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Mother Courage and Her Children



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Works of Bertolt Brecht

published by
Arcade

The Good Person ofSzeclmJan

The Good Person ofSzechl}Jan) Mother COl/rage and Her Children)
and Fear and Misery of tbe Third Reich

Life of Gali/eo) The Resistible Rise ofArturo tn,
and The Caucasian Cbalk Circle

Mother Courage and Her Children

The Threepenny Opera) Baa/, and The Mother



BERTOLT BRECHT

Mother Courage and Her Children

Translated from the German by John Willett
Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim

m
ARCADE PUBLISHING • NEW YORK



Copyright © 1940 by Arvid Englind Teaterforlag, a.b., renewed June 1967 by
Stefan S. Brecht; copyright © 1949 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
Translation copyright for the play and texts by Brecht © 1980 by Stefan S. Brecht
Introduction and editorial notes copyright © 1980 by Eyre Methuen Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
brief passages in a review.

FIRST ARCADE PAPERBACK EDITION 1994

Mother Courage and Her Children, originally published in German under the title
Mutter Courage und ibre Kinder, was first published in this translation in 1980.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brecht, Bertolt, 1898 - 1956.
[Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder. English]
Mother Courage and her children / Bertolt Brecht; translated by John Willett;

edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim. - 1st Arcade pbk. ed.
p. em.

ISBN 1-55970-234-6
I. Willett,John. II. Manheim, Ralph, 1907 - . III. Title.

PT2603.R397M793 1994
832'.912 - dc20 93-25408

Published in the United States by Arcade Publishing, Inc., New York
Distributed by Little, Brown and Company

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CAUTION
This play is fully protected by copyright. All inquiries concerning the rights for pro­fessional or amateur stage production and concerning the music for this play shouldbe directed to Jerold L. Couture, Fitelson, Lasky, AsIan & Couture, 551 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10176. Outside of the United States of America, inquiries
concerning the rights for professional stage production and concerning the music for
this play should be directed to the International Copyright Bureau Ltd., 22a AubreyHouse, Maida Avenue, London W2 1TQ, England, and those for amateur stage pro­duction to Samuel French Ltd., 52 Fitzroy Street, London W1 P 6JR, England.
Inquiries about use of any material other than in performance should be directed to
the publisher.

.

--------

,



cht

Contents

[11 troduction
vii

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN

A chronicle of the Thirty Years War

NOTES AND VARIANTS

Texts by Brecht
Note
The Story
Three diary notes
The Mother Courage model
Two ways of playing Mother Courage
Misfortune in itself is a poor teacher

Editorial Note

[appro'
!ld.
ecred ro



 



Introduction

That Hitler meant war was clear to Brecht by the beginning of

1937. This was some two
and three-quarter years before the

Second World War actually broke out. During the previous
November the German and Italian fascist regimes had banded

together to form the 'Rome-Berlin axis'; Franco,
whose rebellious

armies were on the outskirts of Madrid, was recognised by them
as the legitimate ruler of Spain; an anti-Comintern alliance

was

forged between Japan, then on the point of invading China,
and

the Germans. Hitler, who had already got away with the re­
militarisation of the Rhineland in defiance of the Versailles Treaty,
henceforward had no reason to moderate his aggressive aims. As

Brecht put in one of the 'German War
Primer' series of poems

which he now began writing,

ON THE CALENDAR THE DAY IS NOT YET SHOWN

Every month, every day
Lies open still. One of these days
Is going to be marked with a cross.

For him it was the start of 'The Dark Times': a phrase that from
now on permeates his poetry. Living in Denmark on Fiinen

Island, less than fifty miles across the Baltic from Germany, he
could follow the Nazi advance along with the flight from one

refuge after another of his own threatened friends:
Austria fell in

March 1938, the German-speaking areas of
Czechoslovakia that

September, Prague and the remainder of
Czechoslovakia in

March 1939, Memel in Lithuania
the same month, Madrid and

the Spanish Republic with it. Then Hitler offered
Denmark a non­

aggression pact.
In April 1939, with the Italians in their turn starting

to invade

Albania, Brecht took advantage of a lecture invitation to move to

Sweden, where he was lent a sculptress's house on the island of



viii Introduction

Lidingo outside Stockholm. From now on he and his immediate
entourage were even more isolated than they had' been in Den­
mark; while their object was no longer to await the collapse of theNazis but to move on to the United States, where Piscator, Fritz
Lang and Ferdinand Reyher had already begun working on theirbehalf. This isolation was also in part political, starting back in
1937 when Brecht largely gave up writing those committed playsand poems which had reflected the day-to-day Communist PartyLine. Three things then combined to give him a much more
sceptical attitude towards the Soviet Union and Stalin's leader­
ship, which he now thought (as he put it at the beginning of theyear) should be like Marx's attitude to the German Socialists of
the previous century, 'constructively critical'. The first and most
painful of these was the purges of 1936-39, which had led to the
death or internment not only of his two main Comintern contacts
but also of some of his closest friends. The second, unpleasantlyinterwoven with the purges, was the imposition of the SocialistRealist aesthetic preached by his old adversary Georg Lukacs,which forbade any kind of 'formalism' in the arts; this became a
serious factor from 1937 on. Finally there was the switch in
foreign policy which led to the Soviet-Nazi pact and the partitionof Poland. The Soviet Union, noted Brecht at the time, had
thereby saved itself, 'but at the cost of leaving the workers of theworld without slogans, hopes or support'.

The day marked with a cross proved to be 1 September 1939,when Brecht somewhat uncharacteristically attended a lunch in
honour of Thomas Mann at Stockholm Town Hall. That day theSoviet-Nazi pact was announced, and the Nazis invaded Poland;
forty-eight hours later Britain and France declared war. At first
Brecht carried on working at his old project Love is the Goods,which he had taken up before leaving Denmark and renamed
The Good Person of Szechwan; he had also brought with him theunfinished Julius Caesar novel and The Messingkauf Dialogues, aby-product of the revision of Galilee. But within ten days hefound work grinding to a halt. The Szechwan play was laidaside; three diary entries comment disillusionedly on the 'singu­larly Napoleonic' Russian invasion of Eastern Poland, with its
'usurpation of all the Fascist hypocrisy about "blood brother­
hood" '; then for nearly seven weeks, from 21 September to
7 November the diary too goes blank.



ate

en·

the

HI

er­

ta

Introduction ix

During this interval, and in clear reaction to events,
Brecht

wrote his great play about a war which would range devastatingly
across great tracts of Europe, creating heroes

and profiteers,
imposing order and ideologies, and leaving the

self-sentimentalis­

ing 'little people' - particularly of Germany
- as blindly unaware

as they were at its start.
Mother Courage was written under pressure. In the words of

a

later note to Scandinavian audiences,

As I wrote I imagined that the playwright's warning voice
would be heard from the stages' of various great cities, pro­

claiming that he who would sup with the devil must
have a

long spoon. This may have been naive of me, but
I do not

consider being naive a disgrace. Such productions never
materialised. Writers cannot write as rapidly as governments
can make war, because writing demands hard thought.

And the effort to speak out quickly made it one of the most

spontaneous and, despite its length, most concentrated
of all

Brecht's plays. It bears virtually no trace of any preliminary
work

or preparatory reading; there is none of the major rewriting
that

characterises so many of the other plays; there is for once no
mention of any collaborator, nor any element of borrowing

or

adaptation; there are just two original typescripts, the
one a

straightforward revise of the other. As a feat of deeply
felt

anticipation it is amazing. Though there is nothing to bear
out

Brecht's claim (p. xxx) that the play was written in 1938 or (as the
note to the 1949 edition had it) 'before the outbreak of the Second
World War' it undoubtedly dates from well before the start of any

major fighting. This was still the period of 'We'll hang out
the

washing on the Siegfried Line', of the phoney war, what
Brecht

termed 'the war that isn't waged'. At that time some kind of

peace seemed quite possible, whether as a return
to the prewar

policy of appeasement or by means of an appeal to the
German

people over the heads of their government, as wishfully proposed
by the Communists. Few foresaw the mass bombings,

the de­

portations, the torture of resistants, the
extermination of the

Jews; those vast tragedies which any modern
audience tends to

assume as the understood background to Brecht's 'chronicle

play'.



x Introduction

Where did his vrsion come from? It is rooted, certainly, inhis particular feeling for the seventeenth century, the period inwhich he had already set The Life of Galileo with its proclamation offaith in a 'new age' (even if that age might, in the words of the
1938 version, look like 'a bloodstained old harridan'). That last
leap forward of the Renaissance - one of whose forms, the
Shakespearean History, he adopted for the play - failed in his
view to make a modern nation of Germany because of the cata­
strophic effects of the Thirty Years War, which thus became the
natural analogy for his pessimistic warnings. The obvious dramatic
precedent here was Schiller's Wallenstein's Camp with its picture of
a mongrel seventeenth-century army milling round the canteen
tents; and indeed there are two engravings showing a camp andWallenstein's siege of Stralsund in one of the earliest scripts.
Stylistically however, and to some extent structurally too,
Brecht's example seems to have been the earlier German writer
Grimmelshausen, who himself served in the Thrity Years War
before publishing his rambling picaresque novel Simp/icis­simus in 1669. From a lesser offshoot of that wartime saga, pub­lished separately as Die Landes/ijrzerin Courascbe, came the name of
the play and of its central figure, though in fact Grimmelshausen's
Amazonian adventuress sprang from a higher social class than
Brecht's canteen woman and enjoyed a 'career closer to that of
Yvette. 'A horrific picture of war', the critic Bernhard Diebold
termed it, 'written about with deliberate detachment and seen
from belotu : a frog's-eye view.' The Swedish actress Naima
Wifstrand, whom Brecht wanted to play the leading part, alsointroduced him to the figure of Lotta Svard, a canteen woman in
Johan Ludvig Runeberg's early nineteenth-century balladsabout the Russian-Swedish war. But she, very unlike Brecht's
character, was 'a pearl on the pathway of war', always up with the
troops. 'And the dear young soldiers' heroic mood I she loved in
its full display.' (Thus G. B. Shaw's translation.)

Brueghel, of whom Brecht had two books of reproductions,
may have contributed something; his Dulle Griet is gummed intoanother script - 'the Fury', as he described her,

defending her pathetic household goods with the sword. The
world at the end of its tether. Little cruelty, much hyper­sensitivity.



in
in
of

toe

Introduction xi

Callot too is visually relevant, with his Miseres de la Guerre, even

though Brecht nowhere mentions them.
The character of Brecht's Mother Courage, however, like her

way of speaking, comes primarily from that
other great war

novelist Jaroslav Hasek; indeed Brecht saw his own Sch1!eyk play,
when he came to write it four years later, as a 'companion play.'
Moreover there were also other significant links within Brecht's
own work. Thus in one sense Mother Courage, battling to save
her children, can be compared and contrasted with his earlier
Senora Carrar, whom Naima Wifstrand had translated into

Swedish and acted. In another she is much closer to the Widow

Begbick, the tough itinerant hostess of Man equals Man
and Rise

and Fall of the City of MahagomFJ, two roles already associated
with

Helene Weigel. Her language looks forward to the consciously
Schweik-like dialogue of Puntila and the Conversations Between
Exiles. And the whole inverted morality of the play, with its

suggestion that the conventional virtues sometimes
have the

opposite effect from what moralists imagine, is
close to that of

The Seven Deadly Sins and The Threepenny Opera. This perhaps is

why Brecht could think of including 'Surabaya-Johnny'
as well as

the 'Solomon Song'.

* * *

Quickly as the play was written, in Brecht's view it came too
late

to serve as the intended warning. 'The great bandit [i.e. Hitler]

got his hooks on the theatres
much too soon.' His immediate

hope had been that it could be staged in
Stockholm with Wifstrand

as Courage and Helene Weigel in the non-speaking part
of

Kattrin, who is supposed to have been made dumb so that Weigel
could play her. That winter, while Russia invaded Finland, Weigel
gave some classes in

Wifstrand's acting school, for which Brecht

wrote his Shakespearean Practice Scenes for Actors; meanwhile

Brecht, on a commission from Stockholm Radio,
wrote The

Trial of Lucullus for the composer Hilding Rosenberg
to set.

Given the threat represented by the Nazis, however, neither work

was performed in Sweden; and in April the police
searched the

Lidingo house, the German forces moved
into Denmark and

Norway, and Brecht thought it wise to move on.
The plan for a

Mother Courage production was then resumed in Finland,
where



xii Introduction
the Brechts lived for a further year before the last of the party'sAmerican visas came through. The aim there was to secure a
production in the Helsinki Swedish-language theatre during thewinter of 1940-41. To this end Brecht worked on the songs withthe Finnish composer Simon Parmet, who appears to have
dropped out for fear of echoing Weill too closely. Once again,however, the reason for the play's rejection was evidently the
increasing Nazi pressure, and that January Brecht listed it as one
of his six unstaged plays 'which cannot at present be performed'.In German-speaking Switzerland the Zurich Schauspielhaus
was less inhibited. Cut off from the dramatist himself by the war,this predominantly German company contained a high proportionof anti-Nazi actors of whom some, like Leonard Steckel and the
director Leopold Lindtberg, had worked in Berlin with Piscator,while Wolfgang Langhoff had subsequently been in a concentration
camp. Under the sympathetic management of Ferdinand Rieser
and Oskar Walterlin they had given the premieres of a number of
plays unacceptable in Nazi Germany, notably Ferdinand Bruck­
ner's Die Rassen and Friedrich Wolf's Professor MafJI/ock (both about
anti-Semitism) as well as others by Kaiser, Horvath, Zuckmayerand such Anglo-American authors as Wilder, O'Neill, Priestleyand Shaw. On 19 April 1941, a month before the Brechts left
Helsinki on their long trip to California, they now gave thepremiere of Mother Courage before a predominantly Swiss andGerman emigre audience, among those who saw the productionbeing Thornton Wilder.

This was one of the great theatrical events of the Second World
War, and the play itself made a great impact, thanks above all
to the performance of Therese Giehse (who oddly enough was aBritish subject) in the title part and to the setting devised by TeoOtto, who had worked with Brecht before 1933. Lindtbergdirected, and the Swiss composer Paul Burkhard wrote a new
score. Langhoff and the Austrian Karl Paryla played the two
sons, Wolfgang Heinz the cook. Meanwhile Sigfrit Steiner, theChaplain of this production, was staging the far more directlypolitical Mother for the first time in Switzerland with a cast of
amateurs. And yet Brecht, appreciative as he was, felt that to
some extent his intentions had been traduced. Thus Bernhard
Diebold, who had been one of the outstanding German theatrecritics before 1933, wrote in Die Tat that this Courage, far from



Introduction xiii

being a 'hyaena of the battlefield' (as the Chaplain
calls her), made

her commercial toughness 'almost too subsidiary' to the strength
of her maternal feelings; while as for Lindtberg's direction, it
'either failed to take enough account of the crude earthiness of
the period and Brecht's own malicious sarcasm, or else

it de­

liberately softened them'.
As it turned out, this was the play's sole wartime production.

It was not one of these works which Brecht expected to see put on
in the USA, nor did he make any of the efforts which he and his

friends there devoted to Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, Galileo
and The Good Person of SzechuJan, let alone the plays which he wrote
after arriving. Early in 1941, at the latest, the poet H. R. Hays

had

made a translation from a copy lent him by Hanns Eisler (to whom
Brecht sent one of the first scripts), but although this appeared in
New Directions the same year there never seems to have

been any

move to stage it, not even as a college production.
Almost it

might be said that Brecht had decided to shelve
Mother Courage

as he shelved so many of his works, putting them out of his mind
for years at a time. In 1943, however, he met the composer

Paul

Dessau, whose musical background was in some ways com­

parable to those of Weill and Eisler, and who had
written some

music for the original Paris production of Fear and Misery of the
Third Reich in which Weigel had acted. At a Brecht recital given
at the New School in New York that March, Dessau sang one of

his own Brecht settings with such verve that Brecht encouraged
him to write more, first inviting him to come and work in Cali­

fornia, then at some undefined date asking him to write new

settings for the Mother Courage songs. These
were completed by

1946, when the Zurich company used them
for its guest per­

formances in Vienna, and they became the standard music for the

play. For the moment it seems that they, like the play itself,
were

really being reserved for the day when Brecht should
return to the

German-language theatre and stage the kind of performance
which he and Helene Weigel had in mind.

Though there is evidence in the FBI files of his
intention to

return from as early as 1944, it seems to have been at least a year
after the ending of the war that he began to make serious plans.
Then he wrote to his old collaborator the designer Caspar Neher

(who had remained in Germany) to announce
his conviction that

'we shall build up a theatre once more', followed by his
decision



xiv Introduction

to come to Zurich during 1947 and prepare his return to Berlin,
where he had been offered the use of the Theater am Schiff­
bauerdamm 'for certain things'. This theatre, the original home of
The Tbreepenny Opera, had now been made an offshoot of the
revived Volksbuhne, the great popular theatre organisation which
the Nazis had suppressed thirteen years earlier. The Deutsches
Theater, where Brecht had worked for Max Reinhardt on first
coming to Berlin, had been put under Langhoff of the Zurich
Mother Courage; both theatres were in the Soviet sector.

Early in 1947 Brecht and Piscator started corresponding with a
view to a joint descent on that city. They were in some measure
encouraged in this by Friedrich Wolf, who had returned with the
Red Army and now hoped to draw Piscator back to the Volks­
buhne. Before Piscator made up his mind, however, the division
of Berlin had occurred, and in the event he remained in New York
for another three years. Meanwhile the Brechts carried out their
plan of going to Zurich, and immediately on arrival began dis­
cussing plans with Neher. Within a month the two friends in
collaboration had completed the adaptation of Antigone which they
proposed to stage at the small theatre in Chur managed by Klem­
perer's former dramaturg Hans Curjel. The object of this brilliant
but short-lived exercise, so Brecht noted in his diary on 16 De­
cember, was 'to do preparatory work with Weigel and Cas [Neher]
on Courage for Berlin'. For Weigel had not acted on the pro­
fessional stage for fifteen years, and the Schauspielhaus apparently
had nothing for her.

The Antigone production took place on 15 February 1948, five
days after Brecht's fiftieth birrthday. The same occasion was
celebrated in Berlin by a programme organised by Langhoff, who
had staged a short version of Fear and Misery of the Third Reich
only a fortnight or so earlier. Thereafter it was agreed that the
Zurich Schauspielhaus would give the first production of Puntila,
the fourth and last of their Brecht premieres and the first to be
staged with Brecht's own participation (as unofficial director);
this took place in June, with Leonard Steckel acting the name
part. After that the Brechts' attention was again focused on
Berlin (Salzburg being an alternative bet), and the main problem
was how to get there. Eventually the necessary Austrian and
Czech permits came through, allowing them to travel to the
Soviet Zone of Germany in late October (the US authorities



n,
ff·

of

ties

Introduction xv

having refused them leave to cross Bavaria). Straightaway
Brecht

began holding auditions at Langhoff's theatre, then
on 8 November

his co-director Erich Engel arrived from Munich and two
months

of intensive rehearsal began. Brecht's idea at this time was to set up
his own ensemble under the wing of the Deutsches Theater and

invite prominent outsiders to act with it; he had
in mind figures

like Fritz Kortner and Peter Lorre as well as Therese
Giehse from

Zurich.
In mid-December he discussed this scheme with Langhoff,

seemingly still in the expectation of being able to
use the Theater

am Schiffbauerdamm. Then three weeks later he was
hauled out of

a rehearsal to attend a formal meeting with the party authorities,
the East Berlin mayor Friedrich Ebert (son of the former

Social­

Democratic President), Langhoff and the
Schiffbauerdamm

Intendant Fritz Wisten. Here he was told that the
Schiffbauerdamm

was needed for the Volksbiihne ; the mayor, who never
addressed

a word to him, spoke slightingly of half-baked schemes
which

might upset existing arrangements; and,
in the words of the

diary, 'for the first time since coming here I
felt the foetid breath of

provincialism' .
Within a few days, however, everything fell into the background

as the white half-curtain of the Deutsches Theater
fluttered open

on a brilliantly lit stage. The band struck up 'You captains,
tell

the drums to slacken', and the dusty, tattered family came rolling
on with its cart. Suddenly, in this still devastated city hovering
between peace and war, the

world could see one of the un­

forgettable images of our time.

* * *

From that moment dates Brecht's postwar reputation as a great

director, which for non-Germans has even
overshadowed his

reputation as a playwright. It was a
formidable comeback planned

from three overlapping aspects, and its triple success
was

stunning. First of all, here was a largely
unknown ,German

masterpiece, written in language of tremendous vitality
and still

with many shrewd things to say about war and people's
reactions

to it. Second was an outstanding acting performance from a

virtually forgotten actress, whose striking voice
and features have

become almost inseparable from the Mother Courage figure; that



xvi Introduction

night a legendary character, as well as a star, was born. Finally,
embracing everything else, there was a new, outwardly subdued
but inwardly authoritative spirit emanating from the whole
company and from the new Berliner Ensemble which the Brechts
went on to found upon it. The object of this entire operation was
of course rather different from Brecht's original aim when he wrote
the play. For he made it very clear in his notes and jottings that he
wished not only to make his countrymen think about their blind
involvement in Hitler's war but also to help rebuild their shattered
culture and bridge the long gap back to the progressive ideas of
the Weimar Republic, thereby bringing on a new generation of
actors and directors who would not have been debased by too
much experience of Nazi methods. Given that he meant to tackle
these worthwhile tasks from within the Communist orbit, in his
old spirit of sceptical allegiance, he had to establish his constructive
intentions, which he set himself to do soon after his arrival by
writing some slightly vapid political songs. At the same time he
had to overcome or get round the obstacles to any kind of formal
innovation embodied in the revived Socialist Realism now being
preached by the Russians and, once again, Georg Lukacs. As he
put it in the foreword to Antigone, 'it may not be easy to create
progressive art in the period of reconstruction'. But nobody was
now better placed to do it than he.

The criticisms of the play which now came from both right and
left arose from a feeling that Brecht, having created a great human
character, had deliberately stunted her, thereby stifling much of the
emotion natural both to himself as the creator and also to his
audience. Some, like Friedrich Wolf in the dialogue printed on
pp. 226-9 of Brecht on Theatre, felt that by the end of the play
Courage should have seen the light - that is, the futility of war -
thereby emerging as (in Communist aesthetic jargon) a 'positive'
figure. Others, on both sides of the barriers, pointed to what they
considered a theoretical inconsistency between Brecht's ideas of
'epic' or 'alienated' acting and the undoubted empathy experienced
by audiences at emotional high spots like the death of Kattrin.
This notion that Brecht, for purely intellectual reasons, was
denying certain powerful elements which he had (or should have)
instinctively put into the original play, was reinforced, if not
actually sparked off, by the textual changes which he confesses to on
pp. 89-92. of his notes. Indeed to judge from some commentators'



Introduction xvii

reactions one might imagine that he had rewritten the
Zurich

version as extensively as he did so many of his other plays.
In

fact, of course, only two of his four alterations are significant
-

the first, where Courage's salesmanship distracts her from her
son's

enlistment, and the second, which makes her less ready than
before to give her goods for humanitarian ends

- and they would

scarcely have been noticed if he had not drawn attention to
them

himself. What he worked much harder to correct was not any

'softness' in the actual play but those features of Lindtberg's
production on which Diebold had commented nearly eight years
earlier, along with a certain 'curious aura of harmlessness'

which

he found emanating from his own first Berlin rehearsals. This,
with its smudging-over of all sense of background or development,
he blamed on the bland conformism of the Nazi theatre.

But it is true that the point of the play had in some measure

changed, and the audiences who saw it in Berlin
and Munich

(where he re-staged it with Giehse as Courage and a new cast),
or

during the Berliner Ensemble's various tours, were very
different

from that in wartime Zurich. For these people had been through a

European war; they did not have to be warned about it; they
were

actually beginning to experience the consequences, including
some which Brecht had not foretold. None the less he

remained

convinced that his countrymen were a long way from under­

standing how far they had contributed to the horror,
the chaos and

the suffering - their own included. Doubtful
whether they had

learnt anything, he was convinced that it would be misleading
to

make Courage finish up any less short-sighted than they.
In fact

the surprising thing, to anyone familiar with Brecht's
restless

revaluation of his own plays, is that he did not alter the text more.

Perhaps the reason for this is that his chronic itch to
revise could

in this case be worked out on the (alas, unrealised) film version,
whose making by the East German DEFA was decided

as early as

September 1949. Initially the work on its script
was done by

Emil Hesse Burri, Brecht's old collaborator of the mid-I920S, who

had been a scriptwriter in Munich under the Nazis; and
the

intention was that Engel should direct it. When Engel fell out
some time during 195 I he was replaced by the forty-five-year-old
Wolfgang Staudte, a former Piscator trainee

whose DEFA film

Die Morder sind unter uns had been the first great postwar
success.

Though Brecht himself did not actually do any
of the writing,



xviii Introduction

he was in on the planning, and many of the changes were in line
with his suggestions. The film, said his first notes for DEFA,
'must bring out even more clearly than the play how reality
punishes [Mother Courage] for her failure to learn'. The treatment
was simplified to distinguish her from the 'little people' and show
her marked urge to go forward and profit from the war; later the
'little people' too were criticised as 'the worst of the lot. Why?
The big shots plan it, and the little people carry it out'. Kattrin
in turn was given a lover, a young miller whose vision of popular
resistance to the rulers and their foreign mercenaries is echoed
during the scene of her death, when the peasants in the besieged
town take up improvised arms and drive out the attackers (now
made Croats in order to seem more alien). This is clearly in ac­
cordance with the criticisms made of the play by Wolf and others,
who wanted a greater clement of optimism at the end; though the
old woman herself, her eyes lighting up 'with an expression of
greed and desperate hope' as she hears the troops marching off,
finishes up more incorrigible than ever. After Burri had completed
this first script he and Brecht agreed to make the story more
relevant to the postwar occupation of Germany by stressing the
contrast between the German protagonists (Eilif and Yvette were
now to be Germans, like Courage and Kattrin) and their motley
foreign invaders; there would be control barriers everywhere and
a 'Babylonian' mixture of strange tongues. Evidence too would be
given of persistent foreign attempts to recruit Germans (including
the young miller) for continued wars. Brecht's feelings at this
point are well summed up in the poem 'Germany 1952' which was
worked into the final script, where a group of deserters led by the
young miller throw down their weapons in an abandoned house
full of bourgeois comforts and one of them sings:

o Germany, so torn in pieces
And never left alonel
The cold and dark increases
While each sees to his own.
Such lovely fields you'd have
Such cities thronged and gay;
If you'd but trust yourself
All would be child's play.



e

\,

Introduction xix

But this film was never made. The trouble seems to have been

that DEFA, instead of setting out from the Brecht-Engel produc­
tion and the actors associated with it, wished to make a grand
international co-production with star appeal. Simone Signoret was
booked as Yvette, whose part was then disproportionately in­

flated; the French actor �rnard Blier became the cook. Angelika
Hurwicz, the unforgettable stage Kattrin, was replaced by Sigrid
Roth; difficulties were made over Helene Weigel, who had to be
cast as Courage on Brecht's insistence. In many other ways, too,
Brecht's vision and Staudte's proved deeply incompatible.
Statudte wanted to use colour, Brecht to achieve 'daguerreotype­
like' effects in black and white; Staudte commissioned period
costumes, Brecht rejected them as too operatic; Staudte's French

designer provided the heavy baronial setting seen in
the surviving

stills and located the camp scenes in a sandy waste, Brecht objected
that the Thirty Years War didn't take place in a desert.

Staudte's

verdict was that Brecht was 'utterly hostile to the cinema'. Shooting
nevertheless began, apparently on the assumption that Brecht
would feel forced to accept designs which had only been put
before him at the very last moment. He did not,

and as a result

the whole operation had to be called off after about a fortnight's

unhappy work. It was never resumed, though plans
for some kind

of Mother Courage film continued to be discussed, this
time with

Engel and Burri, right up to Brecht's death in August 1956.
The

film which DEFA did finally realise some four years later was

made on an entirely different basis, for it was a largely static
film

version, made in a studio and photographed in Cinemascope,
of

the Berliner Ensemble stage production: a kind of
Model-book

in motion, preserving Brecht's original vision with minor changes.
Its directors were Brecht's young assistants

Manfred Wekwerth

and Peter Palitzsch, who subsequently directed, respectively, the

Berliner Ensemble itself and the Frankfurt city theatres.

* * *

It was one of Brecht's endless inconsistencies (or 'contradictions')
that, while believing firmly in the need for change,

he established

certain standard productions which other directors of his plays
were expected to study before deciding their own interpretations.
Mother Courage was a prime candidate for this treatment,

thanks on



xx Introduction

the one hand to its high reputation with other theatres throughout
the globe and on the other to the critical disagreements which it
provoked. The 'Mother Courage Model' therefore consists not
only of the notes which we print on pp. 96-144 but of a series of
carefully-keyed photographs of the Berliner Ensemble production
which exists in a published version but was originally made as a
much fuller and more detailed album for loan to prospective
directors. Brecht's purpose here has often been regarded as
absurdly rigid, and the Ensemble itself has been accused of
putting Brecht's works into some kind of airless museum show­
case. On the one hand there have been instances of lifeless copying
or resentful friction whenever the standard model was imposed;
on the other it has shocked more jealously 'original' producers to
go as far as they can in some alternative, if not actually opposite,
direction. Seldom has any director done what Brecht really had
in mind: that is, gone through the 'model' to see exactly what
problems Brecht was trying to solve in each detail of his production,
and how he arrived at his answers, and then gone on to think out
an approach of his own based on the same understanding of the
play. So the use of Model-books has proved to be a somewhat
two-edged device, hindering as much as helping the assimilation
of this great play, particularly by non-German theatres.

Certainly Mother Courage has never become securely established
in the English-speaking countries, where the size of the cast and
the length of the play present a more formidable initial problem
than they do in the German subsidised theatres. Generally it has
proved a box-office disaster, and the one production to enjoy a
long run - Richard Schechner's with the Performance-Group off­
Broadway - seems to have done so more because of its original
treatment of the audience than by its conception and performance
of the text; it became a vivid, sharply biting Courage experience,
almost a happening. The odd thing is that this overall failure in
the professional theatre has not impaired the play's critical and
academic reputation, nor even its attraction for amateurs, to whom
of course a large cast often seems an advantage. As a result Mother
Courage is still somehow lurking in the wings as an enormous
challenge, even something of a reproach to our finest directors
and actors. Why have they never been able to communicate its
pessimism, its savagery and its force? A large part of the reason
surely lies in the language, which in the original is unique, the



Introduction xxi

invention of a major poet who chose neither to imitate seven­

teenth-century dialogue nor to reproduce modern everyday speech
but devised his own curt, sardonic lingo, full of elisions and with
few conjunctions, vividly conveying not only Courage's own
character but also the hard pressures of the war. This is

established

in the very first speeches, and from then on it becomes the principal
dynamic force of what is otherwise a stragglingly episodic play.
Those directors who have enough German to appreciate it have

generally treated it as untranslatable, thereby losing their main
chance of holding the audience's attention; the sense has been
communicated at the cost of Brecht's imaginative assault on the
ear. Our translation therefore sets out to tackle this key problem
by using a somewhat analogous artificial diction, based

this time

on those north English cadences which can reflect a similarly dry,
gloomily humorous approach to great events. It could

have

been done in other ways
- by a Welsh or Irish writer perhaps, or

one versed in Lallans - but so far it has not. The aim must be to

find a language which will keep the play moving across twelve

years of history, a great slice of devastated Europe and,
last but

not least, three or four hours in the theatre.
Add this to the barriers sometimes presented by the 'Model',

plus the widespread feeling among actors that performing
Brecht

demands outlandish technical methods, and there is some danger
of Mother Courage appearing a horribly complicated play. You only
have to read it to see that it is not. Even the changes which
Brecht made to it are only designed to clarify and bring out more

strongly what was already meant to be there; they were correctives,
not major switches of direction. All this belongs in the background,
to be digested and understood certainly, but not to obstruct the

story of the play and the long chain of small, conflicting episodes
which goes to make it up. The stage must be cleared,

as Brecht

cleared it in 1950 to tell German children 'The story of Mother

Courage':

There once was a mother

Mother Courage they called her
In the Thirty Years War
She sold victuals to soldiers.



xxii Introduction

The war did not scare her
From making her cut
Her three children went with her
And so got their bit.

THE EDITORS

Her first son died a hero
The second an honest lad
A bullet found her daughter
Whose heart was too good.

In the end it has to be as simple as that.



Mother Courage
and Her Children

A Chronicle of the

Thirty Years War



Translator: JOHN WILLETT

Characters

MOTHER COURAGE

KATTRIN, her dumb daughter
EILIF, the elder son
S W ISS C HE ESE, the younger S01l
THE RECRUITER

THE SERGEANT

THE COOK

THE GENERAL

THE CHAPLAIN

THE ARMOURER

YVETTE POTTIER

THE MAN WITH THE PATCH

ANOTHER SERGEANT

THE ANCIENT COLONEL

A CLERK

A YOUNG SOLDIER

AN OLDER SOLDIER

A PEASANT

THE PEASANT'S WIFE
THE YOUNG MAN

THE OLD WOMAN

ANOTHER PEASANT

HIS WIFE

THE YOUNG PEASANT

THE ENSIGN

Soldiers
A Voice



1

Spring 1624. The Swedish Commander-in-Chief
Count Oxenstierna is raising troops in Dalecarlia
for the Polish campaign. The canteen woman
Anna Fierling, known under the name of Mother
Courage, loses one son

Country road near a town.
A sergeant and a recruiter stand shivering.

R E C R U IT E R: How can you muster a unit in a place like this?
I've been thinking about suicide, Sergeant. Here am I, got
to find our commander four companies before the twelfth
of the month, and people round here are so nasty I can't

sleep nights. S'pose I get hold of some bloke and shut my
eye to his pigeon chest and varicose veins, I get him proper
drunk, he signs on the line, I'm just settling up, he goes for
a piss, I follow him to the door because I smell a rat; bob's

your uncle, he's off like a flea with the itch. No notion of

word of honour, loyalty, faith, sense of duty. This place
has shattered my confidence in the human race, sergeant.

