CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

The son of Thomas Godfrey Osborne, a commmercial artist, and Nellie Beatrice, a Bar-
maid, John Osborne was born in 1929 in a london suburb.Thomas Godfrey Osborne died when
the boy John was hardly twelve and when World war 2 was gaining still greater momentum.. The
boy spent the remainingyears of the war with his mother in london and was thereafter sent to
boarding school in the west of his Eng and where he waas far from happy. He left schoolin
1949,and that was the end of his education. Having gotinterested in the theatre, John Osborne
tried his talent for acting, making his debut at the Empire Theatre in Sheffield in a play calle No
Room at the Inn. Soon he became an acter cum mannager-cum playwright. He first wrote two
plays in collaboration with others The Devil Inside Him in collaboration with Stella Linden, and
Personal Enemy in collaboration with AntonyCreighton. The first of these plays was produced
in 1950, and the second in 1955. With Antony Creighton, he afterwards collaborate again in the
writing of Emitaph for George Dillon, a play which has been quite popular on the stage ever
since.

It was with the play Look Back in Anger that Osborne made his reeputatioon as a
dramatist. Osborne was twenty-six when he wrote this play and submitted it to the English stage
company which had newly been set up at the RoyalCourt Theatre and which decided to stage the
play as its first by a new author. It was a happy decision by the English stage company.Surely,
the play did not immediately establish itself as a hit, but soon its author was recognized as a
promising dramtist.Osborne continued his career as an actor-cum-dramatist. He appeared an as
actor in Don Juan, in The Death ofSatan, Cards of Identity, and in The Good Woman of setznan.
Theplays he wrote during the ten years following the 'first production of Look Back In Anger
included The Entertainer,The World of Paul Slickey,Luther, and Inadmissible Evidence, besides
some for television.

Osborne therefter produced more work which received approbation and applause, and he
gained considerable popularty as a playwright.Because of Look Back in Anger and some other
plays, he become widely known as an 'angry young man'. In fact, the night of Look Back in
Anger at the Royal court Theatre on the 8th May,1956 was regarded by most as a turning-point
in English theatre. And it is recognized by most that Osborne made a profound impact on his
own generation and that his own success made possible the production of work by other young
dramatists. Osborne has been the recipient of a number of awards and distinctions. He has also
made his mark as a writer of film script, some of his own plays having been made into films too.

John Osborne is a much-married man. His first marriage, to actress Pamela Elizabeth, in
1951was dissolved in 1957, and he married, in the same year, another actress, Mary Ure. His
second marriage was dissplved in 1963, and in the same year he married Penelope Gilliatt, who
was a journalist.The third marriage ended in 1968 he married for the fourth time, the bride this
time being a girl called Jill Bennett. Osborne came to be konwn as the 'angry young man'. This
lable was both his good fortune and misfortune. The play marked the beginning of the new
drama and it become a taking point in a way that had no precedent. But the author's misfortune
consisted in the fact that he could not afterwards grow out of the lable or could not atleast
convince the public that he had done so.

Osborne, however, continued to develop right from the firstnproduction of Look Back in
Anger on the London stage on the 8th may, 1956. That date marked his first apperance as a
dramatist in the London theatre, though his two earlier plays (The Devil Inside Him and Personal
Enemy ), written in collaboration, had been produced out of town, the first in Huddersfield
in1950 and the second in Harrogate in 1955. The Devil Inside Him (written in collabration with
Stella Linden) is a strange melodrama about a Welsh youth whom the villagers think to be an
idiot and his relations think to be a sex-maniac because he writes poetry; his talant are
recognized by a visiting medical student but meanwhile he is constrained to kill a local girl who
attacks his ideas of beauty by trying to pass him off as the father of her child.

Personal Enemy (written in collaboration with Antony Creighton) concers the reaction of
a soldier's relatives and friends when he refuses to be repatriatednfrom his capacity in Korea.
This play suffered at the time from wholesalen deletions demanded by the Lord Chamberlain,
including a whole homosexual strand in the plot. Osborne was just twenty-six when Look Back
in Anger was produced, and he was considered something of a juvenile prodigy. The play had
been quite simply sent by him through the post to the newly established English stage company,
a group idealistically devoted to new theatrical writing, and was their first new whole critical
opinion was favorable. The reviewers were agreed on one point: that Osborn's was a distinctive
new voice. Soon the hero of Look Back in Anger become a kind of folk-hero for a young
generation puzzled by the Hungarian revolution, unhappy about Britan's last imperialist fling at
Suez, and determined to protest against the hydrogen bomb and about all sorts ofpolitical and
social questions.

