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Brecht Collected Plays #5
Collected Plays 5: Life of Galileo / Mother Courage and Her Children
Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.
The fifth volume in the Brecht Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's best-known and most frequently performed and studied plays: Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Galileo, which examines the conflict between free inquiry and official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals.
Mother Courage is usually seen as Brecht's greatest work. Remaining a powerful indictment of war and social injustice, it is an epic drama set in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years' War. The plot follows the resilient Mother Courage who survives by running a commissary business that profits from all sides. As the war claims all of her children in turn, the play poignantly demonstrates that no one can profit from the war without being subject to its terrible cost also.
The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
The fifth volume in the Brecht Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's best-known and most frequently performed and studied plays: Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Galileo, which examines the conflict between free inquiry and official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals.
Mother Courage is usually seen as Brecht's greatest work. Remaining a powerful indictment of war and social injustice, it is an epic drama set in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years' War. The plot follows the resilient Mother Courage who survives by running a commissary business that profits from all sides. As the war claims all of her children in turn, the play poignantly demonstrates that no one can profit from the war without being subject to its terrible cost also.
The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
389 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Bertolt Brecht
1,603 books1,925 followersEugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 11, 2025
"How can I unsee what I have seen?" Bertolt Brecht, LIFE OF GALILEO. A didactic delight. The genius of Bertolt Brecht gave proof through the night that Communism could produce great art. The fever of the late 1930s over Europe, fascism, Stalinism (the Moscow trials and the Great Terror of 1937), the crushing of workers rights, and the governmental assault on science and free inquiry spurred a burst of creativity unmatched by any contemporary author, or since. GALILEO (1938) is the dilemma of a great man silenced from telling the truth. The merchants of Italy want his telescopes only to benefit sea trade. "Every minute you do not work", a rich man tells him, "is a minute lost to Italy". The Catholic Church fears displacing the Earth from its favored position in the heavens will unleash a social and political revolution from the masses of peasants and workers. The Vatican was right on this one. Galileo before the Inquisition in Rome is not noble, he despises his own cowardice, but thinks it better to survive and practice science alone. MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN is a savage indictment of the profit system that causes wars, in this case the Thirty Years War that cost Germany half her population. Brecht is no pacifist, and "Mother Courage" no heroine. He knows no words can stop a war and she knows only by selling her cloth and tin pots to soldiers can she keep her family alive. "Try virtue and see how far you progress in this world. The poor survive by vice". Brecht is incendiary, prophetic and an enemy of all systems that crush the free mind. READ HIM!
June 5, 2025
Galileo pits reason vs authority. Courage is complicit in as well as beaten down by the system of capitalism and war. Both are excellent.
October 11, 2022
to be completely honest i read 1/5th of the book and it was only the mother courage play for ib lit but i had to mark the book as completely read anyways #fake
mother courage was very interesting though at first i hated it then i hated it in the middle but i overall like it and have a lot to unpack about the characters i might be more of a play person than i thought
mother courage was very interesting though at first i hated it then i hated it in the middle but i overall like it and have a lot to unpack about the characters i might be more of a play person than i thought
August 1, 2020
I picked up this edition of Brecht collected plays in my attempt to read Mother Courage and Her Children. But since this edition also contains Life of Galileo, I thought it might also be interesting to touch that play. What makes this edition from Methuen Drama worth-reading is that it contains several additional information regarding the two plays in this book. Both plays are written by Brecht while he was in exile after the rise of Nazi Germany, which show Brecht’s intention of writing the two plays which in some ways denote the circumstances surrounding the rise of Nazism and the launching of World War II in Europe. Besides that, there are also several essays and even side notes written by Brecht himself regarding the two plays which will be helpful for anyone who tries to understand the plays.
