The Plays

This first complete edition of Lawrence’s plays contains eight full-length plays and two fragments. Six of the plays - A Collier’s Friday Night, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, The Merry-go-Round, The Married Man, The Fight for Barbara and The Daughter-in-Law - were written between 1909 and 1913, the period when Lawrence was establishing himself as a writer. They are arguably among his very best early work. Yet Lawrence never saw a play of his own on the stage. Only two were performed in his lifetime, and only three were published: the play often regarded to be his best, The Daughter-in-Law, remaining unpublished until 1965. Up to now, the plays have existed only in faulty or incomplete texts; this edition, drawn from Lawrence’s own surviving manuscripts and typescripts, makes it possible for the first time to read and to stage Lawrence’s plays as he wrote them. Published in two volumes.