![Item #324388 Circle of Chalk. (Written and produced probably in the 13th or 14th century A.D.) [Caption title]. Brecht Source, Ethel van der Veer.](https://jamescumminsbookseller.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/324388.jpg?auto=webp&v=1644349716)
Circle of Chalk. (Written and produced probably in the 13th or 14th century A.D.) [Caption title].
[n.d., ca. 1930s?].
Duplicated typescript, printed rectos only. Prologue and 4 acts, paginated individually. 6, 20, 17, 9, 12 pp. 1 vols. 4to. Metal brads. Toned, some light inking of a few pages Item #324388
My station in life
Is that of a clerk.
But privately
There are two things I love
Surpassingly:
Good wine
And the women
Of other men.
Acting script of the Ethel van der Veer translation of a Chinese play, Circle of Chalk, which tells a tale of disputed inheritance, discord, and murder in the tenth century C.E.
The play was first popularized in the west through a German translation by Klabund (Alfred Henschke) produced in Berlin in 1925, and also produced in London from a script by James Laver, with Anna May Wong as the heroine. Independent of these productions, Ethel van der Veer’s translation was published in 1933.
The Circle of Chalk must be counted as a key source for Bertholt Brecht’s postwar drama, Die Kaukasische Kreidekreis. The present text is uncredited but follows the van der Veer, with the frequent addition of stage directions, many of which now seem “Brechtian” in the way characters turn to face and often directly address the audience.
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