Under Milk Wood is a 1954 radio drama by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. The BBC commissioned the play, which was later adapted for the stage. The first public reading was in New York City in 1953.
A film version of the same name, directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released in 1971. A second adaptation of the play, directed by Pip Broughton, was staged for television in 2014 for the 60th anniversary of the piece.
An omniscient narrator invites the audience to listen to the dreams and innermost thoughts of the inhabitants of the fictional small Welsh fishing town, Llareggub, (buggerall spelt backwards).
They include Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, relentlessly nagging her two dead husbands; Captain Cat, reliving his seafaring times; the two Mrs. Dai Breads; Organ Morgan, obsessed with his music; and Polly Garter, pining for her dead lover. Later, the town awakens, and, aware now of how their feelings affect whatever they do, we watch them go about their daily business.
Origins and development Background
In 1931, the 17-year-old Thomas created a piece for the Swansea Grammar School magazine that included a conversation of Milk Wood stylings, between Mussolini and Wife, similar to those between Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard and her two husbands that would later be found in Under Milk Wood.
In 1933, Thomas talked at length with his mentor and friend, Bert Trick, about creating a play about a Welsh town:
In February 1937, Thomas outlined his plans for a Welsh Journey, following a route that would "be decided by what incidents arose, what people told me stories, what pleasant or unpleasant or curious things...I encountered in the little-known villages among the lesser-known people."Letters to David Higham, 9 February 1937 and Keidrych Rhys, 26 March 1937; and a telegram to Emily Holmes Coleman, 6 April 1937, in the Collected Letters.
A year later, in March 1938, Thomas suggested that a group of Welsh writers should prepare a verse-report of their "own particular town, village, or district."Letter to Meurig Walters, written in Blashford, Hampshire, 28 March 1938 in Collected Letters.
Laugharne In May 1938, the Thomas family moved to Laugharne, a small town on the estuary of the river Tâf in Carmarthenshire, Wales. They lived there intermittentlyThey also lived in Blashford (November 1938 to March 1939 and January 1940 to March 1940), Marshfield, Chippenham (July 1940 to November 1940), and Bishopston (December 1940 to April 1941) – see Thomas' Collected Letters. for just under two years until July 1941. They did not return to live there until 1949.Thomas' Collected Letters show that the family lived for 18 months in Gosport Street and Sea View, Laugharne, between May 1938 and July 1940, and for three months in the Castle in 1941. They did not return to live in Laugharne until May 1949.
The author Richard Hughes, who lived in Laugharne, has recalled that Thomas spoke to him in 1939 about writing a play about Laugharne in which the townsfolk would play themselves,Thomas, D. N. (2004), Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, Seren, p. 75. an idea pioneered on the radio by Cornish villagers in the 1930s.This was a casting idea developed by Bernard Walke in his 1930 radio plays, featuring Cornish miners, fishermen, and farmers playing themselves. See Broadcasting Under Milk Wood, Note 13, online at Broadcasting Under Milk Wood It is also at D.N. Thomas (2020) Under Milk Wood: A Play for Ears: Reflections on T. Rowland Hughes, Philip Burton and Dylan Thomas, May, New Welsh Review. Four years later, in 1943, Thomas again met Hughes, and this time outlined a play about a Welsh village certified as 'mad' by government inspectors.Richard Hughes in Thomas, D. N. (2004), Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, Seren, p. 75, and also Hughes' review of Under Milk Wood in the Sunday Times, 7 March 1954.
Hughes believed that when Thomas "came to write Under Milk Wood, he did not use actual Laugharne characters."The interview, carried out in the 1960s, is in Thomas, D. N. (2004), Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, Seren, p. 75. Nevertheless, some elements of Laugharne are discernible in the play. A girl, age 14, named Rosie Probert ("Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys, I'm dead.") was living in Horsepool Road in Laugharne at the 1921 census.Rosie Probert, born in Swansea, 1907. She was living in Horsepool Road with an aunt and uncle, Margaret and Harlford Francis, a ship's steward. It was a crowded household: also living with them were their son, daughter, son-in-law, step-son and nephew. 1921 census record transcription from FindmyPast. Although there is no-one of that name in Laugharne in the 1939 War Register, nor anyone named Rosie, Laugharne resident, Jane Dark, has described how she told Thomas about her.See the interview with Jane Dark in D. N. Thomas (2004) Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, p179, Seren. Dark has also described telling Thomas about the ducks of Horsepool Road ("Duck Lane") and the drowning of the girl who went in search of them.D. N. Thomas (2004) Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, p179, Seren.