Life of Galileo
Life of Galileo was written during Brecht’s exile in 1937-1939 while he lived with his family in Denmark. This play examines the problems that face not only Galileo himself as a scientist, but also the whole case of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology. However, the play suffered several rewritten until the time it was first staged in 1947 during the time Brecht was in the United States to cater to English audiences. It posed a problem for the staging as the play itself has to be rewritten from original German into English, and then there is also the rising McCarthyism in the US which denounced everyone associated with communism. Brecht association with Communist movement and his fled to East Germany soon after his trial with the House Un-American Activities Committee only made it harder to stage this play in the US.
In East Germany where Brecht finally settled after 1948 where he built Berliner Ensemble during this time, the play itself also suffered negative connotations from the Communist establishment. It was as though the Catholic Church symbolises the Communist Party, Aristotle as Marxism-Leninism with its doctrine, the late ‘reactionary’ pope as Joseph Stalin, the Inquisition as the KGB. The play itself is highly straightforward with the dialogues of each character. I find it not difficult to follow and the symbolisms appear clearly enough to warn whoever read this script. The play is rather positive towards bridging the clash between reason and official ideology with the way Galileo concealed his true intention of developing his research while at the same time tried to hide his belief in reason from the Catholic Church.
Mother Courage and Her Children
Unlike Life of Galileo, the play Mother Courage was intended as Brecht’s warning towards the tide of World War II in Europe. Something that he had been realising all along and very well clear where Hitler’s foreign policy will be after the Munich Agreement in 1938 in which he coveted the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia. However, Hitler’s war came too soon after the German siege of Poland on 1 September 1939 before Brecht could stage Mother Courage into the audience. As he implied to his note to the Scandinavian audience that, “Writers cannot write as rapidly as governments make war.” And soon he would have to continue his exile through the Soviet Union before crossing the Pacific from Vladivostok to California.
Mother Courage is a unique case in denoting the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The Thirty Years War was the war of faith which was fought primarily in Central Europe between the Protestant and Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire. Mother Courage is both benefited and harmed by the war. She managed to sell goods that are short of supply during the war, while also lost her children in various stages of the story. As a person, she is described as common folk, far from privileges, a woman of emancipation who works hard to feed her children each of whom has several qualities that bring disadvantages: dumb Kattrin (could not speak), Schweizerkas “Swiss Cheese” (too honest), Eilif (handsome and strong, but exploited by his general during the war).
Life of Galileo
Life of Galileo was written during Brecht’s exile in 1937-1939 while he lived with his family in Denmark. This play examines the problems that face not only Galileo himself as a scientist, but also the whole case of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology. However, the play suffered several rewritten until the time it was first staged in 1947 during the time Brecht was in the United States to cater to English audiences. It posed a problem for the staging as the play itself has to be rewritten from original German into English, and then there is also the rising McCarthyism in the US which denounced everyone associated with communism. Brecht association with Communist movement and his fled to East Germany soon after his trial with the House Un-American Activities Committee only made it harder to stage this play in the US.
In East Germany where Brecht finally settled after 1948 where he built Berliner Ensemble during this time, the play itself also suffered negative connotations from the Communist establishment. It was as though the Catholic Church symbolises the Communist Party, Aristotle as Marxism-Leninism with its doctrine, the late ‘reactionary’ pope as Joseph Stalin, the Inquisition as the KGB. The play itself is highly straightforward with the dialogues of each character. I find it not difficult to follow and the symbolisms appear clearly enough to warn whoever read this script. The play is rather positive towards bridging the clash between reason and official ideology with the way Galileo concealed his true intention of developing his research while at the same time tried to hide his belief in reason from the Catholic Church.
Mother Courage and Her Children
Unlike Life of Galileo, the play Mother Courage was intended as Brecht’s warning towards the tide of World War II in Europe. Something that he had been realising all along and very well clear where Hitler’s foreign policy will be after the Munich Agreement in 1938 in which he coveted the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia. However, Hitler’s war came too soon after the German siege of Poland on 1 September 1939 before Brecht could stage Mother Courage into the audience. As he implied to his note to the Scandinavian audience that, “Writers cannot write as rapidly as governments make war.” And soon he would have to continue his exile through the Soviet Union before crossing the Pacific from Vladivostok to California.