The play become the centre of alot of soleman theorizing about the 'angry young
woman' and his place in society. More important, the success of the play ensured the survival of
the enterprising company which had staged it (the English stage company), and kept the Royal
Court Theatre (when it was staged ) open as a platform for young writers with something new to
say. Epitaph for George Dillon, (1957),written by Osbornecollaboration with Antony
Creighton,was technicallly similar to otherLook Back in Anger, though it managed to give more
of a fair hearing to other points of view besides that of the unsuccessful writer-hero. But with
The Entertainer (1957), Osborne broke away from realisem, to encase the story of a run-down of
comedian’s relatioms with his family, quite relistically told, in a frame-work of fantastiv music-
hall numbers which generalized the personal drama into some sort of allegory of the state of
Britain in decline. In other words, this places a realistically treated story of a failed comedian in
a nin-ralistic context of allegorically signigicant sketches and numbers. The play reflects on the
present state of Britain and relates Archy Rice’s personal emotional failure to a wider loss of
nerve and purpose. Incidintally, the play marked the first important marriage of the old theatre
and the new because Sir Laurence Oliver played the lead in its first production.

A similar use of an ‘en-distancing ‘ frame work was witnessed in the televition play A
Subject of Scandal and Concern (1960), about Jacob Holyoak, the last man to be tried and
imprisoned for blasphemy in England,which suggested some influence Brect, and the idea was
confirmed by Luther (1961), an epic drama very much lines of Brecht’s Galileo. Even here,
though it was noticeable that Luther made a hero very much in line with Osborne’s own invented
heroes, a Renaissance angry man railing against the way things were and most effective when
given the stage to himself to deliver sermon, the usual thrust-and-parry of historical drama, even
as defined by Brecht, is virtually non-existent in Luther.

Though all these play achieved considerable success, Osborne still seemed in them to be
looking for a style which would enable him to move beyondthe subjective out-pouring of Look
Back in Angry towards a broader, more objective statement. But curously enough it was a more
completely subjective approach to drama than anywhere else in his work which brought his next
major success, and in the opinion of many critic his best play, In admissible Evidence (1964).
Critical reception was strongly mixed: some detested the play and the play the central character,
but most recognized Osborne as an important new talent and the play as emotionally powerful.
They also recognized the play as one that fervently spoke of the concerns of the young in post
was England. The first production of Look Back in Anger was not initially financially successful,
although after an excerpt was shown on BBC the box office was overwhelmed. Osborne was
published as the ‘Angry Young Man,’ and the success of the Look Back in Anger opened the
doors young writer who dealt with contemporary problems.

John James Osborne father Thomas God fry Osborne, was then a commercial artist and copy
writer: his mother, Nellie Beatrice Grove Osborne, worked as a barmaid in pubs most of her life.
Much of Osborne’s childhood was spent in near poverty, and he suffered from frequently
extended illnesses. He deeply affected by his father’s death from tuberculosis in 1941, and also
remembered vividly the air raids and general excitement of war. Osborne attended state schools
until the age of twelve, when he was awarded a scholar ship to attend a minor private school, St.
Michael’s college, in Barn staple, Devon. He was expelled at the age of sixteen after the
headmaster slapped Osborne’s face and Osborne hit him back. After spending some time at
home he took a serious of jobs writing copy for various trade journals. He became interested in
theatre while working as a tutor for children touring with a repertory company. After an
education inspector found him to be uncertified as a teacher, Osborne was relieved of those
duties, but invited to stay with the company as assistant stage manager and eventually as an
actor. He made his stage debut in March 1948, in sheffield and for the next seven years made
the rounds of provincial repertory theatre as an actor.

