John Osborne
People best know British playwright John James Osborne, member of the Angry Young Men, for his play
Look Back in Anger
(1956); vigorous social protest characterizes works of this group of English writers of the 1950s.
This screenwriter acted and criticized the Establishment. The stunning success of Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. In a productive life of more than four decades, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and television. His extravagant and iconoclastic personal life flourished. He notoriously used language of the ornate violence on behalf of the political causes that he supported and against his own family, including his wives and children, who nevertheless often gave as good as they got.
He came onto the theatrical scene at a time when British acting enjoyed a golden age, but most great plays came from the United States and France. The complexities of the postwar period blinded British plays. In the post-imperial age, Osborne of the writers first addressed purpose of Britain. He first questioned the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak from 1956 to 1966, he helped to make contempt an acceptable and then even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behavior and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.
“I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. ...There aren't any good, brave causes left. (Jimmy Porter)”
“Jimmy: (in a low, resigned voice) They all want to scape from the pain of being alive. And, most of all, from love. (...) It's no good to fool yourself about love. You can't fall into it like a soft job, without dirtying up your hands.”
“Jimmy: I hope you won't make the mistake of thinking for one moment that I am a gentleman.”
“Alison: I don't think I want anything more to do with love. Any more. I can't take it on. Cliff: You're too young to start giving up. Too young, and too lovely.”
“Jimmy: The injustice of it is almost perfect! The wrong people going hungry, the wrong people being loved, the wrong people dying!”
“That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?”
“Jimmy: One day, when I'm no longer spending my days running a sweet-stall, I may write a book about us all. It's all here. (slapping his forehead) Written in flames a mile high. And it won't be recollected in tranquillity either, picking daffodils with Auntie Wordsworth. It'll be recollected in fire, and blood. My blood.”
“Asking a working writer what he feels about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.”
“A refined sort of butcher, a woman is.”
“Jimmy: You'll end up like one of those chocolate merengues my wife is so fond of [Alison starts banging jars]...sweet and sticky on the outside, and sink your teeth in it [savouring every word]-inside, all white, messy and disgusting. [offering teapot sweetly to Helena] Milk?”
“Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive.”
“You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something's gone wrong somewhere, hasn't it?”
“I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans.”
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs."[Time Magazine, October 31, 1977]”