SERGEANT: It's too long since they had a war here; stands to
reason. Where's their sense of morality to come from?
Peace - that's just a mess; takes a war to make order.

Peacetime, the human race runs wild. People and cattle get
buggered about, who cares? Everyone eats just as he feels

inclined, a hunk of cheese on top of his nice white bread,
and a slice of fat on top of the cheese. How many young
blokes and good horses in that town there, nobody knows;
they never thought of counting. I been in places ain't seen



4 Mother Courage and Her Children
a war for nigh seventy years: folks hadn't got names to
them, couldn't tell one another apart. Takes a war to get
proper nominal rolls and inventories - shoes in bundles and
corn in bags, and man and beast properly numbered and
carted off, cause it stands to reason: no order, no war.

RECRUITER: Too true.
SERGEANT: Same with all good things, it's a job to get a war

going. But once it's blossomed out there's no holding it;
folk start fighting shy of peace like punters what can't stop
for fear of having to tot up what they lost. Before that it's
war they're fighting shy of. It's something new to them.

RECRUITER: Hey, here's a cart coming. Two tarts with two
young fellows. Stop her, sergeant. If this one's a flop I'm
not standing around in your spring winds any longer, I can
tell you.
Sound of a jew's-harp. Drawn I!J two young fellou«, a covered cart
rolls in. Of' it sit Mother Courage and her dumb daughter Kattrin.

MOTHER COURAGE: Morning, sergeant.
SERGEANT blocking the way: Morning, all. And who are you?
MOTHER COURAGE: Business folk. Sings:

You captains, tell the drums to slacken
And give your infanteers a break:
It's Mother Courage with her waggon
Full of the finest boots they make.
With crawling lice and looted cattle
With lumbering guns and straggling kit­
How can you flog them into battle
Unless you get them boots that fit?

The new year's come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.

Captains, how can you make them face it -
Marching to death without a brew?



ar

Scene I

Courage has rum with which to lace it
And boil their souls and bodies through.
Their musket primed, their stomach hollow -
Captains, your men don't look so well.
So feed them up and let them follow
While you command them into hell.

The new year's come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.

SERGEANT: Halt I Who are you with, you trash?
THE ELDER SON: Second Finnish Regiment.
SERGEANT: Where's your papers?
MOTHER COURAGE: Papers?
THE YOUNGER SON: What, mean to say you don't know

Mother Courage?
SERGEANT: Never heard of her. What's she called Courage

for?
MOTHER COURAGE: Courage is the name they gave me

because I was scared of going broke, sergeant, so I drove
me cart right through the bombardment of Riga with fifty
loaves of bread aboard. They were going mouldy, it was
high time, hadn't any choice really.

SERGEANT: Don't be funny with me. Your papers.
MOTHER COURAGE pulling a bundle ofpapersfro", a tin box and

climbing down off the cart: That's all my papers, sergeant.
You'll find a whole big missal from Altotting in Bavaria for
wrapping gherkins in, and axoad map of Moravia, the
Lord knows when I'll ever get there, might as well chuck it
away, and here's a stamped certificate that my horse hasn't
got foot-and-mouth, only he's dead worse luck, cost fifteen
florins he did - not me luckily. That enough paper for you?

SERGEANT: You pulling my leg? I'll knock that sauce out of
you. S'pose you know you got to have a licence.



6 Mother Courage and Her Chlldren
MOTHER COURAGE: Talk proper to me, do you mind, and

don't you dare say I'm pulling your leg in front of my
unsullied children, 'tain't decent, I got no time for you. My
honest face, that's me licence with the Second Regiment,
and if it's too difficult for you to read there's nowt I can do
about it. Nobody's putting a stamp on that.

RECRUITER: Sergeant, methinks I smell insubordination in
this individual. What's needed in our camp is obedience.

MOTHER COURAGE: Sausage, if you ask me.
SERGEANT: Name.
MOTHER COURAGE: Anna Fierling.
SERGEANT: You all called Fierling then?
MOTHER COURAGE: What d'you mean? It's me's called

Fierling, not them.
SERGEANT: Aren't all this lot your children?
MOTHER COURAGE: You bet they are, but why should they

all have to be called the same, eh? Pointing to her elder son:
For instance, that one's called Eilif Nojocki - Why? his
father always claimed he was called Kojocki or Mojocki or
something. The boy remembers him clearly, except that the
one he remembers was someone else, a Frenchie with a little
beard. Aside from that he's got his father's wits; that man
knew how to snitch a peasant's pants off his bum without
him noticing. This way each of us has his own name, see.

S ERG E ANT: What, each one different?
MOTHER COURAGE: Don't tell me you ain't never come

across that.
SERGEANT: SO I s'pose he's a Chinaman? Pointing to the

younger son.
MOTHER COURAGE: Wrong. Swiss.
SERGEANT: After the Frenchman?
MOTHER COURAGE: What Frenchman? I never heard tell of

no Frenchman. You keep muddling things up, we'll be
hanging around here till dark. A Swiss, but called Fejos,
and the name has nowt to do with his father. He was called



callea

Scene I 7

something quite different and was a fortifications engineer,
only drunk all the time.
Suiss Cheese beams and nods ; dumb Kattrin too is amused.

SERGEANT: How in hell can he be called Fejos?
MOTHER COURAGE: I don't like to be rude, sergeant, but

you ain't got much imagination, have you? Course he's
called Fejos, because when he arrived I was with a Hun­
garian, very decent fellow, had terrible kidney trouble
though he never touched a drop. The boy takes after him.

SERGEANT: But he wasn't his father ...
MOTHER COURAGE: Took after him just the same. I call him

Swiss Cheese. Pointing to her daughter: And that's Kattrin
Haupt, she's half German.

SERGEANT: Nice family, I must say.
MOTHER COURAGE: Aye, me cart and me have seen the

world.
SERGEANT: I'm writing all this down. He turites. And you're

from Bamberg in Bavaria; how d'you come to be here?
MOTHER COURAGE: Can't wait till war chooses to visit

Bamberg, can I?
RECRUITER to Eilij: You two should be called Jacob Ox and

Esau Ox, pulling the cart like that. I s'pose you never get
out of harness ?

EILIF: Ma, can I clobber him one? I wouldn't halflike to.
MOTHER COURAGE: And I says you can't; just you stop

where you are. And now two fine officers like you, I bet you
could use a good pistol, or a belt buckle, yours is on its last
legs, sergeant.

S ERG E ANT: I could use something else. Those boys are
healthy as young birch trees, I observe: chests like barrels,
solid leg muscles. So why are they dodging their military
service, may I ask?

MOTHER COURAGE quickly: Nowt doing, sergeant. Yours is
no trade for my kids.

RECRUITER: But why not? There's good money in it, glory



8 Mother Courage and Her Children
too. Flogging boots is women's work. To Eilif: Come here,
let's see if you've muscles in you or if you're a chicken.

MOTHER COURAGE: He's a chicken. Give him a fierce look,
he'll fall over.

RECRUITER: Killing a young bull that happens to be in his
way. WantJ to lead him off.

MOTHER COURAGE: Let him alone, will you? He's nowt for
you folk.

RECRUITER: He was crudely offensive and talked about
clobbering me. The two of us are going to step into that
field and settle it man to man.

EILIF: Don't you worry, mum, I'll fix him.
MOTHER COURAGE: Stop there! You varmint! I know you,

nowt but fights. There's a knife down his boot. A slasher,
that's what he is.

RECRUITER: I'll draw it out of him like a milk-tooth. Come
along, sonny.

MOT HER CO U RAG E: Sergeant, I'll tell the colonel. He'll
have you both in irons. The lieutenant's going out with my
daughter.

SERGEANT: No rough stuff, chum. To Mother Courage: What
you got against military service? Wasn't his own father a
soldier? Died a soldier's death, too? Said it yourself.

MOTHER COURAGE: He's nowt but a child. You want to
take him off to slaughterhouse, I know you lot. They'll give
you five florins for him.

RECRUITER: First he's going to get a smart cap and boots,
eh?

EILIF: Not from you.
MOT HER CO U RAG E: Let's both go fishing, said angler to

worm. To Swiss Cheese: Run off, call out they're trying to
kidnap your brother. She pulls a knife: Go on, you kidnap
him, just try. I'll slit you open, trash. I'll teach you to make
war with him. We're doing an honest trade in ham and
linen, and we're peaceable folk.



or

ut

at

u,

,at

ra

to

re

ts,

to

to

ap
ke
a

Scene I 9

SERGEANT: Peaceable I don't think; look at your knife. You
should be ashamed of yourself; put that knife away, you old
harridan. A minute back you were admitting you live off
the war, how else should you live, what from? But how's
anyone to have war without soldiers?

MOTHER COURAGE: No need for it to be my kids.
SERGEANT: Oh, you'd like war to eat the pips but spit out

the apple? It's to fatten up your kids, but you won't invest
in it. Got to look after itself, eh? And you called Courage,
fancy that. Scared of the war that keeps you going ? Your
sons aren't scared of it, I can see that.

ElL IF: Take more than a war to scare me.
SERGEANT: And why? Look at me: has army life done all

that badly by me. Joined up at seventeen.
MOTHER COURAGE: Still got to reach seventy.
SERGEANT: I don't mind waiting.
MOTHER COURAGE: Under the sod, eh?
S ERG E ANT: You trying to insult me, saying I'll die?
MOTHER COURAGE: S'pose it's true? S'pose I can see the

mark's on you? S'pose you look like a corpse on leave to
me?Eh?

S WI S S C HE ESE: She's got second sight, Mother has.
R E C R U I T E R: Go ahead, tell the sergeant's fortune, might

amuse him.
MOTHER COURAGE: Gimme helmet. Regives it to her.
SERGEANT: It don't mean a bloody sausage. Anything for a

laugh though.
MOT HER CO U RAG E taking out a sheet ofparchment and tearing

it up: Eilif, Swiss Cheese and Kattrin, may all of us be torn

apart like this if we lets ourselves get too mixed up in the
war. To the Sergeant: Just for you I'm doing it for free.
Black's for death. I'm putting a big black cross on this slip
of paper.

SWISS CHEESE: Leaving the other one blank, see?
MOTHER COURAGE: Then I fold them across and shake



10 Mother Courage and Her Children
them. All of us is jumbled together like this from our
mother's womb, and now draw a slip and you'll know. The
Sergeant hesitates.

RECRUITER to Eilif: I don't take just anybody, they all know
I'm choosey, but you got the kind of fire I like to see.

SERGEANT fishing in the helmet: Too silly. Load of eyewash.
SWISS C HEESE: Drawn a black cross, he has. Write him off.
RECRUITER: They're having you on; not everybody's name's

on a bullet.
SERGEANT hoarsely: You've put me in the shit.
MOTHER COURAGE: Did that yourself the day you became a

soldier. Come along, let's move on now. 'Tain't every day
we have a war, I got to get stirring.

SERGEANT: God damn it, you can't kid me. We're taking that
bastard of yours for a soldier.

EILIF: Swiss Cheese'd like to be a soldier too.
MOTHER COURAGE: First I've heard of that. You'll have to

draw too, all three of you. She goes to the rear to mark crosses
onfurtber slips.

R E C R U I T E R to Eilif: One of the things they say against us is
that it's all holy-holy in the Swedish camp; but that's a
malicious rumour to do us down. There's no hymn-singing
but Sundays, just a single verse, and then only for those got
voices.

MOTHER COURAGE coming back uJith the slips, which she drops
into the sergeant's helmet: Trying to get away from their rna, the
devils, off to war like calves to salt-lick. But I'm making
you draw lots, and that'll show you the world is no vale of
joys with 'Come along, son, we need a few more generals'.
Sergeant, I'm so scared they won't get through the war.
Such dreadful characters, all three of them. She hands the
helmet to Eilif. Hey, come on, fish out your slip. He fishes one
out, unfolds it. She snatches it from him. There you are, it's a
cross. Oh, wretched mother that I am, 0 pain-racked giver
of birth! Shall he die? Aye, in the springtime of life he is



r

he

ow

er

Scene I I I

doomed. If he becomes a soldier he shall bite the dust, it's

plain to see. He is too foolhardy, like his dad was. And if he
ain't sensible he'll go the way of all flesh, his slip proves it.
Shouts at him: You going to be sensible?

EILIF: Why not?
MOTHER COURAGE: Sensible thing is stay with your

mother, never mind if they poke fun at you and call you
chicken, just you laugh.

RECRUITER: If you're pis sing in your pants I'll make do with
.

your brother.
MOTHER COURAGE: I told you laugh. Go on, laugh. Now

you draw, Swiss Cheese. I'm not so scared on your account,
you're honest. He fishes in the helmet. Oh, why look at your
slip in that strange way? It's got to be a blank. There can't
be any cross on it. Surely I'm not going to lose you. She
takes the slip. A cross? What, you too? Is that because you're
so simple, perhaps? 0 Swiss Cheese, you too will be sunk if
you don't stay utterly honest all the while, like I taught you
from childhood when you brought the change back from
the baker's. Else you can't save yourself. Look, sergeant,
that's a black cross, ain't it?

SERGEANT: A cross, that's right. Can't think how I come to
get one. I always stay in the rear. To the Recruiter: There's no
catch. Her own family get it too.

SWISS CHEESE: I get it too. But I listen to what I'm told.
MOTHER COURAGE to Kattrin: And now you're the only one

I know's all right, you're a cross yourself; got a kind heart
you have. Holds the helmet up to her on the cart, but takes the

slip out herself. No, that's too much. That can't be right;
must have made a mistake shu ffiing. Don't be too kind­
hearted, Kattrin, you'll have to give it up, there's a cross
above your path too. Lie doggo, girl, it can't be that hard
once you're born dumb, Right, all of you know now. Look
out for yourselves, you'll need to. And now up we get and
on we go. She climbs on to the cart.



12 Mother Courage and Her Children
R E C R U I T E R to the sergeant: Do something.
SERGEANT: I don't feel very well.
RECRUITER: Must of caught a chill taking your helmet off in

that wind. Involve her in a deal. Aloud: Might as well have
a look at that belt-buckle, sergeant. After all, our friends
here have to live by their business. Hey, you people, the
sergeant wants to buy that belt-buckle.

MOTHER COURAGE: Half a florin. Two florins is what a belt
like that's worth. Climbs down again.

SERGEANT: 'Tain't new. Let me get out of this damned wind
and have a proper look at it. Goes behind the cart with the
buckle.

MOTHER COURAGE: Ain't what I call windy.
SERGEANT: I s'pose it might be worth half a florin, it's silver.
MOTHER COURAGEjoining him behind the cart: It's six solid

ounces.

RECRUITER to Eilif: And then we men'll have one together.
Got your bounty money here, come along. Eilif stands
undecided.

MOTHER COURAGE: Half a florin it is.
SERGEANT: It beats me. I'm always at the rear. Sergeant's the

safest job there is. You can send the others up front, cover
themselves with glory. Me dinner hour's properly spoiled.
Shan't be able to hold nowt down, I know.

MOTHER COURAGE: Mustn't let it prey on you so's you
can't eat. Just stay at the rear. Here, take a swig of brandy,
man. Gives him a drink.

R E C R U I T E R has taken Eilif by the arm and is leading him away up
stage: Ten florins bounty money, then you're a gallant
fellow fighting for the king and women'll be after you like
flies. And you can clobber me for free for insulting you.
Exeunt both.
Dumb Kattrin leans downfrom the cart and makes hoarse noises.

MOTHER COURAGE: All right, Kattrin, all right. Sergeant's
just paying. Bites the balf-florin. I got no faith in any kind of



Scene 2 13

money. Burnt child, that's me, sergeant. This coin's good,
though. And now let's get moving. Where's Eilif?

SWISS CHEESE: Went off with the recruiter.

MOT HER CO U RAG E stands quite still, then: You simpleton. To
Kattrin: 'Tain't your fault, you can't speak, I know.

SERGEANT: Could do with a swig yourself, mao That's life.
Plenty worse things than being a soldier. Want to live off
war, but keep yourself and family out of it, eh?

MOTHER COURAGE: You'll have to help your brother pull
now, Kattrin.
Brother and sister hitch themselves to the cart and start pulling.
Mother Courage walks alongside. The cart rolls on.

S ERG E ANT looking after them:

Like the war to nourish you?
Have to feed it something too.

2

In the years 1625 and 1626 Mother Courage
crosses Poland in the train of the Swedish
armies. Before the fortress of Wallhof she meets
her son again. Successful sale of a capon and
heyday of her dashing son

The general's tent.

Beside it, his kitchen. Thunder of cannon. The cook is arguing 1JJith
Mother Courage, who wants to sell him a capon.

THE COO K: Sixty hellers for a miserable bird like that?
MOT HER CO U RAG E: Miserable bird? This fat brute? Mean



14 Mother Courage and Her Children
to say some greedy old general - and watch your step if
you got nowt for his dinner - can't afford sixty hellers for
him?

THE COOK: I can get a dozen like that for ten hellers justdown the road.
MOTHER COURAGE: What, a capon like this you can get justdown the road? In time of siege, which means hunger that

tears your guts. A rat you might get: 'might' I say because
they're all being gobbled up, five men spending best part of
day chasing one hungry rat. Fifty hellers for a giant capon intime of siege!

THE COO K: But it ain't us having the siege, it's t'other side.
We're conducting the siege, can't you get that in yourhead?

MOTHER COURAGE: But we got nowt to eat too, even worse
than them in the town. Took it with them, didn't they?They're having a high old time, everyone says. And look at
us! I been to the peasants, there's nowt there.

THE COO K: There's plenty. They're sitting on it.
MOTHER COURAGE triumphantlY: They ain't. They're bust,that's what they are. Just about starving. I saw some, were

grubbing up roots from sheer hunger, licking their fingersafter they boiled some old leather- strap. That's way it is.And me got a capon here and supposed to take fortyhellers for it.
THE COO K : Thirty, not forty. I said thirty.
MOTHER COURAGE: Here, this ain't just any old capon. It

was such a gifted beast, I been told, it could only eat to
music, had a military march of its own. It could count, it
was that intelligent. And you say forty hellers is too much?
General will make mincemeat of you if there's nowt on his
table.

THE COO K: See what I'm doing? He takes a piece of beef and
puts his knife to it. Here I got a bit of beef, I'm going to roastit. Make up your mind quick.



P if
for

just

Scene 2 15

MOTHER COURAGE: Go on, roast it. It's last year's.
THE COOK: Last night's. That animal was still alive and

kicking, I saw him myself.
MOTHER COURAGE: Alive and stinking, you mean.
THE COO K: I'll cook him five hours if need be. I'll just see if

he's still tough. He cuts into it.
MOTHER COURAGE: Put plenty of pepper on it so his lord­

ship the general don't smell the pong.
Yhe general, a chaplain and Eilifenter the tent.

THE GENERAL slapping Eilif on the shoulder: Now then, Eilif
my son, into your general's tent with you and sit thou at my
right hand. For you accomplished a deed of heroism, like a

pious cavalier, and doing what you did for God, and in a
war of religion at that, is something I commend in you
most highly, you shall have a gold bracelet as soon as we've
taken this town. Here we are, come to save their souls for

them, and what do those insolent dung-encrusted yokels go
and do? Drive their beef away from us. They stuff it into
those priests of theirs all right, back and front, but you
taught' em manners, ha! So, here's a pot of red wine for you,
the two of us'll knock it back at one gulp. Tbey do so. Piss all
for the chaplain, the old bigot. And now, what would you
like for dinner, my darling?

EILIF: A bit of meat, why not?
THE GENERAL: Cook! Meat!

THE COO K : And then he goes and brings guests when there's
nowt there.

Mother Courage silences him so she can listen.
EILIF: Hungry job cutting down peasants.
MOTHER COURAGE: Jesus Christ, it's my Eilif.
THE COOK: Your what?

MOTHER COURAGE: My eldest boy. It's two years since I
lost sight of him, they pinched him from me on the road,
must think well of him if the general's asking him to dinner,
and what kind of a dinner can you offer? Nowt. You heard



16 Mother Courage and Her Children
what the visitor wishes to eat: meat. Take my tip, yousettle for the capon, it'll be a florin.

THE GENERAL has sat down with Eilij, and bellows: Food,
lamb, you foul cook, or I'll have your hide.

THE coo K: Give it over, dammit, this is blackmail.
MOTHER COURAGE: Didn't someone say it was a miserable

bird?
THE COOK: Miserable; give it over, and a criminal price,fifty hellers.
MOTHER COURAGE: A florin, I said. For my eldest boy, the

general's guest, no expense is too great for me.
THE COO K gives her the monry: You might at least pluck itwhile I see to the fire.
MOTHER COURAGE sits dotun to pluck the fowl: He won't halfbe surprised to see me. He's my dashing clever son. Then I

got a stupid one too, he's honest though. The girl's nowt.One good thing, she don't talk.
THE GENERAL: Drink up, my son, this is my best Falernian ;

only got a barrel or two left, but that's nothing to pay for a
sign that's there's still true faith to be found in my army.As for that shepherd of souls he can just look on, because all
he does is preach, without the least idea how it's to be
carried out. And now, my son Eilif, tell us more about the
neat way you smashed those yokels and captured the twentyoxen. Let's hope they get here soon.

EILI F: A day or two at most.
MOTHER COURAGE: Thoughtful of our Eilif not to bring the

oxen in till tomorrow, else you lot wouldn't have looked
twice at my capon.

ElL IF: Well, it was like this, see. I'd heard peasants had been
driving the oxen they'd hidden, out of the forest into one
particular wood, on the sly and mostly by night. That'swhere people from the town were s'posed to come and pickthem up. So I holds off and lets them drive their oxen
together, reckoning they'd be better than me at finding'em.



ou

ad,

anle

ree,

Scene 2 17

I had my blokes slavering after the meat, cut their emer­

gency rations even further for a couple of days till their
mouths was watering at the least sound of any word

beginning with 'rne-', like 'measles' say.
THE GENERAL: Very clever of you.
ElL IF: Possibly. The rest was a piece ofcake. Except that the

peasants had cudgels and outnumbered us three to one and
made a murderous attack on us. Four of 'em shoved me into

a thicket, knocked my sword from my hand and bawled out
'Surrender!' What's the answer, I wondered; they're going
to make mincemeat of me.

THE GENERAL: What did you do?

EILIF: I laughed.
THE GENERAL: You did what?

EILIF: Laughed. So we got talking. I put it on a business

footing from the start, told them 'Twenty florins a head's
too much. I'll give you fifteen'. As I was meaning to pay.
That threw them, and they began scratching their heads. In
a flash I'd picked up my sword and was hacking 'em to

pieces. Necessity's the mother of invention, eh, sir?
THE GENERAL: What is your view, pastor of souls?

THE CHAPLAIN: That phrase is not strictly speaking in the

Bible, but when Our Lord turned the five loaves into five
hundred there was no war on and he could tell people to
love their neighbours as they'd had enough to eat. Today
it's another story.

THE GENERAL laughs: Quite another story. You can have a

swig after all for that, you old Pharisee. To Eilif:
Hacked

'em to pieces, did you, so my gallant lads can get a proper
bite to eat? What do the Scriptures say? 'Whatsoever thou
doest for the least of my brethren, thou doest for me'. And

what did you do for them? Got them
a good square meal

of beef, because they're not accustomed to mouldy bread,
the old way was to fix a cold meal of

rolls and wine in your

helmet before you went out to fight for God.



18 Mother Courage and Her Chlldren
EILIF: Aye, in a flash I'd picked up my sword and was

hacking them to pieces.
THE GENERAL: You've the makings of a young Caesar. You

ought to see the King.
ElL IF: I have from a distance. He kind of glows. I'd like to

model myself on him.
THE GENERAL: You've got something in common already.

I appreciate soldiers like you, Eilif, men of courage. Some­
body like that I treat as I would my own son. He leads him
over to the map. Have a look at the situation, Eilif; it's a long
haul still.

MOTHER COURAGE who has been listening and now angri(y plucks
the101V/: That must be a rotten general.

THE COO K: He's ravenous all right, but why rotten?
MOTHER COURAGE: Because he's got to have men of

courage, that's why. If he knew how to plan a proper cam­
paign what would he be needing men of courage for?
Ordinary ones would do. It's always the same; whenever
there's a load of special virtues around it means something
stinks.

THE COO K: I thought it meant things is all right.
MOTHER COURAGE: No, that they stink. Look, s'pose some

general or king is bone stupid and leads his men up shit
creek, then those men've got to be fearless, there's another
virtue for yeu. S'pose he's stingy and hires too few soldiers,
they they got to be a crowd of Hercules's. And s'pose he's
slapdash and don't give a bugger, then they got to be clever
as monkeys else their number's up. Same way they got to
show exceptional loyalty each time he gives them im­
possible jobs. Nowt but virtues no proper country and no
decent king or general would ever need. In decent countries
folk don't have to have virtues, the whole lot can be
perfectly ordinary, average intelligence, and for all I know
cowards.

THE GENERAL: I'll wager your father was a soldier.



of

rt

�,

er

10

Scene 2 19

EILIF: A great soldier, I been told. My mother warned me
about it. There's a song I know.

THE GENERAL: Sing it to us. Roars: When's that dinner

coming?
ElL IF: It's called The Song of the Girl and the Soldier.

He sings it, dancing a war dance with his sabre:

The guns blaze away, and the bay'nit'll slay
And the water can't hardly be colder.
What's the answer to ice? Keep off's my advice!
That's what the girl told the soldier.
Next thing the soldier, wiv' a round up the spout
Hears the band playing and gives a great shout:
Why, it's marching what makes you a soldier!
So it's down to the south and then northwards once more:

See him catching that bay'nit in his naked paw I
That's what his comrades done told her.

Oh, do not despise the advice of the wise
Learn wisdom from those that are older

And don't try for things that are out of your reach
-

That's what the girl told the soldier.
Next thing the soldier, his bay'nit in place
Wades into the river and laughs in her face
Though the water comes up to his shoulder.
When the shingle roof glints in the light 0' the moon
We'll be wiv' you again, not a moment too soon!
That's what his comrades done told her.

MOTHER COURAGE takes up the song in the kitchen, beating on a

pot with her spoon:

You'll go out like a light! And the sun'll take flight
For your courage just makes us feel colder.
Oh, that vanishing light! May God see that it's right!

-

That's what the girl told the soldier.



20 Mother Courage and Her Children
ElL IF: What's that?
MOTHER COURAGE continues singing:

Next thing the soldier, his bay'nit in place
Was caught by the current and went down without trace
And the water couldn't hardly be colder.
The the shingle roof froze in the light 0' the moon
As both soldier and ice drifted down to their doom _
And d'you know what his comrades done told her?
He went out like a light. And the sunshine took flight
For his courage just made 'em feel colder.
Oh, do not despise the advice of the wise I
That's what the girl told the soldier.

THE GENERAL: The things they get up to in my kitchen
these days.

EILIF has gone into the kitchen. He flings his arms round his mother:
Fancy seeing you again, mal Where's the others?

MOTHER COURAGE in his arms: Snug as a bug in a rug. Theymade Swiss Cheese paymaster of the Second Finnish; anyroad he'll stay out of hghting that way, I couldn't keep him
out altogether.

EILIF: How's the old feet?
MOTHER COURAGE: Bit tricky getting me shoes on of a

morning.
THE GENERAL hasjoined them: So you're his mother, I hope

you've got plenty more sons for r e like this one.
EILIF: Ain't it my lucky day? You sitting out there in the

kitchen, ma, hearing your son commended ...
MOTHER COURAGE: You bet I heard. Slaps bisface.
EI LI F holding his cheek: What's that for? Taking the oxen?
MOTHER COURAGE: No. Not surrendering when those four

went for you and wanted to make mincemeat of you. Didn't
I say you should look after yourself? You Finnish devil!
The general and the chaplain stand in the doorway laughing.



Scene 3 2.1

3

Three years later Mother Courage is taken
prisoner along with elements of a Finnish regi­
ment. She manages to save her daughter, like­
wise her covered cart, but her honest son is
killed

Military camp.
Afternoon. A flagpole with the regimental flag. From her cart,
festooned now witb all kinds ofgoods, Mother Courage has stretched

a

1JJashing line to a large cannon, across iubicb she and Kattrin are

folding the washing. She is bargaining at the same time with
an

armourer over a sack of shot. Swiss Cheese, now wearing a pay­
master's uniform, is lookin�g on.

A comely person, Yvette Pottier, is sewing a gai!J coloured hat, a

glass of brandy before her. She is in her stockinged feet, having laid
aside her red high-heeled boots.

T HE ARM 0 U R E R: I'll let you have that shot for a couple of
florins. It's cheap at the price, I got to have the money
because. the colonel's been boozing with his officers since
two days back, and the drink's run out.

MOTHER COURAGE: That's troops' munitions. They catch
me with that, I'm for court-martial. You crooks flog the

shot, and troops got nowt to fire at enemy.
THE ARMOURER: Have a heart, can't you; you scratch my

back and I'll scratch yours.
MOTHER COURAGE: I'm not taking army property. Not at

that price.
THE ARMOURER: You can sell it on the q.t. tonight to the

Fourth Regiment's armourer for five florins, eight even, if



22 Mother Courage and Her Children
you let him have a receipt for twelve. He's right out of
ammunition.

MOTHER COURAGE: Why not you do it?
THE A RMOURER: I don't trust him, he's a pal of mine.
MOTHER COURAGE takes the sack: Gimme. To Kattrin: Take

it away and pay him a florin and a half. The armourer protests.
I said a florin and a half. Kattrin drags the sack upstage, the
armourer following her. Mother Courage addresses Swiss Cheese:
Here's your woollies, now look after them, it's October and
autumn may set in any time. I ain't saying it's got to, cause
I've learned nowt's got to come when you think it will, not
even seasons of the year. But your regimental accounts got
to add up right, come what may. Do they add up right?

SWISS CHEESE: Yes, mother.
MOTHER COURAGE: Don't you forget they made you pay­

master cause you was honest, not dashing like your brother,
and above all so stupid I bet you ain't even thought of
clearing off with it, no not you. That's a big consolation to
me. And don't lose those woollies.

SWISS CHEESE: No, mother, I'll put them under my mat­
tress. Begins to go.

THE ARMOURER: I'll go along with you, paymaster.
MOTHER COURAGE: And don't you start learning him none

of your tricks.
The armourer leaves with Swiss Cheese without any farewell
gesture.

YVE TTE waving to him: No reason not to say goodbye,
armourer.

MOTHER COURAGE to Yvette: I don't like to see them to­
gether. He's wrong company for our Swiss Cheese. Oh
well, war's off to a good start. Easily take four, five years
before all countries are in. A bit of foresight, don't do
nothing silly, and business'Il flourish. Don't you know you
ain't s'posed to drink before midday with your complaint?

YVETTE: Complaint, who says so, it's a libel.



of

Tah

Dn�

to-

Scene 3 23

MOTHER COURAGE: They all say so.
YVE TTE: Because they're all telling lies, Mother Courage,

and me at my wits' end cause they're all avoiding me like

something the cat brought in thanks to those lies, what the
hell am I remodelling my hat for? She throws it away. That's

why I drink before midday. Never used to, gives you crows'
feet, but now what the hell? All the Second Finnish know
me. Ought to have stayed at home when my first fellow did
me wrong. No good our sort being proud. Eat shit, that's
what you got to do, or down you go.

MOTHER COURAGE: Now don't you start up again about
that Pieter of yours and how it all happened, in front of my
innocent daughter too.

YVETTE: She's the one should hear it, put her off love.
MOTHER COURAGE: Nobody can put 'em off that.
YVE TTE: Then I'll go on, get it off my chest. It all starts with

yours truly growing up in lovely Flanders, else I'd never of
seen him and wouldn't be stuck here now in Poland,
cause he was an army cook, fair-haired, a Dutchman but
thin for once. Kattrin, watch out for the thin ones, only in
those days I didn't know that, or that he'd got a girl already,
or that they all called him Puffing Piet cause he never took
his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job, it meant
that little to him. She sings the Song ofFraternisation:

When I was only sixteen
The foe came into our land.

He laid aside his sabre
And with a smile he took my hand.

After the May parade
The May light starts to fade.
The regiment dressed by the right
The drums were beaten, that's the drill.
The foe took us behind the hill

And fraternised all night.



24 Mother Courage and Her Children
There were so many foes then
But mine worked in the mess.
I loathed him in the daytime.
At night I loved him none the less.
After the May parade
The May light starts to fade.
The regiment dressed by the right
The drums were beaten, that's the drill.
The foe took us behind the hill
And fraternised all night.

The love which came upon me
Was wished on me by fate.
My friends could never grasp why
I found it hard to share their hate.
The fields were wet with dew
When sorrow first I knew.
The regiment dressed by the right
The drums were beaten, that's the drill.
And then the foe, my lover still
Went marching out of sight.

I followed him, fool that I was, but I never found him,
and that was five years back. She walks unsteadilY behind the
cart.

MOTHER COURAG E: You left your hat here.
YVETTE: Anyone wants it can have it.
MOTHER COURAGE: Let that be a lesson, Kattrin. Don't

you start anything with them soldiers. Love makes the
world go round, I'm warning you. Even with fellows not in
the army it's no bed of roses. He says he'd like to kiss the
ground your feet walk on - reminds me, did you wash them
yesterday? - and after that you're his skivvy. Be thankful
you're dumb, then you can't contradict yourself and won't
be wanting to bite your tongue off for speaking the truth;



m,

:�

Scene 3 25

it's a godsend, being dumb is. And here comes the general's
cook, now what's he after?
Enter the cook and the chaplain.

THE CHAPLAIN: I have a message for you from your son

Eilif, and the cook has come along because you made such
a profound impression on him.

THE COO K: I just came along to get a bit of air.
MOTHER COURAGE: That you can always do here if you

behave yourself, and if you don't I can deal with you. What
does he want? I got no spare cash.

