and a coda full of notes and drafts and theoretical applications.
The Good Person of Szechuan - much like the biblical story of Lot, the gods here will spare the world if “we find enough good people who succeed in living a life worthy of a human being” (5), which proposes a bios of sorts for McCluhan’s cosmopolis. What we see is that a person must undergo a diremption in order to meet this exacting standard while carrying forth capitalist economic activity, wherein love is “an impossible weakness,” “the most fatal of all” (52). The gods see this, noting with agambenian import that “people have trouble enough saving their bare lives” (94). The question accordingly becomes whether to “refashion man? Or change the world about? / Or turn to different gods?” (103).
Puntila and Matti, His Hired Man - sex comedy epic theatre style, which of course includes left revolutionary politics. Based on local Finnish folklore. Engages the sly servant stock character: “When I’m talking with my employers, I never have any opinions, they don’t like the help to have opinions” (119). Even though the worker contends that “human beings weren’t made to be marketed,” employer snipes that “he’s the kind who antagonizes the working class” (130), as though class antagonism arises unilaterally from solitary demagogues rather than from the structure of the economics itself. What is necessary therein, however, is the coming to self-consciousness of the class, for itself: “If the cows could talk things over, for instance, the slaughterhouse would be on its way out” (139). Against this are the forces of true conservatism, for whom all that is solid melts into air: “It’s this commercial age. Everything is becoming cheap and tawdry” (164). Sometimes even the cappies, against their self-interest, develop this perspective, such as the proprietor here, who looks “deep into the depravity of the world” (168).
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui - satire of fascism, via Chicago gangster film. Occurring during “this awful change from glut to destitution” (199) in the global crisis of the 30s, the situation is so dire that “call this a life?” can be given the agambenian answer that “we’re not dead yet” (200). Though this indexes closely to the NSDAP, it can stand in as a generalizable model for right populist movements, such as Trump. We need a “show of grandeur to impress the little man” (242), and supracompetitive cartel profits are explained as “it’s because our packers and teamsters pushed by outside agitators want more and more” (247), the standard numbnut cappy reply. We see that the fascist here has one of the RSB’s key concepts: “nothing in my naked hands but indomitable faith” (266) (we must recall the ‘unconquerable belief, indomitable conviction’ and ‘verily it is conviction that kills’ bits from the Second Apocalypse.)
Includes at no extra cost some anti-fascist one-acts.
The Good Person of Szechuan - much like the biblical story of Lot, the gods here will spare the world if “we find enough good people who succeed in living a life worthy of a human being” (5), which proposes a bios of sorts for McCluhan’s cosmopolis. What we see is that a person must undergo a diremption in order to meet this exacting standard while carrying forth capitalist economic activity, wherein love is “an impossible weakness,” “the most fatal of all” (52). The gods see this, noting with agambenian import that “people have trouble enough saving their bare lives” (94). The question accordingly becomes whether to “refashion man? Or change the world about? / Or turn to different gods?” (103).
Puntila and Matti, His Hired Man - sex comedy epic theatre style, which of course includes left revolutionary politics. Based on local Finnish folklore. Engages the sly servant stock character: “When I’m talking with my employers, I never have any opinions, they don’t like the help to have opinions” (119). Even though the worker contends that “human beings weren’t made to be marketed,” employer snipes that “he’s the kind who antagonizes the working class” (130), as though class antagonism arises unilaterally from solitary demagogues rather than from the structure of the economics itself. What is necessary therein, however, is the coming to self-consciousness of the class, for itself: “If the cows could talk things over, for instance, the slaughterhouse would be on its way out” (139). Against this are the forces of true conservatism, for whom all that is solid melts into air: “It’s this commercial age. Everything is becoming cheap and tawdry” (164). Sometimes even the cappies, against their self-interest, develop this perspective, such as the proprietor here, who looks “deep into the depravity of the world” (168).
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui - satire of fascism, via Chicago gangster film. Occurring during “this awful change from glut to destitution” (199) in the global crisis of the 30s, the situation is so dire that “call this a life?” can be given the agambenian answer that “we’re not dead yet” (200). Though this indexes closely to the NSDAP, it can stand in as a generalizable model for right populist movements, such as Trump. We need a “show of grandeur to impress the little man” (242), and supracompetitive cartel profits are explained as “it’s because our packers and teamsters pushed by outside agitators want more and more” (247), the standard numbnut cappy reply. We see that the fascist here has one of the RSB’s key concepts: “nothing in my naked hands but indomitable faith” (266) (we must recall the ‘unconquerable belief, indomitable conviction’ and ‘verily it is conviction that kills’ bits from the Second Apocalypse.)
Includes at no extra cost some anti-fascist one-acts.
June 22, 2025
Satires on capitalism as a system. Szechwan: impossibility of being good. Puntila: contradictions of the charitable rich. Ui: relation to fascists/gangsters.
July 22, 2019
After he has Betty Dullfeet’s husband murdered, Arturo Ui, the main character in Bertolt Brecht’s play The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, says to her, “Now you stand defenseless/In a cold world where, sad to say, the weak/Are always trampled.” Ui, an obvious parallel to Hitler, could easily substitute “the weak” with “the good.” His words contextualize a central question in Collected Plays: Six: Is it possible to be a good person when you live in a word overrun with poverty, corruption, and violence?
