Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 1-32

3. Yakkety Yak: Mojo (1995)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 33-63

4. Exclusion from the Garden: The Night Heron (2002)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 65-82

5. Homage: The Winterling (2006)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 83-102

6. Drought: Parlour Song (2008)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 103-119

7. The Enchanted Wood: Jerusalem (2009)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 121-156

8. Time, Myth and Power: The River (2012)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 157-174

9. Allusion: The Ferryman (2017)

   • Sean McEvoy

   Pages 175-211

10. Back Matter

    Pages 213-217

    PDF

Jez Butterworth is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commercially successful playwrights to have emerged in Britain in the early twenty-first century. This book, only the second so far to have been written on him, argues that the power of his most acclaimed work comes from a reinvigoration of traditional forms of tragedy expressed in a theatricalized working-class language. Butterworth’s most developed tragedies invoke myth and legend as a figurative resistance to the flat and crushing instrumentalism of contemporary British political and economic culture. In doing so they summon older, resonant narratives which are both popular and high-cultural in order to address present cultural crises in a language and in a form which possess wide appeal. Tracing the development of Butterworth’s work chronologically from Mojo (1995) to The Ferryman (2017), each chapter offers detailed critical readings of a single play, exploring how myth and legend become significant in a variety of ways to Butterworth’s presentation of cultural and personal crisis.

• Jez Butterworth
• Tragedy
• Contemporary Drama
• Myth and drama
• Class and contemporary theatre
• Allusion and intertextuality
• Jerusalem
• The Ferryman

• Brighton, UK

  Sean McEvoy

Sean McEvoy is a Bye Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK. His research specialisms include early modern English theatre and contemporary British and Irish theatre, with a particular interest in tragedy. Previous publications include Hamlet: A Sourcebook (2005), Ben Jonson: Renaissance Dramatist (2007), Theatrical Unrest: Ten Riots in the History of the Stage 1601-2004 (2016), and Tragedy: The Basics (2017). 

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