THE CHAPLAIN: Actually I had a message for his brother the

paymaster.
MOTHER COURAGE: He ain't here now nor anywhere else

neither. He ain't his brother's paymaster. He's not to lead

him into temptation nor be clever at his expense. Giving him

money from the purse slung round her: Give him this,
it's a sin,

he's banking on mother's love and ought to be ashamed
of

himself.
THE COOK: Not for long, he'll have to be moving off with

the regiment, might be to his death. Give him a
bit extra,

you'll be sorry later. You women are tough,
then later on

you're sorry. A little glass of brandy wouldn't
have been a

problem, but it wasn't offered and, who knows,
a bloke may

lie beneath the green sod and none of you people will ever
be able to dig him up again.

THE CHAPLAIN: Don't give way to your feelings, cook. To
fall in battle is a blessing, not an inconvenience, and why?
It is a war of faith. None of your common wars

but a

special one, fought for the faith and therefore pleasing
to

God.
THE COOK: Very true. It's a war all right in one sense, what

with requisitioning, murder and looting and the
odd bit of

rape thrown in, but different from
all the other wars because

it's a war of faith; stands to reason. But it's thirsty work at

that, you must admit.

lD



1.6 Mother Courage and Her Children
THE CHAPLAIN to Mother Courage, indicating the Cook: I tried

to stop him, but he says he's taken a shine to you, you
figure in his dreams.

THE COOK lighting a stumpy pipe: Just want a glass of brandy
from a fair hand, what harm in that? Only I'm groggy
already cause the chaplain here's been telling such jokes all
the way along you bet I'm still blushing.

MOTHER COURAGE: Him a clergyman too. I'd best give the
pair of you a drink or you'll start making me immoral
suggestions cause you've nowt else to do.

THE CHAPLAIN: Behold a temptation, said the court
preacher, and fell. Turning back to look at Kattrin as he leaves:
And who is this entrancing young person?

MOTHER COURAGE: That ain't an entrancing but a decent
young person. The chaplain and the cook go behind the cart with
Mother Courage. Kattrin looks after them, then walks aJvay from
her washing towards the hat. She picks it up and sits down, pullingthe red boots towards her. Mother Courage can be heard in the
background talkingpolitics with the chaplain and the cook.

MOTHER COURAGE: Those Poles here in Poland had no
business sticking their noses in. Right, our king moved in
on them, horse and foot, but did they keep the peace? no,
went and stuck their noses into their own affairs, they did,
and fell on king just as he was quietly clearing off. They
committed a breach of peace, that's what, so blood's on
their own head.

THE CHAPLAIN: All our king minded about was freedom.
The emperor had made slaves of them all, Poles and
Germans alike, and the king had to liberate them.

THE COOK: Just what I say, your brandy's first rate, I weren't
mistaken in your face, but talk of the king, it cost the kingdear trying to give freedom to Germany, what with givingSweden the salt tax, what cost the poor folk a bit, so I've
heard, on top of which he had to have the Germans locked
up and drawn and quartered cause they wanted to carryon



ed
ou

tl:e
oral

re

Scene 3 2.7

slaving for the emperor. Course the king took a serious
view when anybody didn't want to be free. He set out by
just trying to protect Poland against bad people, particularly
the emperor, then it started to become a habit

till he ended

up protecting the whole of Germany. They didn't half kick.
So the poor old king's had nowt but trouble for all his
kindness and expenses, and that's something he had to
make up for by taxes of course, which caused bad blood,
not that he's let a little matter like that depress him. One

thing he had on his side, God's word, that was a help.
Because otherwise folk would of been saying he done it all
for himself and to make a bit on the side. So he's always had
a good conscience, which was the main point.

MOTHER COURAGE: Anyone can see you're no Swede or you
wouldn't be talking that way about the Hero King.

THE C HAP L A IN: After all he provides the bread you eat.
THE COOK: I don't eat it, I bake it.
MOTHER COURAGE: They'll never beat him, and why, his

men got faith in him. Seriously: To go by what the big shots

say, they're waging war for almighty God and
in the name

of everything that's good and lovely. But look closer, they
ain't so silly, they're waging it for what they can get. Else
little folk like me wouldn't be in it at al1.

THE COOK: That's the way it is.

THE CHAPLAIN: As a Dutchman you'd do better to glance
at the flag above your head before venting your opinions
here in Poland.

MOTHER COURAGE: All good Lutherans here. Prosit!
Kattrin has Pllt on Yvette's hat and begun strutting

around in

imitation ofher way ofwalking.
Suddenly there is a noise of cannon fire and shooting.

Drums.

Mother Courage, the Cook and the Chaplain rusb Ott! from
behind

the cart, the two last-named still carrying their glasses.
The

armourer and another soldier run up to the cannon and try to push it

away.



- � ....... ................�-"��-.,.---.:., ... ;:- ..... ".-:,,'"::�, .. - - ...

28 Mother Courage and Her Children
MOTHER COURAGE: What's happening? Wait till I've

taken my washing down, you louts! She tries to rescue her
washing.

THE ARMOURER: The Catholics! Broken through. Don't
know if we'll get out of here. To the soldier: Get that gun
shifted! Runs on.

THE COO K: God, I must find the general. Courage, I'll drop
by in a day or two for another talk.

MOTHER COURAGE: Wait, you forgot your pipe.
THE COO K in the distance: Keep it for me. I'll be needing it.
MOTHER COURAGE: Would happen just as we're making a

bit of money.
THE CHAPLAIN: Ah well, I'll be going too. Indeed, if the

enemy is so close as that it might be dangerous. Blessed
are the peacemakers is the motto in wartime. If only I had
a cloak to cover me.

MOTHER COURAGE: I ain't lending no cloaks, not on your
life. I been had too often.

THE CHAPLAIN: But my faith makes it particularly danger­
ous for me.

MOTHER COURAGE gets him a cloak: Goes against my
conscience, this does. Now you run along.

THE CHAPLAIN: Thank you, dear lady, that's very generous
of you, but I think it might be wiser for me to remain seated
here; it could arouse suspicion and bring the enemy down
on me if I were seen to run.

MOTHER COURAGE to the soldier: Leave it, you fool, who's
going to pay you for that? I'll look after it for you, you're
risking your neck.

THE SOLDIER running away: You can tell 'em I tried.
MOTHER COURAGE: Cross my heart. Sees her daughter with the

hat. What you doing with that strumpet's hat? Take that lid
off, you gone crazy? And the enemy arriving any minute!
Pulls the hat off Kattrin's head. Want 'em to pick you up and
make a prostitute of you? And she's gone and put those



ve

ner

.ger·

ffi,

ose

Scene 3 29

boots on, whore of Babylon! Off with those boots! Tries to

tug them off her. Jesus Christ, chaplain, gimme a hand, get
those boots off her, I'll be right back. Runs to the cart.

YVETTE arrives,powdering herface: Fancy that, the Catholics are
coming. Where's my hat? Who's been kicking it around? I
can't go about looking like this if the Catholics are coming.
What'll they think of me? No mirror either. To the chaplain:
How do I look? Too much powder?

THE CHAPLAIN: Exactly right.
YVETTE: And where are them red hoots? Fails to find them as

Kattrin hides her feet under her skirt. I left them here all right.
Now I'll have to get to me tent barefoot. It's an outrage.
Exit.
Swiss Cheese runs in carrying in a small box.

MOTHER COURAGE arrives with her hands full of ashes. To
Kattrin: Here some ashes. To Swiss Cheese: What's that

you're carrying?
SWISS CHEESE: Regimental cash box.
MOTHER COURAGE: Chuck it away. No more paymastering

for you.
SWISS CHEESE: I'm responsible. Hegoes to the rear.
MOTHER COURAGE to the chaplain: Take your clerical togs

off, padre, or they'll spot you under that cloak. She rubs
Kattrin'sface with ash. Keep still, will you? There you are, a
bit of muck and you'll be safe. What a disaster. Sentries
were drunk. Hide your light under a bushel, it says. Take a

soldier, specially a Catholic one, add a clean face, and there's

your instant whore. For weeks they get nowt to eat,
then

soon as they manage to get it by looting they're falling on

anything in skirts. That ought to do. Let's have a look. Not
bad. Looks like you been grubbing in muckheap. Stop
trembling. Nothing'll happen to you like that. To Swiss
Cheese: Where d'you leave cash box?

SWISS CHEESE: Thought I'd put it in cart.
MOTHER COURAGE horrified: What, my cart? Sheer criminal



30 Mother Courage and Her Children

idiocy. Only take me eyes off you one instant. Hang us all
three, they will.

SWISS CHEESE: I'll put it somewhere else then, or clear out
with it.

MOTHER COURAGE: You sit on it, it's too late now.
CHAPLAIN who is changing his clothes downstairs: For heaven's

sake, the flag!
MOTHER COURAGE hauls down the regimentalflag: Bozhe moil

I'd given up noticing it were there. Twenty-five years I've
had it.
The thunder of cannon intensifies.

A morning three days later. The cannon has gone. Mother Courage,
Kattrin, the Chaplain and Swiss Cheese are sitting gloomilY over a
meal.
SWISS CHEESE: That's three days I been sitting around with

nowt to do, and sergeant's always been kind to me but any
moment now he'll start asking where's Swiss Cheese with
the pay box?

MOTHER COURAGE: You thank your stars they ain't after
you.

THE CHAPLAIN: What can I say? I can't even hold a service
here, it might make trouble for me. Whosoever hath a full
heart, his tongue runneth over, it says, but heaven help me
if mine starts running over.

MOTHER COURAGE: That's how it goes. Here they sit, one
with his faith and the other with his cash box. Dunno which
is more dangerous.

THE CHAPLAIN: We are all of us in God's hands.
MOTHER COURAGE: Oh, I don't think it's as bad as that yet,

though I must say I can't sleep nights. If it weren't for you,
Swiss Cheese, things'd be easier. I think I got meself cleared.
I told 'em I didn't hold with Antichrist, the Swedish one
with horns on, and I'd observed left horn was a bit un­
serviceable. Half way through their interrogation I asked



ne

en

Scene 3 3 I

where I could get church candles not too dear. I knows the

lingo cause Swiss Cheese's dad were Catholic, often used to
make jokes about it, he did. They didn't believe me all that
much, but they ain't got no regimental canteen lady. So
they're winking an eye. Could turn out for the best, you
know. We're prisoners, but same like fleas on dog.

THE CHAPLAIN: That's good milk. But we'll need to cut
down our Swedish appetites a bit. After all, we've been
defeated.

MOTHER COURAGE: Who's been defeated? Look, victory
and defeat ain't bound to be same for the big shots up top
as for them below, not by no means. Can be times the
bottom lot find a defeat really pays them. Honour's lost,
nowt else. I remember once up in Livonia our general took
such a beating from enemy I got a horse off our baggage
train in the confusion, pulled me cart seven months, he did,
before we won and they checked up. As a rule you can say
victory and defeat both come expensive to us ordinary folk.
Best thing for us is when politics get bogged down solid.
To Swiss Cheese: Eat up.

S WI S S CHEESE: Got no appetite for it. What's sergeant to do
when pay day comes round?

MOTHER COURAGE: They don't have pay days on a retreat.
SWISS CHEESE: It's their right, though. They needn't retreat

if they don't get paid. Needn't stir a foot.
MOTHER COURAGE: Swiss Cheese, you're that conscientious

it makes me quite nervous. I brought you up to be honest,
you not being clever, but you got to know where to stop.
Chaplain and me, we're off now to buy Catholic flag and
some meat. Dunno anyone so good at sniffing meat, like

sleepwalking it is, straight to target. I'd say he can pick out
a good piece by the way his mouth starts watering. Well,
thank goodness they're letting me go on trading. You don't
ask tradespeople their faith but their prices. And Lutheran
trousers keep cold out too.

el,



32 Mother Courage and Her Children
THE CHAPLAIN: What did the mendicant say when he heard

the Lutherans were going to turn everything in town and
country topsy-turvy? They'll always need beggars. Mother
Courage disappears into the cart. So she's still worried about
the cash box. So far they've taken us all for granted as part
of the cart, but how long for?

SWISS CHEESE: I can get rid of it.
THE CHAPLAIN: That's almost more dangerous. Suppose

you're seen. They have spies. Yesterday a fellow popped up
out of the ditch in front of me just as I was relieving myself
first thing. I was so scared I only just suppressed an
ejaculatory prayer. That would have given me away all
right. I think what they'd like best is to go sniffing people's
excrement to see if they're Protestants. The spy was a little
runt with a patch over one eye.

MOTHER COURAGE clambering out of the cart with a basket:
What have I found, you shameless creature? She holds up the
red boots in triumph. Yvette's red high-heeled boots! Coolly
went and pinched them, she did. Cause you put it in her
head she was an enchanting young person. She lays them in
the basket. I'm giving them back. Stealing Yvette's boots!
She's wrecking herself for money. That's understandable.
But you'd do it for nothing, for pleasure. What did I tell
you: you're to wait till it's peace. No soldiers for you.
You're not to start exhibiting yourself till it's peacetime.

THE CHAPLAIN: I don't find she exhibits herself.
MOTHER COURAGE: Too much for my liking. Let her be

like a stone in Dalecarlia, where there's nowt else, so folk
say 'Can't see that cripple', that's how I'd lief have her.
Then nowt'll happen to her. To Swiss Cheese: You leave that
box where it is, d'you hear? And keep an eye on your sister,
she needs it. The pair of you'll have me in grave yet. Sooner
be minding a bagful of fleas.
She leaves with the chaplain. Kattrin clears away the dishes.

SWISS CHEESE: Won't be able to sit out in the sun in shirt-



er

�.

Scene 3 33

sleeves much longer. Kattrin points at a tree. Aye, leaves
turning yellow. Kattrin asks by gestures if he wants a drink.
Don't want no drink. I'm thinking. Pause. Said she can't
sleep. Best if I got rid of that box, found a good place for it.
All right, let's have a glass. Kattrin goes behind the cart. I'll
stuff it down the rat-hole by the river for the time being.
Probably pick it up tonight before first light and take it to
Regiment. How far can they have retreated in three days?
Bet sergeant's surprised. I'm agreeably disappointed in you,
Swiss Cheese, he'll say. I make you responsible for the
cash, and you go and bring it back.
As Kattrin emerges from behind the cart with a full glass in her
hand, two men confront her. One is a sergeant, the other doffs his hat
to her. He has a patch over one eye.

THE MAN WITH THE PATCH: God be with you, mistress.

Have you seen anyone round here from Second Finnish

Regimental Headquarters?
Kattrin, badlY frightened, runs downstage, spilling the brandy. The
two men look at one another, then withdraw on seeing Swiss Cheese
sitting there.

SWISS CHEESE interrupted in his thoughts: You spilt half of It.
What are those faces for? Jabbed yourself in eye? I don't
get it. And I'll have have to be off, I've thought it over, it's
the only way. He gets up. She does everything possible to make him
realise the danger. He onlY shrugs her off. Wish I knew what
you're trying to say. Sure you mean well, poor creature,
just can't get words out. What's it matter your spilling my
brandy, I'll drink plenty more glasses yet, what's one more
or less? He gets the boxfrom the cart and takes it under his tunic.
Be back in a moment. Don't hold me up now, or I'll be

angry. I know you mean well. Too bad you can't speak.
As she tries to hold him back he kisses her and tears himself away.
Exit. She is desperate, running hither and thither uttering little
noises. The Chaplain and Mother Courage return. Kattrin rushes to
her mother.



34 Mother Courage and Her Children
MOTHER COURAGE: What's all this? Pull yourself together,

love. They done something to you? Where's Swiss Cheese?
Tell it me step by step, Kattrin. Mother understands you.
What, so that bastard did take the box? I'll wrap it round
his ears, the little hypocrite. Take your time and don't
gabble, use your hands, I don't like it when you howl like a
dog, what'll his reverence say? Makes him uncomfortable.
What, a one-eyed man came along?

THE CHAPLAIN: That one-eyed man is a spy. Have they
arrested Swiss Cheese? Kaltrin shakes her head, shrugs her
shoulders. We're done for.

MOTHER COURAGE fishes in her basket and brings out a
Catholic flag, 1}J/;ich the Chaplain fixes to the mast: Better hoist
new flag.

THE CHAPLAIN bitterly: All good Catholics here.
Voices are heard from the rear. The two men bring in Sn/iss
Cheese.

SWISS CHEESE: Let me go, I got nowt. Don't twist my
shoulder, I'm innocent.

SERGEANT: Here's where he came from. You know each
other.

MOTHER COURAGE:Us?How?
SWISS CHEESE: I don't know her. Got no idea who she is,

had nowt to do with them. I bought me dinner here, ten
hellers it cost. You might have seen me sitting here, it was
too salty.

SERGEANT: Who are you people, eh?
MOTHER COURAGE: We're law-abiding folk. That's right,

he bought a dinner. Said it was too salty.
SERGEANT: Trying to pretend you don't know each other,

that it?
MOTHER COURAGE: Why should I know him? Can't know

everyone. I don't go asking 'em wat they're called and are
they a heretic; ifhe pays he ain't a heretic. You a heretic?

SWISS CHEESE: Go on.



Scene 3 35

THE CHAPLAIN: He sat there very properly, never opening
his mouth except when eating. Then he had to.

SERGEANT: And who are you?
MOTHER COURAGE: He's just my potboy. Now I expect you

gentlemen are thirsty, I'll get you a glass of brandy, you
must be hot and tired with running.

SERGE.ANT: No brandy on duty. To Swiss Cheese: You were
carrying something. Must have hidden it by the river. Was
a bulge in your tunic when you left here.

MOTHER COURAGE: You sure it was him?

S W ISS C HE ESE : You must be thinking of someone else. I
saw someone bounding off with a bulge in his tunic. I'm
the wrong man.

MOTHER COURAGE: I'd say it was a misunderstanding too,
such things happen. I'm a good judge of people, I'm
Courage, you heard of me, everyone knows me, and I tell
you that's an honest face he has.

SERGEANT: We're on the track of the Second Finnish

Regiment's cash box. We got the description of the fellow
responsible for it. Been trailing him two days. It's you.

SWISS CHEESE: It's not me.

SERGEANT: And you better cough it up, or you're a goner,
you know. Where is it?

MOTHER COURAGE urgently: Of course he'd give it over
rather than be a goner. Right out he'd say: I got it, here it
is, you're too strong. He ain't all that stupid. Speak up,
stupid idiot, here's the sergeant giving you a chance.

SWISS CHEESE: S'pose I ain't got it.
SERGEANT: Then come along. We'll get it out of you. Tbey

lead him off.
MOTHER COURAGE calls after them: He'd tell you. He's not

that stupid. And don't you twist his shoulder! Runs after them.

Evening of the same day. The Chaplain and dumb Kattrin are cleaning
glasses andpolishing knives.



36 Mother Courage and Her Children
THE CHAPLAIN: Cases like that, where somebody gets

caught, are not unknown in religious history. It reminds me
of the Passion of Our Lord and Saviour. There's an old
song about that. He sings the Song of the Hours :

In the first hour Jesus mild
Who had prayed since even
Was betrayed and led before
Pontius the heathen.

Pilate found him innocent
Free from fault and error
Therefore, having washed his hands
Sent him to King Herod.

In the third hour he was scourged
Stripped and clad in scarlet
And a plaited crown of thorns
Set upon his forehead.

On the Son of Man they spat
Mocked him and made merry.
Then the cross of death was brought
Given him to carry.

At the sixth hour with two thieves
To the cross they nailed him
And the people and the thieves
Mocked him and reviled him.

This is Jesus King of Jews
Cried they in derision
Till the sun withdrew its light
From that awful vision.



Scene 3 37

At the ninth hour Jesus wailed
Why hast thou me forsaken?
Soldiers brought him vinegar
Which he left untaken.

Then he yielded up the ghost
And the earth was shaken.
Rended was the temple's veil
And the saints were wakened.

Soldiers broke the two thieves' legs
As the night descended
Thrust a spear in Jesus' side
When his life had ended.

Still they mocked, as from his wound
Flowed the blood and water
Thus blasphemed the Son of Man
With their cruel laughter. *

MOT HER CO U RAG E entering excitedly: It's touch and go.
They say sergeant's open to reason though. Only we
mustn't let on it's Swiss Cheese else they'll say we helped
him. It's a matter of money, that's all. But where's money to

come from? Hasn't Yvette been round? I ran into her, she's

got her hooks on some colonel, maybe he'd buy her a
canteen business.

THE CHA PLAIN: Do you really wish to sell?
MOTHER COURAGE: Where's money for sergeant to come

from?
THE CHAPLAIN: What'll you live on, then?

MOTHER COURAGE: That's just it.
Yvette Pottier arrives l1Jith an extremely ancient colonel.

YVETTE embracing Mother COl/rage: My dear Courage, fancy
* Song translated by Ralph Manheim

j



38 Mother Courage and Her Children

seeing you so soon. U:?'hispers: He's not unwilling. Aloud:
This is my good friend who advises me in business matters.
I happened to hear you wanted to sell your cart on account
of circumstances. I'll think it over.

MOTHER COURAGE: Pledge it, not sell, just not too much
hurry, tain't every day you find a cart like this in war­
time.

YVE TTE disappointed: Oh, pledge. I though it was for sale. I'm
not so sure I'm interested. To the colonel: How do you feel
about it?

THE COLONEL: Just as you fee], pet.
MOTHER COURAGE: I'm only pledging it.

I
YVETTE: I thought you'd got to have the money.

\ MOTHER COURAGEfirm!J: I got to have it, but sooner run
j myself ragged looking for a bidder than sell outright. And

why? The cart's our livelihood. It's a chance for you,
Yvette; who knows when you'll get another like it and have
a special friend to advise you, am I right?

YVETTE: Yes, my friend thinks I should clinch it, but I'm not
sure. If it's only a pledge ... so you agree we ought to buy
outright?

TIlE COLONEL: I agree, pet.
MOTHER COURAGE: Best look and see if you can find any­

thing for sale then; maybe you will if you don't rush it, take
your friend along with you, say a week or fortnight, might
find something suits you.

YVETTE: Then let's go looking. I adore going around looking
for things, I adore going around with you, Poldi, it's such
fun, isn't it? No matter if it takes a fortnight. How soon
would you pay the money back if you got it?

MOTHER COURAGE: I'd pay back in two weeks, maybe
one.

YVETTE: I can't make up my mind, Poldi cheri, you advise
me. Takes the colonel aside: She's got to sell, I know, no
problem there. And there's that ensign, you know, the



Scene 3 39

fair-haired one, he'd be glad to lend me the money. He's
crazy about me, says there's someone I remind him of.

What do you advise?
THE COLONEL: You steer clear of him. He's no good. He's

only making use of you. I said I'd buy you something,
didn't I, pussykins?

YVETTE: I oughtn't to let you. Of course if you think the
ensign might try to take advantage ... Poldi, I'll accept it
from you.

THE COLONEL: That's how I feel too.

YVETTE: Is that your advice?
THE COLONEL: That is my advice.

YVETTE to Courage once more: My friend's advice would be to
accept. Make me out a receipt saying the cart's mine once
two weeks are up, with all its contents, we'll check it now,
I'll bring the two hundred florins later. To the colonel: You
go back to the camp, I'll follow, I got to check it all and see
there's nothing missing from my cart. She kisses him. He
leaves. She climbs tip on the cart. Not all that many boots, are
there?

MOTHER COURAGE: Yvette, it's no time for checking your
cart, s'posing it is yours. You promised you'd talk to ser­
geant about Swiss Cheese, there ain't a minute to lose, they
say in an hour he'll be courtmartialled.

YVETTE: Just let me count the shirts.
MOT HER CO U RAG E pIt/ling her down by the skirt: You bloody

vampire. Swiss Cheese's life's at stake. And not a word
about who's making the offer, for God's sake, pretend it's
your friend, else we're all done for cause we looked after
him.

YVETTE.: I fixed to meet that one-eyed fellow in the copse, he
should be there by now.

THE CHAPLAIN: It doesn't have to be the whole two

hundred either, I'd go up to a hundred and fifty, that may be

enough.



40 Mother Courage and Her Children
MOTHER COURAGE: Since when has it been your money?

You kindly keep out of this. You'll get your hotpot all
right, don't worry. Hurry up and don't haggle, it's life or
death. Pushes Yvette off.

THE CHAPLAIN: Far be it from me to interfere, but what are
we going to live on ? You're saddled with a daughter who
can't earn her keep.

MOTHER COURAGE: I'm counting on regimental cash box,
Mr Clever. They'll allow it as his expenses.

THE CHAPLAIN: But will she get the message right?
MOTHER COURAGE: It's her interest I should spend her two

hundred so she gets the cart. She's set on that, God knows
how long that colonel of hers'll last. Kattrin, polish the
knives, there's the pumice. And you, stop hanging round
like Jesus on Mount of Olives, get moving, wash them
glasses, we'll have fifty or more of cavalry in tonight and I
don't want to hear a lot of 'I'm not accustomed to having
to run about, oh my poor feet, we never ran in church'.
Thank the Lord they're corruptible. After all, they ain't
wolves, just humans out for money. Corruption in humans
is same as compassion in God. Corruption's our only hope.
Long as we have it there'll be lenient sentences and even an
innocent man'll have a chance of being let off.

YVETTE comes in panting: They'll do it for two hundred. But
it's got to be quick. Soon be out of their hands. Best thing
is I go right away to my colonel with the one-eyed man.
He's admitted he had the box, they put the thumbscrews on
him. But he chucked it in the river soon as he saw they
were on his track. The box is a write-off. I'll go and get the
money from my colonel, shall I?

MOTHER COURAGE: Box is a write-off? How'm I to pay
back two hundred then?

YVETTE: Oh, you thought you'd get it from the box, did
you? And I was to be Joe Soap I suppose? Better not count
on that. You'll have to pay up if you want Swiss Cheese



Scene 3 41

back, or would you sooner I dropped the whole thing so's
you can keep your cart?

MOTHER COURAGE: That's something I didn't allow for.
Don't worry, you'll get your cart, I've said goodbye to it, jhad it seventeen years, I have. I just need a moment to think, ,
it's bit sudden, what'm I to do, two hundred's too much for
me, pity you didn't beat 'em down. Must keep a bit back,
else any Tom, Dick and Harry'll be able to shove me in
ditch. Go and tell them I'll pay hundred and twenty florins,
else it's all off, either way I'm losing me cart.

YVETTE: They won't do it. That one-eyed man's impatient
already, keeps looking over his shoulder, he's so worked
up. Hadn't I best pay them the whole two hundred?

MOTHER COURAGE in despair: I can't pay that. Thirty years
I been working. She's twenty-five already, and no husband.
I got her to think of too. Don't push me, I know what I'm
doing. Say a hundred and twenty, or it's off.

YVETTE: It's up to you. Rushes off.
Without looking at either the Chaplain or her daughter, Mother
Courage sits down to help Kattrin polish knives.

MOTHER COURAGE: Don't smash them glasses, they ain't
ours now. Watch what you're doing, you'll cut yourself.
Swiss Cheese'll be back, I'll pay two hundred if it comes to
the pinch. You'll get your brother, love. For eighty florins
we could fill a pack with goods and start again. Plenty of
folk has to make do.

THE CHAPLAIN: The Lord will provide, it says.
MOTHER COURAGE: See they're properly dry. She cleans

knives in silence. Kattrin suddenly runs behind the cart, sobbing.
YVETTE comes running in: They won't do it. I told you so. The

one-eyed man wanted to leave right away, said there was no

point. He says he's just waiting for the drum-roll; that
means sentence has been pronounced. I offered a hundred
and fifty. He didn't even blink. I had to convince him to

stay there so's I could have another word with you.



42 Mother Courage and Her Children
MOTHER COURAGE: Tell him I'll pay the two hundred.

Hurry! Yvette runs off. They sit in silence. The Chaplain has
stopped polishing the glasses. I reckon I bargained too long.
In the distance drumming is heard. The Chaplain gets up and goes
to the rear. Mother Courage remains seated. It grows dark. The
drumming stops. It grows light once more. Mother Courage is sitting

J
exactly as before.

YVETTE arrives, very pale: Well, you got what you asked for,
with your haggling and trying to keep your cart. Eleven
bullets they gave him, that's all. You don't deserve I should
bother any more about you. But I did hear they don't
believe the box really is in the river. They've an idea it's
here and anyhow that you're connected with him. They're
going to bring him here, see if you gives yourself away
when you sees him. Thought I'd better warn you so's you
don't recognise him, else you'll all be for it. They're right
on my heels, best tell you quick. Shall I keep Kattrin away?
Mother Courage shakes her head. Does she know? She mayn't
have heard the drumming or know what it meant.

MOTHER COURAGE: She knows. Get her.
Yvettefetches Kattrin, who goes to her mother and stands beside her.
Mother Courage takes her hand. Tl110 lansequenets come carrying a
stretcher with something lying on it covered by a sheet. The sergeant
marches beside them. They set down the stretcher.

SERGEANT: Here's somebody we dunno the name of. It's got
to be listed, though, so everything's shipshape. He had a
meal here. Have a look, see if you know him. He removes the
sheet. Know him? Mother Courage shakes her head. What,
never see him before he had that meal here? Motber Courage
shakes her head. Pick him up. Chuck him in the pit. He's got
nobody knows him. They carr:y him aJIJa_)'.



Scene 4 43

4

Mother Courage smgs the Song of the Grand
Capitulation

Outside an officer's tent.

Mother Courage is waiting. A clerk looks out of the tent.

THE CLERK: I know you. You had a paymaster from the

Lutherans with you, what was in hiding. I'd not complain
if I were you.

MOTHER COURAGE: But I got a complaint to make. I'm
innocent, would look as how I'd a bad conscience if I let

this pass. Slashed everything in me cart to pieces with their
sabres, they did, then wanted I should pay five taler fine for

nowt, I tell you, nowt.

CLER K: Take my tip, better shut up. We're short of canteens,
so we let you go on trading, specially if you got a bad
conscience and pay a fine now and then.

MOTHER COURAGE: I got a complaint.
C LE R K: Have it your own way. Then you must wait

till the

captain's free. l¥7ithdralt's inside the tent.
YOUNG SOLDIER enters aggressive!J: Bouque la Madonne!

Where's that bleeding pig of a captain what's took my
reward money to swig with his tarts? I'll do him.

OLD E R SOL DIE R running after him: Shut up. They'll put you
in irons.

YOU N G SOL DIE R: Out of there, you thief! I'll slice you into

pork chops, I will. Pocketing my prize money after
I'd

swum the river, only one in the whole squadron, and now I
can't even buy meself a beer. I'm not standing for that.
Come on out there so I can cut you up!



44 Mother Courage and Her Children
OLDER SOLDIER: Blessed Mother of God, he's asking for

trouble.
MOTHER COURAGE: Is it some reward he weren't paid?
YOUNG SOLDIER: Lemme go, I'll slash you too while I'm at

it.
OLDER SOLDIER: He rescued the colonel's horse and got no

reward for it. He's young yet, still wet behind the ears.
MOTHER COURAGE: Let him go, he ain't a dog you got to

chain up. Wanting your reward is good sound sense. Why
be a hero otherwise?

YOUNG SOLDIER: So's he can sit in there and booze. You're
shit-scared, the lot of you. I done something special and I
want my reward.

MOTHER COURAGE: Don't you shout at me, young fellow.
Got me own worries, I have; any road you should spare
your voice, be needing it when captain comes, else there
he'll be and you too hoarse to make a sound, which'll make
it hard for him to clap you in irons till you turn blue. People
what shouts like that can't keep it up ever; half an hour, and
they have to be rocked to sleep, they're so tired.

YOUNG SOLDIER: I ain't tired and to hell with sleep. I'm
hungry. They make our bread from acorns and hemp-seed,
and they even skimp on that. He's whoring away my
reward and I'm hungry. I'll do him.

MOTHER COURAGE: Oh I see, you're hungry. Last year that
general of yours ordered you all off roads and across fields
so corn should be trampled flat; I could've got ten florins
for a pair of boots s'pose I'd had boots and s'pose anyone'd
been able to pay ten florins. Thought he'd be well away
from that area this year, he did, but here he is, still there,
and hunger is great. I see what you're angry about.

YOUNG SOLDIER: I won't have it, don't talk to me, it ain't
fair and I'm not standing for that.

MOTHER COURAGE: And you're right; but how long? How
long you not standing for unfairness? One hour, two



Scene 4 45

hours? Didn't ask yourself that, did you, but it's the whole
point, and why, once you're in irons it's too bad if you
suddenly finds you can put up with unfairness after all.

YOUNG SOLDIER: What am I listening to you for, I'd like to
know? Bouque la Madonne, where's that captain?

MOTHER COURAGE: You been listening to me because you
knows it's like what I say, your anger has gone up in smoke

already, it was just a short one and you needed a long one,
but where you going to get it from?

YOUNG SOLDIER: Are you trying to tell me asking for my
reward is wrong?

MOTHER COURAGE: Not a bit. I'm just telling you your
anger ain't long enough, it's good for nowt, pity. If you'd a
long one I'd be trying to prod you on. Cut him up, the
swine, would be my advice to you in that case; but how

about if you don't cut him up cause you feels your
tail going

between your legs? Then I'd look silly and captain'd take it
out on me.

OLDER SOLDIER: You're perfectly right, he's just a bit
crazy.

YOUNG SOLDIER: Very well, let's see if I don't cut him up.
Draws his sn/ord. When he arrives I'm going to cut him up.

C L E R K looks out : The captain'll be here in one minute. Sit
down.
The Young Soldier sits donm.

MOTHER COURAGE: He's sitting now. See, what did I say?
You're sitting now. Ah, how well they know us, no one need
tell 'em how to go about it. Sit down! and, bingo, we're

sitting. And sitting and sedition don't mix. Don't try
to

stand up, you won't stand the way you
was standing before.

I shouldn't worry about what I think; I'm no better,
not one

moment. Bought up all our fighting spirit, they have. Eh?