This collection contains three plays Brecht developed while living in Finland during World War II—The Good Person of Szechwan, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, and Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti. Brecht found a temporary haven in Finland while he was on the run from Nazi Germany (Brecht believed Hitler personally wanted to see him dead.) and waiting for a visa to enter the United States.
The Good Person of Szechwan explores a world where “poverty is the rule in our province.” At the beginning of the play, the gods visit Szechwan looking for a “good” person in a world where “the good have found our earth impossible to live on.” They believe they find a good person in Shen Teh, a sex worker who offers the gods shelter. The gods thank Shen Teh by giving her a thousand silver dollars. She uses this money to open a tobacconist’s shop where she hopes “to do a great deal of good.” Called “The Angel of the Slums” by her community, Shen Teh offers her shop as shelter to the homeless and disadvantaged. In less than twenty-four hours, the denizens completely overtake Shen Teh’s shop, and they completely trash it before it opens.
In Brecht’s Szechwan, Shen Teh’s “goodness” is perceived as weakness, and she finds herself on the cusp of losing both her money and her business. As a way to gain control, she assumes the persona of Shui Ta, Shen Teh’s male cousin. Shui Ta is calculating, practical, and unemotional. He basically embodies everything Shen Teh isn’t. He immediately kicks out the miscreants, transforms Shen Teh’s exploitive wanna-be-pilot fiancé into a person with integrity, and turns Shen Teh’s tobacconist business into a small, lucrative factory. Along the way, Shui Ta betrays Wang, Shen Teh’s best friend, and is so late repaying a loan to an elderly couple that the couple falls into financial ruin. To be successful, Shen Teh sheds her kindness and embraces a cold, masculine self-preservation. Ultimately, Brecht observes that goodness can only survive by means of evil. As Shu Ta states toward the end of the play, “Good deeds are the road to ruin.”
Brecht’s “great historical gangster play” The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui takes place in gang-ridden Chicago, and the characters in Ui’s squad all represent famous Nazis. Arturo Ui is Hitler; Ernesto Roma, Ui’s lieutenant, is Röhm, and Emanuele Giri, one of Ui’s captains, is Göring. The play explores “a world where good deeds go unnoticed” and shows how Ui comes to control Chicago, and then expands his power to the suburbs. Ui’s rise goes largely unchallenged. Most of the characters acquiesce to Ui either out of self-interest or fear—the lines between these are blurred. In Scene 10, the character Dogsborough—who represents Paul von Hindenburg, the President of Germany who elected Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933—confesses that he’s aware of the crimes Ui and his gang have committed: “All this/Your honest Dogsborough knew. All this/He tolerated out of sordid lust/For gain, and fear of forfeiting your trust.”
The main character in Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti is a wealthy, powerful landlord. When Puntila is intoxicated, which is most of the time, he acts with great benevolence: he proposes marriage to several women; he offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to Matti, his chauffeur. He bestows jobs on the marginalized and underprivileged, and even hints at giving away part of his land. However, Puntila’s kindness transforms into an entitled rage when he’s sober. He reneges on all his drunken promises and blames the other characters for taking advantage of him while he was intoxicated. Goodness is a fleeting concept for Puntila and those in his inner circle, and his word lasts only as long as his benders. As Matti states, “You’re (Puntila is) half-way human when you’re drunk enough.”
During Shen Teh’s final, emotionally charged monologue, she asks the gods “Why/Is wickedness so rewarded, and why is so much suffering/Reserved for the good?” Brecht offers no clear conclusions. His characters ruminate on questions that encourage readers to make their own queries. What does it mean to be a good person? Is it possible to rise above a malevolent, violent environment—a landscape where goodness, if it’s present at all, exists only as an ephemeral chimera?
This collection contains three plays Brecht developed while living in Finland during World War II—The Good Person of Szechwan, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, and Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti. Brecht found a temporary haven in Finland while he was on the run from Nazi Germany (Brecht believed Hitler personally wanted to see him dead.) and waiting for a visa to enter the United States.
The Good Person of Szechwan explores a world where “poverty is the rule in our province.” At the beginning of the play, the gods visit Szechwan looking for a “good” person in a world where “the good have found our earth impossible to live on.” They believe they find a good person in Shen Teh, a sex worker who offers the gods shelter. The gods thank Shen Teh by giving her a thousand silver dollars. She uses this money to open a tobacconist’s shop where she hopes “to do a great deal of good.” Called “The Angel of the Slums” by her community, Shen Teh offers her shop as shelter to the homeless and disadvantaged. In less than twenty-four hours, the denizens completely overtake Shen Teh’s shop, and they completely trash it before it opens.
