The Case of the Three-letter Word

By PENELOPE GILLIATT PROSECUTING COUNSEL: is your name Arnold Wesker?

DEFENDANT: It iS.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL: And are you the author of a play called The Kitchen? Is that an ex- ample of dramatic merit, dragging the words 'the kitchen' into the name of a play?

WESKER: I think it is, sir.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL: And what is more, did you not write another play called [spitting] Chicken Soup with Barley? More of this so- called expert, artistic writing? Another title in the public good. I suppose?

WESKER: Yes.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL: Mr. Wesker, I do not wish to be offensive, but it is clear, is it not, that you are seeking to put food on a pedestal. In every one of your four plays, there are bouts of eating of the most blatant kind. The expression 'eat' occurs no less than 167 times; the expression 'tea,' ninety-three times; 'gin' and 'nip,' fifty times apiece. In these times of more and more unbridled nourishment, when young people are free to partake with one another here, there and everywhere, dropping in at snack-bars without the faintest regard for regular meal-times, does it not seem to you that people like yourself are only dragging the name of England in the dust?

WESKER: Sir, in my plays it has always been my intention to present eating as though it were a perfectly natural activity.

JUDGE (twitching): Just a moment. I would like to write that down. [Heavy sarcasm.] A— natural . . .

DEFENDING COUNSEL (a member of the Diners' Club and known to be a liberal man. Prosecut- ing counsel is a teetotaller and a vegetarian. The Judge weighs six stone and recently had his stomach removed): M'lud, my client has never depicted eating for eating's sake. He has always seen it as part of an abiding relation- ship. There is no eating outside the family.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL: Hal M'learned friend is not being serious. Can Mr. Wesker point to a single passage where it is not made all too clear that his characters enjoy food? There is a difference, is there not, between decent, secret eating, eating on a diet, and this—stuff- which ends time and again in satisfaction?

DEFENDING COUNSEL: It seems to me, m'lud, that there is an anomaly in this prosecution when playwrights such as William Douglas Home are openly peddling works that have no sincere attitude to meals at all. Breakfast with the Times, boiled eggs after hunting—everyone knows you only have to go into Shaftesbury Avenue to pick up the most worthless view of eating just for the price of a stall.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL (yawning): Has it escaped !relearned friend's notice that there is a little difference between the Honourable William Douglas Home and the accused? That Mr. Wesker's characters prepare their own food, sometimes even actually cook it the stage? Is this how we want to repres ourselves to future generations, as a pec without servants?

JUDGE : Quite right. Members of the jury, are not of course to pay any regard to opinion, but you may think it right to cI off his head.

(A girl in the public gallery boos, and is snu ered by the sergeant.) PROSECUTING COUNSEL: We come now to case of Chin-Chin. A French play. I am a humourless man, members of the jury, to Englishmen like ourselves there will alw be something peculiarly unpleasant about sort of thing. You observe the gaiety that has endeavoured to inject into his disgust title. (A small square Frenchman has ci into the dock.) PROSECUTING COUNSEL (about to score): We you care to tell the jury your name?

FRENCHMAN: Francois Billetdoux, sir.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL (with a smirk): You the nature of what we are dealing with. M r. French Love-letter, you are not here deliver a lecture on your language, you in the Old Bailey [confirmatory wave of hand]. Your play is nothing but a success of drinking scenes, is it not?

BILLETuoux: Well— PROSECUTING COUNSEL: You expert writers si to be incapable of giving an artistic opin in a plain yes or no.

BILLETDOUX : Sir, it is a play about two pet who begin to drink because they cannot one another enough.

PROSECUTING COUNSEL: Those of us who h our feet on the ground may think differen It is simply a glorification of alcohol, and story is nothing but padding. Do the coI address a single word to one another of kind that you would expect to hear at a cc tail party? Can you point to just one pass of decent gossip? What are they doing, Exchanging nips-1 believe that is the wor out of tooth-mugs. Is this a basis for a Iasi relationship?

DEFENDING COUNSEL: Mlud, I should like call an expert witness to give evidence that references to drinking are an integral par the play and could not be cut without serial damaging the work.

CLERK : Call Mr. Brendan Behan.

(Short lull. Policeman goes up w Judge whispers in his ear.) JUDGE (pleased): Your witness appears to detained in what the Sergeant—restrained if I may say so, a very proper regard for general distaste for these three-letter woe( has privately identified to me as a 'pub.'

Case collapses. Noises of waiving of right to by jury, guillotining, etc. Public files using three-letter words freely. on erg pie ou my op tut 'he not but ays his he ing ept uld

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