S'pose I kick back, might be bad for business.
Let me tell

you a thing or two about the Grand Capitulation.
She sings

the Song of the Grand Capitulation:



46 Mother Courage and Her Children
Back when I was young, I was brought to realise
What a very special person I must be
(Not just any old cottager's daughter, what with my looks

and my talents and my urge towards Higher Things)
And insisted that my soup should have no hairs in it.
No one makes a sucker out of me!

(A1l or nothing, only the best is good enough, each man for
himself, nobody's telling me what to do.)

Then I heard a tit

Chirp: Wait a bit!
And you'll be marching with the band
In step, responding to command
And striking up your little dance:
Now we advance.
And now: parade, form square!
Then men swear God's there­
Not the faintest chance!

In no time at all anyone who looked could see
That I'd learned to take my medicine with good grace.
(Two kids on my hands and look at the price of bread, and

things they expect of you!)
When they finally came to feel that they were through with

me

They'd got me grovelling on my face.
(Takes all sorts to make a world, you scratch my back and

I'll scratch yours, no good banging your head against a
brick wall.)

Then I heard that tit

Chirp: Wait a bit r
And you'll be marching with the band
In step, responding to command
And striking up your little dance:
Now they advance.
And now: parade, form square!



Scene 4 47

Then men swear God's there­
Not the faintest chance!

I've known people tried to storm the summits:
There's no star too bright or seems too far away.
(Dogged does it, where there's a will there's a way, by hook

or by crook.)
As each peak disclosed fresh peaks to come, it's
Strange how much a plain straw hat could weigh.
(You have to cut your coat according to your cloth.)
Then I hear the tit

Chirp: Wait a bit!
And they'll be marching with the band
In step, responding to command
And striking up their little dance:
Now they advance
And now: parade, form square!
Then men swear God's there­

Not the faintest chance I

MOTHER COURAGE to tbe young soldier: That's why I reckon
you should stay there with your sword drawn if you're
truly set on it and your anger's big enough, because you got
grounds, I agree, but if your anger's a short one best leave
right away.

YOUNG SOLDIER: Oh stuff it. He staggers off with the older
soldierfollowing.

CLERK sticks his head out: Captain's here now. You can make
your complaint.

MOTHER COURAGE: I changed me mind. I ain't complain-
ing. Exit.



48 Mother Courage and Her Children

5

Two years have gone by. The war is spreading
to new areas. Ceaselessly on the move, Courage's
little cart crosses Poland, Moravia, Bavaria, Italy
then Bavaria again. 163 I. Tilly's victory at
Leipzig costs Mother Courage four officers'
shirts

Mother Courage's cart has !topped in a badlY shot-up village.

Thin military music in the distance. Two soldiers at the bar being
served by Kattrin and Mother Courage. One of them has a lady's fur
"oat over his shoulders.

MOTHER COURAGE: Can't pay, that it? No money, no
schnapps. They give us victory parades, but catch them
giving men their pay.

SOLDIER: I want my schnapps. I missed the looting. That
double-crossing general only allowed an hour's looting in
the town. He ain't an inhuman monster, he said. Town
must of paid him.

THE CHAPLAIN stumbles in: There are people sti11lying in
that yard. The peasant's family. Somebody give me a hand.
I need linen.
The second soldier goes off with him. Kattrin becomes very excited
and tries to make her mother produce linen.

MOTHER COURAGE: I got none. All my bandages was sold
to regiment. I ain't tearing up my officer's shirts for that
lot.

C HAP L A I N calling back: I need linen, I tell you.
MOTHER COURAGE blocking Kattrin's way into the cart by



Scene 5 49

sitting on the step: I'm giving nowt. They'll never pay, and

why, nowt to pay with.
CHAPLAIN bending over a It/oman he has carried in: Why d'you

stay around during the gunfire?
PEASANT wOMANfeeb!J: Farm.
MOTHER COURAGE: Catch them abandoning anything. But

now I'm s'posed to foot the bill. I won't do it.
FIRST SOLDIER: Those are Protestants. What they have to

be Protestants for?

MOTHER COURAGE: They ain't bothering about faith. They
lost their farm.

SECOND SOLDIER: They're no Protestants. They're Cath­
olics like us.

FIRST SOLDIER: No way of sorting 'em out in a bombard-
ment.

A PEASANT brought in by the chaplain: My arm's gone.
THE CHAPLAIN: Where's that linen?

MOTHER COURAGE: I can't give nowt. What with expenses,
taxes, loan interest and bribes. Making guttural noises, Kattrin
raises a plank and threatens her mother with it. You gone plain
crazy? Put that plank away or I'll paste you one, you cow.
I'm giving nowt, don't want to, got to think of meself.
The chaplain lifts her off the steps and sets her on the ground, then
starts pulling out shirts and tearing them into strips. My officers'
shirts! Half a florin apiece! I'm ruined. From the house comes
the cry ofa child in pain.

THE PEASANT: The baby's in there still. Kattrin dashes in.
THE CHAPLAIN to the tuoman : Don't move. They'll get it out.
MOTHER COURAGE: Stop her, roof may fall in.
THE CHAPLAIN: I'm not going back in there.
MOTHER COURAGE torn both wa:_ys: Don't waste my precious

linen.
Kattrin brings a ba�y out ofthe ruins.

MOTHER COURAGE: How nice, found another baby to cart
around? Give it to its ma this instant, unless you'd have me



50 Mother Courage and Her Children

fighting for hours to get it off you, like last time, d'you
hear? To the second soldier: Don't stand there gawping, you
go back and tell them cut out that music, we can see it's a
victory with our own eyes. All your victories mean to me is
losses.

THE CHAPLAIN (ling a bandage: Blood's coming through.
Kattrin is rocking the baby and making Ifillaby noises.

MOTHER COURAGE: Look at her, happy as a queen in all
this misery; give it back at once, its mother's coming round.
She catches thefirst soldier, iuho has been attacking the drinks and is
trying to make off with one of the bottles. Psia krew l Though t
you'd score another victory, you animal? Now pay.

FIRST SOLDIER: I got nowt.
MOTHER COURAGE pulling the fur coat off his back: Then leave

that coat, it's stolen any road.
THE CHAPLAIN: There's still someone under there.

6

Outside the Bavarian town of Ingolstadt Courage
participates in the funeral of the late Imperial
commander Tilly. Discussions are held about
war heroes and the war's duration. The Chaplain
complains that his talents are lying fallow and
dumb Kattrin gets the red boots. The year is
1632

Inside a canteen tent.

It has a bar towards the rear. Rain. Sound of drums and Funeral
music. The Chaplain and the regi11lental clerk are plcrying a board
game. Mother Courage and her dallghter are stocktaking.



Scene 6 51

THE C HAP L A IN: Now the funeral procession will be moving
off.

MOTHER COURAGE: Too bad about commander in chief
-

twenty-two pairs those socks - he fell by accident, they say.
Mist over fields, that was the trouble. General had just been

haranguing a regiment saying they must fight to last man
and last round, he was riding back when mist made him
lose direction so he was up front and a bullet got him in

midst of battle - only four hurricane lamps left. A whistle

from the rear. She ..goes to the bar. You scrimshankers, dodging
your commander in chief's funeral, scandal I call

it. Pours

drinks.
THE C L E R K: They should never of paid troops out before

the funeral. Instead of going now they're all getting pissed.
THE CHAPLAIN to the clerk: Aren't you supposed to go to

the funeral?

THE CLERK: Dodged it cause of the rain.
MOTHER COURAGE: It's different with you, your uniform

might get wet. I heard they wanted to toll bells for
funeral

as usual, except it turned out all churches had been blown

to smithereens by his orders, so poor old commander in
chief won't be hearing no bells as they let the coffin down.

They're going to let off three salvoes instead to cheer things
up - seventeen belts.

SHouTsfrom the bar: Hey, Missis, a brandy!
MOTHER COURAGE: Let's see your money. No, I ain't

having you in my tent with your disgusting boots.
You can

drink outside, rain or no rain. To the clerk: I'm only letting
in sergeants and up. Commander in

chief had been having
his worries, they say. S'posed to have been trouble with
Second Regiment cause he stopped their pay, said it was a
war of faith and they should do it for free. Funeral march. All
look to the rear.

THE CHAPLAIN: Now they'll be filing past the noble corpse.
MOTHER COURAGE: Can't help feeling sorry for those



5 2 Mother Courage and Her Children

generals and emperors, there they are maybe thinking
they're doing something extra special what folk'll talk about
in years to come, and earning a public monument, like
conquering the world for instance, that's a fine ambition for
a general, how's he to know any better? I mean, he plagues
hisself to death, then it all breaks down on account of
ordinary folk what just wants their beer and bit of a chat,
nowt higher. Finest plans get bolloxed up by the pettiness
of them as should be carrying them out, because emperors
can't do nowt themselves, they just counts on soldiers and
people to back 'em up whatever happens, am I right?

THE CHAPLAIN laughs: Courage, you're right, aside from the
soldiers. They do their best. Give me that lot outside there,
for instance, drinking their brandy in the rain, and I'd
guarantee to make you one war after another for a hundred
years if need be, and I'm no trained general.

MOTHER COURAGE: You don't think war might end, then?
THE CHAPLAIN: What, because the commander in chief's

gone? Don't be childish. They're two a penny, no shortage
of heroes.

MOTHER COURAGE: Ee, I'm not asking for fun of it, but
because I'm thinking whether to stock up, prices are low
now, but if war's going to end it's money down the drain.

THE CHAPLAIN: I realise it's a serious question. There've
always been people going round saying 'the war can't go on
for ever'. I tell you there's nothing to stop it going on for
ever. Of course there can be a bit of a breathing space. The
war may need to get its second wind, it may even have an
accident so to speak. There's no guarantee against that;
nothing's perfect on this earth of ours. A perfect war, the
sort you might say couldn't be improved on, that's some­
thing we shall probably never see. It can suddenly come to
a standstill for some quite unforeseen reason, you can't
allow for everything. A slight case of negligence, and it's
bogged down up to the axles. And then it's a matter of



Scene 6 53

hauling the war out of the mud again. But emperor and

kings and popes will come to its rescue. So on the whole it
has nothing serious to worry about, and will live to a ripe
old age.

A SOLDIER sings at the bar:
A schnapps, landlord, you're late!
A soldier cannot wait
To do his emperor's orders.

Make it a double, this is a holiday.

MOTHER COURAGE: S'pose I went by what you say ...
THE CHAPLAIN: Think it out for yourself. What's to com-

pete with the war?
THE SOLDIER at the rear:

Your breast, my girl, you're late!
A soldier cannot wait

To ride across the borders.

THE CLERK unexpectedlY: And what about peace? I'm from
Bohemia and I'd like to go home some day.

THE CHAPLAIN: Would you indeed? Ah, peace. Where is

the hole once the cheese has been eaten?

THE SOLDIER at the rear:

Lead trumps, my friend, you're late!
A soldier cannot wait.
His emperor needs him badly.

Your blessing, priest, you're late!
A soldier cannot wait.
Must lay his life down gladly.

THE CLERK: In the long run life's impossible if there's no

peace.
THE CHAPLAIN: I'd say there's peace in war too;

it has its

peaceful moments. Because war satisfies all requirements,



54 Mother Courage and Her Children

peaceable ones included, they're catered for, and it would
simply fizzle out if they weren't. In war you can do a crap
like in the depths of peacetime, then between one battle and
the next you can have a beer, then even when you're moving
up you can lay your head on your arms and have a bit of
shuteye in the ditch, it's entirely possible. During a charge
you can't play cards maybe, but nor can you in the depths of
peacetime when you're ploughing, and after a victory there
are various openings. You may get a leg blown off, then
you start by making a lot of fuss as though it were serious,
but afterwards you calm down or get given a schnapps, and
you end up hopping around and the war's no worse off than
before. And what's to stop you being fruitful and multi­
plying in the middle of all the butchery, behind a barn or
something, in the long run you can't be held back from it,
and then the war will have your progeny and can use them
to carryon with. No, the war will always find an outlet,
mark my words. Why should it ever stop?
Kattrin has ceased working and is staring at the Chaplain.

MOTHER COURAGE: I'll buy fresh stock then. If you say
so. Kattrin sudde1J!y flings a basketfull of bottles to the ground and
runs off. Kattrin! Laughs. Damn me if she weren't waiting
for peace. I promised her she'd get a husband soon as peace
came. Hurries after her.

THE C L E R K standing up: I won. You been talking too much.
Pay up.

MOTHER COURAGE returning with Kattrin: Don't be silly,
war'll go on a bit longer, and we'll make a bit more money,
and peacetime'll be all the nicer for it. Now you go into
town, that's ten minutes' walk at most, fetch things from
Golden Lion, the expensive ones, we can fetch rest in cart
later, it's all arranged, regimental clerk here will go with
you. Nearly everybody's attending commander in chief's
funeral, nowt can happen to you. Careful now, don't let
them steal nowt, think of your dowry.



Scene 6 55

Kattrin puts a cloth over her head and leaves with the clerk.
---

THE CHAPLAIN: Is that all right to let her go with the clerk?
MOTHER COURAGE: She's not that pretty they'd want to

ruin her.
THE C HAP L A IN: I admire the way you run your business and

always win through. I see why they called you Courage.
MOTHER COURAGE: Poor folk got to have courage. Why,

they're lost. Simply getting up in morning takes some doing
in their situation. Or ploughing a field, and in a war at that.
Mere fact they bring kids into world shows they got
courage, cause there's no hope for them. They have to hang
one another and slaughter one another, so just looking each
other in face must call for courage. Being able to put up
with emperor and pope shows supernatural courage, cause
those two cost 'em their lives. She sits down, takes a little pipe
from her purse and smokes.-You might chop us a bit of
kindling.

THE C HAP L A I N reluctantly removing his coat and preparing to

chop up sticks: I happen to be a pastor of souls, not a wood­
cutter.

MOTHER COURAGE: I got no soul, you see. Need firewood,
though.

THE CHAPLAIN: Where's that stumpy pipe from?
MOTHER COURAGE: Just a pipe.
THE CHAPLAIN: What d'you mean, 'just', it's a quite

particular pipe, that.
MOTHER COURAGE: Aha?

THE CHAPLAIN: That stumpy pipe belongs to the Oxen­
stierna Regiment's cook.

MOTHER COURAGE: If you know that already why ask, Mr
Clever?

THE CHAPLAIN: Because I didn't know if you were aware

what you're smoking. You might just have been rummag­
ing around in your things, come across some old pipe or
other, and used it out of sheer absence of mind.

;et



-

".:: .. ·;'·.·.1.'· '. . .
L

1 '

56 Mother Courage and Her Children
MOTHER COURAGE: And why not?
THE CHAPLAIN: Because you didn't. You're smoking that

deliberately.
MOTHER COURAGE: And why shouldn't I?
THE CHAPLAIN: Courage, I'm warning you. It's my duty.

Probably you'll never clap eyes on the gentleman again, and
that's no loss but your good fortune. He didn't make at all a
reliable impression on me. Quite the opposite.

MOTHER COURAGE: Really? Nice fellow that.
THE CHAPLAIN: SO he's what you would call a nice fellow?

I wouldn't. Far be it from me to bear him the least ill-will,
but nice is not what I would call him. More like one of those
Don Juans, a slippery one. Have a look at that pipe if you
don't believe me. You must admit it tells you a good deal
about his character.

MOTHER COURAGE: Nowt that I can see. Worn out, I'd call
it.

THE CHAPLAIN: Practically bitten through, you mean. A
man of wrath. That is the pipe of an unscrupulous man of
wrath; you must see that if you have any discrimination
left.

'MOTHER COURAGE: Don't chop my chopping block in two.
THE CHAPLAIN: I told you I'm not a woodcutter by trade. I

studied to be a pastor of souls. My talent and abilities are
being abused in this place, by manual labour. My God­
given endowments are denied expression. It's a sin. You
have never heard me preach. One sermon of mine can put
a regiment in' such a frame of mind it'll treat the enemy like
a flock of sheep. Life to them is a smelly old foot-cloth
which they fling away in a vision of final victory. God has
given me the gift of speech. I can preach so you'll lose all
sense of sight and hearing.

MOTHER COURAGE: I don't wish to lose my sense of sight
and hearing. Where'd that leave me?

THE CHAPLAIN: Courage, I have often thought that your

" /
- .... 1 � i.� ., � -, •



that

Scene 6 57

dry way of talking conceals more that just a warm heart.
You too are human and need warmth.

MOTHER COURAGE: Best way for us to get this tent warm is

have plenty of firewood.
THE CHAPLAIN: Don't change the subject. Seriously,

Courage, I sometimes ask myself what it would be like if
our relationship were to become somewhat closer. I mean,
given that the whirlwind of war has so strangely whirled us
together.

MOTHER COURAGE: I'd say it was close enough. I cook
meals for you and you run around and chop firewood for
instance.

THE CHAPLAIN coming closer: You know what I mean by
closer; it's not a relationship founded on meals and wood­
chopping and other such base necessities. Let your head
speak, harden thyself not.

MOTHER COURAGE: Don't you come at me with that axe.

That'd be too close a relationship.
THE CHAPLAIN: You shouldn't make a joke of it. I'm a

serious person and I've thought about what I'm saying.
MOTHER COURAGE: Be sensible, padre. I like you. I don't

want to row you. All I'm after is get myself and children
through all this with my cart. I don't see it as mine, and
I ain't in the mood for private affairs. Right now I'm taking
a gamble, buying stores just when commander in chief's
fallen and all the talk's of peace. Where d'you reckon you'd
turn if I'm ruined? Don't know, do you? You chop us some
kindling wood, then we can keep warm at night, that's
quite something these times. What's this? She gets up. Enter
Kattrin, out of breath, with a wound above her eye. She is carrying
a variety ofstuff: parcels, leather goods, a drum and so on.

MOT HER CO U RAG E: What happened, someone assault you?
On way back? She was assaulted on her way back. Bet it

was that trooper was getting drunk here. I shouldn't have
let you go, love. Drop that stuff. Not too bad, just a flesh



....... ';,', '1." .. , l," /.
r:

- -- . _,_,._ --- -- _---_-. ... -- -- - -

...

58 Mother Courage and Her Children
wound you got. I'll bandage it and in a week it'll be all
right. Worse than wild beasts, they are. She ties up the
iuound.

THE CHAPLAIN: It's not them I blame. They never went
raping back home. The fault lies with those that start wars,
it brings humanity's lowest instincts to the surface.

MOTHER COURAGE: Calm down. Didn't clerk come back
with you? That's because you're respectable, they don't
bother. Wound ain't a deep one, won't leave no mark.
There you are, all bandaged up. You'll get something, love,
keep calm. Something I put aside for you, wait till you see.
She delves into a sack and brings out Yvette's red hi._f!,h-heeled boots.
Made you open your eyes, eh? Something you always
wanted. They're yours. Put 'em on quick, before I change
me mind. Won't leave no mark, and what if it does? Ones
I'm really sorry for's the ones they fancy. Drag them around
till they're worn out, they do. Those they don't care for
they leaves alive. I seen girls before now had pretty faces,
then in no time looking fit to frighten a hyaena. Can't even
go behind a bush without risking touble, horrible life they
lead. Same like with trees, straight well-shaped ones get
chopped down to make beams for houses and crooked ones
live happily ever after. So it's a stroke of luck for you really.
Them boots'll be all right, I greased them before putting
them away.
Kattrin leaves the boots where they are and crawls into the cart.

THE CHAPLAIN: Let's hope she's not disfigured.
MOTHER COURAGE: She'll have a scar. No use her waiting

for peacetime now.
THE CHAPLAIN: She didn't let them steal the things.
MOTHER COURAGE: Maybe I shouldn't have dinned that

into her so. Wish I knew what went on in that head of hers.
Just once she stayed out all night, once in all those years.
Afterwards she went around like before, except she worked
harder. Couldn't get her to tell what had happened. Worried

"

,)
.., ......

-

.... -,
-



e rear!,

'JfKeO
rorriea

Scene 7 59

me quite a while, that did. She collects the articles brou,ght ry
Kattrin, and sorts them angrily. That's war for you. Nice way
to get a living!
Sound of cannon fire.

THE CHAPLAIN: Now they'll be burying the commander in
chief. This is a historic moment.

MOTHER COURAGE: What I call a historic moment is them

bashing my daughter over the eye. She's half wrecked
already, won't get no husband now, and her so crazy about
kids; any road she's only dumb from war, soldier stuffed
something in her mouth when she was little. As for Swiss
Cheese I'll never see him again, and where Eilif is God alone
knows. War be damned.

7

Mother Courage at the peak of her business
career

Highroad.

The chaplain, Mother Cot/rage and Kattrin are pulling the cart, lvhit:h
is hung with new wares. Mother Courage is n-earing a necklace of
silver coins.

MOTHER COURAGE: I won't have you folk spoiling my war
for me. I'm told it kills off the weak, but they're write-off
in peacetime too. And war gives its people a better deal.
She sings:

And if you feel your forces fading
You won't be there to share the fruits.



Some people think to live by looting
The goods some others haven't got.
You think it's just a line they're shooting
Until you hear they have been shot.

60 Mother Courage and Her Children
But what is war but private trading
That deals in blood instead of boots?

And what's the use of settling down? Them as does are
first to go. Sings:

And some I saw dig six feet under
In haste to lie down and pass out.
Now they're at rest perhaps they wonder
Just what was all their haste about.

They pull itfurther.

8

The same year sees the death of the Swedish
king Gustavus Adolphus at the battle of Liitzen.

, Peace threatens to ruin Mother Courage's busi­
ness. Courage's dashing son performs one heroic
deed too many and comes to a sticky end

Camp.

A summer morning. In front of the cart stand an old woman and her
son. The son carries a large sack of bedding.

MOTHER COURAGE'S VOICE from inside the cart: Does it
need to be this ungodly hour?

" /
...... ""-�,, t .. I • -.



are

Scene 8 61

THE YOUNG MAN: We walked twenty miles in the night and
got to be back today.

MOTHER COURAGE'S VOICE: What am I to do with bed-

ding? Folk've got no houses.
THE YOUNG MAN: Best have a look first.
THE OLD WOMAN: This place is no good either. Come on.
THE YOUNG MAN: What, and have them sell the roof over

our head for taxes? She might pay three florins if you throw
in the bracelet. Bells start ringing. Listen, mother.

v cn cv.sfrom the rear: Peace! Swedish king's been killed.
MOTHER cou RAGE sticks her head out of the cart. She has notyet

done her hair: What's that bell-ringing about in mid-week?
THE CHAPLAIN crawling outfrom under the cart: What are they

shouting? Peace?
MOTHER COURAGE: Don't tell me peace has broken out just

after I laid in new stock.
THE C HAP L A I N falling to the rear: That true? Peace?
VOICES: Three weeks ago, they say, only no one told us.
THE C HAP L A I N to Courage: What else would they be ringing

the bells for?
VOl C E s: A whole lot of Lutherans have driven into town,

they brought the news.
THE YOUNG MAN: Mother, it's peace. What's the matter?

The old woman has collapsed.
MOTHER COURAGE speaking into the cart: Holy cow! Kattrin,

peace! Put your black dress on, we're going to church.
Least we can do for Swiss Cheese. Is it true, though?

THE YOUNG MAN: The people here say so. They've made
peace. Can you get up? The old woman stands tip dumbfounded.
I'll get the saddlery going again, I promise. It'll all work
out. Father will get his bedding back. Can you walk? To the
Chaplain: She came over queer. It's the news. She never
thought there'd be peace again. Father always said so.
We're going straight home. They go off.

MOTHER COURAGE's VOICE: Give hera schnapps.



1',::",;"""", . • l," /
::n..------�

62 Mother Courage and Her Children
THE CHAPLAIN: They've already gone.
MOTHER COURAGE's VOICE: What's up in camp?
THE CHAPLAIN: They're assembling. I'll go on over.

Shouldn't I put on my clerical garb?
MOTHER COURAGE'S VOICE: Best check up before parading

yourself as heretic. I'm glad about peace, never mind if I'm
ruined. Any road I'll have got two of children through the
war. Be seeing Eilif again now.

THE CHAPLAIN: And who's that walking down the lines?
Bless me, the army commander's cook.

THE COO K somewhat bedraggled and carrying a bundle: What do I
behold? The padre!

THE CHAPLAIN: Courage, we've got company.
Mother Courage clambers out,

THE COO K: I promised I'd drop over for a little talk soon as
I had the time. I've not forgotten your brandy, Mrs
Fierling.

MOTHER COURAGE: Good grief, the general's cook! After
all these years! Where's my eldest boy Eilif?

THE COO K: Hasn't he got here? He left before me, he was on
his way to see you too.

THE CHAPLAIN: I shall don my clerical garb, just a moment.
Goes �fJ behind the cart.

MOTHER COURAGE: Then he may be here any minute. Calls
into the cart: Kattrin, Eilif''s on his way. Get cook a glass of
brandy, Kattrin I Kattrin does not appear. Drag your hair
down over it, that's all right. Mr Lamb's no stranger.
Fetches the brandy herself. She don't like to come out, peace
means nowt to her. Took too long coming, it did. They
gave her a crack over one eye, you barely notice it now but
she thinks folks are staring at her.

THE COO K: Ah yes. War. He and Mother Courage sit down.
MOTHER COURAGE: Cooky, you caught me at bad moment.

I'm ruined.
THE COOK: What? That's hard.

"

/
of • JI/ 1'" 'i .... I'} ... 1 ,- i

�



MOTHER COURAGE: Peace'll wring my neck. I went and
took Chaplain's advice, laid in fresh stocks only t'other day.

OYer. And now they're going to demobilise and I'll be left sitting
on me wares.

THE COO K: What d'you want to go and listen to padre for?
If I hadn't been in such a hurry that time, the Catholics
arriving so quickly and all, I'd warned you against that
man. All piss and wind, he is. So he's the authority around
here, eh?

MOTHER COURAGE: He's been doing washing-up for me
and helping pull.

THE COO K: Him pull! I bet he told you some of those jokes
of his too, I know him, got a very unhealthy view of
women, he has, all my good influence on him went for
nowt. He ain't steady.

MOTHER COURAGE: You steady then?
THE COOK: Whatever else I ain't, I'm steady. Mud in your

eye!
MOTHER COURAGE: Steady, that's nowt. I only had one

steady fellow, thank God. Hardest I ever had to work in me
life; he flogged the kids' blankets soon as autumn came,
and he called me mouth-organ an unchristian instrument.
Ask me, you ain't saying much for yourself admitting
you're steady.

THE COOK: Still tough as nails, I see; but that's what I like
about you.

MOTHER COURAGE: Now don't tell me you been dreaming
of me nails.

THE COO K: Well, well, here we are, along with armistice bells
and your brandy like what nobody else ever serves, it's
famous, that is.

MOTHER COURAGE: I don't give two pins for your armistice
bells just now. Can't see 'em handing out all the back pay
what's owing, so where does that leave me with my famous
brandy? Had your pay yet?

IOment.

Scene 8 63



---

"':" • ';,', '1.' " ••
�:_ =:::_;:=- __ � -=_ --:..-:;;::;:;::.,.-�:::"'=:=--A/

64 Mother Courage and Her Children
THE COO K hesitantly: Not exactly. That's why we all shoved

off. If that's how it is, I thought, I'll go and visit friends.
So here I am sitting with you.

MOTHER COURAGE: Other words you got nowt.
THE COOK: High time they stopped that bloody clanging.

Wouldn't mind getting into some sort of trade. I'm fed up
being cook to that lot. I'm s'posed to rustle them up meals
out of tree roots and old bootsoles, then they fling the hot
soup in my face. Cook these days is a dog's life. Sooner do
war service, only of course it's peacetime now. He sees the
fhaplain reappearing in his old garments. More about that later.

THE CHAPLAIN: It's still all right, only had a few moths
in it.

THE COOK: Can't see why you bother. You won't get your
old job back, who are you to inspire now to earn his pay
honourably and lay down his life? What's more I got a
bone to pick with you, cause you advised this lady to buy a
lot of unnecessary goods saying war would go on for ever.

THE CHAPLAIN heatedlY: I'd like to know what concern that
is of yours.

THE COOK: Because it's unscrupulous, that sort of thing is.
How dare you meddle in other folks' business arrangements
with your unwanted advice?

THE CHAPLAIN: Who's meddling? To Courage: I never knew
this gentleman was such an intimate you had to account to
him for everything.

MOTHER COURAGE: Keep your hair on, cook's only giving
his personal opinion and you can't deny your war was a
flop.

THE CHAPLAIN: You should not blaspheme against peace,
Courage. You are a hyaena of the battlefield.

MOTHER COURAGE: I'm what?
THE COOK: If you're going to insult this lady you'll have to

settle with me.
THE C HAP LA IN: It's not you I'm talking to. Your inten-

..... .,- ..... 1



o\'ed
ends,

I
wten-

Scene 8 65

tions are only too transparent. To Courage: But when I see
you picking up peace betwixt your finger and your thumb
like some dirty old snot-rag, then my humanity feels out­
raged; for therf I see that you don't want peace but war,
because you profit from it; in which case you shouldn't
forget the ancient saying that whosoever sups with the
devil needs a long spoon.

MOTHER COURAGE: I got no use for war, and war ain't got
much use for me. But I'm not being called no hyaena, you
and me's through.

THE CHAPLAIN: Then why grumble about peace when
everybody's breathing sighs of relief? Because of some old
junk in your cart?

MOTHER COURAGE: My goods ain't old junk but what I
lives by, and you too up to now.

THE CHAPLAIN: Off war, in other words. Aha.

THE COOK to the chaplain: You're old enough to know it's
always a mistake offering advice. To Cot/rage: Way things
are, your best bet's to get rid of certain goods quick as you
can before prices hit rock-bottom. Dress yourself and get
moving, not a moment to lose.

MOTHER COURAGE: That ain't bad advice. I'll do that, I

guess.
THE CHAPLAIN: Because cooky says it.
MOTHER COURAGE: Why couldn't you say it? He's right,

I'd best go off to market. Goes inside the cart.

THE COO K: That's one to me, padre. You got no presence
of mind. What you should of said was: what, me offer
advice, all I done was discuss politics. Better not take me
on. Cock-fighting don't suit that get-up.

THE C HAP L A IN: If you don't stop your gob I'll murder you,
get-up or no get-up.

THE COO K pulling off his boots and unwrapping his foot-cloths:
Pity the war made such a godless shit of you, else you'd
easily get another parsonage now it's peacetime. Cooks



"';" , ';,', 'I," • ,. , •
'._ ,.4

66 Mother Courage and Her Children
won't be needed, there's nowt to cook, but faith goes on
just the same, nowt changed in that direction.

THE CHAPLAIN: Mr Lamb, I'm asking you not to elbow
me out. Since I came down in the world I've become a
better person. I couldn't preach to anyone now.
Enter Yvette Pottier in black, dressed up to the nines, can:ying a
cane. She is milch older and fatter, and heavilY ponidered. She is
follou/ed by a manservant.

YVETTE: Hullo there, everybody. Is this Mother Courage's
establishment?

THE CHAPLAIN: It is. And with whom have we the hon­
our ... ?

YVETTE: With the Countess Starhemberg, my good man.
Where's Courage?

THE CHAPLAIN falls into the cart: The Countess Starhem-
berg wishes to speak to you.

MOTHER COURAGE'S VOICE: Just coming.
YVETTE: It's Yvette.
MOTHER COURAGE'S VOICE: Oh, Yvette!
Y VET T E: Come to see how you are. Sees the cook turn round

aghast: Pieter!
THE COOK: Yvette!
YVETTE: Well I never! How d'you come to be here?
T HE COO K: Got a lift.
THE CHAPLAIN: You know each other then? Intimately?
YVETTE: I should think so. She looks the cook over. Fat .

. THE COO K: Not all that skinny yourself.
YVETTE: All the same I'm glad to see you, you shit. Gives me

a chance to say what I think of you.
THE CHAPLAIN: You say it, in full; but don't start till

Courage is out here.
MOT HER CO U RAG E coming ost tvith all kinds ofgoods: Yvette!

Tbey embrace. But what are you in mourning for?
YVETTE: Suits me, don't it? My husband the colonel died a

few years back.

"-
...... -.. � , .' � "



Scene 8 67

son MOTHER COURAGE: That old fellow what nearly bought
the cart?

YVE TTE: His elder brother.
MOTHER COURAGE: Then you're slttmg pretty. Nice to

find somebody what's made it in this war.
YVETTE: Up and down and up again, that's the way it went.
MOTHER COURAGE: I'm not hearing a word against

colonels, they make a mint of money.
THE CHAPLAIN: I would put my boots back on if I were

you. To Yvette: You promised you would say what you
think of the gentleman.

THE COOK: Don't kick up a stink here, Yvette.
MOTHER COURAGE: Yvette, this is a friend of mine.
YVETTE: That's old Puffing Piet.
THE COOK: Let's drop the nicknames. I'm called Lamb.
MOTHER COURAGE lau._p,hs: Puffing Piet l Him as made all

the women crazy! Here, I been looking after your pipe for
you.

THE CHAPLAIN: Smoking it, too.
YVETTE: What luck I can warn you against him. Worst of

the lot, he was, rampaging along the whole Flanders coast­
line. Got more girls in trouble than he has fingers.

THE COOK: That's all a long while ago. Tain't true anyhow.
YVETTE: Stand up when a lady brings you into the conver­

sation! How I loved this man! All the time he had a little
dark girl with bandy legs, got her in trouble too of course.

THE COO K: Got you into high society more like, far as I can
see.

YVETTE: Shut your trap, you pathetic remnant! Better watch
out for him, though; fellows like that are still dangerous
even when on their last legs.

MOTHER COURAGE to Yvette: Come along, got to get rid of
my stuff afore prices start dropping. You might be able to
put a word in for me at regiment, with your connections.
Calls into the cart: Kattrin, church is off, I'm going to'ed a



68 Mother Courage and Her Children
market instead. When Eilif turns up, one of you give him
a drink. Exit lvith Yvette.

YVETTE as she leaves: Fancy a creature like that ever making
me leave the straight and narrow path. Thank my lucky
stars I managed to reach the top all the same. But I've
cooked your goose, Puffing Piet, and that's something
that'll be credited to me one day in the world to come.

THE CHAPLAIN: I would like to take as a text for our little
talk 'The mills of God grind slowly'. Weren't you com­
plaining about my jokes?

THE COOK: Dead out of luck, I am. It's like this, you see: I
thought I might get a hot meal. Here am I starving, and
now they'll be talking about me and she'll get quite a
wrong picture. I think I'll clear out before she's back.

THE CHAPLAIN: I think so too.
THE COOK: Padre, I'm fed up already with this bloody peace.
e Human race has to go through fire and sword cause it's

sinful from the cradle up. I wish I could be roasting a fat
capon once again for the general, wherever he's got to, in
mustard sauce with a carrot or two.

THE CHAPLAIN: Red cabbage. Red cabbage for a capon.
THE COOK: You're right, but carrots was what he had to

have.
THE CHAPLAIN: No sense of what's fitting.
THE COO K: Not that it stopped you guzzling your share.
THE CHAPLAIN: With misgivings.
THE COOK: Anyway you must admit those were the days.
THE CHAPLAIN: I might admit it if pressed.
THE COOK: Now you've called her a hyaena your days here

are finished. What you staring at?
THE CHAPLAIN: Eilifl Eili] arrives, followed by soldiers lvith

pikes. His hands are fettered. His face is chall;:)I-white. What's
wrong?

EILIF: Where's mother?
THE CHAPLAIN: Gone into town.



him
Scene 8 69

ElL IF: I heard she was around. They've allowed me to come
and see her.

THE coo K to the soldiers: What you doing with him?
A SOL DIE R: Something not nice.
THE CHAPLAIN: What's he been up to?
THE SOLDIER: Broke into a peasant's place. The wife's

dead.
THE CHAPLAIN: How could you do a thing like that?
EILIF: It's what I did last time, ain't it?
THE COOK: Aye, but it's peace now.
ElL IF: Shut up. All right if! sit down till she comes?
THE SOLDIER: We've no time.
THE CHAPLAIN: In wartime they recommended him for

that, sat him at the general's right hand. Dashing, it was,
in those days. Any chance of a word with the provost­
marshal?

THE SOLDIER: Wouldn't do no good. Taking some peas-
ant's cattle, what's dashing about that?

THE COOK: Dumb, I call it.
ElL IF: If I'd been dumb you'd of starved, clever bugger.
THE COOK: But as you were clever you're going to be

shot.
THE CHAPLAIN: We'd better fetch Kattrin out anyhow.
ElL IF: Sooner have a glass of schnapps, could do with that.
THE SOLDIER: No time, come along.
THE CHAPLAIN: And what shall we tell your mother?
EILIF: Tell her it wasn't any different, tell her it was the same

thing. Or tell her nowt. The soldiers propel him aJ1J�'Y.
THE C HAP L A IN: I'll accompany you on your grievous

journey.
EILIF: Don't need any bloody parsons.
THE CHAPLAIN: Wait and see. Follou/s him.
THE COO K calls after them: I'll have to tell her, she'll want to

see him.
THE CHAPLAIN: I wouldn't tell her anything. At most that



70 Mother Courage and Her Children
he was here and will come again, maybe tomorrow. By then
I'll be back and can break it to her. Hurries off.
The cook looks after him, shaking his head, then walks restlessly
around. Finally he comes liP to the cart.

THE COOK: Hoy! Don't you want to come out? I can under­
stand you hiding away from peace. Like to do the same
myself. Remember me, I'm general's cook? I was wonder­
ing if you'd a bit of something to eat while I wait for your
mum. I don't half feel like a bit of pork, or bread even, just
to fill the time. Peers inside. Head under blanket. Sound of
gunfire off.

MOT HER CO U RAG E runs in, out of breath and with all her goods
still: Cooky, peacetime's over. War's been on again three
days now. Heard news before selling me stuff, thank God.
They're having a shooting match with Lutherans in town.
We must get cart away at once. Kattrin, pack up! What you
in the dumps for? What's wrong?

THE COOK: Nowt.
MOTHER COURAGE: Something is. I see it way you look.
THE COOK: Cause war's starting up again, I s'pose. Looks

as if it'll be tomorrow night before I get next hot food
inside me.

MOTHER COURAGE: You're lying, cooky.
THE COO K: Eilif was here. Had to leave almost at once,

though.
MOTHER COURAGE: Was he now? Then we'll be seeing

him on march. I'm joining our side this time. How's he
look?

THE COOK: Same as usual.
MOTHER COURAGE: Oh, he'll never change. Take more

than war to steal him from me. Clever, he is. You going to
help me get packed? Begins to pack up. What's his news?
Still in general's good books? Say anything about his deeds
of valour?

THE cooKglum(y: Repeated one of them, I'm told.

-�
....... -.. � '. � "



Scene 8 71

then MOTHER COURAGE: Tell it me later, we got to move off.
Kattrin appears. Kattrin, peacetime's finished now. We're
moving on. To the cook: How about you?

THE COOK: Have to join up again.
MOTHER COURAGE: Why don't you ... Where's padre?
THE COO K: Went into town with Eilif.
MOTHER COURAGE: Then you come along with us a way.

Need somebody to help me.
THE COO K: That business with Yvette, you know ...
MOTHER COURAGE: Done you no harm in my eyes. Oppo­

site. Where there's smoke there's fire, they say. You com­
ing along?

THE COOK: I won't say no.

MOTHER COURAGE: The Twelfth moved off already. Take
the shaft. Here's a bit of bread. We must get round behind
to Lutherans. Might even be seeing Eilif tonight. He's my
favourite one. Short peace, wasn't it? Now we're off again.
She sings as the cook and Kattrin harness themselves liP:

From DIm to Metz, from Metz to Munich

Courage will see the war gets fed.
The war will show a well-filled tunic
Given its daily shot of lead.
But lead alone can hardly nourish
It must have soldiers to subsist.
It's you it needs to make it flourish.

The war's still hungry. So enlist!



72 Mother Courage and Her Children

9
It is the seventeenth year of the great war of
faith. Germany has lost more than half her
inhabitants. Those who survive the bloodbath
are killed off by terrible epidemics. Once fertile
areas are ravaged by famine, wolves roam the
burnt-out towns. In autumn 1634 we find Cou­
rage in the Fichtelgebirge, off the main axis of
the Swedish armies. The winter this year is early
and harsh. Business is bad, so that there is
nothing to do but beg. The cook gets a letter
from Utrecht and is sent packing

Outside a semi-dilapidatedparsonage.

Grry morning in ear!J winter. Gusts of wind. Mother Courage and
the cook in shabby sheepskins, draJving the cart.

THE COOK: It's all dark, nobody up yet.
MOTHER COURAGE: Except it's parson's house. Have to

crawl out of bed to ring bells. Then he'll have hot soup.
THE COOK: What from when whole village is burnt, we

seen it.
MOTHER COURAGE: It's lived in, though, dog was barking.
THE COOK: S'pose parson's got, he'll give nowt.
MOTHER COURAGE: Maybe if we sing....
THE COO K: I've had enough. Abmpt!J:' Got a letter from

Utrecht saying mother died of cholera and inn's mine.
Here's letter if you don't believe me. No business of yours
the way aunty goes on about my mode of existence, but
have a look.

-,
- .. -.. _, , '-



ourl

out

Scene 9 73

MOTHER COURAGE reads the letter: Lamb, I'm tired too of
always being on the go. I feel like butcher's dog, dragging
meat round customers and getting nowt off it. I got nowt
left to sell, and folk got nowt left to buy nowt with.
Saxony a fellow in rags tried landing me a stack of old
books for two eggs, Wiirttemberg they wanted to swap
their plough for a titchy bag of salt. What's to plough for?
Nowt growing no more, just brambles. In Pomerania
villages are s'posed to have started in eating the younger
kids, and nuns have been caught sticking folk up.

THE COOK: World's dying out.
MOT HER CO U RAG E: Sometimes I sees meself driving

through hell with me cart selling brimstone, or across
heaven with packed lunches for hungry souls. Give me my �
kids what's left, let's find some place they ain't shooting,
arid I'd like a few more years undisturbed.

T H i' coo K: You and me could get that inn going, Courage,
think it over. Made up me mind in the night, I did: back to
Utrecht with or without you, and starting today.

MOTHER COURAGE: Have to talk to Kattrin. That's a bit

quick for me; I'm against making decisions all freezing
cold and nowt inside you. Kattrin! Kattrin climbs out of the
cart. Kattrin, got something to tell you. Cook and I want
to go to Utrecht. He's been left an inn there. That'd be a

settled place for you, let you meet a few people. Lots of
'em respect somebody mature, looks ain't everything. I'd
like it too. I get on with cook. Say one thing for him, got a
head for business. We'd have our meals for sure, not bad,
eh? And your own bed too; like that, wouldn't you?
Road's no life really. God knows how you might finish up.
Lousy already, you are. Have to make up our minds, see,
we could move with the Swedes, up north, they're some­
where up that way. She points to the left. Reckon that's
fixed, Kattrin.

THE COOK: Anna, I got something private to say to you.



74 Mother Courage and Her Children
MOTHER COURAGE: Get back in cart, Kattrin.

Kattrin climbs back.
THE COOK: I had to interrupt, cause you don't understand,

far as I can see. I didn't think there was need to say it,
sticks out a mile. But if it don't, then let me tell you
straight, no question of taking her along, not on your life.
You get me, eh.
Kattrin sticks her head ou: of the cart behind them and listens.

MOTHER COURAGE: You mean I'm to leave Kattrin back
here?

THE COOK: Use your imagination. Inn's got no room. It
ain't one of the sort got three bar parlours. Put our backs
in it we two'll get a living, but not three, no chance of that.
She can keep cart.

MOTHER COURAGE: Thought she might find husband in
Utrecht.

THE COOK: Go on, make me laugh. Find a husband, how?
Dumb and that scar on top of it. And at her age?

MOTHER COURAGE: Don't talk so loud.
THE COO K: Loud or soft, no getting over facts. And that's

another reason why I can't have her in the inn. Customers
don't want to be looking at that all the time. Can't blame
them.

MOTHER COURAGE: Shut your big mouth. I said not so
loud.

THE COOK: Light's on in parson's house. We can try sing­
ing.

MOTHER COURAGE: Cooky, how's she to pull the cart on
her own? War scares her. She'll never stand it. The dreams
she must have... I hear her nights groaning. Mostly
after a battle. What's she seeing in those dreams, I'd like to
know. She's got a soft heart. Lately I found she'd got
another hedgehog tucked away what we'd run over.

THE COO K: Inn's too small. Calls out: Ladies and gentlemen,
domestic staff and other residents! We are now going to



nd,
it,

you
life,

n,

to

Scene 9 75

give you a song concerning Solomon, Julius Caesar and
other famous personages what had bad luck. So's you can

see we're respectable folk, which makes it difficult to carry
on, particularly in winter.
They sing:

You saw sagacious Solomon
You know what came of him.

To him complexities seemed plain.
He cursed the hour that gave birth to him

And saw that everything was vain.
How great and wise was Solomon!
The world however didn't wait

But soon observed what followed on.

It's wisdom that had brought him to this state -
How fortunate the man with none!

Yes, the virtues are dangerous stuff in this world, as this
fine song proves, better not to have them and have a

pleasant life and breakfast instead, hot soup for instance.
Look at me: I haven't any but I'd like some. I'm a serving
soldier but what good did my courage do me in all them
battles, nowt, here I am starving and better have been shit­
scared and stayed at home. For why?

You saw courageous Caesar next

You know what he became.

They deified him in his life
Then had him murdered just the same.
And as they raised the fatal knife
How loud he cried: You too, my son!

The world however didn't wait
But soon observed what followed on.

It's courage that had brought him to that state.
How fortunate the man with none!



16 Mother Courage and Her Children
50110 voce: Don't even look out. Aloud: Ladies and gentle­
men, domestic staff and other inmates! All right, you may
say, gallantry never cooked a man's dinner, what about
trying honesty ? You can eat all you want then, or anyhow
not stay sober. How about it?

)

You heard of honest Socrates
The man who never lied:

They weren't so grateful as you'd think
Instead the rulers fixed to have him tried
And handed him the poisoned drink.
How honest was the people's noble son!
The world however didn't wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It's honesty that brought him to that state.
How fortunate the man with none!

Ah yes, they say be unselfish and share what you've got,
but how about if you got nowt? It's all very well to say
the do-gooders have a hard time, but you still got to have
something. Aye, unselfishness is a rare virtue, cause it just
don't pay.

Saint Martin couldn't bear to see
His fellows in distress.
He met a poor man in the snow
And shared his cloak with him, we know.
Both of them therefore froze to death.
His place in Heaven was surely won!
The world however didn't wait
But soon observed what followed on.
Unselfishness had brought him to that state.
How fortunate the man with none!

That's how it is with us. We're respectable folk, stick
together, don't steal, don't murder, don't burn places

"
...... ",- .. tl}'" I '"



tie-

'ex

Scene 9 77

down. And all the time you might say we're sinking lower
and lower, and it's true what the song says, and soup is few
and far between, and if we weren't like this but thieves and
murderers I dare say we'd be eating our fill. For virtues
aren't their own reward, only wickednesses are, that's how
the world goes and it didn't ought to.

Here you can see respectable folk
Keeping to God's own laws.
So far he hasn't taken heed.
You who sit safe and warm indoors

Help to relieve our bitter need!
How virtuously we had begun 1
The world however didn't wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It's fear of God that brought us to that state.
How fortunate the man with none 1

v cn cn from above: Hey, you therel Come on upl There's hot
soup if you want.

MOTHER COURAGE: Lamb, me stomach won't stand nowt.
'Tain't that it ain't sensible, what you say, but is that your
last word? We got on all right.

THE COOK: Last word. Think it over.

MOTHER COURAGE: I've nowt to think. I'm not leaving her
here.

THE COOK: That's proper senseless, nothing I can do about
it though. I'm not a brute, just the inn's a small one. So
now we better get on up, or there'll be nowt here either and

wasted time singing in the cold.
MOTHER COURAGE: I'll get Kattrin.
THE COOK: Better bring a bit back for her. Scare them if

they sees three of us coming. Exeunt both.
Kattrin climbs out of the cart with a bundle. She looks around to
see if the other two have gone. Then she takes an old pair of



78 Mother Courage and Her Children
trousers of the cook's and a skirt of her mother's, and Icrys them
side by side on one of the wheels, so that they are easiiy seen. She
has finished and is picking up her bundle to go, when Mother
Courage comes back from the house.

MOTHER COURAGE with a plate of soup: Kattrin! Will you
stop there? Kattrin! Where you off to with that bundle?
Has devil himself taken you over? She examines the bundle.
She's packed her things. You been listening? I told him
nowt doing, Utrecht, his rotten inn, what'd we be up to
there? You and me, inn's no place for us. Still plenty to
be got out of war. She sees the trousers and the skirt. You're
plain stupid. S'pose I'd seen that, and you gone away?
She holds Kattrin back as she tries to break awcry. Don't you
start thinking it's on your account I given him the push.
It was cart, that's it. Catch me leaving my cart I'm used
to, it ain't you, it's for cart. We'll go off in t'other direc­
tion, and we'll throw cook's stuff out so he finds it, silly
man. She climbs in and throws out a few other articles in the
direction of the trousers. There, he's out of our business now,
and I ain't having nobody else in, ever. You and me'll carry
on now. This winter will pass, same as all the others. Get
hitched up, it looks like snow.

They both harness themselves to the cart, then wheel it round and
drag it off. When the cook arrives-he looks blanklY at his kit.



Scene 10 79

10

During the whole of 1635 Mother Courage and
her daughter Kattrin travel over the highroads of
central Germany, in the wake of the increasingly
bedraggled armies

High road.

Mother Courage and Kattrin are pulling the cart. They pass a

peasant's house inside which there is a voice singing.

THE VOICE:

The roses in our arbour

Delight us with their show:
They have such lovely flowers
Repaying all our labour
After the summer showers.

Happy are those with gardens now:
They have such lovely flowers.

When winter winds are freezing
As through the woods they blow
Our home is warm and pleasing.
We fixed the thatch above it

With straw and moss we wove it.

Happy are those with shelter now
When winter winds are freezing.

Mother Courage and Kattrin pause to listen, then continue pulling.



80 Mother Courage and Her Children

II

January 1636. The emperor's troops are threaten­
ing the Protestant town of Halle. The stone
begins to speak. Mother Courage loses her
daughter and trudges on alone. The war is a long
way from being over

The cart is standing, much the worse for wear, alongside a peasant's
house with a huge thatched roof, backing on a wall of rock. It is night.

An ensign and three soldiers in heavy armour step out of the wood.

THE ENSIGN: I want no noise now. Anyone shouts, shove
your pike into him.

FIRST SOLDIER: Have to knock them up, though, if we're
to find a guide.

THE ENS I G N: Knocking sounds natural. Could be a cow
bumping the stable wall.
The soldiers knock Oft the door of the house. The peasant's wife
opens it. They stop her mouth. Two soldiers go in.

MAN'S VOICE within: What is it?
The soldiers bring out the peasant and his son.

THE ENSIGN pointing at the cart, where Kattrin's head has ap­
peared: There's another one. A soldier drags her out. Anyone
else live here beside you lot?

THE PEASANTS: This is our son. And she's dumb. Her
mother's gone into town to buy stuff. For their business,
cause so many people's getting out and selling things
cheap. They're just passing through. Canteen folk.

THE ENSIGN: I'm warning you, keep quiet, or if there's the
least noise you get a pike across your nut. Now I want



n·

ne

one

Her

Scene II 81

someone to come with us and show us the path to the
town. Points to theyoung peasant. Here, you.

THE YOUNG PEASANT: I don't know no path.
SECOND SOLDIER grinning: He don't know no path.
THE YOUNG PEASANT: I ain't helping Catholics.
THE ENSIGN to the second soldier: Stick your pike in his ribs.
THE YOUNG PEASANT forced to his knees, with the pike

threatening him: I won't do it, not to save my life.
FIRST SOLDIER: I know what'll change his mind. Goes

towards the stable. Two cows and an ox. Listen, you: if

you're not reasonable I'll chop up your cattle.
THE YOUNG PEASANT: No, not that!
THE PEASANT'S WIFE weeps: Please spare our cattle, cap-

tain, it'd be starving us to death.
THE ENSIGN: They're dead if he goes on being obstinate.
FIRST SOLDIER: I'm taking the ox first.
THE YOUNG PEASANT to his father: Have I got to? The wife

nods. Right.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: And thank you kindly, captain, for

sparing us, for ever and ever, Amen.
The peasant stops his wife from further expressions ofgratitude.

FIRST SOLDIER: I knew the ox was what they minded about
most, was I right?
Guided by the young peasant, the ensign and his men continue on
their way.

THE PEASANT: What are they up to, I'd like to know. Nowt
good.

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Perhaps they're just scouting. What
you doing?

THE PEASANT putting a ladder against the roof and climbing up
it: Seeing if they're on their own. From the top: Something
moving in the wood. Can see something down by the
quarry. And there are men in armour in the clearing. And a
gun. That's at least a regiment. God's mercy on the town
and everyone in it!



82. Mother Courage and Her Children
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Any lights in the town?
THE PEASANT: No. They'll all be asleep. Climbs down. If

those people get in they'll butcher the lot.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Sentries're bound to spot them

first.
THE PEASANT: Sentry in the tower up the hill must have

been killed, or he'd have blown his bugle.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: If only there were more of us.
THE PEASANT: Just you and me and that cripple.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Nowt we can do, you'd say....
THE PEASANT: Nowt.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Can't possibly run down there in

the blackness.
THE PEASANT: Whole hillside's crawling with 'em. We

could give a signal.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: What, and have them butcher us

too?
THE PEASANT: You're right, nowt we can do.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE to Kattrin: Pray, poor creature, pray!

Nowt we can do to stop bloodshed. You can't talk, maybe,
but at least you can pray. He'll hear you if no one else can.
I'll help you. All kneel, Kattrin behind the two peasants. Our
Father, which art in Heaven, hear Thou our prayer, let not
the town be destroyed with all what's in it sound asleep and
suspecting nowt. Arouse Thou them that they may get up
and go to the walls and see how the enemy approacheth
with pikes and guns in the blackness across fields below the
slope. Tuming to Kattrin: Guard Thou our mother and
ensure that the watchman sleepeth not but wakes up, or
it will be too late. Succour our brother-in-law also, he is
inside there with his four children, spare Thou them, they
are innocent and know nowt. To Kattrin, who gives a groan:
One of them's not two yet, the eldest's seven. Kattrin stands
up distractedly, Our Father, hear us, for only Thou canst
help; we look to be doomed, for why, we are weak and



Scene I I 83

have no pike and nowt and can risk nowt and are in Thy
hand along with our cattle and all the farm, and same with
the town, it too is in Thy hand and the enemy is before the
walls in great strength.
Unobserved, Kattrin has slipped away to the cart and takenfrom it
something which she hides beneath her apron ; then she climbs up the
ladder on to the stable roof

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Forget not the children, what are in
danger, the littlest ones especially, the old folk what can't
move, and every living creature.

THE PEASANT: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
them that trespass against us. Amen.
Sitting on the roof, Kattrin begins to beat the drum which she has
pulled out from under her apron.

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Jesus Christ, what's she doing?
THE PEASANT: She's out of her mind.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Quick, get her down.

The peasant hurries to the ladder, but Kattrin pulls it up on to the
roof

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: She'll do us in.
THE PEASANT: Stop drumming at once, you cripple!
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Bringing the Catholics down on us!
THE PEASANT lookingfor stones to throw: I'll stone you.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Where's your feelings? Where's

your heart? We're done for if they come down on us. Slit
our throats, they will. Kattrin stares into the distance towards
the town and carries on drumming.

THE PEASANT'S WIFE to her husband: I told you we shouldn't
have allowed those vagabonds on to farm. What do they
care if our last cows are taken?

THE ENSIGN runs in with his soldiers and the young peasant: I'll
cut you to ribbons, all of you!

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Please, sir, it's not our fault, we
couldn't help it. It was her sneaked up there. A foreigner.

THE ENSIGN: Where's the ladder?



84 Mother Courage and Her Children
THE PEASANT: There.
THE ENSIGN calls up: I order you, throw that drum down.

Kattrin goes on drumming.
THE ENSIGN: You're all in this together. It'll be the end of

you.
THE PEASANT: They been cutting pine trees in that wood.

How about if we got one of the trunks and poked her
off....

FIRST SOLDIER to the ensign: Permission to make a sug­
gestion, sir! He whispers something in the ensign's ear. Listen,
we got a suggestion could help you. Get down off there
and come into town with us right away. Show us which
your mother is and we'll see she ain't harmed.
Kattrin goes on drumming.

THE ENSIGN pushes him roughlY aside: She doesn't trust you;
with a mug like yours it's not surprising. Calls up: Suppose
I gave you my word? I can give my word of honour as an
officer.
Kattrin drums harder.

THE EN S I G N: Is nothing sacred to her?
THE YOUNG PEASANT: There's more than her mother in­

volved, sir.
FIRST SOLDIER: This can't go on much longer. They're

bound to hear in the town.
THE ENSIGN: We'll have somehow to make a noise that's

louder than her drumming. What can we make a noise
with?

FIRST SOLDIER: Thought we weren't s'posed to make no
noise.

THE ENSIGN: A harmless one, you fool. A peaceful one.
THE PEASANT: I could chop wood with my axe.
THE EN SIGN: Good: you chop. The peasantfetches his axe and

attacks a tree-trunk. Chop harder! Harder! You're chopping
for your life. Kattrin has been listening, drumming less loudlY
the while. She now looks wildlY round; and goes on drumming.



u;

Scene II 85

THE ENS I G N: Not loud enough. To the first soldier: You chop
too.

THE PEASANT: Only got the one axe. Stops chopping.
THE ENSIGN: We'll have to set the farm on fire. Smoke her

out, that's it.
THE PEASANT: It wouldn't help, captain. If the townspeople

see a fire here they'll know what's up.
Kattrin has again been listening as she drums. At this point she
laughs.

THE ENSIGN: Look at her laughing at us. I'm not having
that. I'll shoot her down, and damn the consequences.
Fetch the harquebus.
Three soldiers hurry off. Kattrin goes on drumming.

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: I got it, captain. That's their cart.
If we smash it up she'll stop. Cart's all they got.

THE ENSIGN to the young peasant: Smash it up. Calls up:
We're going to smash up your cart if you don't stop drum­
ming. Theyoung peasant gives the cart a few feeble blows.

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Stop it, you animal!
Desperately looking towards the cart, Kattrin emits pitiful
noises. But she goes on drumming.

THE ENSIGN: Where are those clodhoppers with the har­
quebus?

FIRST SOLDIER: Can't have heard nowt in town yet, else
we'd be hearing their guns.

THE ENSIGN calls up: They can't hear you at all. And now
we're going to shoot you down. For the last time: throw
down that drum!

THE YOU N G PEA SAN T stldden!J flings away his plank: Go on
drumming! Or they'll all be killed I Go on, go on....
The soldier knocks him down and beats him with his pike. Kattrin
starts to cry, but she goes on drumming.

THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Don't strike his back I For God's

sake, you're beating him to death!
The soldiers hurry in with the arquebus.

In·

're



86 Mother Courage and Her Children
SECOND SOLDIER: Colonel's frothing at the mouth, SIr.

We're all for court-martial.
THE ENSIGN: Set it up l Set it up! Calls up while the gun is

)
being erected: For the very last time: stop drumming I
Kattrin, in tears, drums as loud as she can. Fire! The soldiers fire.
Kattrin is hit, gives a few more drumbeats and then slou4y
crumples.

THE ENSIGN: That's the end of that.
But Kattrin's last drumbeats are taken up by the town's cannon.
In the distance can be heard a confused noise of tocsins and gunfire.

FIR ST SOLDIER: She's made it.

I2

Before first light. Sound of the fifes and drums of
troops marching off into the distance

In front of the cart Mother Courage is sqtlatting by her daughter. The
peasantfamilY are standing near her.

THE PEASANTS with hostility: You must go, missis. There's
only one more regiment behind that one. You can't go on
your own.

MOTHER COURAGE: I think she's going to sleep. She sings:

Lullaby baby
What's that in the hay?
Neighbours' kids grizzle
But my kids are gay.
Neighbours' are in tatters
And you're dressed in lawn
Cut down from the raiment an



Scene I2. 87

Angel has worn.
Neighbours' kids go hungry
And you shall eat cake

Suppose it's too crumbly
You've only to speak.
Lullaby baby
What's that in the hay?
The one lies in Poland
The other - who can say?

Better if you'd not told her nowt about your brother-in­
law's kids.

THE PEASANT: If you'd not gone into town to get your cut
it might never of happened.

MOTHER COURAGE: Now she's asleep.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: She ain't asleep. Can't you see she's

passed over?
THE PEASANT: And it's high time you got away yourself.

There are wolves around and, what's worse, marauders.
MOTHER COURAGE: Aye.

She goes and gets a tarpaulin to cover the dead girl with.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE: Ain't you got nobody else? What

you could go to ?
MOTHER COURAGE: Aye, one left. Eilif.
THE PEASANT as Mother Courage covers the dead girl: Best look

for him, then. We'll mind her, see she gets proper burial.
Don't you worry about that.

MOTHER COURAGE: Here's money for expenses.
She counts ou! coins into the peasant's hands.
Tbepeasant and his son shake hands with her and carry Kattrin

away.
THE PEASANT'S WIFE as she leaves: I'd hurry.
MOTHER COURAGE harnessing herself to the cart: Hope I can

pull cart all right by meself. Be all right, nowt much inside
it. Got to get back in business again.



-

---

I

':'. I 'j'-4 ",,' t' .,

With all its luck and all its danger
The war is dragging on a bit
Another hundred years or longer
The common man won't benefit.
Filthy his food, no soap to shave him
The regiment steals half his pay.
But still a miracle may save him:
Tomorrow is another day!

The new year's come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.

88 Mother Courage and Her Children
Another regiment with its fifes and drums marches past in the
background.

MOTHER COURAGE tugging the cart: Take me along!
Singing is heardfrom offstage:



the

Texts by Brecht

NOTE

The effect of the premiere of Mother Courage and Her Children, given
in Zurich during the Second World War with the exceptional
Therese Giehse in the title part, was to allow the bourgeois press
to talk about a Niobe-like tragedy and the heart-rending vitality of
all maternal creatures. This despite the pacifist and anti-fascist
convictions of the Zurich Schauspielhaus and its predominantly
emigre German actors. Thus forewarned,

the playwright made
certain changes for the Berlin production. What follows

is the

original text.

Scene I, p. II, line JJ:

MOTHER COURAGE: ••• Look out for yourselves, you'll need to.
And now up we get and on we go.

THE SERGEANT: I don't feel very well.

THE RECRUITER: Perhaps you caught a chill taking your helmet
off in that wind.
The Sergeant snatches back his helmet.

MOTHER COURAGE: Hey, gimme my papers, you. Someone else

might ask to see them, and there'd I be with
no papers.

She puts them all in her pewter box.
THE RECRUITER to Eilif: Have a look at them boots anyway.

And then we men'll have one together. And come round behind
the cart, I'll show you I got the bounty money on

me.

THE SERGEANT: I don't get it, I'm always at the rear. Sergeant's
safest job there is. You can send the others up front,

cover them­

selves with glory. Me dinner hour's properly spoiled. Shan't
be

able to hold nowt down, I know.
MOTHER COURAGE addressing him: Mustn't let it prey on you so's



90 Notes and Variants

you can't eat. Just stay at the rear. Here, take a swig of brandy,
man. Gives him a drink from the cart.

RECRUITER has taken Eilif by the arm and is leading hi", a1vay up
stage: If a bullet's got your name on there's nowt you can doabout it. You drew a cross, that's all. Ten florins bounty money,then you're a gallant fellow fighting for the king and women'llbe after you like flies. And you can clobber me free for insulting
you. Exeunt both.
Dumb Kattrin, having watched this seduction, makes hoarse noises.

MOTHER COURAGE: All right, Kattrin.tall right. Sergeant's not
feeling well, he's superstitious, I hadn't realised. And now let's
get moving. Where's Eilif gone?

SWISS CHEESE: Must have gone off with the recruiter. They was
talking together the whole time.

Scene J, p. 48, line I I:

MOTHER COURAGE to the other: Can't pay, that it? No money, no
schnapps. They give us military marches, but catch them giving
men their pay.

SOLDIER: I want my schnapps. I missed the looting. That double­
crossing general only allowed an hour's looting in the town. He
ain't an inhuman monster, he said. Town must of paid him.

THE CHAPLAIN stumbles in: There are people still lying in that
yard. The peasant's family. Somebody give me a hand. I need
linen.
The second soldier goes of! with bim.

MOTHER COURAGE: I got none. All my bandages was sold to
regiment. I ain't tearing up my officers' shirts for that lot.

C HAP L A I N calling back: I need linen, I tell you.
MOTHER COURAGE rummages in her cart: I'm giving nowt. They'll

never pay, and why, nowt to pay with.
CHAPLAIN bending over a woman he has carried in: Why d'you stayaround during the gunfire?
PEASANT wOMANfeebly: Farm.
MOTHER COURAGE: Catch them abandoning anything. My lovelyshirts I Tomorrow officers '11 be around and I'll have nowt for

'em. She throws- down one which Kattrin gives to the peasant woman.What's got into me, giving stuff away? Wasn't me started this
war.



Texts by Brecht 91

FIRST SOLDIER: Those are Protestants. What they have to be

protestants for?
MOTHER COURAGE: They ain't bothering about faith. They lost

their farm.
SECOND SOLDIER: They're no Protestants. They're Catholics

like us.
FIRST SOLDIER: No way of sorting 'em out in a bombardment.
A PEASANT brought in by the chaplain: My arm's gone.

The painful screams of a child are heardfrom the house.
THE C HAP L A I N to the peasant woman: Lie where you arc.

MOTHER COURAGE: Get that child out of there!

Kattrin dashes in.
MOTHER COURAGE tearing up shirts: A hundred florins apiece.

I'm ruined. Don't shift her as you're doing her bandage, it might
be her back. To Kattrin, who has rescued a baby from the ruins and is

cradling it as she walks: How nice, found another baby to cart
around? Give it to its rna this instant, unless you'd have me

fighting for hours to get it off you, like last time, d'you
hear?

Kattrin pays no attention. All your victories mean to me
is losses.

That's enough, padre, come on, easy with my linen for Christ
sake.

THE CHAPLAIN: I need more, blood's coming through.
MOTHER COURAGE referring to Kattrin : Look at her, happy as a

queen in all this misery; give it back at once, its
mother's coming

round. As Katlrin reluctantly hands the baby back to its mother,
Mother Courage tears up another shirt. I can't give nowt, catch me,
got to think of meself. To the second

soldier: Don't stand there

gawping, you go back and tell them cut out that music,
we can

see it's a victory with our own eyes. Help yourself to a glass of

schnapps, padre, don't argue, I've enough troubles. She
has to

climb down off the cart to pull her daughter away from the first soldier,
who is drunk. Thought you'd score another victory, you animal?
You're not getting away like that till you've paid. To the peasant:
Your kid won't go short. Indicating the woma»: Help yourself to

something for her. To the first soldier: Then leave that coat,
it's

stolen any road. The first soldier goes lurching away. Mother Courage
tears liP further shirts.

'f H E C HAP L A IN: There's still someone under there.

MOTHER COURAGE: Don't worry, I'm tearing up the lot.



92 Notes and Variants

Scene 7, p. J9, line I6:

High road. The chaplain, Mother Courage and Kattrin are pulling the
cart. It is filthy and neglected, but hllng uJith new wares none the less.
MOTHER COURAGE sings:

Some people think to live by looting [etc. with one or two small
variations not affecting the meaning] ...
The refrain 'The newyear's come' is played fry her on her mouth-organ.

