JOURNEY'S END BY R.C SHERRIFF

To what extent does R.C Sherriff's play “Journey's End” conform to the convention of tragedy?

To what extent does R.C Sherriff's play “Journey's End” conform to the convention of tragedy?

Introduction

Robert Cedric Sherriff was born on June 6, 1896, at Kingston-on-Thames, near London. His father, Herbert Hankin Sherriff, worked for the Sun Insurance Company; his mother was Constance Winder Sherriff. Robert grew up in Kingston-on-Thames, where he attended the local grammar school. He graduated at age seventeen, after which he followed his father into the insurance business, but his career was interrupted after nine months by the outbreak of World War I. Sherriff volunteered for service and became a second lieutenant in the Ninth East Surrey Regiment. He was wounded so severely at Ypres (where four-fifths of the original British Expeditionary Force died) that he was hospitalized for six months. At war's end he was mustered out as a captain (Darlington, 1999, pp. 493).

Back in civilian life, Sherriff returned to the Sun Insurance Company, where he worked for the next ten years as a claims adjuster. For recreation, he joined the Kingston rowing club, and to raise funds for the organization, he and some fellow members wrote and produced plays. Sherriff took to playwriting with zeal and studied William Archer's Play-Making (1912) so thoroughly that he claimed to have memorized it. In addition, he began to read modern plays systematically and commuted to London to see the latest productions. Returning home on the train, he sometimes developed dialogue for a play he had in mind.

After writing plays for six years for amateur productions, Sherriff turned to a more serious project: a drama based upon his firsthand knowledge of trench warfare. His parents had saved the letters he had written to them from the trenches, and these helped him revive the immediacy of the experience, its realistic details, and his friendships and feelings at the time. Throughout 1928 he worked alone on the play. Gradually the drama, at first called “Suspense” and then “Waiting,” took final shape as Journey's End (Darlington, 1999, pp. 494).

Discussion

Realizing that the play “Journey's End” was not the stuff of amateur theatricals, Sherriff sent it to the Curtis Brown theatrical agency. Impressed but unable to see the play's commercial possibilities, Brown sent it on to Geoffrey Dearmer at the Incorporated Stage Society. Dearmer advised Sherriff to send a copy to George Bernard Shaw, who sent it back with the comment that it was “a document, not a drama,” and that as a slice of “horribly abnormal life” it should be “performed by all means, even at the disadvantage of being the newspaper of the day before yesterday.” Even so, all the London theatrical managements rejected Journey's End; they were strongly opposed to war plays, and this one lacked all the standard ingredients for a popular success. It had no leading lady, no romance, and no conventional heroics, and all the action took place offstage. Though this was the author's seventh play, the first six were ...