Authors: Bertolt Brecht
RECRUITER
: Too true.
SERGEANT
: Same with all good things, it’s a job to get a war going. But once it’s blossomed out there’s no holding it; folk start fighting shy of peace like punters what can’t stop for fear of having to tot up what they lost. Before that it’s war they’re fighting shy of. It’s something new to them.
RECRUITER
: Hey, here’s a cart coming. Two tarts with two young fellows. Stop her, sergeant. If this one’s a flop I’m not standing around in your spring winds any longer, I can tell you.
Sound of a jew’s-harp. Drawn by two young fellows, a covered cart rolls in. On it sit Mother Courage and her dumb daughter Kattrin
.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Morning, sergeant.
SERGEANT
blocking the way:
Morning, all. And who are you?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Business folk.
Sings:
You captains, tell the drums to slacken
And give your infanteers a break:
It’s Mother Courage with her waggon
Full of the finest boots they make.
With crawling lice and looted cattle
With lumbering guns and straggling kit –
How can you flog them into battle
Unless you get them boots that fit?
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.
Captains, how can you make them face it –
Marching to death without a brew?
Courage has rum with which to lace it
And boil their souls and bodies through.
Their musket primed, their stomach hollow –
Captains, your men don’t look so well.
So feed them up and let them follow
While you command them into hell.
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.
SERGEANT
: Halt! Who are you with, you trash?
THE ELDER SON
: Second Finnish Regiment.
SERGEANT
: Where’s your papers?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Papers?
THE YOUNGER SON
: What, mean to say you don’t know Mother Courage?
SERGEANT
: Never heard of her. What’s she called Courage for?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Courage is the name they gave me because I was scared of going broke, sergeant, so I drove me cart right through the bombardment of Riga with fifty loaves of bread aboard. They were going mouldy, it was high time, hadn’t any choice really.
SERGEANT
: Don’t be funny with me. Your papers.
MOTHER COURAGE
pulling a bundle of papers from a tin box and climbing down off the cart:
That’s all my papers, sergeant. You’ll find a whole big missal from Altótting in Bavaria for wrapping gherkins in, and a road map of Moravia, the Lord knows when I’ll ever get there, might as well chuck it away, and here’s a stamped certificate that my horse hasn’t got foot-and-mouth, only he’s dead worse luck, cost fifteen florins he did – not me luckily. That enough paper for you?
SERGEANT
: You pulling my leg? I’ll knock that sauce out of you. S’pose you know you got to have a licence.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Talk proper to me, do you mind, and don’t you dare say I’m pulling your leg in front of my unsullied children, ‘tain’t decent, I got no time for you. My honest face, that’s me licence with the Second Regiment, and
if it’s too difficult for you to read there’s nowt I can do about it. Nobody’s putting a stamp on that.
RECRUITER
: Sergeant, methinks I smell insubordination in this individual. What’s needed in our camp is obedience.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Sausage, if you ask me.
SERGEANT
: Name.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Anna Fierling.
SERGEANT
: You all called Fierling then?
MOTHER COURAGE
: What d’you mean? It’s me’s called Fierling, not them.
SERGEANT
: Aren’t all this lot your children?
MOTHER COURAGE
: You bet they are, but why should they all have to be called the same, eh?
Pointing to her elder son:
For instance, that one’s called Eilif Nojocki – Why? his father always claimed he was called Kojocki or Mojocki or something. The boy remembers him clearly, except that the one he remembers was someone else, a Frenchie with a little beard. Aside from that he’s got his father’s wits; that man knew how to snitch a peasant’s pants off his bum without him noticing. This way each of us has his own name, see.
SERGEANT
: What, each one different?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Don’t tell me you ain’t never come across that.
SERGEANT
: So I s’pose he’s a Chinaman?
Pointing to the younger son
.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Wrong. Swiss.
SERGEANT
: After the Frenchman?
MOTHER COURAGE
: What Frenchman? I never heard tell of no Frenchman. You keep muddling things up, we’ll be hanging around here till dark. A Swiss, but called Fejos, and the name has nowt to do with his father. He was called something quite different and was a fortifications engineer, only drunk all the time.
Swiss Cheese beams and nods; dumb Kattrin too is amused
.
SERGEANT
: How in hell can he be called Fejos?
MOTHER COURAGE
: I don’t like to be rude, sergeant, but you ain’t got much imagination, have you? Course he’s called Fejos, because when he arrived I was with a Hungarian, very
decent fellow, had terrible kidney trouble though he never touched a drop. The boy takes after him.
SERGEANT
: But he wasn’t his father …
MOTHER COURAGE
: Took after him just the same. I call him Swiss Cheese cause he’s good at pulling cart.
Pointing to her daughter:
And that’s Kattrin Haupt, she’s half German.
SERGEANT
: Nice family, I must say.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Aye, me cart and me have seen the world.
SERGEANT
: I’m writing all this down.
He writes
. And you’re from Bamberg in Bavaria; how d’you come to be here?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Can’t wait till war chooses to visit Bamberg, can I?
RECRUITER
to Eilif:
You two should be called Jacob Ox and Esau Ox, pulling the cart like that. I s’pose you never get out of harness?
EILIF
: Ma, can I clobber him one? I wouldn’t half like to.
MOTHER COURAGE
: And I says you can’t; just you stop where you are. And now two fine officers like you, I bet you could use a good pistol, or a belt buckle, yours is on its last legs, sergeant.
SERGEANT
: I could use something else. Those boys are healthy as young birch trees, I observe: chests like barrels, solid leg muscles. So why are they dodging their military service, may I ask?
MOTHER COURAGE
quickly:
Nowt doing, sergeant. Yours is no trade for my kids.