Scene I2, p. 86, line I6:

THE PEASANTS: You must go, rrussis. There's only one more
regiment behind that one. You can't go on your own.

MOTHER COURAGE: She's still breathing. Maybe she's falling
asleep.

The effect of the peasant wars, the greatest disaster in German
history, was to draw the teeth of the Reformation. That left busi­
ness and cynicism. Along with her friends and guests and almost
everyone else, Courage - and I say this as an aid to theatrical pro­
duction - recognises the purely commercial nature of the war;
indeed this is what attracts her to it. She believes in the war right
to the end. It never even strikes her that in a war you need a big
pair of scissors if you are to get your cut. Observers of catastrophes
are wrong to imagine that the victims will learn from these. So
long as the masses remain the passive object of politics they will
never be able to view what happens to them as an experiment,
merely as a fate; they learn no more from the catastrophe than a
guinea pig learns about biology. It is not the playwright's job to
open Courage's eyes at the end - she catches a glimpse of some­
thing around the middle of the play, at the end of scene 6, then
loses sight of it once more - his concern is with the eyes of the
audience.

['Anmerkung' from Versuche 9, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1949,
reprinted in GW Stucke 4.]



the

all

Texts by Brecht 93

THE STORY

Curve of the dralJlaturgJ

I

This scene emphasises that things are at the beginning. Courage's
canteen business and the new war as new undertakings of a
familiar sort. (They begin and they continue; they begin by con­
tinuing.) Needed: energy, enterprise, the prospect of new times,
arrival of new business, together with new dangers. She longs for
war and at the same time fears ;t She wants to join in, but as a
peacea6Ie business woman, not in a warlike way. She wants to
maintain her family during the war and by means of it. She wants
to serve the army and also to keep out of its clutches.

Her children: With her eldest son she is afraid of his bravery,
but counts on his cleverness. With the second she is afraid of his

stupidity but counts on his honesty. With her daughter she is
afraid of her pity but counts on her dumbness. Only her fears
prove to be justified.

She is anticipating business; she is going to go bankrupt.
The play begins with the entrance (i.e. hanging about) of the

men of war. The vast disorder of war begins with order, the vast
disorganisation with organisation.

The peaceful landscape and the men of iron. Courage arrives
four strong, goes away three strong.

2

War as a business idyll. Courage swindles peasants out of a capon;
her elder son robs peasants of their oxen. He wins fame and pos­
sessions; she profits. She pillages the army somewhat too. The

danger for her son becomes more real.

J

Being taken prisoner need be no disadvantage to her business. It
seems that she had nothing to say against her younger son's join­
ing the army as a paymaster. All she thinks necessary in his case



94 Notes and Variants

is honesty. This is the finish of him. If he had not been connected
with the army he would not have been killed. Her stubborn bar­
gaining over her cart costs her son his life. She stops her daughterfrom becoming a whore - the only career open to her in wartime,
and one which brings good fortune to Yvette. In any case she is no
Antigone.

4

Courage stifles her human reactions (any kind of outrage, rebellion
or criticism) for the sake of her business. She thinks capitulationwill do something for her.

J

All the same, human reactions sometimes override her business
principles. The general's victory leads to financial losses.

6

Business, meant to earn her daughter's (peacetime) dowry, leads
to her wartime disfigurement. Courage counts on the length ofthe war, which is helpful to her finances but means spinsterhoodfor her daughter. Finally for the first time she curses the war which,
from a business standpoint, she must needs want.

7

Peacetime is pleasant, if also ruinous. Thanks to the peace she does
not get her son back, but loses him for good. In her daughter's
case peace arrives too late. The son falls because he has applied the
principles of war in peacetime. The former camp prostitute YvettePottier has prospered as a result of the war and married a colonel.
The war starts up again. Will business start up again too?

Business is on the downgrade. The war is too long. Disorgan­isation and disorder on every side. In a song Courage (qua beggar)
curses all the human virtues as not only uncommercial but posi-



ed

Texts by Brecht 95

tively dangerous. For her daughter's sake she must give up the
cook, who could have provided her with a roof over her head. She
is bound to the war by pity for her daughter.

!J

The daughter perishes because of her pity for other people's
children. Courage goes on dragging her empty cart, alone, in the
wake of the tattered army.

[From Werner Hecht (ed.): Materialien zu Brechts 'Mutter
Courage', Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1967, pp. 7-9.]

THREE DIARY NOTES

(i)
Going over Mother Courage I am quite pleased to see how war
emerges as a vast field akin to the fields of

modern physics, in
which bodies experience peculiar deviations from their courses.
Any calculation about the individual based on peacetime experi­
ence proves to be unreliable, bravery is no help, nor is caution, nor
honesty, nor crookedness, nor brutality, nor pity: all are equally
fatal. We are left with those same forces that turn peace into war,
the ones that can't be named.

(ii)
Why is Courage a realist work?

It adopts a realist point of view on behalf of the people vis-a-vis
all ideologies. To the people war is neither an uprising nor a busi­
ness operation, merely a disaster.

Its point of view is not a moral one: that is to say, it is ethical,
but without being derived from the currently prevailing morality.

The actions of the characters are given motives that can be recog­
nised and allowed for and will facilitate dealing with real people.

The work functions in terms of the present state of conscious­

ness of the majority of mankind.

(iii)
Rehearsing the new production of Courage (with Busch, Geschon­
neck and Lutz). Paying particular attention to the dialectical ele-



96 Notes and Variants
ments. Cook and Chaplain in scene 8, where peace brings them
both to the edge of the precipice, are fighting for their quarters:
their respective setbacks make them better people. The two
enemies meet amicably on the plane of reminiscent nostalgia for
the war.

Working on Ruth's Model book is a grind; but it has to be done
if only to show how many things have to be taken into account for
a production.

[From Brecht's Arbeitsjournal, Suhrkamp 1973, entries for
5 January 1941, 22 April 1941 and 4 June 1951. The new pro­
duction by the Berliner Ensemble had its premiere in September
195 1 and was then seen at the Paris International Theatre
Festival in 1954.]

THE MOTHER COURAGE MODEL

Now, after the great war, life goes on in our ruined cities, but
it is a different life, the life of different or differently composed
groups, guided or thwarted by new surroundings, new because
so much has been destroyed. The great heaps of rubble are piled
on the city's invaluable substructure, the water and drainage pipes,
the gas mains and electric cables. Even those large buildings that
have remained intact are affected by the damage and rubble
around them, and may become an obstacle to planning. Temporary
structures must be built and there is always a danger of their
becoming permanent. All this is reflected in art, for our way of
thinking is part of our way of living. In the theatre we set up
models to fill the gap. They immediately meet with strong op­
position from. all supporters of the old ways, of the routine that
masquerades as experience and of the conventionality that calls
itself creative freedom. And they are endangered by those who
take them up without having learned to use them. While meant
to simplify matters, they are not simple to handle. They were
designed not to make thought unnecessary, but to provoke it;
not to replace but to compel artistic creation.

First of all we must imagine that the information which the
printed text provides about certain events - in this case the adven­
tures of Mother Courage and the losses she incurs _. has to some
extent been complemented; it has now been established that when



dry
eJ!

of

up
op­
that
callI
who
ean!

'ere

eit;

the
ren­

me

hen

Texts by Brecht 97
the woman's dead son was brought to her she was sitting beside
her mute daughter, and so on - the kind of information which an
artist painting some historic incident can arrive at by question­
ing eye-witnesses. Later he can still change certain details as for
one reason or another he may think advisable. Until one has

learned to copy (and construct) models in a living and intelligent
way, one had better not copy too much. Such things as the cook's
makeup or Mother Courage's costume should not be imitated. The
model should not be used to excess.

Pictures and descriptions of a performance are not enough. One
does not learn much by reading that a character moves in a par­
ticular direction after a given sentence, even if the tone of the
sentence, the way of walking, and a convincing motive can be
supplied - which is very difficult. The persons available for the
imitation are not the same as those of the pattern; with them it
would not have come into being. Anyone who deserves the name
of artist is unique; he represents something universal, but in his
own individual way. He can neither be perfectly imitated nor give
a perfect imitation. Nor is it so important for artists to imitate
art as to imitate life. The use of models is a particular kind of art,
and there is a limit to what can be learned from it. The aim must

be neither to copy the pattern exactly nor to break away from it
too quickly.

In studying what follows - a number of explanations and dis­
coveries emerging from the rehearsal of a play - one should above
all be led by the solutions of certain problems to consider the
problems themselves,

Music

Paul Dessau's music for Mother Courage is not meant to be par­
ticularly easy; like the stage set, it left something to be supplied
by the audience; in the act of listening they had to link the voices
with the melody. Art is not a land of Cockaigne. In order to make
the transition to the musical items, to let the music have its say,
we lowered a musical emblem from the grid whenever there was a
song which did not spring directly from the action, or which did
spring from it but remained clearly apart. This consisted of a
trumpet, a drum, a flag, and electric globes that lit up; a slight and
delicate thing, pleasant to look at, even if scene 9 found it badly



98 Notes and Variants

damaged. Some people regarded this as sheer playfulness, as an
unrealistic element. But on the one hand playfulness in the theatre
should not be condemned out of hand as long as it is kept within
bounds, and on the other it was not wholly unrealistic, for it
served to set the music apart from the reality of the action. We
made use of it as a visible sign of the shift to another artistic level­
that of music - and in order to give the right impression that these
were musical insertions, rather than to lead people to think quite
mistakenly that the songs 'sprang from the action'. People who
object to this are quite simply opposed to anything intermittent,
inorganic, pieced-together - this chiefly because they object to any
shattering of illusion. What they ought to have objected to was
not the tangible symbol of music, but the manner of fitting the
musical numbers into the play: i.e. as insertions.

The musicians were placed so that they could be seen, in a box
beside the stage - thus their performances became little concerts,
independent contributions made at suitable points in the play.
The box communicated with the stage, so that a musician or two
could occasionally go backstage for trumpet calls or when music
occurred as part of the action.

We began with the overture. It was a bit thin, for it was per­
formed by only four musicians; still, it was a reasonably cere­
monious preparation for the confusions of war.

Stage Design
For the production we are describing, at the Deutsches Theater
in Berlin, we used the well-known model devised by Teo Otto
during the war for the Zurich Schauspielhaus. There was a
permanent framework of huge screens, making use of such
materials as one would expect to find in the military encampments
of the seventeenth century: tenting, wooden posts lashed together
with ropes, etc. Three-dimensional structures, realistic both as to
construction and as to material, were placed on the stage to
represent such buildings as the parsonage and the peasants' house,
but in artistic abbreviation, only so much being shown as was
necessary for the action. Coloured projections were thrown on the
cyclorama, and the revolving stage was used to give the impression
of travel - we varied the size and position of the screens and used
them only for the camp scenes, so as to distinguish these from the



Texts by Brecht 99
scenes on the highway. The Berlin stage designer made his own
versions of the buildings (in scenes 2, 4, 5, 9, 10 and II), but on
the same principle. We dispensed with the background projections
used in Zurich and hung the names of the various countries over
the stage in large black letters. We used an even, white light, as
much of it as our equipment permitted. I�ted
any vesti� of 'atmosphere' that courd eas,jIl: have given the
jncidents a romantjc tiAg@. We retained almost everything else
down to the smallest details (chopping block, hearth, etc.), par­
ticularly the admirable positionings of the cart. This last was very
important because it determined much of the grouping and move­
ment from the outset.

Surprisingly little is lost by the sacrifice of complete freedom
of 'artistic creation' . You have to start somewhere, with some­
thing, and it may as well be with something that has already been
fully thought out. Freedom will be acquired through the principle
of contradiction, which is continually active and vocal in all of us.

Realistic Theatre and Illusion

Writing in I R26, Goethe spoke of the 'inadequacy of the English
wooden stage' of Shakespeare's day.. He says: 'There is no trace
here of the aids to naturalness to which we have gradually become
accustomed through the improvement in machinery, in the art of
perspective and in costuming.' 'Who?' he asks, 'would tolerate
such a thing today? Under those conditions Shakespeare's plays
would become highly interesting fairy tales, narrated by a number
of persons who tried to increase their effectiveness somewhat by
making up as the characters, by coming and going and carrying
out the movements necessary to the story, but left it to the audi­

ence to imagine as many paradises and palaces as they pleased on
the empty stage.'

Since he wrote these words, the mechanical equipment of our
theatres has been improving for a hundred years, and 'aids to
naturalness' have led to such emphasis on illusion that we late­
comers would be more inclined to put up with Shakespeare on an
empty stage than with a Shakespeare who had ceased to require or
provoke any use of the imagination.

In Goethe's day such improvement as had been made in the
mechanics of illusion was relatively harmless, since the machinery



100 Notes and Variants

was so imperfect, so much 'in the childhood of its beginnings',
that theatre itself was still a reality and both imagination and
ingenuity could still be employed to turn nature into art. The sets
were still theatrical displays, in which the stage designer gave an
artistic and poetic interpretation of the places concerned.

The bourgeois classical theatre occupied a happy halfway point
on the road to naturalistic illusionism. Stage machinery provided
enough elements of illusion to improve the representation of
some aspects of reality, but not so much as to make the audience
feel that they were no longer in a theatre; art had not yet come to
signify the obliteration of all indications that art is at work. Since
there was no electricity, lighting effects were still primitive; where
poor taste decreed sunset effects, poor equipment prevented total
enchantment. The Meiningers' authentic costumes came later; they
were usually magnificent, though not always beautiful, and they
were after all compensated by an inauthentic manner of speaking.
In short, theatre remained the theatre, at least where it failed in its
business of deception. Today the restoration of the theatre's reality
as theatre is a precondition for any realistic representation of
human relations. Too much heightening of the illusion in the
setting, along with a 'magnetic' manner of acting which gives the
spectator the illusion of being present at a fleeting, fortuitous
'real' event, create such an impression of naturalness that one can
no longer interpose one's judgment, imagination or reactions, and
must simply conform by sharing in the experience and becoming
one of 'nature's' objects. The illusion created by the theatre must
be a partial one, so that it can always be recognised as illusion.
Reality, however completely represented, must be changed by art,
in order that it may be seen to be subject to change and treated as
such.

That is why we are demanding naturalness today - because we
want to change the nature of our human relations.

Elements of l!!usion-

No doubt the sight of the cyclorama behind a completely empty
stage (in the prologue and in the seventh and last scenes) creates
the illusion of a flat landscape with the sky above it. There is no
objection to this, because there must be some stirring of poetry
in the soul of the spectator if such an illusion is to come about.



we

ty
tel

Ira
try
Jt.

Texts by Brecht 101

Thanks to the ease with which it is created, the actors are able to
suggest by their manner of playing, at the beginning that a wide
horizon lies open to the business enterprise of the little family of
provisioners, then at the end that the exhausted seeker after
fortune is faced by boundless devastation. And we can always
hope that this substantive impression of the play will combine
with a formal one: that when the spectator sees the empty stage,
soon to be inhabited, he will be able to share in the initial void
from which everything arises. On this tabula rasa, he knows, the
actors have been working for weeks, testing first one detail, then
another, coming to know the incidents of the chronicle by portray­
ing them, and portraying them by judging them. And now the play
is starting and Mother Courage's cart comes rolling on to the stage.

If in big matters such a thing as a beautiful approximation is
possible, in matters of detail it is not. A realistic portrayal requires
carefully worked-out detail in costumes and props, for here the
imagination of the audience can add nothing. All implements
connected with working and eating must have been most lovingly
made. And the costumes, of course, cannot be as for a folklore

festival; they must show signs of individuality and social class.
They have been worn for a longer or shorter time, are made of
cheaper or more expensive material, are well or not so well taken
care of, etc.

Jhe costumes for this production of Mother Courage were by __
�.

What is a performance of Mother Courage and Her Children primarilY
meant to show?

That in wartime the big profits are not made by little people. That
war, which is a continuation of business by other means, makes
the human virtues fatal even to their possessors. That no sacrifice
is too great for the struggle against war.

Prologue

By way of a prologue, Mother Courage and her little family were
shown on their way to the war zone. Mother Courage sang her
business song from scene I (so that in scene I her answer 'In
business' is followed immediately by the sergeant's question:



102 Notes and Variants

'Halt! Who are you lot with ?'). After the overture, to spare the
performer the exertion of singing against the rumbling of the
revolve, the first stanza was played on a record, the house being
darkened. Then the prologue begins.

The Long Road to War
The linen half-curtain, on which in the following the titles of
the scenes are projected, opens and Mother Courage's cart is
rolled forward against the movement of the revolve.

The cart is a cross between a military vehicle and a general
store. A sign affixed to the side of it says: 'Second Finnish Regi­
ment' and another 'Mother Courage, Groceries'. On the canvas
Swedish pork sausages are displayed next to a flag with a price
tag indicating 'Four Florins'. The cart will undergo several
changes in the course of the chronicle. There will be sometimes
more, sometimes less merchandise hanging on it, the canvas will
be dirtier or cleaner, the letters on the signs will be faded and then
again freshly painted, depending on the state of business. Now, at
the start, it is clean and richly covered with wares.

The cart is pulled by the two sons. They sing the second stanza
of Mother Courage's Business Song: 'Generals, how can you make
them face it - I March off to death without a brew?' On the box
sit dumb Kattrin, playing the Jew's harp, and Mother Courage.
Courage is sitting in lazy comfort, swaying with the cart and
yawning. Everything, including her one backward glance, indicates
that the cart has come a long way.

We had conceived of the song as a dramatic entrance, lusty and
cocky - we had the last scene of the play in mind. But Weigel saw
it as a realistic business song and suggested that it be used to
picture the long journey to the war. Such are the ideas of great
actors.

Once this was settled, it seemed to us that by showing the
business woman's long journey to the war zone we would be
showing clearly enough that she was an active and voluntary
participant in the war. But certain reviews and many discussions
with persons who had seen the play showed that a good many
people regarded Mother Courage merely as a representative of the
'little people' who 'become involved in the war in spite of them­
selves', who are 'helpless victims of the war', and so on. A deeply

�
.

....... .l� .. I
-,

•

"



r.l

Texts by Brecht 103

engrained habit leads the theatregoer to pick out the more emo­
tional utterances of the characters and overlook everything else.
Like descriptions of landscapes in novels, references to business
are received with boredom. The 'business atmosphere' is simply
the air one breathes and as such requires no special mention. And
so, regardless of all our efforts to represent the war as an aggregate
of business deals, the discussions showed time and time again that
people regarded it as a timeless abstraction.

Too Short can be Too Long
The two stanzas of the opening song plus the pause between them
during which the cart rolls silently along, take up a certain amount
of time, too much time it seemed to us at first in rehearsal. But
when we cut the second stanza, the prologue seemed longer, and
when we prolonged the pause between the stanzas, it seemed
shorter.

[ ... ]

I

The business woman Anna Fierling, known as
Mother Courage, encounters the Swedish army

Recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. Mother
Courage introduces her mixed family, acquired in various theatres of war,
to a sergeant. The canteen woman defends her sons against the recruiters
with a knife. She sees that her sons are listening to the recruiters and
predicts that the sergeant will meet an early death. To make her children
afraid of the war, she has them draw black crosses as well. Thanks to a
small business deal, she nevertheless loses her brave son. And the sergeant
leaves her with a prophecy:

'Want the war to nourish you?
You must feed it something too.'



104 Notes and Variants

Overall arrangement
Recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. On the
empty stage the sergeant and the recruiter are standing right front
on the lookout, complaining in muffled voices of the difficulty of
finding cannon fodder for their general. The city of which the
sergeant speaks is assumed to be in the orchestra. Mother Courage's
cart appears and the recruiters' mouths water at the sight of the
young men. The sergeant cries 'Halt!' and the cart stops.

Mother Courage introduces her mixed fami(y, acquired in various
theatres of war, to a sergeant. The professionals of commerce and of
war meet, the war can start. At the sight of the military, the
Fierlings may hesitate for a moment as though afraid: the soldiers
on their own side are also enemies; the army gives, but it also
takes. Mother Courage's 'Morning, sergeant' is spoken in the same
curt, military monotone as his 'Morning, all.' Climbing down
from her cart, she makes it clear that she regards showing her
papers as a formality, superfluous among professionals ('All right,
we'll run through the whole routine'). She introduces her little
family, acquired in various theatres of war, in a jocular tone: she
puts on a bit of a 'Mother Courage' act.

The cart and the children are on the left, the recruiters on the
right. Mother Courage crosses over with her tin box full of papers.
She has been summoned, but she is also sallying forth to scout and
do business. She describes her children from the other side of the
stage, as though better able to take them in from a distance. The
recruiter makes forays behind her back, stalking the sons, tempting
them. The pivotal point is in the lines: 'I bet you could do with a
good pistol, or a belt buckle?' and 'I could do with something else.'

The canteen u/oman defends her sons against the recruiters with a knife.
The sergeant leaves her standing there and goes over to the sons,
followed by the recruiter. He thumps their chests, feels their
calves. He goes back and stands before Mother Courage: 'Why
aren't they in the army?' The recruiter has stayed with the sons:
'Let's see if you're a chicken.' Mother Courage runs over, thrusts
herself between the recruiter and her son: 'He's a chicken.' The
recruiter goes over to the sergeant (on the right) and complains:
'He was crudely offensive'; Mother Courage snatches her Eilif
away. The sergeant tries to reason, but Mother Courage pulls a
knife and stands there in a rage, guarding her sons.



the

Texts by Brecht 105
Mother Courage sees that her sons are listening to the recruiter and

predicts that the sergeant u'ill meet an earlY death. Again she goes over
to the sergeant ('Give me your helmet'). Her children follow her
and look on, gaping. The recruiter makes a flank movement,
comes up to Eilif from behind and speaks to him.

When after some hesitation the sergeant has drawn his black

cross, the children, satisfied, go back to the cart, but the recruiter
follows them. And when Mother Courage turns ('I've got to take
advantage'), she sees the recruiter between her sons; he has his
arms around their shoulders.

To make her children afraid of the war, Mother Courage has them draw
black crosses as well. The rebellion in her own ranks is in full swing.
She runs angrily behind her cart to paint black crosses for her
children. When she returns to the cart's shaft with the helmet, the

recruiter, grinning, leaves the children to her and goes back (right)
to the sergeant. When the sombre ceremony is over, Mother

Courage goes to the sergeant, returns his helmet, and with flutter­

ing skirts climbs up on the seat of the cart. The sons have harnessed
themselves, the cart starts moving. Mother Courage has mastered
the situation.

Because of a small business deal, she nevertheless loses her brave son.
But the sergeant has only been half defeated; on the recruiter's
advice, he offers to make a purchase. Electrified, Mother Courage
climbs down from the cart and the sergeant draws her off left

behind the cart. While the deal is in progress, the recruiter takes

the harness off Eilif and leads him away. Kattrin sees this, climbs
down from the cart and tries in vain to call her mother's attention

to Eilif's disappearance. But Mother Courage is deep in her bar­
gaining. Only after she has snapped her moneybag shut does she
notice his absence. For a moment she has to sit down on the cart

shaft, still holding her buckles. Then she angrily flings them into
the cart, and the family, with one less member, moves gloomily off.

And the sergeant leaves her with a prophecy. Laughing, he predicts
that if she wants to live off the war, she will also have to give the
war its due.

[ ... ]



106 Notes and Variants

The recruiters

The empty stage of the prologue was
transformed into a specific

locality by means of a few clumps of wintry grass marking
the

edge of a highway. Here the military
men stand waiting, freezing

in their armour.

The great disorder of war begins with order, disorganisation
with organisation. The troublemakers have troubles

of their own.

We hear complaints to the effect that it takes intelligence
to get a

war started. The military are businessmen. The sergeant has
a

little book that he consults, the recruiter has a map to help him

fight with geography. The fusion of war
and business cannot be

established too soon.

Grouping

There will be some difficulty in persuading the actors playing the

sergeant and the recruiter to stay together
and in one place until

Mother Courage's cart appears. In our theatre, groups always
show a strong tendency to break up, partly

because each actor

believes he can heighten audience interest by moving about and

changing his position, and partly because he
wants to be alone, so

as to divert the attention of the audience from the group
to himself.

But there is no reason not to leave the military men together; on

the contrary, both the image and the argument
would be impaired

by a change of position.

Changes ofposition
Positions should be retained as long as there is no compelling
reason for changing them - and a desire for variety is not a com­

pelling reason. If one gives in to a
desire for variety, the conse-

quence is a devaluation
of all movement on the stage; the spectator m

ceases to look for a specific meaning behind each movement, he
in

stops taking movement seriously. But, especially
at the crucial

points in the action, the full impact
of a change of position must

not be weakened. Legitimate variety is obtained by ascertaining
the crucial points and planning the arrangement around them.

al

For example, the recruiters have been listening
to Mother Courage;

she has succeeded in diverting and entertaining them with her talk



the
until

Iways
actor

ut and

inc
the

Ing

Texts by Brecht 107
and so putting them in a good humour; so far there has been only
one ominous circumstance: the sergeant has asked for her papers;
but he has not examined them - his only purpose was to prolong
their stay. She takes the next step (physically too: she goes up to
the sergeant, takes hold of his belt buckle, and says: '1 bet you
could do with a belt-buckle ?'), she tries to sell them something,
and that is when the recruiters spring into action. The sergeant
says ominously: 'I could do with something else' and along with
the recruiter goes over to the sons at the cart's shaft. The recruiters

look the sons over as they would horses. The crucial point is
accented when the sergeant goes back to Mother Courage, comes
to a standstill before her, and asks: '\\?hy are they dodging their
military service?' (The effect of such movements should not be
weakened by having the actors speak during them.) If changes of
position are needed to make certain developments clear to the
audience, the movement must be utilised to express something
significant for the action and for this particular moment; if nothing
of the sort can be found, it is advisable to review the whole

arrangement up to this point; it will probably be seen to be at
fault, because the sole purpose of an arrangement is to express the

action, and the action (it is to be hoped) involves a logical develop­
ment of incidents, which the arrangement need only present.

on

'n,

ta

im
be

mrelling
t a com·

On details

On the brightly lighted stage every detail, even the smallest, must
of course be acted out to the full. This is especially true of actions
which on our stage are glossed over almost as a matter of principle,
such as payment on conclusion of a sale. Here Weigel devised (for
the sale of the buckle in I, the sale of the capon in 2, the sale of

drinks in 5 and 6, the handing out of the burial money in 12, etc.)
a little gesture of her own: she audibly snaps shut the leather

moneybag that she wears slung from her neck. It is indeed difficult
in rehearsals to resist the impatience of actors who are in the habit
of trying to sweep an audience off its feet, and to work out the
details painstakingly and inventively in accordance with the

principle of epic theatre: one thing after another. Even minute details
are very revealing, e.g. the fact that when the recruiters step up to
her sons and feel their muscles as if they were horses, Mother
Courage displays maternal pride for a moment, until the sergeant'sourage;

her talk



108 Notes and Variants

question ('Why are they dodging their military service ?') showsher the danger their qualities put them in: then she rushes between
her sons and the recruiters. The pace at rehearsals should be slow,
if only to make it possible to work out details; determining the
pace of the performance is another matter and comes later.

A detail

In pulling a knife, Mother Courage shows no savagery. She is
merely showing how far she will go in defending her children. The
performer must show that Mother Courage is familiar with such
situations and knows how to handle them.

Mother Courage has her children draw lots. Only by a mild tirade
and by eloquently averting her face when Swiss Cheese draws his
slip from the helmet - in other words by a slightly exaggerateddisplay of impartiality (see for yourself, no sleight-of-hand, no
tricks) does the actress show that Mother Courage knows she has
been tampering with fate - otherwise she fully believes what she
says, namely, that in certain situations certain of her children's
qualities and defects could be fatal.

Mother Courage predicts that the sergeant will meet an eariy death. We
discovered that Mother Courage had to turn around towards
Eilif before stepping up to the sergeant to let him draw his lot.
Otherwise it would not have been understood that she does this
in order to frighten her warlike son away from the war.

The belt-buckle deal. Mother Courage loses her son to the recruiter
because she can't resist the temptation to sell a belt buckle. After
climbing down from the cart to bring the sergeant the buckle, she
must at first show a certain amount of distrust by looking around
anxiously for the recruiter. Once the sergeant, seizing the stringof buckles, has drawn her behind the cart, her distrust shifts to
the area of business. When she goes to get schnapps for the ser­
geant, she takes the buckle, which has not yet been paid for, outof his hands; and she bites into the coin. The sergeant is dismayedat her distrust.

If the distrust at the beginning were omitted, we should have
a stupid, utterly uninteresting woman, or a person with a passionfor business but no experience. The distrust must not be absent, it
must merely be too weak to do any good.



Ws

een

OWl
the

ser­

out

)'ed

are

JOn

t,it

Texts by Brecht 1°9

Pantomime

The recruiter must act out the scene where he removes the harness

from Eilif ('women'll be after you like flies'). He is freeing him
from his yoke.

He has forced a florin on him; holding out his fist with the
florin in it in front of him, Eilif goes off as if in a trance.

Proportion

Weigel showed a masterful sense of proportion in playing
Mother

Courage's reaction to the abduction of her brave son. She
showed

dismay rather than horror. In becoming a soldier, her son
has not

been lost, he is merely in danger. And she will lose other children.
To show that she knows very well why Eilif is no longer with her,
Weigel let her string of belt buckles drag on the ground

and threw

it angrily into the cart after holding it between her legs
while

sitting on the shaft for a few moments to rest. And
she does not

look her daughter in the face as she puts her into Eilif's harness.

2

Before the fortress of Wallhof Mother Courage
meets her brave son again

Mother Courage sells provisions at exorbitant prices in the
Swedish camp ;

while driving a hard bargain OIJer a capon, she makes the acquaintance of
an army cook who is to play an important part in her life.

The Swedish

general brings a young soldier into his tent and honour
him for his bravery.

Mother Courage recognises her lost son in the young
soldier ; taking aduan­

tage of the meal in Eilif's honour, she gets a steep price for
her capon.

Eilif relates his heroic deed and Mother Courage,
while pluckin<.� her capon

in the kitchen a4Joining the tent, expresses opinions about rotten generals.

Eilif does a sword dance and his mother
answers lvith a song. Eilif hugs his

mother and gets a slap in the face for putting himself in danger
with his

heroism.
'\
\



110 Notes and Variants

Overall arrangement
Mother Courage sells provisions at exorbitant prices in the Swedish camp
before the fortress of Wal/hof; while driving a hard bargain over a caponshe makes the acquaintance of an army cook who is to play an important
part in her life. In this scene the movement occurs at the pivotalpoint ('You know what I'm going to do ?'). The cook stops peel­ing his carrots, fishes a piece of rotten meat out of the garbagebarrel and takes it over to the butcher's block. Courage's attemptat blackmail has failed.

The Swedish general brings a young soldier into his tent and makes a
short speech commending him for his bravery. A drumroll outside the
tent announces the arrival of highly placed persons. It need not beclear whether the general drinks in order to honour the soldier or
honours the soldier in order to drink. Meanwhile in the kitchen
adjoining the tent the cook is preparing the meal. Courage staysright there with her capon.

Motber Courage recognises her lost son in the young soldier ; takingaduantage of the meal in Eilij's honour, she gets a steep price for her capon.Mother Courage is overcome with joy at seeing her son, but not
too overcome to turn Eilif's reappearance to her business advan­
tage. Meanwhile, the general gets the chaplain to bring him a spillto light his clay pipe.

Eilij relates his heroic deed and Mother Courage, while plucking hercapon in the kitchen, expresses opinions about rotten generals. At firstthe mother beams as she listens to the story, then her face clouds
over, and in the end she throws her capon angrily into the tubin front of her. Resuming her work, she lets it be known what
she thinks of the general; at the same time the general in the tentshows her son on the map what new deeds of heroism he needs
him for.

Eilij does a sword dance and his mother answers with a song. Eilif doeshis sword dance front stage near the partition between tent andkitchen. Mother Courage creeps up to the partition to finish the
song. Then she goes back to her tub but remains standing.Eilif hugs his mother and gets a slap in the face for putting himself indanger with his heroism.



Texts by Brecht I I I

The capon deal

The bargaining over the capon between Courage and the cook
served among other things to establish the beginning of their
tender relationship. Both showed pleasure in the bargaining, and
the cook expressed his admiration not only for her ready tongue
but also for the shrewdness with which she exploited the honour­

ing of her son for business purposes. Courage in turn
was amused

at the way the cook fished the
chunk of rotten beef out of the

garbage barrel with the tip of his long meat knife and carried it,
carefully as though it were a precious object

- though to be kept
at a safe distance from one's nose

- over to his kitchen table. The

actor Bildt played the scene brilliantly, making the cook, a Don

Juan fired by budding passion, prepare the capon
with theatrical

elegance. This dumb, show, it should be observed,
was performed

with restraint, so that it did not distract from the scene in the
tent.

Bildt even took the trouble to acquire a Dutch accent with the

help of a Dutchman.
[ ... ]

The general
The general was made into something of a cliche. Too

much gruff
bluster, and the performance showed too little about

the ruling
class. It would have been better to make him an effete

Swedish

aristocrat, who honours the brave soldier as a
matter of routine

action, almost absently. If this had been done, his very
entrance -

he is drunk, supports himself on the guest of honour,
and heads

straight for the wine jug
- would have been more instructive. As

it was, one saw little more than rowdy drunkenness.

[ ... ]

The war of religion
The general's treatment of the chaplain is

meant to show the role

of religion in a war of religion. This was played
rather crudely.

The general has him bring the burning spill
for his pipe and

contemptuously pours wine over his coat;
with his eyes on Eilif,

the chaplain wipes the hem of his cassock,
half protesting, half

taking it as a joke. He is not invited to sit
down to table like the



I I 2 Notes and Varian tx

young murderer, nor is he given anything to drink. But what
shows his position most clearly is the undignified way, resulting
from the indignity of his position, with which he sits down at
table and pours himself wine when the general leads the young
soldier, in whose presence all this is enacted, to the map on the tent
wall, thereby leaving the table unoccupied. This position is the
source of the chaplain's cynicism.