Osborne’s playwriting career began while he was still an actor. He wrote five plays before the
production of Look Back in Anger made him an overnight success. The Devil inside Him. Co-
authored whit Stella Linden, was produced in Harrogate in 1950 personal Enemy, co-authored
with Anthon Creighton, was produced in Harrogate in 1955 and Epitaph for George Dillon, also
written with Creighton, was later produced in 1958 by the English stage company and has been
published. The real breakthrough came when Look Back in Anger was staged in 1956 as the
thired production of the newly formed English stage company at the Royal Court Theatre. Look
Back in Anger was the first play Osborne had written alone. He had submitted copies of the
script to every agent in London and many West End producers and had been rejected by all.
After the success of Look Back in Anger, Osborne continued to have a highly successful career
as playwright. His next play, The Entertainer, was written Laurence Oliver in mind for the
central character, Archie Rice. It was produced by the English stage company in April 1957 with
Oliver giving what has been widely considered to be one of his finest performance. Both Look
Back in Anger and The Entertainer were adapted for film.

Following The Entertainer, Osborne continued to have a productive career, writing

seventeen more stage plays, eleven plays for television, five screen plays (including Tom Jones,
for which he received an Academy Award), and four book, including two volumes of
autobiography, Osborne was married five times; to actress Pamela Lane from 1951 to 1957 to
Mary Ure, who played Alison in Look Back in Anger, from 1957 to 1962;to Penelope Gillett
film and drama critic for The Observer, from 1963 to 1967; to actress Jill Bennett from 1968 to
1977 and to journalist Helen Dawson beginning in 1978. In admissible Evidence started a
period of great fertility in Osborne’s work. The next year, another major play, A Patriot for Me
was produced. It tells history of the homosexual double agents, Alfred Redi, and his spying
activities for both the Austrians and the Russians in the years preceding the first world war. The
play is an attempt to place Redi, and his problems in a larger social and moral context, but the
overall balance is unsatisfactory, and finally Redi’s character and motivation are obscured
rather than illuminated by the elaboration of the context. In 1966, Osborne adapted a play by
Lope de Vega giving it the title A Bond Honoured, but it proved a flop.

In 1968 came two more plays Time Present and The Hotel in Amsterdam. The first of
these is notable in so far as it is the first time that Osborne has taken a woman as his central
character, and the second is an uncharacteristic attempt by Osborne to broaden his talent and
increase his teachnical resource by presenting a balancee collection of six major characters rather
than a magnetic central character surrounded by an attentive chorus. Opinions are sharply
divided as to the extent to which these two plays are successful.
 In subsequents years Osborne’s writing continued to follow much the same lines as his
earlier plays, predictable in its content and its attitudes, but often unexpected in the precise from
it took. He seems, for instance, to have had second thoughts about the hard words he once had
for television, and has written a serious of major television plays,including The Right
Prospectus, a wildly come story of school life, and two studies of a new topic, the problems of
fame and distinction, and how the famouse and distinguised deal with them, in very Like a
Whale and The Gifts of Friendship. Indeed, as Osborne has progressed in his own life from being
an angry unknown to being an angry middle-aged institution, his interest and sympathies have
shifted more towards the problem of middle ae, of fame and money and power. West of Suez
(1969), panorama of family life in an outpost of the collapsing British empire in which the older
characters seem to have most of the author’s sympathy. Other plays by Osborne, such as A Sense
of Detachment (1972)and The End of Me Old Cigar (1975), are satrical charades which some
thought significant and some merely messy, but A Place Calling Itself Rome (1973), a modern
re-working of Shakespeare’s coriolanus as a sober political drama, suggested, like his
adaptations of Hedda Gabler and The picture of Dorian Gray; that Osborne was taking a new
practical interest in his craft as such, the how as well as the why of what he was saying.

In all these plays Osborne has shown a large-scale, unruly talant. His attempts to extent it
have been more successful than his attempts to discipline it; he remains a splashily effective,
untidy dramatist, whose work seems almost infallibly to capture the attention of a more broadly
based public than that of any of his contemporaries. He is, indeed, the nearest that the whole new
drama in Britain has come to producing a genuinely popular dramatist, a dramatist with the sort
of shamrless theatrical effectiveness which alone can get over to some sort of mass audence in
theatre today. It seems unlikely that we can expect any great change in his dramatic attitudes,
which have remained remarkably consistent from the first; deep distress, which apparently he
continues to feel about the way things are, shows little sign of humanizing his soul. But the
expressions of the distress, if not always profound, are seldom less than striking in their instant
effect, and his best plays remain remarkably freshin revival: Look Back in Anger, though already
a period piece and a social document of the disoriented mid 1950’s, does not date, but, if
anything, seems better today, when a more balanced view is possible, than it did at the time, as a
centre of excited controversy. He died of heart failure on december 24, 1994.