Mother Courage is a unique case in denoting the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The Thirty Years War was the war of faith which was fought primarily in Central Europe between the Protestant and Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire. Mother Courage is both benefited and harmed by the war. She managed to sell goods that are short of supply during the war, while also lost her children in various stages of the story. As a person, she is described as common folk, far from privileges, a woman of emancipation who works hard to feed her children each of whom has several qualities that bring disadvantages: dumb Kattrin (could not speak), Schweizerkas “Swiss Cheese” (too honest), Eilif (handsome and strong, but exploited by his general during the war).
February 2, 2020
Mother Courage and Her Children is not as bad as I thought it would be! Granted, it made me want to sleep at various points (but that's perhaps because I've been reading a lot for university) but its controlled, reflective, insightful release and evocation of emotion--prime characteristics of Epic Theatre, which Brecht is the inventor and champion of--more than made up for its at times dreary plot. Mother Courage shows how melodrama and excess are not the only language for the tumults and crises of life; regulation is just as, if not more, effective. At the end of the play Mother Courage has lost everything as she sings her last lament to life. But she is not kicking and screaming, nor trying to take her life, as a certain Hedda Gabler does. Instead, she walks away in solitude and desolation, and it is with this last image of her that the audience begins to truly feel.
March 21, 2024
Solo he leído la parte de madre coraje, me ha gustado bastante. Al principio se me ha hecho un poco pesado.
Fragmento q me ha gustado:
Yo tenía diecisiete
Cuando llegó el enemigo
Dejo de lado el machete
Me dio su mano de amigo
Y tras ka flores de mayo
Vino la noche de mayo
El regimiento formado
El tambor, tocando adusto
Me mete tras un arbusto
Y así hemos fraternizado
El enemigo abundaba
Y cocinero era el mío
Durante el día lo odiaba
De noche era el desvarío
Porque a las flores de mayo
Sigue la noche de mayo
El regimiento formado
El tambor, tocando adusto
Me mete tras un arbusto
Y así hemos fraternizado
El amor que yo sentía
Era algo celestial
Mi familia no entendía
Que no lo quisiera mal
Y en una mañana oscura
Comenzó mi desventura
El regimiento formado
El tambor, tocando adusto
Y mi amado, mi disgusto
Para siempre se ha marchado
Comment: madre coraje, tía, no has aprendido nada
Fragmento q me ha gustado:
Yo tenía diecisiete
Cuando llegó el enemigo
Dejo de lado el machete
Me dio su mano de amigo
Y tras ka flores de mayo
Vino la noche de mayo
El regimiento formado
El tambor, tocando adusto
Me mete tras un arbusto
Y así hemos fraternizado
El enemigo abundaba
Y cocinero era el mío
Durante el día lo odiaba
De noche era el desvarío
Porque a las flores de mayo
Sigue la noche de mayo
El regimiento formado
El tambor, tocando adusto
Me mete tras un arbusto
Y así hemos fraternizado
El amor que yo sentía
Era algo celestial
Mi familia no entendía
Que no lo quisiera mal
Y en una mañana oscura
Comenzó mi desventura
El regimiento formado
El tambor, tocando adusto
Y mi amado, mi disgusto
Para siempre se ha marchado
Comment: madre coraje, tía, no has aprendido nada
January 20, 2020
The 5 stars are for the play Mother Courage and Her Children. The Life of Galileo, also in this volume, is a fine story about science and religion. But Mother Courage is spectacular.
The play takes place during the 30 Years War, a pointless and protracted bloodbath between Catholics and Protestants. Mother Courage makes a living as a small-beans war profiteer. She is powerful and dirty and cruel and cynical and beautiful and loves her children. She is maybe my favorite character from any play.
She sings at the end, still tugging along her cart:
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.
The play takes place during the 30 Years War, a pointless and protracted bloodbath between Catholics and Protestants. Mother Courage makes a living as a small-beans war profiteer. She is powerful and dirty and cruel and cynical and beautiful and loves her children. She is maybe my favorite character from any play.