Eilif's dance
The brave son's short sword dance must be executed with passion
as well as ease. The young man is imitating a dance he has seen
somewhere. It is not easy to make such things evident.

Costume: Eilif has a cheap, dented breastplate and is still wear­
ing his frayed trousers. Not until scene 8 (the outbreak of peace)
does he wear expensi ve clothing and gear; he dies rich.

A detail

During her angry speech about rotten generals Courage plucks
her capon violently, giving the plucking a kind of symbolic
significance. Brief bursts of laughter from the amused cook inter­
rupt her blasphemies.
[ ... ]

3

Mother Courage switches from the Lutheran to
the Catholic camp and loses her honest son Swiss
Cheese

Black-marketing in ammuninon. Mother Courage serves a camp whore
and warns her daughter not to take up with soldiers. While Courage flirts
l1lith the cook and the chaplain, dumb Kattrin tries on the whore's hat and
shoes. Surprise attack. First meal in the Catholic camp. Conversation
between brother and sister and arrest of Swiss Cheese. Mother Courage
mortgages her cart to the camp whore in order to ransom Swiss Cheese.



tif'

Texts by Brecht I 13

Courage haggles over the amount of the bribe. She haggles too long
and hears

the volley that lays Swiss Cheese low. Dumb Kattrin stands
beside her

mother to wait for the dead Swiss Cheese. For fear ofgiving herself away,
Courage denies her dead son.

Overall arrangement

During the whole scene the cart stands left with its
shaft pointed

towards the audience, so that those to the left of it are not seen

by those on the right. Centre rear there is a flagpole, right
front a

barrel serving as a dining table. The scene is divided
into four

parts: The surprise attack, The arrest of the honest son,
The bargaining,

The denial. After the first two parts the half-curtain is drawn; after

the third part the stage is darkened.

Black-marketing in ammunition. Mother Courage enters
from the

left, followed by an ordnance officer who is trying to
talk her into

something. For a moment she stands front stage
with him; after

'Not at that price', she turns away from him and sits down
on a

box near the cart, where Swiss Cheese is already sitting. The

business is conducted in an undertone. Kattrin is called away from

taking down the washing and goes behind the
cart left with the

ordnance officer. Courage has started mending Swiss Cheese's

pants; while working, she admonishes him
to be honest. Return­

ing from the other side of the cart, the
ordnance officer takes him

away with him. This and the following scenes
have the tone of an

idyll.
Mother Courage serves a camp whore and warns her daughter

not to

take up with soldiers. Taking her sewing, Courage
sits down with

the Pottier woman. Kattrin listens to their
conversation as she

takes the washing off the line. After her song, Pottier,
with a

conspicuously whorish gait, goes behind the cart.
While Courage flirts with the cook and the chaplain,

dumb Kattrin tries

on the whore's hat and shoes. After some brief banter, Mother Courage
leads her guests behind the cart for a glass of wine

and they strike

up a political conversation. After the
inserted sentence 'This is a

war of faith', the cook ironically starts singing the hymn 'A strong­
hold sure'. This gives Kattrin time to tryon Yvette's hat

and shoes.

Surprise attack. The fixed point amid all
the running and shout­

ing of the surprise attack is the chaplain,
who stands still and gets



114 Notes and Variants

in everybody's way. The rest of the arrangement follows from the
printed text.

First mea! ill the Catholic camp. The chaplain, now Mother
Courage's potboy, joins the little family around the cooking pot;
Swiss Cheese keeps slightly to one side; he wants to get away.

Conversation between brother and sister and arrest of Swiss Cheese.
The conversation between brother and sister takes place at the
improvised dining table. When Kattrin sees the spy behind the
cart, she tries to stop her brother from climbing into it. When
Courage comes back with the chaplain, Kattrin runs towards her
as far as the centre of the stage. Courage, the chaplain and Kattrin
group themselves around the table, waiting for the Catholics.

Mother COllra.f!,e tries to !JIorlgal!,e her wa(e,oll 10 the camp whore ill order
10 ransom sIV;SS Cheese. The chaplain runs to meet Courage; she is
exhausted and he catches her in his arms in front of the cart. She
quickly frees herself from his embrace, which has restored her
strength a little, and starts thinking. Her plan is all ready when
Pottier comes along with the colonel. Pottier leaves the colonel
standing there, runs over to Courage, gives her the kiss of Judas,
runs back to her cavalier, and then crawls avidly into the cart.
Courage pulls her out, curses her, and sends her off with a push to
negotiate over Swiss Cheese.

Mother Courage haggles over the amount of the bribe. Courage has set
Kattrin and the chaplain to washing glasses and scouring knives,
so creating a certain atmosphere of siege. Standing centre stage
between her family and the whore, she refuses to give up her cart
entirely - she has fought too hard for it. She sits down again to
scour knives and does not stand up when Pottier comes back with
the news that the soldiers are asking two hundred florins. Now she
is willing to pay.

Mother Courage hears the volley that lays Swiss Cheese Imp. No sooner
has Courage sent Pottier away than she suddenly stands up and
says: '1 think 1 bargained too long.' The volley rings out, the
chaplain leaves her and goes behind the wagon. It grows dark.

For fear of giving herself away, Courage denies her dead son. Yvette
walks slowly out from behind the wagon. She scolds Courage,
warns her not to give herself away, and brings Kattrin out from
behind the wagon. Her face averted, Kattrin goes to her mother
and stands behind her. Swiss Cheese is brought in. His mother
goes over to him and denies him.



Texts by Brecht I I 5

Movements and groupings

The arrangement of the movements and groupings must
follow

the rhythm of the story and give pictorial expression to the
action.

In scene 3 a camp idyll is disrupted by the enemy's surprise
attack. The idyll should be composed from the start in

such a

way as to make it possible to show a
maximum of disruption.

It must leave room for people to run to and fro in clearly laid-out

confusion; the parts of the stage must be able to change their
functions.

At the beginning of the scene Kattrin is hanging out washing
on a clothes-line stretched between the cart and the

cannon

right rear so that Courage can hurriedly take
it down at the end

of the scene. In order to rescue her washing, Courage must go

diagonally right across the stage. Kattrin sits
huddled by the

barrel right front, where at the beginning
Yvette was being

served as a customer; Courage takes soot from the cart and

brings it to the barrel to rub on her daughter's
face. The same

place which up until then had been devoted exclusively
to business

is now the scene of a private incident. Carrying the cash-box,
Swiss Cheese enters diagonally from right rear to the cart left
front in such a way that his path crosses that of Courage hurrying
to her daughter. First she runs a few steps past him,

but she has

seen the cash box and turns round towards him just as he is about

to enter the cart. She stands for a moment like a hen
between

two endangered chicks, undecided which to save
first. While she

is smearing her daughter's face, her son hides
the cash box in the

cart; she cannot reprove him until she
has finished with her

daughter and he comes back out of the cart.
She is still standing

beside him when the chaplain rushes out from behind the cart

and points to the Swedish flag. Courage runs
to it centre rear and

takes it down.
The camp idyll that is disrupted by the

attack must be divided

into distinct parts. After the shady little deal in
black-market

ammunition has been completed by the cart steps, Swiss

Cheese followed by the ordnance officer goes out right.
The

ordnance officer recognises the camp whore who is sitting by
the

barrel, sewing her hat; he looks away in disgust.
Yvette shouts

something after him, and then, when
the centre of gravity has

shifted to the right side of the stage, Courage also
comes slowly



116 Notes and Variants

over to the barrel. (A little later Kattrin follows, coming out
from behind the cart and starting once more to hang up the
washing.) The two women talk and Kattrin listens as she hangs
up the washing. Yvette sings her song. With a provocative gait,
she goes out from right front to left rear. Kattrin watches her
and is admonished by her mother. The cook and the chaplain
come in from the right rear. After a brief bit of banter during
which they attract the attention of the audience to Kattrin by the
attention they pay to her, Mother Courage leads them behind the
wagon. The political discussion and Kattrin's pantomine follow.
She imitates Yvette, walking over the same ground. The alarm
begins with the ordnance officer and soldiers running in from
right rear. The cook goes out in that direction after Courage has
run to the cannon to rescue her washing and Kattrin to the barrel
to hide her feet.

.

Important

Courage's unflagging readiness to work is important. She is hardly
ever seen not working. It is her energy and competence that make
her lack of success so shattering.

A tiny scene

The tiny scene at the beginning of 3, in which army property is
black-marketed, shows the general and matter-of-fact corruption
in army camps during the great war of religion. The honest son
listens with half an ear, as to something quite usual, his mother
does not conceal the crooked business from him, but admonishes
him to be honest because he is not bright. His heeding of this
advice is going to cost him his life.

Yvette Pottier

Kattrin has the example of Yvette before her. She herself must
work hard; the whore drinks and lolls about. For Kattrin too the
only form of love available in the midst of the war would be
prostitution. Yvette sings a song showing that other forms of love
lead to grave trouble. At times the whore becomes powerful by
selling herself at a high price. Mother Courage, who only sells



Texts by Brecht I 17

boots, must struggle desperately to defend her cart against her.
Mother Courage of course makes no moral condemnation of
Yvette and her special type of business.

The colonel

The colonel whom Yvette lugs in to buy Courage's cart for her
is difficult to play, because he is a purely negative quantity. His

only function is to show the price the whore must pay for her
rise in life; consequently he must be repellent. [Georg-Peter] Pilz

portrayed the aged colonel subtly, making him mime an ardent

passion of which he was not for one moment capable. The old
man's lechery erupted as though in response to a cue, and he
seemed to forget his surroundings. An instant later he forgot his

lechery and stared absently into the void. The actor produced a

striking effect with his stick. In his passionate moments he pressed
it to the ground so hard that it bent; an instant later it snapped
straight - this suggested loathsome aggressive impotence

and

produced an irresistibly comic effect. Considerable elegance is

required to keep such a performance within the bounds of good
taste.

A detail

Having finished hanging up the washing, Kattrin
stares open­

mouthed at the visitors from the general's tent. The cook honours
her with special attention as he follows Courage behind the cart.
This is probably what gives her the idea of stealing Yvette's

weapons.

The two sides

While on one side of the cart the war is being discussed with
frank mockery, Kattrin is appropriating some of the tools

of the

whore's trade and practising Yvette's swaying gait, which she has

just seen. Here [Angelika] Hurwicz's facial expression
was strained

and deeply serious.



I 18 Notes and Variants

'A stronghold sure'

The first part of Kattrin's pantomime occurs after 'I wasn't mis­
taken in your face.' (The cook added: 'This is a war of faith.') At
this point Courage, the cook and the chaplain placed themselves
to one side of the cart in such a way that they could not see
Kattrin, and struck up 'A stronghold sure.' They sang it with
feeling, casting anxious glances around them as though such a
song were illegal in the Swedish camp.

The surprise attack

It must be brought out that Courage is used to such surprises and
knows how to handle them. Before she thinks about saving the
cannon, she rescues her washing. She helps the chaplain to disguise
himself, she smears her daughter's face, she tells her son to throw
the cash box away, she takes down the Swedish flag. All this she
does as a matter of routine, but by no means calmly.
[ ... ]

The meal

Courage has prepared it. Enlarged by the new employee who was
a chaplain only that morning, the little family still seem somewhat
flurried; in talking they look around like prisoners, but the mother
is making jokes again; the Catholics, she says, need trousers as
much as the Protestants. They have not learned that honesty is
just as mortally dangerous among Catholics as among Lutherans.

The chaplain
The chaplain has found a refuge. He has his own bowl to eat from
and he makes himself awkwardly useful, hauls buckets of water,
scours knives, and so on. Otherwise he is still an outsider. For this
reason or because of his phlegmatic disposition he shows no
exaggerated involvement in the tragedy of the honest son. While
Courage is engaged in her unduly prolonged bargaining, he looks
upon her simply as his source of support.



Texts by Brecht II9

Swiss Cheese

I t seems to be hard for an actor to repress his pity for the character
he is playing and not to reveal his knowledge of his impending
death. In speaking to his sister Swiss Cheese shows no forebodings;
this is what makes him so moving when he is taken.

Brother and sister

The short conversation between dumb Kattrin and Swiss Cheese

is quiet and not without tenderness. Shortly before the destruction
we are shown for the last time what is to be destroyed.

The scene goes back to an old Japanese play in which two boys
conclude a friendship pact. Their way of doing this is that one
shows the other a flying bird, while the second shows the first a
cloud.

A detail

Kattrin gesticulates too wildly in telling her mother about the
arrest of Swiss Cheese. Consequently Courage does not under­
stand her and says: 'Use your hands, I don't like it when you
howl like a dog, what'll his reverence say? Makes him uncomfort­
able.' Hurwicz made Kattrin pull herself together and nod. She
understands this argument, it is a strong one.

A detail

While the sergeant was questioning her in the presence of Swiss

Cheese, Courage rummaged in a basket
- a busy business woman

with no time for formalities. But after the sentence: 'And don't you

twist his shoulder' she ran after the soldiers who were leading him

away.

Yvette's three trips

Yvette runs back and forth three times for the sake of Courage's
son and her cart. Her anger changes from mere anger at Courage's
attempt to swindle her by paying her out of the regimental

cash box

to anger at Courage's betrayal of her son.



120 Notes and Variants

Kattrin and the bargaining over Swiss Cheese
The portrayal of dumb Kattrin is not realistic if her goodness is
stressed to the point of making her oppose her mother's attempt
to get the amount of the bribe reduced. She runs off from scouring
the knives when she begins to see that the bargaining has been
going on too long. When after the execution Yvette sends her
ahead and she goes to her mother with her face averted, there may
be a reproach in this - but above all she cannot look her in the
face.

The denial

Courage is S1ttIng, holding the hand of her daughter \V ho is
standing. When the soldiers come in with the dead boy and she
is asked to look at him, she stands up, goes over, looks at him,
shakes her head, goes back and sits down. During all this she has
an obstinate expression, her lower lip thrust forward. Here
Weigel's recklessness in throwing away her role reaches its highest
point.

(The actor playing the sergeant can command the spectator's
astonishment by looking around at his men in astonishment at
such hardness.)

Observation

Her look of extreme suffering after she has heard the shots, her
unscreaming open mouth and backward-bent head probably
derived from a press photograph of an Indian woman crouched
over the body of her dead son during the shelling of Singapore.
\Veigel must have seen it years before, though when questioned
she did not remember it. That is how observations are stored up
by actors. - Actually it was only in the later performances that
Weigel assumed this attitude.
[ ... ]



Texts by Brecht 121

4

The Song of the Grand Capitulation

Mother Courage is sitting outside the captain's tent ; she has come to put
in a complaint about damage to her cart ; a clerk advises her in vain to

let

well alone. A young soldier appears, also to make a complaint ; she dis­
suades him. The bitter 'Song of the Grand Capitulation'. Courage herself
learns from the lesson she has given the young soldier and leaves

without

having put in her complaint.

Overall arrangement

Mother Courage is sitting outside the captain's tent ; she has come to put
in a complaint about damage to her cart ; a clerk advises her in

vain to let

well alone. The clerk comes up to the bench where Courage is sitting and

speaks to her kindlY. She remains obstinate.
Ayoung soldier appears, also to make a complaint; she

dissuades him,

arguing that his anger is too short. Two soldiers
enter. The younger wants

to rush into the captain's tent and the older is holding him back by main

force. Courage intervenes and involves the young
man in a conversation about

the danger of short attacks of anger.
The bitter 'Song of the Grand Capitulation'. The young soldier,

tubose

anger has evaporated, goes off cursing.
Courage herself learnsfrom the lesson she has givetl theyoung soldier,

and

leaves without putting in her complaint.

Courage's state of mind at the beginning of the scene

In the first rehearsals Weigel opened this scene in an attitude of

dejection. This was not right.
Courage learns by teaching. She teaches capitulation

and learns

it.
The scene calls for bitterness at the start and dejection at the

end.



122 Notes and Variants

Courage's depravity
In no other scene is Courage so depraved as in this one, where
she instructs the young man in capitulation to the higher-ups and
then puts her own teaching into effect. Nevertheless Weigel's
face in this scene shows a glimmer of wisdom and even of nobility,
and that is good. Because the depravity is not so much that of her
person as that of her class, and because she herself at least rises
above it somewhat by showing that she understands this weakness
and that it even makes her angry.
[ ... ]

The scene played u'ithout alienation

Such a scene is socially disastrous if by hypnotic action the actress
playing Mother Courage invites the audience to identify with her.
This will only increase the spectator's own tendencies to resig­
nation and capitulation - besides giving him the pleasure of being
superior to himself. It will not put him in a position to feel the
beauty and attraction of a social problem.

5

Mother Courage loses four officers' shirts and
dumb Kattrin finds a baby

After a battle. Courage refuses 10 (.�il'e the chaplain her officers' shirts to
banda(.�e wounded peasants. Kattrin threatens her mother. At the risk of
her life Kattrin saues an infant. Courage laments the loss of her shirts and
snatches a stolen coat allJay from a soldier who has stolen some schnapps,
lJ)hile Kattrin rocks the balry in her arms.

Overall arrangement

After a battle. Courage is standing with two soldiers outside her
cart; its sideboard is lowered for use as a bar. Kattrin, sitting on



�I,

Texts by Brecht 123

the steps, is uneasy. Courage gulps down two glasses of schnapps;
she needs them to harden her to the sight of misery.

Courage refuses to give the chaplain her officers' shirts to bandage
wounded peasants. From inside a peasant's wrecked house the chap­
lain shouts for linen. Kattrin is prevented by her mother from

taking officers' shirts from the cart. Courage obstinately blocks the

steps, letting no one in.
Kattrin threatens her mother. With the help of one soldier the

chaplain has carried a wounded woman out of the house, then
an old peasant whose arm is dangling. Again he calls for linen
and all look at Courage who lapses into silence. Angrily Kattrin
seizes a plank and threatens her mother. The chaplain has to take
it away from her. He picks Courage up, sets her down on a chest,
and takes some officers' shirts.

At the risk of her life Kattrin saves an infant. Still struggling with
the chaplain, Courage sees her daughter rush into the house that
is threatening to cave in, to save a baby. Tugged both ways,
between Kattrin and the officers' shirts: she runs about until the

shirts arc torn into bandages and Kattin comes out of the house
with the infant. Now she runs after Kattrin to make her get rid of

the baby. (Movements: Kattrin with the baby runs counter­
clockwise around the wounded, then clockwise around the cart.)
Her mother stops in the middle of the stage because

the chaplain
is coming out of the cart with the shirts. Kattrin sits down on

the

chest right.
Courage laments the loss of her shirts and snatches a stolen coat away

from a soldier who has stolen some schnapps, while Kattrin
rocks the baby

in her arms. After springing like a tigress at the soldier who has
failed to pay, Mother Courage stuffs his fur coat into the

cart.

A new Courage
A change has taken place in Courage. She has sacrificed

her son

to the cart and now she defends the cart like a tigress. She has been
hardened by the hard bargains she drives.

A detail

At the beginning of the scene (after 'They give us victory
marches

on all right, but catch them giving men their pay') Weigel's Courage



124 Notes and Variants

tossed off two glasses of schnapps. Apart from this extenuating
circumstance, she provided no justification for Courage's haggling,
scolding and raging throughout the scene.

A detail

There was a kind of by-play between the soldier who gets no
schnapps from Courage and the soldier drinking schnapps at the
bar. It expressed the hostility between the haves and the have-riots.
The drinker grins scornfully and drains his glass with ostentatious
enjoyment, the have-not gives him a long hostile stare before
turning around in disgust and going defeated to the rear - to wait
for a chance to lay hands on the schnapps. Later the drinker will
show more sympathy than the thirsty man for the wounded
peasant woman.

The contradictions must not disappear
The character of the chaplain is based on a contradiction. He is
part scoundrel, part superior intelligence. The actor [Werner] Hinz
gave him a wooden, awkward, comical quality, which he retained
in his role of good Samaritan. His manner was stiff and cold, as
though it were only his clergyman's past that impelled him to turn
against his present employer. But something else shone through:
his former high position gives him the leadership on the battlefield
where he acts in a spirit deriving from the realisation that in the
last analysis he himself was one of the oppressed. When he helps
the injured, it becomes clear that he too is to be pitied.

The scene is dependent on mime

The effect of the battlefield scene depends entirely on the scrupu­
lously detailed mime with which Kattrin shows her mounting
anger at her mother's inhumanity. Angelika Hurwicz ran back and
forth like an alarmed hen between the wounded peasants and
Mother Courage. Up to the point when she began to argue, in
gestures, with her mother, she made no attempt to repress the
voluptuous curiosity that horror inspires in infantile persons. She
carried the baby out of the house like a thief; at the end of the
scene she lifted the baby up in the air, prodding it with both hands



Texts by Brecht I Z 5
as though to make it laugh. If her mother's share in the spoils is
the fur coat, hers is the baby.

Kattrin

In the battlefield scene Kattrin threatens to kill her mother because

she refuses the wounded peasants her linen. It is necessary to
show an intelligent Kattrin from the start. (Her infirmity misleads
actors into representing her as dull.) At the beginning she is fresh,
gay and even-tempered - Hurwicz gave her a kind of awkward
charm even in the conversation with her brother in scene 3. True,
the helplessness of her tongue communicates itself to her body;
but it is the war that breaks her, not her infirmity; in technical
terms, the war must find something that remains to be broken.

The whole point is missed if her love of children is depreciated
as mindless animal instinct. Her saving of the city of Halle is an
intelligent act. How else would it be possible to bring out what
must be brought out, namely, that here the most helpless creature
of all is ready to help?

A detail

At the end of the scene Kattrin lifted the baby into the air, while
Courage rolled up the fur coat and threw it into the cart: both
women had their share of the spoils.

Music and pauses

Music played an essential part in the fifth (battlefield) scene.
Victory march: from the start to 'Somebody give me a hand'.
From after 'My arm's gone' to 'I can't give nowt'.
From after' ... happy as a queen in all this misery' to the end of

the scene.

Pauses after:
'Town must of paid him something.'
'Where's that linen?'
'Blood's coming through.' [This line spoken by the chaplain is

deleted from the final text. It followed 'All your victories mean to

me is losses'.]



126 Notes and Variants

6

Prosperity has set in, but Kattrin is disfigured
Mother Courage, grown prosperous, is stocktaking; funeral oration for
the fallen field marshal Tilly. Conversation about the duration of the war;
the chaplain proves that the war is going to go on for a long time. Kattrin
is sent to buy merchandise. Mother Courage declines a proposal of marriage
and insists on firewood. Kattrin is permanently disfigured by some soldiers
and rejects Yvette's red shoes. Mother Courage curses the war.

Overall arrangements
Mother Courage, grown prosperous, is stocktaking; funeral oration for
the fallen field marshal TillY. Courage interrupts her counting of
merchandise to serve brandy to some soldiers who are playing
hooky from the funeral. She virtuously reproves them, declaring
that she feels sorry for generals because the common people don't
give their grandiose plans proper support. Meanwhile she is look­
ing for worms in a tin box. The regimental clerk listens in vain,
hoping to catch her in a subversive utterance.

Conversation about the duration of the tuar ; the chaplain proves that
the war will go on for a long time. The right section of the stage is the
private quarters. To the left are the bar and the guest table at
which the clerk and the chaplain are sitting. There is by-play
between right and left when the drinking soldier sings for Kattrin
and she smiles at him, while Courage, with a bundle of belt buckles
which she is counting, comes over to the table to ask the chaplain­
potboy how long he thinks the war will go on. All through his
cynical comments she stands deep in thought. Should she lay in
new supplies?

Kattrin is sent to buy merchandise. When the chaplain-potboy saysthe war will go on for a long time, Kattrin runs angrily behind the
cart. Courage laughs, brings her back and sends her to the campwith a big basket to buy merchandise. 'Don't let them take nowt,
think of your dowry.'

Mother Courage declines a proposal of marriage and insists on firewood.
Courage has sat down on a stool beside her cart; she fills a pipe



Texts by Brecht 127

and tells the potboy to chop some firewood. He chops clumsily,
complaining that his talents are lying fallow, and, probably with a
view to avoiding physical labour, asks her to marry him. She hints
that she doesn't want to take anybody into her business, and leads
him gently back to the chopping block.

Kattrin is permanent(y disfigured by some soldiers and rejects Yvette's
red shoes. Kattrin staggers in with a basket full of merchandise.

She collapses at the entrance to the tent and Courage has to drag
her over to her stool and dress her wound. Kattrin rejects the
red shoes that her mother brings out to comfort her; they are
now.useless. With silent reproach she crawls into the cart.

Mother Courage curses the war. Slowly Courage brings forward
the new supplies, which Kattrin has defended at such cost, and

gets down on her knees to look them over
in the place where she

was stock-taking at the beginning of the scene. She recognises that
war is a miserable source of income and for the first and last time

curses the war.

Inventory

Again Courage has changed. Increasing prosperity has made
her

softer and more human. Both qualities attract the chaplain and he

proposes to her. For the first time we see
her sitting briefly at rest,

not working.

Funeral oration for Tilly
In the course of many performances it was found that Courage's
funeral oration for the field marshal is more effective if during the

pause, when all are looking to the rear and the funeral march
has

grown loud and solemn, the clerk, who is slightly tipsy,
rises from

his chair and watches Courage closely, suspecting that in this
oration she is ridiculing the field marshal. He sits down again in

disappointment, because Courage has not said anything demon­

strably incriminating.
(The pause during the funeral march must be long;

otherwise

the funeral scene will not produce the right effect.)



128 Notes and Variants

A detail

In the funeral oration for field marshal Tilly ('Can't help feeling
sorry for those generals and emperors') Weigel added - after 'how's
he to know any better?' - 'Jesus Christ, the worms have got into
my biscuits.' While saying this she laughed. Here Mother Courage
releases the merriment which, with the clerk looking on, she was
unable to express in her evasively subversive speech.

Mime

The chaplain's remarks on the longevity of the war must not take
on an independent existence. They are the answer to Courage's
anxious question as to whether she can risk taking in new mer­
chandise. While the chaplain was talking, Weigel mimed Courage's
anxiety and calculations.

A detail

The drunken soldier addresses his song to Kattrin. She smiles at
him. For the last time before she is disfigured the spectator is
reminded that she is capable of love.

A point to consider

Violent occupations lead actors to shout. The actor playing the
chaplain shouted occasionally while chopping wood. The scene
suffered.
[ ... ]

Kattrin

Again sitting huddled on the chest as during the drunken soldier's
song, the injured girl merely touches her forehead gingerly once
or twice to make sure where the wound is; otherwise, except forthe willingness with which she lets herself be bandaged, she gives
no indication of knowing what the scar will mean to her. Protest
is expressed by her lack of interest in Yvette's red shoes and by the
way she crawls into the cart: she blames her mother for what has
happened to her.



Texts by Brecht 12.9

Contradiction

Courage has cursed the war while gathering up the supplies in
defence of which her daughter has been disfigured.

Resuming the stocktaking begun at the start of the scene, she
now counts the new articles.

7

Mother Courage at the peak of her business
career

Mother Courage has corrected her opinion of the war and sings its praises
as a goodprovider.

Overall arrangement

Mother Courage has corrected her opinion of the war and sings its praises
as a good provider. Pulled by Kattrin and the chaplain-potboy, the
cart comes in from the rear and rolls along the footlights. Courage
walks beside them, arguing with them; then, while singing, she
turns to the audience. Pause.

Signs ofprosperity
After some forty performances it seemed to us that in scene 6,
for the stocktaking, Courage should have rings on her fingers and
a chain of silver talers round her neck as a sign of the relative

prosperity she had achieved. But after a few more performances
one of us discovered that this weakened her speech about the

courage of the poor, and we
decided to put the signs of prosperity

in scene 7. Here, where she retracts her condemnation
of war, her

recently acquired signs of prosperity show her up for
what she is:

bribed.
In this short scene Weigel showed Courage in the full possession

of her vitality, as previously only in scene 5 (the battlefield scene);
in scene 5, however, she was gloomy; here she was cheerful.

[ ... ]



130 Notes and Variants

8

Peace threatens to ruin Mother Courage's busi­
ness. Her dashing son performs one heroic deed
too many and comes to a sticky end

Courage and the chaplain hear a tumour that peace has broken out. The
cook reappears. The fight for the feedbag. An old friend who has made
a good thing of the war; PufJing Piet is unmasked. The downfall of Eilif,
Mother Courage's dashing son; he is executed for one of the misdeeds thai
had brought him rewards during the war. The peace comes to an end;
Courage leaves the chaplain and goes on with the cook in the wake of the
Swedish army.

Overall arrangement

Courage and the chaplain hear a rumour that peace has broken out. On
the right stand an old woman and her son who have come from
the city with all sorts of household goods to sell. It is early in the
morning, and Courage, still half asleep, answers sulkily from the
cart left. Then bells are heard from the right, the chaplain crawls
out from under the cart where he has been sleeping and Courage
sticks her head out of the cart. The bells seem to have made the
old woman happy - not so Mother Courage.

The cook reappears. The bells of peace bring all sorts of visitors.
First comes - from the right like the rest - the cook, ragged, with
all his possessions in a bundle. The chaplain is not pleased to see
him, but Courage, who is braiding her hair, runs out to meet him
and shakes his hand heartily. She invites him over to a wooden
bench in front of the cart, while the chaplain goes behind the cart
to put on his clerical garb. Amid the ringing of the bells they sit
there almost like lovers, telling each other about the bankruptcy
that peace has brought them'.

The fightfor thefeedbag. When the chaplain comes back - he stands
in the middle of the stage like a last incisor in a toothless mouth -
the cook begins to demolish him. Courage climbs into her cart
to get her pack ready; she is going to sell the merchandise she
bought when the chaplain promised her a long war. The cook



Texts by Brecht I 3 I

starts unwrapping his feet because he means to stay, and
the

chaplain is obliged to beg him humbly not to drive him
out. The

cook merely shrugs his shoulders.
An old friend who has made a good thing of the war; PujJing Piet

is

unmasked. Another visitor. Fat and asthmatic, walking with the

help of a cane, the Countess Starhemberg, the former camp whore,
enters, clothed in black silk and followed by a servant. She has
dismounted from her carriage to call on Mother Courage. She
catches sight of the cook, known to her as Puffing Piet, and angrily
denounces him to Courage, who has difficulty in preventing her
from attacking him with her cane.

The downfall of Eilif, Mother Courage's dashing son; he is
executedfor

one of the misdeeds that brought him rewards during the
war. When the

women have left, the cook gloomily puts his foot wrappings on

again and the chaplain relishes his triumph. Their
conversation

turns to melancholy recollections of the good old war days. Blown
in by the bells of peace, soldiers with arquebuses bring

in a richly
dressed lieutenant - Eilif. His courage deserts him when he

hears

that his mother is not there. The chaplain gives him a swallow
of brandy and, a clergyman once again, accompanies

him to the

place of execution.
The peace comes to an end; Courage goes on with the cook,

in the wake

of the Swedish army. The cook tries to get Kattrin
to come out of

the cart so he can beg some bread from her. Courage comes

running in, overjoyed. The peace is over. The
cook does not

mention Eilif's death. With the cook's help she packs her belong­
ings into the cart and they go on without the chaplain.

Advance preparation

In her conversation with the chaplain in scene 6 Weigel very care­

fully laid the groundwork for her conversation
with the cook in

scene 8. She said 'Nice fellow that' a little more warmly and

thoughtfully than required by her good-natured
rebuff of the

chaplain. Consequently in scene 8 she had an
audience who knew

what was what. This enabled her to take a dry, matter-of-fact tone
with the cook. Knowing what it knew, the audience could

be

touched as well as amused that the subject of their love dialogue
should be the fact that they were both ruined.



132. Notes and Variants

The dignity of misery
In the cockfight between the chaplain and the cook, Hinz as the
chaplain obtained a powerful and natural effect when, suddenly
throwing all arrogance to the winds, he begged the cook not to
squeeze him out of his place with Courage because, having
become a better man, he could no longer practise the clergyman's
profession. His fear of losing his job lent him a new dignity.

Humiliations

The cook too is capable of enduring humiliations. At the end of
the dialogue in which he triumphs over the chaplain, he removes
his shoes and foot wrappings like a man who has come to the end
and goal of a long peregrination. Yvette finds him barefooted,
which embarrasses the ageing Don Juan. After he has been un­
masked and the chaplain has lectured him, he sorrowfully puts his
footwear back on. The episode in which he begs Kattrin for food
was played brilliantly by Bildt. His bundle slung over his shoulder,
ready to hit the road, he first tapped his stick nonchalantly on the
drum hanging from the cart. Talking into the cart, he uttered the
words 'pork' and 'bread' in the tone of a gourmet and con­
noisseur: the starving cook.

Good business

Yvette Pottier is the only character in the play who strikes it rich;
she has sold herself for a good price. She has been as badly dis­
figured by good food as Kattrin by her scar; she is so fat one has
the impression that eating has become her only passion. She speaks
with the accent of the Austrian aristocracy.
[ ... ]

War the provider
Courage comes back from the village exhausted from running but
overjoyed that the war has started up again. In high spirits she
lets the cook relieve her of her pack. The prospect of good
business will enable her to take the cook in. She speaks light­
heartedly of the possibility of seeing her son again. 'Now there's



Texts by Brecht 133

war again, everything will work out all right' [not
in the final

text]. She is going to ride over his grave.

A detail

While they are packing, Kattrin appears. She sees
the cook staring

at her scar, covers it with her hand and
turns away. She has come

to fear the light.
Again in scene I I, when the soldiers drag

her out of the cart,

she holds her hand over her eye.

9
Times are hard, the war is going badly. On
account of her daughter, she refuses the offer of
a home

The cook has inherited a tavern in Utrecht. Kattrin hears
the cook refuse

to take her along there. The 'Song of the Temptations of
the Great'.

Kattrin decides to spare her mother the need to make
a decision, packs her

bundle and leaves a message. Mother Courage stops Kattrin from running

awt!Y and goes on alone with her.
The cook goes to Utrecht.

Overall arrangement

Times are hard. The cook has inherited a tavern in Utrecht.
In the early

dawn of a stormy winter day Courage and the cook,
both in rags,

bring the cart to a stop outside a parsonage.
The cook morosely

unharnesses himself and admits to Courage that he means to go to

Utrecht where he has inherited a tavern. He asks
her to go with

him. Sitting shivering on the shaft, Courage complains
of the bad

business situation: the war is no longer finding much to feed on.

Kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along there. The cook
inter­

rupts the conversation
between mother and daughter about the

peaceful life in Utrecht, and motions Courage
to step to one side

with him (to the right, in front of the parsonage).
Hidden beside

the cart, Kattrin hears the cook
refuse to take her along.



134 Notes and Variants

The cook and Courage sing the 'Song of the Temptations of the Great'.
While they sing their begging song, Courage desperately thinks
over the cook's offer, presumably her last hope of settling down.

Kattrin decides to spare her mother the need to make a decision, packsher bundle and leaves a message. By the end of the begging song.
Courage has made up her mind to decline the offer. She still goesinto the parsonage with the cook for the sake of the soup. Kattrin
comes in with a bundle and deposits her mother's skirt with the
cook's trousers over it on the cart's shaft.

Mother Courage stops Kattrin from running away and goes on alone with
her. Courage catches Kattrin just as she is about to steal away. She
has brought a dish of soup. Feeding her as one would a child, she
assures her that it has never occurred to her to desert the cart.
She throws the cook's bundle and trousers out of the cart, putsherself and Kattrin in harness and starts off with her (behind the
house, to the right).

The cook goes to Utrecht. The cook sees that the women and cart
are gone. He silently picks up his bundle and sets out on his way,
right rear, to settle down in Utrecht.

The Cook

In this scene the cook must not under any circumstances be
represented as brutal. The tavern he has inherited is too small to
keep three people, and the customers cannot be expected to put upwith the sight of the disfigured Kattrin. That's all there is to it.
Courage does not find his arguments unreasonable. Weigelshowed plainly that Courage thought the proposition over - she
thinks every proposition over. This she did by looking overtowards the cart during the first stanza of the begging song with
an expression compounded of indecision, fear and pity.
[ ... ]

A detail

In this scene, in which her arguments are rather thin, Couragespoke to her daughter as one speaks to a person who is hard of
hearing. Her loud, slow delivery also gives the impression that sheis speaking in the name of the cook as well, but without being atall sure of herself in this.



Texts by Brecht 135

Kattrin's demonstration

In laying out the trousers and skirt
Kattrin tries to leave her

mother a message explaining why she has gone away.
But Hurwicz

also indicated a note of resentment by glancing at the parsonage
where her mother and the cook were presumably eating soup,
then looking at her composition and stifling

an uncanny, malignant

giggle by raising her hand to her
mouth before sneaking away.

A detail

While saying the words 'Don't you go thinking
it's on your ac­

count I gave him the push,' Courage put
a spoonful of soup into

Kattrin's mouth.

[ ... ]

The cook sets out for Utrecht

Scenes of this kind must be fully acted out: Courage and
Kattrin

harness themselves to the cart, push it back a few feet so as
to be

able to circle the parsonage, and then move
off to the right. The

cook comes out, still chewing a piece of bread, sees his belongings,

picks them up and goes off to the
rear with long steps. We see him

disappear. Thus the parting of the ways
is made visible.

10

Still on the road

Mother and daughter hear someone in a peasant
house singing the 'Song

of Home'.

The song in the Munich production

A fine variation used in the Munich production:
the song was

sung with unfeeling, provocative
self-assurance. The arrogant

pride of possession expressed
in the singing turned the listeners

on the road into damned souls.



136 Notes and Variants

Expression not wanted
The two women enter, pulling the cart. They hear the voice from
the peasant house, stop, listen, and start off again. What goes on
in their minds should not be shown; the audience can imagine.

A detail

In one of the later performances Weigel, when starting off again,
tossed her head and shook it like a tired cart horse getting back
to work. It is doubtful whether this gesture can be imitated.

II

Dumb Kattrin saves the city of Halle

A surprise attack is planned on the city of Halle ; soldiers force a young
peasant to show them the way. The peasant and his wife tell Kattrin to
join them in praying for the city. Kattrin climbs up on the barn roof and
beats the drum to awaken the city. Neither the offer to spare her mother
in the city nor the threat to smash the cart can make her stop drumming.
Death of dumb Kattrin.

Oueral! arrangement
A surprise attack is planned on the city of Halle; soldiers force a young
peasant to show them the way. An ensign and two soldiers come to a
farm at night. They drag the peasants, still half asleep, out of the
house and Kattrin out of her cart. By threatening to kill the
peasants' only ox they force the young peasant to serve as their
guide. (They lead him to the rear; the party go out right.)

The peasant and his wife tell Kattrin to join them in praying for the
city. The peasant moves a ladder over to the barn (right), climbs
up and sees that the woods are swarming with armed men He
comes down, he and his wife talk it over and decide not to endanger
themselves by trying to warn the city. The peasant woman goes
over to Kattrin (right front) and tells her to pray God to help the
city. The three of them kneel down and pray.



Texts by Brecht 137

Kattrin climbs up on the barn roof and beats the drum to
awaken the

city. From the peasant woman's prayer
Kattrin learns that the

children in Halle are in danger. Stealthily she takes the drum from

the cart, the same drum she had brought back when she
was dis­

figured. With it she climbs up on the barn
roof. She starts drum­

ming. The peasants try in vain to make
her stop.

Neither the offer to spare her mother in the city nor the
threat to smash

the cart can make her stop drumming. At the sound of the
drum the

ensign and the soldiers come back with
the young peasant. The

soldiers take up a position by the cart and the ensign
threatens the

peasants with his sword.
First one of the soldiers, then the ensign

moves to the centre to make promises to Kattrin. The peasant goes
over to a log (left front) and chops at it with

an axe to drown out

the sound of the drum. Kattrin is victorious
in the noise contest,

the ensign starts to go into the house to set
it on fire, the peasant

woman indicates the cart. One of the soldiers
kicks the young

peasant and forces him to
batter the cart with a plank, the other

soldier is sent off for an arquebus. He sets up the arquebus,
the

ensign orders him to fire.
Kattrin's death. Kattrin falls forward, the drumsticks in

her

drooping hands strike one full beat
followed by a feeble beat; for

a moment the ensign is triumphant, then the
cannon of Halle

responds, taking up the rhythm of Kattrin's
drumbeats.

Bad comedians are always laughing
Bad tragedians are always weeping

In sad scenes just as in comic ones precision must
be combined

with ease; the hand that guides the arrangement must
be both

firm and relaxed. The actors take their positions and form
their

groups in very much the
same way as the marbles

tossed into a

wooden bowl in certain roulette-like children's games
fall into

hollows, with the difference that in the games
it is not decided in

advance which marbles will fall into which hollows,
whereas in

theatrical arrangements there only seems to be no
advance de­

cision. And indeed the reason for the stiffness
or heaviness that is

so characteristic of sad scenes in the
German theatre is that in

tragedy the human body is unjustifiably neglected
and so seems to

be afflicted with muscular cramp. Which is deplorable.



138 Notes and Variants

Kattrin's two fears
Kattrin's dumbness does not save her. The war gives her a drum.
With this unsold drum she must climb up on the barn roof and
save the children of Halle.

Conventional heroism must be avoided. Kattrin is ridden by
two fears: her fear for the city of Halle and her fear for herself.

'The dramatic scene'

Audiences were especially stirred by the drum scene. Some ex­
plained this by saying that it is the most dramatic scene in the
play and that the public likes its theatre dramatic rather than
epic. In reality the epic theatre, while capable of portraying other
things than stirring incidents, clashes, conspiracies, psychological
torments and so on, is also capable of portraying these. Spectators
may identify themselves with Kattrin in this scene; empathy may
give them the happy feeling that they too possess such strength.
But they are not likely to have experienced such empathy through­
out the play - in the first scenes, for example.

Alienation

If the scene is to be saved from a wild excitement amid which
everything worth noticing is lost, close attention must be given
to alienation.

For example: if the conversation of the peasants is swallowed
up by a general hubbub, the audience will be in danger of being'carried away'; then they will fail to take note how the peasants
justify their failure to act, how they fortify each other in the
belief that there is nothing they can do, so that the only remaining
possibility of 'action' becomes prayer.

In view of this, the actors in rehearsal were made to add 'said
the man' or 'said the woman' after each speech. For example:,

"Sentries are bound to spot them first," said the woman.'
,

"Sentry must have been killed," said the man.'
,

"If only there were more of us," said the woman.'
,

"Just you and me and that cripple," said the man.'
,

"Nowt we can do, you'd say ... " said the woman.'
,

"Nowt," said the man,' and so on.



Texts by Brecht 139

Kattrin's drufllming
Kattrin keeps watching what is going on down below.

Conse­

quently her drumming breaks off after the following sentences,

'Jesus Christ, what's she doing?'
'I'll cut you all to ribbons!'

'We got a suggestion could do you some good.'
'With a mug like yours it's not surprising.'
'We must set the farm on fire.'

Detail in tempestuous scenes

Such scenes as the one where the peasant tries to drown
the noise

of Kattrin's drumming by chopping wood must be fully
acted

out. As she drums, Kattrin must look down at the peasant
and

accept the challenge. In tempestuous scenes
the director needs a

certain amount of stubbornness to make miming of this sort last

long enough.

A detail

Hurwicz showed increasing exhaustion while drumming.

The ritual character of despair

The lamentations of the peasant woman, whose son
the soldiers

have taken away and whose farm they threaten
when Kattrin

starts her drumming to wake the townspeople,
must have a certain

routine quality about it; it must suggest a 'set
behaviour pattern'.

The war has been going on too long. Begging, lamenting,
and

informing have frozen into fixed forms: they
are the things you do

when the soldiery arrive.
It is worth forgoing the 'immediate impression' of

a particular,

seemingly unique episode of horror so
as to penetrate a deeper

stratum of horror and to show how repeated, constantly recurring
misfortune has driven people to ritualise their gestures of

self­

defence - though of course these ritual gestures
can never free

them from the reality of fear, which on the stage must permeate
the ritual.

[ ... ]



140 Notes and Variants

12

Mother Courage Moves on

The peasants have to convince Courage that Kattrin is dead. The lullaf?y
for Kattrin. Mother Courage pays for Kattrin's burial and receives the
condolences of the peasants. Alone, Mother Courage harnesses herself to
the empty cart ; still hoping to get back into business, she follows the ragged
army.

Overall arrangement
The peasants have to convince Courage that Kattrin is dead. The cart
is standing on the empty stage. Mother Courage is sitting with
the dead Kattrin's head in her lap. The peasants are standing in a
hostile knot at the dead girl's feet. Courage speaks as if her
daughter were only sleeping, deliberately disregarding the re­
proaches of the peasants who are saying that she is to blame for
Kattrin's death.

The lullaby for Kattrin. The mother's face is bent low over her
daughter's face. Her song fails to pacify the peasants.

Mother Courage pays for Kattrin's burial and receives the condolences
of the peasants. When she realises that her last child is dead, she
rises painfully to her feet and hobbles around the corpse (on the
right) and along the footlights to behind the cart. She comes back
with a sheet of canvas. The peasants ask her if she has no one else;
she answers over her shoulder: ' Aye, one left. Eilif.' And with
her back to the audience she lays the canvas over the body. Then
at the head end of the body she pulls it up over the face and stands
behind the body, facing the audience. The peasant and his son give
her their hands and bow ceremoniously before carrying the body
away (to the right). The woman also gives Courage her hand, goes
to the right and stops again in indecision. The women exchange a
few words, then the peasant woman goes away.

Alone, Mother Courage harnesses herself to her empty cart ; still hoping
to get back into business, she follows the ragged army. Slowly the old
woman goes to the cart, unrolls the cord which Kattrin had until
then been pulling, takes a stick, examines it, pulls the loop of the



Texts by Brecht 141

second cord through, wedges the stick under her arm
and moves

off. The last stanza of the 'Mother Courage Song' has begun as she

is bending down over the shaft. The revolve begins
to turn and

Mother Courage circles the stage once. The curtain
falls as she

turns right rear for the second time.

The peasants

The peasants' attitude towards Courage is hostile.
She has caused

them great difficulties and they will have her on
their hands if she

cannot catch up with the departing army. As they see it,
she is to

blame for what has happened. Besides, she is an unscdentary
element, and now in wartime belongs with the incendiaries,

cut­

throats and looters who follow in the wake of armies.
In condoling

with her by giving her their hands, they are only doing
what is

customary.

The hOI/J

During the whole scene Weigel showed an
almost bestial stupor.

All the more beautiful was her deep bow when the body was

carried away.

The lulla�y

The lullaby must be sung without any sentimentality
or desire to

provoke sentimentality. Otherwise its significance
is lost. The

idea underlying this song is murderous: this
mother's child must

fare better than other children of other mothers. By slight emphasis
on the 'you', Weigel portrayed Courage's

treacherous hope of

bringing her child, and perhaps hers alone, through
the war. To

this child who had lacked even the most ordinary things,
she

promised the most extraordinary.

Paying for the burial

Even in paying for the burial, Weigel gave one
last hint of Cour­

age's character. She fished a few
coins out of her leather bag, put

one back and gave the peasants the
rest. This did not in the least

detract from the overpowering effect of desolation.



142 Notes and Variants

The last stanza
The last stanza of the 'Mother Courage Song' was struck up by
the musicians in the box while Courage was slowly harnessing
herself to the cart. It gives powerful expression to her still un­
shattered hope of getting her cut from the war. It gains in power
if the illusion that the song is being sung by marching armies in
the distance is dropped.
[ ... ]

Timing
At the end as at the beginning the cart must be seen rolling along.Of course the audience would understand if it were simply pulled
away. When it goes on roIling there is a moment of irritation ('this
has been going on long enough'). But when it goes on still longer,
a deeper understanding sets in.

The pulling of the cart in the last scene
For scene 12 the peasants' house and the barn with roof (from
scene I I) were removed from the stage; only the cart and Kattrin's
body remained. The word 'Saxony' in big letters is hoisted into
the flies when the music starts. Thus the cart was hauled off a
completely empty stage recalling scene I. Mother Courage de­
scribed a complete circle with it on the revolving stage, passing
the footlights for the last time. As usual, the stage was brilliantly
lit.

Realist discoveries

In giving the peasants the money for Kattrin's burial, Weigel
quite mechanically puts back one of the coins she has taken out
of her purse. What does this gesture accomplish? It shows that
in all her grief the business woman has not wholly forgotten how
to reckon - money is hard to come by. This little gesture has the
power and suddenness of a discovery - a discovery concerning
human nature, which is moulded by conditions. To dig out the
truth from the rubble of the self-evident, to link the particular
strikingly with the universal, to capture the particular that charac­
terises a general process, that is the art of the realist.



Texts by Brecht 143

A change in the text

After 'I'll manage, there isn't much in it,' Courage added, first
in the Munich, then in the Berlin production: 'I've got to get back
into business.'

Mother Courage learns nothing

In the last scene Weigel's Courage seemed to be eighty years old.
And she understands nothing. She reacts only to remarks con­
nected with the war, such as that she mustn't be left behind, and

takes no notice when the peasants brutally accuse her of being to
blame for Kattrin's death.

In 1938, when the play was written, Courage's inability
to

learn from war's unprofitable character was a prophecy. At the

time of the 1948 Berlin production the wish was expressed that
at

least in the play Courage would understand.
In order that the realism of this play should benefit the spectator,

that is, in order that the spectator should learn something,
the

theatre must work out a way of playing it which does not lead to
audience identification with the principal character (heroine).

To judge by press reviews and statements of spectators,
the

original production in Zurich, for example, though artistically
on a high level, merely pictured war as a natural catastrophe

and

ineluctable fate, confirming the belief of the petit-bourgeois mem­

bers of the audience in their own indestructibility and power to

survive. But even for the equally petit-bourgeois Mother Courage
the decision whether or not to join in was left open throughout the

play. It follows that the production must have represented
Cour­

age's business activity, her desire to get her cut
and her willingness

to take risks, as perfectly natural and 'eternally human' phen­
omena, so that there was no way out. Today the petit-bourgeois
can no longer in fact keep out of the war, as Courage

could have

done. And probably no performance of the play can give
a petit­

bourgeois anything more than a real
horror of war and a certain

insight into the fact that the big business
deals which constitute

war are not made by the little people. A play is more
instructive

than reality, because in it the war situation is
set up experimentally

for the purpose of giving insight; that is, the spectator
assumes the

attitude of a student - provided the production is right. The



I 44 Notes and Variants

proletarians in the audience, the members of a class which really
can take action against war and eliminate it, must be given an
insight - which of course is possible only if the play is performed
in the right way - into the connection between war and commerce:
the proletariat as a class can do away with war by doing away with
capitalism. Here, of course, a good deal depends on the growth of
self-awareness among the proletariat, a process that is going on
both inside and outside the theatre.

The epic elen/ent

As for the epic element in the Deutsches Theater production,
indications of it could be seen in the arrangement, in the deline­
ation of the characters, in the accurate execution of detail, and in
the spirited rhythm of the entire performance. Moreover, the
contradictions that pervade the play were not taken over ready­
made, but worked out, and the parts, visible as such, fitted well
into the whole. Nonetheless, the central aim of the epic theatre
was not achieved. Much was shown, but the element of showing
was absent. Only in a few rehearsals devoted to recasting was it
brought out clearly. Here the actors 'marked', that is, they merely
showed the new members of the cast certain positions and tones,
and the whole took on the wonderfully relaxed, effortless, and
unobtrusive quality that stimulates the spectator to think and feel
for himself.

No one missed this fundamental epic element; and this is
probably why the actors did not dare to provide it.

Concerning these notes
It is to be hoped that the present notes, indicating a few of the
ideas and devices of various kinds that are necessary for the per­
formance of a play, will not make an impression of misplaced
seriousness. It is difficult in writing about these things to convey
the carefree lightness that is essential to the theatre. Even in their
instructive aspect, the arts belong to the realm of entertainment.

[From Mutter Courage und ibre Kinder. Text/Allffiihrung/ .Anmer­
kungen. Henschel-Verlag, East Berlin, 1956.]



Texts by Brecht 145

TWO WAYS OF PLA YING MOTHER COURAGE

When the title role is played in the usual way, so as to communi­
cate empathy, the spectator (according to numerous witnesses)
experiences an extraordinary pleasure: the indestructible vitality
of this woman beset by the hardships of war leaves him with
a sense of triumph. Mother Courage's active participation in the
war is not taken seriously; the war is a source, perhaps her only
source, of livelihood. Apart from this element of participation.
in spite of it, the effect is very much as in 5chweyk, where

- in

a comic perspective, to be sure - the audience triumphs with

Schweyk over the plans of the belligerent powers to sacrifice
him. But in the case of Mother Courage such an effect has far
less social value, precisely because her participation, however
indirect it may seem, is not taken into

consideration. The effect

is indeed negative. Courage is represented chiefly as a mother,
and like Niobe she is unable to protect her children against fate
- in this case, war. At most, her merchant's trade and

the way

she plies it give her a 'realistic, un-ideal' quality; they do not

prevent the war from being seen as fate. It remains, of course,
wholly evil, but after all she comes through it alive, though
deformed. By contrast Weigel, employing a technique which

prevents complete empathy, treated the merchant's trade not as
a natural but as a historical one - that is, belonging to a historical,
transient period - and war as the best time for it. Here too the
war was a self-evident source of livelihood, but this spring from
which Mother Courage drank death was a polluted one. The
merchant-mother became a great living contradiction, and it was
this contradiction which utterly disfigured and deformed her. In
the battlefield scene, which is cut in most productions, she really
was a hyaena; she parted with the shirts because she saw her

daughter'S hatred and feared violence; she cursed at
the soldier

with the coat 'and pounced on him like a tigress. When her

daughter was disfigured, she cursed the war with
the same pro­

found sincerity that characterised her praise of it in
the scene

immediately following. Thus she played the contradictions
in all

their irreconcilable sharpness. Her daughter's rebellion against her

(when the city of Halle is saved) stunned
her completely and

taught her nothing. The tragedy of Mother Courage
and of her

life, which the audience was made to feel deeply, lay in a
terrible



146 Notes and Variants

contradiction which destroyed a human being, a contradiction
which has been transcended, but only by society itself in long and
terrible struggles. What made this way of playing the part morally
superior was that human beings - even the strongest of them -
were shown to be destructible.

[Written 1951. From GW Schriften zum Theater, p. 895. First
published in Tbeaterarbeit, 19 p.]

[MI SFO R TUNE IN ITSELF IS A POO R TEAC HER]
The audience gave off the acrid smell of clothing that had not
been properly cleaned, but this did not detract from the festive
atmosphere. Those who had come to see the play had come from
ruins and would be going back to ruins. There was more light
on the stage than on any square or in any house.

The wise old stage manager from the days of Max Reinhardt
had received me like a king, but what gave the production its
hard realism was a bitter experience shared by all. The dress­
makers in the workshops realised that the costumes had to be
richer at the beginning of the play than at the end. The stage
hands knew how the canvas over Mother Courage's cart had to
be: white and new at the beginning, then dirty and patched, then
somewhat cleaner, but never again really white, and at the end
a rag.

Weigel's way of playing Mother Courage was hard and angry;
that is, her Mother Courage was not angry; she herself, the
actress, was angry. She showed a merchant, a strong crafty woman
who loses her children to the war one after another and still goes
on believing in the profit to be derived from war.

A number of people remarked at the time that Mother Courage
learns nothing from her misery, that even at the end she does not
understand. Few realised that just this was the bitterest and most
meaningful lesson of the play.

Undoubtedly the play was a great success; that is, it made a
big impression. People pointed out Weigel on the street and
said: 'Mother Courage!' But I do not believe, and I did not believe
at the time, that the people of Berlin - or of any other city where
the play was shown - understood the play. They were all con­
vinced that they had learned something from the war; what they



Texts by Brecht 147

failed to grasp was that, in the playwright's view, Mother Courage
was meant to have learned nothing from her war. They did not
see what the playwright was driving at: that war teaches people
nothing.

Misfortune in itself is a poor teacher. Its pupils learn hunger
and thirst, but seldom hunger for truth or thirst for knowledge.
Suffering does not transform a sick man into a physician.

Neither

what he sees from a distance nor what he sees face to face is

enough to turn an eyewitness into an expert.
The audiences of 1949 and the ensuing years did not see

Mother

Courage's crimes, her participation, her
desire to share in the

profits of the war business; they saw only
her failure, her suffer­

ings. And that was their view of Hitler's
war in which they had

participated: it had been a bad war and now they
were suffering.

In short, it was exactly as the playwright had prophesied.
War

would bring them not only suffering, but also the inability
to learn

from it.
The production of Mother Courage and Her Children

is now in

its sixth year. It is certainly a brilliant production,
with great

actors. Undoubtedly something has changed. The play is
no

longer a play that came too late, that is, after
a war. Today a new

war is threatening with all its horrors. No one speaks
of it, but

everyone knows. The masses
are not in favour of war. But life is

so full of hardships. Mightn't war do away with
these? Didn't

people make a very good living in the last war,
at any rate till

just before the end? And aren't there
such things as successful

wars?
I am curious to know how many of those who

see Mother

Courage and Her Children today understand
its warning.

[Written 1954. From GW Schriften zum Theater, p. 1147.]



Editorial Note

The first typescript of Mother Courage, in Brecht's own typing with
its characteristic absence of capital letters, was made in 1939,
though there is also what may be a slightly earlier draft of the
first few pages in verse. Amended by Brecht and by his collaborator
Margarete Steffin, who died in 1941, it was then duplicated for the
Zurich production and again in 1946 by the Kurt Reiss agency in
Basel. This seems to have been the text which Brecht circulated
to some of his friends, and of which one scene was accordingly
published in the Moscow Internationale Lsteratur before the
premiere, while a copy served as the basis for H. R. Hays's first
American translation. Brecht made a few further additions and
alterations to the 1946 version, which was once again duplicated
for the Deutsches Theater production of 1949. Brecht's own copies
of this Deutsches Theater script bear yet more notes and small
amendments, as well as cuts which were disregarded in the pub­
lished version. This appeared as Versuche 9 in 1949, continuing the
grey paperbound series of Brecht's writings which had been inter­
rupted in 1933.

The main shifts of emphasis in the play were indicated by Brecht
in his own notes which followed the first publication of the play
in the Versuche (1949) and have been reprinted in subsequent
editions (pp. 89-92 above). The final versions of these passages,
with the exception of the last (which concludes the play) are to be
found in the additions to the Deutsches Theater typescript. The
change in scene I, says Brecht's diary, was proposed by his assistant
Kuckhahn. In the case of the last scene, the major change took
place subsequently, between the Versuche edition of 1949 and the
reprint of 195 o. It consisted in the insertion of the stage directions
showing Mother Courage first covering her daughter's body, then
handing over money to the peasants who carry it away, and of the
last sentence 'Have to get back in business again'. In previous
versions, too, she was made to join in the refrain of the final song.
Now, presumably, she was too old and exhausted to do more than
pull her cart.



Editorial Notes 149

These changes were, as Brecht said, calculated to bring out

Courage's short-sighted concentration on business and alienate
the audience's sympathies. Thus in scene 1 she now became dis­
tracted by the chance of selling a belt buckle; in scene 5 she no

longer helped the others to make bandages of her expensive
shirts; while in scene 7 she was shown prospering (her lines up
to 'Them as does are the first to go' were new, while the scene
title 'Mother Courage at the peak of her business career' and the
silver necklace of the stage direction were added after the 1949

edition). Besides these, however, Brecht made earlier alterations
to two of the main characters - the cook and the camp prostitute
Yvette - and to virtually all the songs, whose independent role
in the play became considerably strengthened as a result. Scene 8
seems to have called for repeated amendment, thanks partly to
Brecht's uncertainty about the Yvette-cook relationship, which in
turn depended on the choice of song for scene 3, where it is first

expressed. Another confusion which has perhaps left its
mark on

the final text concerns religion: the first typescript gave the chap­
lain the Catholic title of 'Kaplan' throughout, putting Courage
initially in the Catholic camp, which the Lutherans then

overran

in scene 3. Though Brecht corrected this on the script, to conform
with the rest of the story, the religious antagonism emerges none
too clearly even in the final version.

Brecht's first typescript also numbered the scenes rather dif­

ferently, so as to run from I to 11, omitting the present
scenes

7 and 10. He altered this to make 9 scenes,
a division which he

retained in the 1946 script, writing the original scene titles, to

correspond with it, very nearly in their present form. 'The Story'
(pp. 93-95. above) refers to this numbering, as also

does a note

attached to the typescript:

The minor parts can easily be divided among a small number
of actors. For instance the sergeant in scene I can also play the
wounded peasant in scene 5 and the young

man in scene 7 [8];
the general in scene 2 can be the clerk in scene 4

and the old

peasant in scene 9 [I 1], and so on. Moreover
the soldier in

scene 3, the young soldier in scene 4
and the ensign in scene 9 [ I I]

can be performed by the same actor without alteration of
make­

up.



150 Notes and Variants

5eltings and costumes

High road with a Swedish city in the background/Inside the
general's tent/Camp/Outside an officer's tent/In a bombarded
village/In a canteen tent during rain/In the woods outside a
city/Outside a parsonage in the winter/Near a thatched peasant
dwelling.

The chief item of scenery consists in Courage's cart, from
which one must be able to deduce her current financial situation.
The brief scenes on the high road which are appended to
scenes 6 and 8 [now scenes 7 and 10] can be played in front of
the curtain.

So far as the costumes are concerned, care must be taken to
avoid the brand-new elegance common in historical plays. They
must show the poverty involved in a long war.

The following scene-by-scene resume of the changes follows the
same numbering, the present scene numbers being given in square
brackets.

2. [2]
The cook's original name 'Feilinger' is amended to 'Lamb' on the
first typescript. The general's reference to the king and Eilif's
reply were added to this; the general's following 'You've got
something in common already' was an afterthought added on the
Deutsches Theater script (according to Manfred Wekwerth it was
meant to refer to the enthusiasm with which Eilif drank). Eilif's
'dancing a war dance with his sabre' was penned by Brecht on the 1946
script.

The song itself is taken over from Brecht's first collection of
poems, Die Hauspostille (1927), and derives originally from the
verse at the end of Kipling's short story Love 0' Women, itself taken
from the song of the Girl and the Soldier in the story My Great and
Only.

1. [I]
In Brecht's first typescript the family arrive to the sound of a
piano-accordion, not a Jew's harp, and there are some minor
differences in the Mother Courage song.



Editorial Notes 151

3· [3]
The three sub-scenes (divided by the passage of time) are num­
bered 3, 3a and 3b, of which only the first has a title. Yvette
originally was Jessie Potter, amended on the first typescript to

Jeannette Pottier; she had become Yvette by 1946. The scene
started with Mother Courage's remark to Swiss Cheese 'Here's

your woollies,' everything to do with the armourer being added
to the first typescript (p. 21).

Instead of the 'Song of Fraternisation', Jessie 'sings the song of
Surabaya-Johnny' (from Happy End), immediately after the words
'Then I'll tell you, get it off my chest', Courage having just said

'Just don't start in on your Johnny'. The text of this song is
not

reproduced in the typescript, but a first version of Johnny's
description is inserted, with Jeannette 'growing up on Batavia'
and the man being a 'ship's cook, blond, a Swede, but skinny'. In

pen, Batavia is changed to Flanders, ship's cook to army
cook and

Swede to Dutchman. A 'Song of Pipe-and-Drum Henny' is added,
which is a slightly adapted version of 'Surabaya-Johnny' in three
verses (the refrain appears only in the 1946 script). In the text of
this song, which still fits the Weill music, Burma is

amended to

Utrecht and the fish market (in 'You were something to do with
the fish market I And nothing to do with the army') to a tulip
market. Besides the beginning ('When I was only sixteen') the
second quatrain of the second verse was absorbed in the 'Song of
Fraternisation', which is substituted in Brecht's amended copy of

the 1946 script. This also adds that the Cook was called 'Pipe­
Henny' because he never took his pipe out of his mouth when

he

was on the job.
Some light on the camp prostitute's vary ages is cast by her

ensuing remark about her failure to run him to earth.
In the first

typescript it happened 'twenty years ago', in the 1946 and
Deutches

Theater scripts 'ten years ago', before being reduced to the present
'five' some time between 1949 and 1953.

The chaplain's 'Song of the Hours' is adapted from a seven­

teenth-century hymn by Michael Weisse. It occurs for the first
time

in the Deutsches Theater script, where it consists of seven verses

only and is sung before the curtain to introduce
sub-scene 3 b, it

was cut before the premiere. In Mother Courage's subsequent
speech on corruptibility (p. 40) there is a

section which was cut



152 Notes and Variants

in this script but is of interest for its anticipation of The Caucasian
Chalk Circle:

I used to know a judge in Franconia who was so out for money,
even small sums from poor people, that he was universally
regarded as a good man right up into Saxony, and that's some
way. People talked about him as if he were a saint, he'd listen
to everybody, he was tough about the amount - wouldn't let
anyone say they were penniless if they had anything - widow or
profiteer, he treated them all alike, all of them had to give.

4· [4]
The young soldier was originally complaining about the delay
in getting his basic pay. Brecht's amendments to his typescript
introduced the idea of a special reward, as well as giving Mother
Courage more to say. The song was called 'The Song of Waiting'
in this typescript and was amended at every stage, first and fore­
most by adding the (spoken) parentheses.

5· [J]
See p. 90 above. The cry 'Pshagreff!' - Polish Psia Krew (blood
of a dog) - near the end was simply 'Stop!' until after the 1949
edition.

6. [6]
This scene appeared in the Moscow monthly Internationale Literatur
(then edited by J. R. Becher), No. 12, 1940. Courage's speech
beginning 'Let's see your money!' was very much longer there,
as also in the first two scripts. The drunken soldier and his song
were additions to the first typescript; Courage's suggestion that
he may have been responsible for the attack on Kattrin being
an addition to the 1946 script. In lnternationale Literatur and prior
to the Deutsches Theater version Kattrin accepts the red shoes
at the end of the scene and 'sets about her work; she has calmed
down'.



Editorial Notes 1 5 3

6a. [7]
See p. 92 above.

7. [8]
This scene (Eilif's death) is the most heavily amended, partly in
order to get the confrontation of the cook and Yvette straight.
Originally, on the first typescript, she denounces him as 'That's

Surabaya-Johnny', which prompts Courage to hum the refrain
of the song. Courage previously has a song of her own, following
the chaplain's 'Off war, in other words. Aha!' (p. 65), which she
introduces by the lines:

If the Emperor's on top now, what with King of Sweden being
dead, all it'll mean is that taxes go to the Emperor. Ever seen

a

water wheel? Mills have them. I'm going to sing you a song
about one of them water wheels, a parable featuring the great.
(She sings the Song of the Water Wheel)

- a song to Eisler's music which
is to be found in Brecht's The

Round Heads and the Pointed Heads. It was omitted from the 1946
script.

8. [9]
The fourth (St. Martin) verse of the 'Solomon Song' (itself

of

course partly taken over from the Threepenny Opera)
made its

appearance in the 1946 script. The cook's tavern
was originally

in Uppsala, amended when he became a Dutchman.

8a. [10]
The scene was originally un-numbered. The title was added

be­

tween the 1949 and 195 3 Versucbe
editions.

9. [II]
The date of the title was at first March 1635 and the threatened

town Havelberg. The only change of any substance took place



154 Notes and Variants

after the peasant's 'Suppose we got one of the trunks and poked
her off ... ', where in all three scripts the soldiers proceeded to
fetch one and actually tried to dislodge Kattrin with it. This was
deleted on Brecht's Deutsches Theater script, which incidentally
bears marks showing exactly where the drumbeats should fall.

He gets his uniform and rations
The regiment gives him his pay.
The rest defeats our comprehension
Tomorrow is another day.

9a. [I2]
See p. 92. On the first typescript lines 5-7 of the song originally
read

before Brecht amended them to read as now .

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