The Similarities Between Serjeant Musgrave's Dance And A Taste Of Honey

The two options chosen are John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance and A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney. They were picked as the playwrights were not the stereotypical new wave playwrights of the 1950s. Delaney, whilst working class, was female. Arden was middle-class and one of the few to attend University (along with Rudkin and Mercer).
Delaney’s (1992, 7) A Taste of Honey debuted in 1958 while Arden’s (1986, 8) Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance was a year later. The 1950s had seen the continuing recovery from World War II lead to a consumer-led economic boom. It was summed up in the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s 1957 address, which included the now famous line, “most of our people have never had it so good” (BBC, 2008). Not everyone felt part of this development or agreed with the growth in materialism. A counter-culture began to arise with rock and roll and recognition of teenagers for who the establishment did not cater to their tastes. A Taste of Honey was the teenage Delaney’s reaction to the 1950s male-dominated, middle-class theatre. Disappointed in the limited perspectives if offered following a visit to a performance of Terence Rattigan’s
Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance includes natural effects such as stutters, "Why then I'd - I'd - I'd tell 'em" (Arden, 1986, 31) and Hurst is cut off by Musgrave three times in that argument, marked with a “-” in the script (Arden, 1986, 30-31). It includes various pieces of jargon. Sparky’s first speech includes the military terms, “recruiting party…enlisted…attested…Royal Barracks…field kitchens…provost-sarnt…corporal-cook…Commissary…Regiment” (Arden, 1986, 9) to set the scene. There are a few slang terms such as the repeated use of ‘Lobster’ but slang can be double-edged. The notes section lists the definition as “soldier” (Arden, 1986, 108), but to an American it could have meant “A gullible, awkward, bungling, or undesirable person” (Encyclo, 2014)