RECRUITER
: But why not? There’s good money in it, glory too. Flogging boots is women’s work.
To Eilif:
Come here, let’s see if you’ve muscles in you or if you’re a chicken.
MOTHER COURAGE
: He’s a chicken. Give him a fierce look, he’ll fall over.
RECRUITER
: Killing a young bull that happens to be in his way.
Wants to lead him off
.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Let him alone, will you? He’s nowt for you folk.
RECRUITER
: He was crudely offensive and talked about clobbering me. The two of us are going to step into that field and settle it man to man.
EILIF
: Don’t you worry, mum, I’ll fix him.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Stop there! You varmint! I know you, nowt but fights. There’s a knife down his boot. A slasher, that’s what he is.
RECRUITER
: I’ll draw it out of him like a milk-tooth. Come along, sonny.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Sergeant, I’ll tell the colonel. He’ll have you both in irons. The lieutenant’s going out with my daughter.
SERGEANT
: No rough stuff, chum.
To Mother Courage:
What you got against military service? Wasn’t his own father a soldier? Died a soldier’s death, too? Said it yourself.
MOTHER COURAGE
: He’s nowt but a child. You want to take him off to slaughterhouse, I know you lot. They’ll give you five florins for him.
RECRUITER
: First he’s going to get a smart cap and boots, eh?
EILIF
: Not from you.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Let’s both go fishing, said angler to worm.
To Swiss Cheese:
Run off, call out they’re trying to kidnap your brother.
She pulls a knife:
Go on, you kidnap him, just try. I’ll slit you open, trash. I’ll teach you to make war with him. We’re doing an honest trade in ham and linen, and we’re peaceable folk.
SERGEANT
: Peaceable I don’t think; look at your knife. You should be ashamed of yourself; put that knife away, you old harridan. A minute back you were admitting you live off the war, how else should you live, what from? But how’s anyone to have war without soldiers?
MOTHER COURAGE
: No need for it to be my kids.
SERGEANT
: Oh, you’d like war to eat the pips but spit out the apple? It’s to fatten up your kids, but you won’t invest in it. Got to look after itself, eh? And you called Courage, fancy that. Scared of the war that keeps you going? Your sons aren’t scared of it, I can see that.
EILIF
: Take more than a war to scare me.
SERGEANT
: And why? Look at me: has army life done all that badly by me? Joined up at seventeen.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Still got to reach seventy.
SERGEANT
: I don’t mind waiting.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Under the sod, eh?
SERGEANT
: You trying to insult me, saying I’ll die?
MOTHER COURAGE
: S’pose it’s true? S’pose I can see the mark’s on you? S’pose you look like a corpse on leave to me? Eh?
SWISS CHEESE
: She’s got second sight, Mother has.
RECRUITER
: Go ahead, tell the sergeant’s fortune, might amuse him.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Gimme helmet.
He gives it to her
.
SERGEANT
: It don’t mean a bloody sausage. Anything for a laugh though.
MOTHER COURAGE
taking out a sheet of parchment and tearing it up:
Eilif, Swiss Cheese and Kattrin, may all of us be torn apart like this if we lets ourselves get too mixed up in the war.
To the sergeant:
Just for you I’m doing it for free. Black’s for death. I’m putting a big black cross on this slip of paper.
SWISS CHEESE
: Leaving the other one blank, see?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Then I fold them across and shake them. All of us is jumbled together like this from our mother’s womb, and now draw a slip and you’ll know.
The sergeant hesitates
.
RECRUITER
to Eilif:
I don’t take just anybody, they all know I’m choosey, but you got the kind of fire I like to see.
SERGEANT
fishing in the helmet:
Too silly. Load of eyewash.
SWISS CHEESE
: Drawn a black cross, he has. Write him off.
RECRUITER
: They’re having you on; not everybody’s name’s on a bullet.
SERGEANT
hoarsely:
You’ve put me in the shit.
MOTHER COURAGE
: Did that yourself the day you became a soldier. Come along, let’s move on now. ‘Tain’t every day we have a war, I got to get stirring.
SERGEANT
: God damn it, you can’t kid me. We’re taking that bastard of yours for a soldier.
EILIF
: Swiss Cheese’d like to be a soldier too.
MOTHER COURAGE
: First I’ve heard of that. You’ll have to
draw too, all three of you.
She goes to the rear to mark crosses on further slips
.
RECRUITER
to Eilif:
One of the things they say against us is that it’s all holy-holy in the Swedish camp; but that’s a malicious rumour to do us down. There’s no hymn-singing but Sundays, just a single verse, and then only for those got voices.
MOTHER COURAGE
coming back with the slips, which she drops into the sergeant’s helmet:
Trying to get away from their ma, the devils, off to war like calves to salt-lick. But I’m making you draw lots, and that’ll show you the world is no vale of joys with ‘Come along, son, we need a few more generals’. Sergeant, I’m so scared they won’t get through the war. Such dreadful characters, all three of them.
She hands the helmet to Eilif
. Hey, come on, fish out your slip.
He fishes one out, unfolds it. She snatches it from him
. There you are, it’s a cross. Oh, wretched mother that I am, o pain-racked giver of birth! Shall he die? Aye, in the springtime of life he is doomed. If he becomes a soldier he shall bite the dust, it’s plain to see. He is foolhardy, like his dad was. And if he ain’t sensible he’ll go the way of all flesh, his slip proves it.
Shouts at him:
You going to be sensible?
EILIF
: Why not?
MOTHER COURAGE
: Sensible thing is stay with your mother, never mind if they poke fun at you and call you chicken, just you laugh.