She sings at the end, still tugging along her cart:
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.
October 27, 2024
Three stars for Life of Galileo - pretty flat and, to me, dramatising the story in this way brought nothing to it. Brecht has some thought-provoking insights in to the meaning and impact of the historical affair but they could be adequately or better expressed in an Orwell-style essay. Something of the sort is included as a foreword and notes in this edition.
Five stars for Mother Courage - this definitely gained texture, irony and interest as a play.
But I'm not convinced about Willett's translations. I don't know how much is due to potential inherent difficulties in translating the way Brecht uses language though. Certaintly the cod-Yorkshire dialect he uses for most characters in Mother Courage I found very grating.
Five stars for Mother Courage - this definitely gained texture, irony and interest as a play.
But I'm not convinced about Willett's translations. I don't know how much is due to potential inherent difficulties in translating the way Brecht uses language though. Certaintly the cod-Yorkshire dialect he uses for most characters in Mother Courage I found very grating.
April 19, 2020
Mother Courage and Her Children was the reason I picked this up. Having heard it name checked so often, I was feeling bad that I’d never read any Brecht. In the end I didn’t really enjoy it all that much although I can see the points it makes about war, profit and humanity. Life of Galileo on the other hand I wasn’t really too fussed about reading, but this play blew me away. Superb account of reason and logic pitted against religious zeal. 3 stars for MC and 4 for Galileo (rounded up).
November 15, 2024
I have logged reading Galileo so many times, and actually, I read a different translation of Mother Courage, so this is not a substantive review of Brecht's playwriting skill (of which he has an excess!) but instead a review of the translation of Galileo, which is horrible. Overwrought, bad, etc. Makes the play feel like a lecture rather than theater—this is not the alienation effect, sorry.
April 10, 2025
Two of Brecht's strongest plays (and the shorter version of Galileo as well) demonstrate the playwright's talented integration of contemporary social issues within narrative frameworks which mature well beyond those issues, especially as Mother Courage belies World War II for the capitalistic influence of the war machine and its effect on traditionally empathetic figures.
July 18, 2018
Ya había leido una parte en la Facultad. Muy interesante obra que grafica de forma didáctica un problema de la época...
July 14, 2020
3/5 -- not enough verfremdungseffekt.
April 6, 2025
ABANDONADO
ekipo estoy entrando en un bloqueo lector y no me ayuda para nada
se que algun dia lo retomare but its not the moment
ekipo estoy entrando en un bloqueo lector y no me ayuda para nada
se que algun dia lo retomare but its not the moment
September 23, 2025
Solo leí "Vida de Galileo"
February 23, 2022
Loved it! I forgot about this author until I started making a list of authors to read. I did one of my senior papers on a book of his poetry when I was in High School. I think both Galileo and Mother Courage are brilliant. Mother Courage was his masterpiece. I'm so very glad I read this. I hear Mother Courage was the inspiration for Lynn Nottage's Ruined. Ruined is one of the two Pulitzer Prize-winning stories she wrote. I plan on reading both of Nottage's books.
October 14, 2012
¿Alegato contra la guerra? ¿Crítica de los poderes establecidos? ¿Panfleto anticlerical?
La verdad es que no lo tengo nada claro. No sé por qué imaginaba que la acción se desarrollaría en medio de una guerra contemporánea y va y me encuentro con la Guerra de los treinta años, con personajes que me recordaban a Valle Inclán, con una especie de esperpento. Seguro que la comparación se le ha ocurrido a alguien antes. En fin, sorprendido por la lectura, acabando de digerir...
La verdad es que no lo tengo nada claro. No sé por qué imaginaba que la acción se desarrollaría en medio de una guerra contemporánea y va y me encuentro con la Guerra de los treinta años, con personajes que me recordaban a Valle Inclán, con una especie de esperpento. Seguro que la comparación se le ha ocurrido a alguien antes. En fin, sorprendido por la lectura, acabando de digerir...
April 7, 2008
Brecht may be dated but still powerful.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews