Editorial: Eyre Methuen LTD

Year of publication: November 1965

Place of publication: London

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

Pam: She is the daughter of Mary and Harry, she is twenty three years old. She id thin, black hair, light eyes, small mouth and thin complexion. She has a son with Len, although she says that the father is Fred. Her personality is hard and egoist.

Mary: She is the wife of Harry, she is 53 years old. She is not very tall and quite fat. Her has curly hair and grey.

Harry: He is the husband of Mary, he is 50years old, is serious. Never talks with his wife, at the play only talks with her wife one time (when Mary break a glass on his head).

Len: He is the main character, he is twenty years old. He life in rent at the house of Pam after he had had sexual relations with her, in fact he is in love of she. He has many works at the develop of the play.

Fred: He is a friend of Len, he is twenty years old. He is attractive, although immature, irresponsible and egoist. He had a son with Pam but he murder him, so he went to the prison. After Liz is his girlfriend.

The other characters that appear at the play are secondary: Pete, Mike, Collin, Barry and Liz.

PLOT:

Len is been lover of Pam started to live with her, while she without knowing Fred had a relation with him. Pam makes pregnant and later has a son, although is from Len Pam says is from Fred. While Len is worried by she and the baby, Fred doesn’t want to now nothing; one day he and his friends through stones to the baby, they also pinch the baby, etc. since they kill him.

For this act he goes to the prison, and when he go out of there Pam is waiting him, but he continues with his posture, he doesn’t want to know nothing from her. Pam thinks that all is guilty of Len, to living with her and she tries to expels of her house. By other hand the Pam’s parents also talks each other due to that Harry though that his wife had relations with Len.

SPACE:

The play happens in the south of London. The scenes happens in repeated places, the dining room of Pam’s house, the room of Len, at the prison and in a cafeteria.

TIME:

The author doesn’t specify the time when it happens, but we know that there are more than nine month because Pam makes pregnant and had the baby.

STYLICTIC AND LITERARY RESOURCES:

The text is written using an argot (contractions as: aint, oo’s, ere’s, arf …) this difficult the comprehension of the text although it’s written in a simple language.

PERSONAL OPINION:

In my opinion the play is quite difficult to understand, but by other hand the thematic is quite cruel in the aspect of the murder and the deal with the baby.

It is impressive how the people could deal a baby, but this is not an old thematic because now a day there are also people that could mistreat their babies. Talking about rest of the play, it’s quite entertaining because there are action and in some aspects as the sex, the passion and the madness that the people could arrive to do, etc. in this way arrive to represent the real life.