by Si Chen
The Dance of Death is a play written by Wystan Hugh Auden and directed and produced by Rupert Doone, making its debut as part of the Group Theatre’s first season to general audiences in the London Westminster Theatre in 1933. It is a musical propaganda play, depicting the psychological collapse and decay of the modern bourgeoisie, the social order made up of citizens in the middle class.
The term was coined by Karl Marx, the forefather of Marxism, whose ideas served as the basis of communism and socialism. Interestingly, at the end of the play, it is written that Karl Marx himself is a character who appears, to the tune of Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn, just to watch the main character (the dancer) abruptly pass away on the spot.
This copy of the book is a version bound in its original black cloth cover with gilded lettering on its spine, and based on observation, it was likely manually hand-printed with a press, as there are discrepancies such as smudges in the inked words.
Interestingly, there is a handwritten message behind the front cover quoting, “This copy was shown to Rupert Doone, the producer of the original, who declared that these annotations bore no relation to his original production.” This note is dated on 13 October 1958, and is signed by B. C. Bloomfield, which is a clue to one of this book’s previous owners.
Researching deeper on his name brings up that he authored A Directory of Rare and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland for the Rare Books Group of the Library Association of Ireland. It also further explains why he would have had access to this book and was able to communicate directly with the original producer, Doone, as well.
Other notes that allude to the book having passed through many owners are three more names signed in varying degrees of legibility, one that might be a John Harreis, G. F. Palmer, and lastly Geoffrey Tillotson. The book also shows annotations that could indicate the prices the owners paid to buy this book for their collections.
The pages of the play script are filled with numerous short annotations, seemingly director’s notes and edits on stage directions. Some examples include instructions indicating when different parts of the chorus (men, women, all) should sing (Fig 3), and he also cancelled off certain side characters and rewrote their lines for other casts.
A possible reason why this previous owner would have done this was because he could have been a play director with a limited cast, and further inspection of the top of the pages show an indent in the paper, most likely from being pressed by a pen’s clip. Seeing this, we can imagine a busy director running around the stage, instructing his cast members with a pen clipped onto his script for quick annotations and changes.