In Brecht’s Szechwan, Shen Teh’s “goodness” is perceived as weakness, and she finds herself on the cusp of losing both her money and her business. As a way to gain control, she assumes the persona of Shui Ta, Shen Teh’s male cousin. Shui Ta is calculating, practical, and unemotional. He basically embodies everything Shen Teh isn’t. He immediately kicks out the miscreants, transforms Shen Teh’s exploitive wanna-be-pilot fiancé into a person with integrity, and turns Shen Teh’s tobacconist business into a small, lucrative factory. Along the way, Shui Ta betrays Wang, Shen Teh’s best friend, and is so late repaying a loan to an elderly couple that the couple falls into financial ruin. To be successful, Shen Teh sheds her kindness and embraces a cold, masculine self-preservation. Ultimately, Brecht observes that goodness can only survive by means of evil. As Shu Ta states toward the end of the play, “Good deeds are the road to ruin.”
Brecht’s “great historical gangster play” The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui takes place in gang-ridden Chicago, and the characters in Ui’s squad all represent famous Nazis. Arturo Ui is Hitler; Ernesto Roma, Ui’s lieutenant, is Röhm, and Emanuele Giri, one of Ui’s captains, is Göring. The play explores “a world where good deeds go unnoticed” and shows how Ui comes to control Chicago, and then expands his power to the suburbs. Ui’s rise goes largely unchallenged. Most of the characters acquiesce to Ui either out of self-interest or fear—the lines between these are blurred. In Scene 10, the character Dogsborough—who represents Paul von Hindenburg, the President of Germany who elected Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933—confesses that he’s aware of the crimes Ui and his gang have committed: “All this/Your honest Dogsborough knew. All this/He tolerated out of sordid lust/For gain, and fear of forfeiting your trust.”
The main character in Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti is a wealthy, powerful landlord. When Puntila is intoxicated, which is most of the time, he acts with great benevolence: he proposes marriage to several women; he offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to Matti, his chauffeur. He bestows jobs on the marginalized and underprivileged, and even hints at giving away part of his land. However, Puntila’s kindness transforms into an entitled rage when he’s sober. He reneges on all his drunken promises and blames the other characters for taking advantage of him while he was intoxicated. Goodness is a fleeting concept for Puntila and those in his inner circle, and his word lasts only as long as his benders. As Matti states, “You’re (Puntila is) half-way human when you’re drunk enough.”
During Shen Teh’s final, emotionally charged monologue, she asks the gods “Why/Is wickedness so rewarded, and why is so much suffering/Reserved for the good?” Brecht offers no clear conclusions. His characters ruminate on questions that encourage readers to make their own queries. What does it mean to be a good person? Is it possible to rise above a malevolent, violent environment—a landscape where goodness, if it’s present at all, exists only as an ephemeral chimera?
May 17, 2022
Existe aquele ensaio famoso do Borges, "Kafka e seus precursores", no qual ele forma um conjunto meio absurdo* de coisas que seriam "kafkianas" (essa palavra horrível, preguiçosa) avant la lettre, por assim dizer. O argumento final é conhecido e também um pouco o do Eliot: um escritor inventa seus precursores, reorganiza uma tradição que retroativamente reage também à sua presença etc.
Além da barbaridade generalizada e ostensiva, a merda do bolsonarismo - que, claro, é só um pedaço da merda maior, que não acaba com ele - também não deixa de ter suas sutilezas. É explícita a relação entre Arturo Ui e a ascensão de Hitler, a ponto de a peça vir acompanhada de uma correspondência entre cada cena e acontecimentos da época. Mas, mesmo assim, o presente se impõe com tamanha força que não consigo deixar de imaginar as paródias de (p. ex.) Ricardo III declamadas por Arturo Ui com a dicção boçalizada do Jair.
*(talvez impossível? lembro só do paradoxo da convergência do Zenão e de algo de literatura chinesa antiga)
Mudando de assunto: muito honestamente, nunca pensei que uma peça do Brecht (Szechwan/Setsuan) fosse me fazer entender um pouco melhor o segundo casamento da minha mãe.
(Puntila é legal também, só não pensei em nada pra dizer sobre essa)
Além da barbaridade generalizada e ostensiva, a merda do bolsonarismo - que, claro, é só um pedaço da merda maior, que não acaba com ele - também não deixa de ter suas sutilezas. É explícita a relação entre Arturo Ui e a ascensão de Hitler, a ponto de a peça vir acompanhada de uma correspondência entre cada cena e acontecimentos da época. Mas, mesmo assim, o presente se impõe com tamanha força que não consigo deixar de imaginar as paródias de (p. ex.) Ricardo III declamadas por Arturo Ui com a dicção boçalizada do Jair.
*(talvez impossível? lembro só do paradoxo da convergência do Zenão e de algo de literatura chinesa antiga)
Mudando de assunto: muito honestamente, nunca pensei que uma peça do Brecht (Szechwan/Setsuan) fosse me fazer entender um pouco melhor o segundo casamento da minha mãe.
(Puntila é legal também, só não pensei em nada pra dizer sobre essa)
May 17, 2025
Where Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti rarely exceeds the shape of its comedic structure, the other two plays in this sixth collection locate better qualities of Brecht and his collaborators' epic style within the exotic and irregular treatments of China and the United States, albeit the former is a universal moral tale and the latter is a specific realization of the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. They may not rise to apex of Mother Courage nor Galileo, but these works do not appear to show the weaknesses of his dramatic works to follow.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews