Violence in 'Serjeant Musgrave's Dance': A Study in Tragic Antitheses

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Serjeant Musgrave's Dance is largely an exploration of the place of violence in society and our varying responses to it. Although the setting of the play is nineteenth-century England, the contemporary relevance of Arden's theme is obvious as increasingly in our twentieth-century society violence is becoming accepted as an inescapable mode of political expression…. Arden is very much aware of the dilemma facing many thoughtful and morally responsible persons in a liberal society [who recognize the need for change but are unwilling to accept the means and ends of violence]…. It is with this dilemma and the consequences of the tragic antitheses of our responses to the social challenge that Arden is primarily concerned.

The moral-political question is given sharpest focus and most acute and challenging dramatic expression through Serjeant Musgrave, a zealot so convinced of the absolute rightness of his cause that he is willing to adopt horrifying means to achieve his goal, and so unswerving and single-minded in his devotion to his avowed purpose that he refuses to be distracted by any consideration not immediately relevant. (p. 437)

Arden does more than set out the problem, though he offers no happy resolution. The critics who regard the author's refusal to make a simple, obvious commitment as evidence of inconsistency or irresolution, or admirable detachment, seem to miss or underemphasize what there is of affirmation and hope in the play…. [To] imply that Arden takes no position, that the actions do not take place within a system of stated or implied values, that Arden's view of his characters and situations is "unflinchingly amoral," is to make the play virtually though perhaps unintentionally an absurdist play, and to deprive it of its dramatic and moral force…. It is true that to achieve greater dramatic effectiveness and to explore more comprehensively and enable the audience to consider more critically the central issues, Arden tries to maintain in his play and transfer to his audience a high degree of objectivity. The songs which he intrudes successfully into the play and other non-naturalistic devices, derived largely from Brecht and perhaps Behan, are designed to make the audience aware that we are watching a play. Like the distancing in time of the contemporary episodes that provide the kernel of the plot, these devices help us achieve the psychic distance the better to enable us to avoid the kind of early commitment that would close our minds to points of view other than those we immediately sympathize with. But objectivity does not mean continuing detachment from the issues being dramatically unfolded. The fact that we must not identify does not mean that we do not sympathize, and the fact that we achieve a measure of objectivity does not mean that Arden does not have values to which he expects us to respond positively…. Arden's sympathies and the values to which they are attached emerge clearly in the several conflicts that constitute the action of the drama. His realization of the inconsistencies and limitations in the points of view of his characters compels him, however, to check and qualify any tendency to over-simplify responses and prevents him from offering any dogmatic or even firmly conceived resolutions to the issues. The play is complicated perhaps unduly because Arden tries to convey too fully the inter-connected patterns of violence in our society as he explores the divergent elements in the conflicting groups, each with its own needs and responses. (pp. 438-40)

Complicating the plot in which we have a conflict within the town between the Establishment and the workers, and a conflict between the group of army deserters and their society that accepts and uses violence as a way of life, there is an overlapping conflict that embraces both, a conflict between the townspeople and the soldiers—that is, between the 'insiders,' the settled inhabitants, and the 'outsiders' who come into their midst and are regarded with mistrust. (p. 442)

Underlying these conflicts which are provoked by social conditions is yet another conflict, perhaps even deeper in its implications and more universal, the encounter that Richard Gilman in an excellent study of Arden's plays [see CLC, Vol. 6] has termed "the confrontation of a deadly impulse towards purity … and the impure, flawed, capricious, and uncodifiable nature of reality beneath our schemes for organizing it."… To be fully understood and fairly judged, [this position, exemplified in the figure of Musgrave,] must be examined in the light of the opposition between his viewpoint, that of the 'purist' or 'prophet', abstract though passionately dedicated, sacrificing and self-sacrificing, and that of Mrs. Hitchcock…. It is the antagonism that sets duty, discipline and order, the values of the soldier, which here are virtues because they are intended to destroy violence, against the humane, less heroic attitude that cherishes tolerance, tenderness, love and life. (p. 444)

[At the end of the play] when the Dragoons enter, Musgrave, who was, according to Arden, "temporarily at a loss," suddenly seizes the machine-gun and covers the Dragoons, in effect commanding the situation. At this point the Bargee seizes a rifle and sticks it into Musgrave's back, commanding him to put his hands up. But as Arden carefully points out in the following stage direction, "Musgrave is pushed forward by the rifle, but he does not obey." Musgrave knows that surrender means conviction and death, and holding the Gatling gun he can still act violently, but he does not do so. Instead he submits quietly to the trooper when called on by him to surrender. In a sense Musgrave fails in his immediate mission because of his inner division, this scruple which holds him back. In another sense he fails because his view of life is too constricted: he does not realize that the common man from whom his support must come, cannot kill in cold blood for a more or less abstract principle, even when that principle is made visible by the dangling skeleton of a fellow-townsman; and he does not recognize that the particular plight of the colliers is more immediate and pressing to them than the long-range though probably more important ideal of non-violence. In part, too, Musgrave fails because his single-minded and narrow-minded, though righteous, obsession leaves no room for still other human qualities, and needs, and for the element of chance, the unpredictable in life. He is austere, Puritanical, in his divine service in which love and joy have no place. In his vision of life, all must be orderly, duty and obedience paramount, as on the parade ground. But life is not like that. There is spontaneity and irregularity, individuality, growth, crossing of lines, and there must be tolerance for error, mercy, forgiveness, a place for love and life. These aspects of human experience are brought out by Mrs. Hitchcock, who comes closest to expressing what appear to be Arden's outlook and positive values. (p. 447)

But Arden refuses to regard the Musgrave position, terrible as it is in its acceptance of violence, as evil or even meaningless. Though Musgrave's militancy involves a limited vision and brings death, since it is in a good cause the ultimate consequence is martyrdom, which has a positive outcome. Mrs. Hitchcock, knowing the townspeople, and understanding and sympathizing with Musgrave, comforts him. The joint dance of the oppressors and the oppressed, the anti-dance of God's Word, she assures him, is "not a dance of joy. Those men are hungry, so they've got no time for you. One day they'll be full, though, and the Dragoons'll be gone, and then they'll remember." The importance of remembering is stressed throughout the play. Though Musgrave is doubtful about Mrs. Hitchcock's reassurance, he drinks from the glass which she puts to his lips, an act which, seen in the light of his refusal to drink from it at the beginning of the scene, must now be regarded as an act of acceptance and reconciliation, a sharing of her hope, a partaking in a ritual of fellowship. This symbolic affirmation or rather suggestion of the possibility of salvation through sacrifice, for it is not much more than a suggestion, is reasserted in Attercliffe's song which ends the play.

             For the apple holds a seed will grow
             In live and lengthy joy
             To raise a flourishing tree of fruit
             For ever and a day.

The symbol of the apple and its seed, which suggest continuing life, reinforces the theme that even though violence may be inescapable and must have its place for the present at least, love, too, must be recognized and have its place, and though death is present, life is paramount and ultimately will prevail. (p. 449)

The symbol of the apple and its seed suggests more. Ideas and visions and heroic deeds of martyrdom are also seeds. This hopeful reminder, though put in the form of a question, closes the play, as Attercliffe, after his song, says, "They're going to hang us up a length higher nor most apple-trees grow, Serjeant. D'you reckon we can start an orchard?" Up till this concluding scene the answer would have had to be a clear 'no,' but by the end, a tentative 'yes' is possible. (p. 450)

In some respects Serjeant Musgrave's Dance can be seen in terms of the theatre of the absurd. The need for action and the seeming futility of action, with more death the only apparent consequence of action; the way in which the end of the play seems to bring us around again to the beginning, with the present situation basically unchanged; and the ironical comment provided by the linked dance of the miners, mine-owner, clergyman and constable, all convey a sense of the absurdity of the human scene. Above all, the role of the Bargee, Joe Bludgeon, reinforces this element of the absurd…. [Insofar] as the Bargee acts as a Chorus, an Everyman, commenting on the crisis action that follows, Arden seems to heighten this element of the absurd in life. But even this interpretation has limited validity if we use it to identify Serjeant Musgrave's Dance as an absurdist play. In the first place, even the Bargee, repulsive figure that he is made out to be, is not entirely a negative force. He helps us to see the empty pomposity of the Establishment figures and by his pantomimic gestures and ironic echoes deflates and at the same time alerts us to the dangers of the dogmatic absolutism of zealots like Musgrave…. Furthermore, the Bargee represents only one aspect of Everyman. Mrs. Hitchcock, standing outside the conflicting forces and commenting on them in recognizable human and humane terms, sounds the closing note with her affirmative, reassuring statement.

Arden, then, very much aware of the complex factors that make up the contemporary scene with all its brutalities and inequities, has no easy answer. On the surface at least, at the end of the play, social conditions remain unchanged. But Arden is reluctant to end on so pessimistic and hopeless a note. He is aware of the possibility of change. He acknowledges the role that increasingly enlightened and bold leaders like Walsh might play, and more important, he reminds us that the dramatic martyrdom of a dedicated hero like Musgrave may have incalculable significance. Though Arden's complex exploration of the place of violence in life and the various responses to it is not encouraging, his vision certainly is not bereft of hope. The ground on which the seeds fall, life, is not barren, and the seeds, slow though the process may be, will fructify. (pp. 450-52)

M. W. Steinberg, "Violence in 'Serjeant Musgrave's Dance': A Study in Tragic Antitheses," in The Dalhousie Review, Vol. 57, No. 3, Autumn, 1977, pp. 437-52.

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