Both Laugharne and Llareggub have a castle,Llareggub's Bessie Bighead has a cow called Fan from the Castle and, like Laugharne, Llareggub is on an estuary ("boat-bobbing river and sea"), with cockles, cocklers and Cockle Row. Laugharne also provides the clock tower of Myfanwy Price's dreams,"Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper, dreams of...her lover, tall as the town clock tower..." as well as Salt House Farm which may have inspired the name of Llareggub's Salt Lake Farm.For an alternative explanation of the name "Salt Lake Farm", see Dylan's sketch of Llareggub Llareggub's Butcher Beynon almost certainly draws on butcher and publican Carl Eynon, though he was not in Laugharne but in nearby St Clears.For more on Dylan drinking in Eynon's pub, see online at Eynon butcher and publican which is based on an interview with Eynon: G. Burn (1972) "Dylan Thomas", Radio Times, 26 October: "He [Dylan] used to come in here and sit in the room with the coracle men around an open fire and I'd watch him listening and memorising and writing down. He told me he was writing a play and that I was in it, but he'd put you off if you started fishing him...My fridges are down the lane out the back there and sometimes Dylan would see me walking back up to the shop carrying a cleaver, often with my little dog. It was a dachshund, see, a sausage dog, but in his play he calls it a corgi." (Burn 1972)
New Quay In September 1944, the Thomas family moved to a bungalow called Majoda on the cliffs outside New Quay, Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), Wales, and left in July the following year. Thomas had previously visited New Quay whilst living in nearby Talsarn in 1942–1943,For an account of Thomas' time in Gelli, Talsarn, see Thomas, D. N. (2000), A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren. and had an aunt and cousins living in New Quay.The aunt was Elizabeth Ann Williams who had married his mother Florence's brother, John Williams. Elizabeth came to live in New Quay in the 1920s with her daughter, Theodosia, Dylan's first cousin. Theodosia married Thomas Legg, a master mariner, in 1930. Their three children were born and brought up in New Quay. Thomas Legg's parents, Captain George Legg OBE and his wife, Margaret, also lived in New Quay. For more on Thomas' New Quay relations, see pp. 106–115 of D. N. Thomas (2002), The Dylan Thomas Trail, Y Lolfa. George and Margaret Legg, and their daughter-in-law, Theodosia, are to be found in the 1945 Register of Electors for New Quay. He had written a New Quay pub poem, Sooner than you can water milk, in 1943,This poem can be found on page 189 of Thomas, D. N. (2000), Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren, and also in Jones, D. (1991), Dylan Thomas: The Poems, Dent, with a note on its New Quay origins. A later version of the poem can be found in Thomas' letter of 28 May 1945 to T. W. Earp in the Collected Letters, with note on its New Quay origins. which has several words and ideas that would later re-appear in Under Milk Wood.For example, watered-down milk, fish heads, telescopes, bible black and prying preachers. Elements of the play can also be found in another work from 1943, in Thomas' broadcast, Reminiscences of Childhood e.g. Cherry Owen's fish-frail of bottles, whilst Thomas' reference in the broadcast to a far-off race of Mormons anticipates Utah Watkins of Salt Lake Farm. Thomas' bawdy letter-poem from New Quay to T. W. Earp, written just days after moving into Majoda,21 September 1944, Collected Letters. contains the name "No-good", anticipating Nogood Boyo of Under Milk Wood.
Thomas's wife, Caitlin, has described the year at Majoda as "one of the most important creative periods of his life...New Quay was just exactly his kind of background, with the ocean in front of him ... and a pubThe Black Lion where he felt at home in the evenings."Thomas, C. (1986), Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas, Secker and Warburg, p. 92. Thomas' biographers have taken a similar view. His time there, recalled Constantine FitzGibbon, his first biographer, was "a second flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the earliest days … [with a] great outpouring of poems", as well as a good deal of other material.See C. FitzGibbon (1965) The Life of Dylan Thomas, p. 266 Little Brown. Biographer Paul Ferris agreed: "On the grounds of output, the bungalow deserves a plaque of its own."P. Ferris (1999), Dylan Thomas: The Biography, Dent, p. 4. Thomas' third biographer, George Tremlett, concurred, describing the time in New Quay as "one of the most creative periods of Thomas's life."G. Tremlett (1993), Dylan Thomas: In the Mercy of his Means, Constable, p. 95.
Some of those who knew him well, including FitzGibbon, have said that Thomas began writing Under Milk Wood in New Quay.FitzGibbon, C. (1965), The Life of Dylan Thomas pp. 266–67, Little Brown. The play's first producer, Douglas Cleverdon, agreed, noting that Thomas "wrote the first half within a few months; then his inspiration seemed to fail him when he left New Quay."Cleverdon, D. (1954), in the Radio Times, 22 January. It has to be said that Cleverdon is not consistent in his dating of work on the play. One of Thomas' closest friends and confidantes, Ivy Williams of Brown's Hotel, Laugharne, has said "Of course, it wasn't really written in Laugharne at all. It was written in New Quay, most of it."in Thomas D. N. (2004), Dylan Remembered 1935–1953, Seren, p. 187.
The writer and puppeteer, Walter Wilkinson, visited New Quay in 1947, and his essay on the town captures its character and atmosphere as Thomas would have found it two years earlier.W. Wilkinson (1948), Puppets in Wales, Bles, and online here Wilkinson in New Quay Photos of New Quay in Thomas' day, as well as a 1959 television programme about the town, can be found here.
There were many milestonesMilestones:in particular, the broadcasts Quite Early One Morning (1945), The Londoner (1946), Margate – Past and Present (1946) and Return Journey (1947). on the road to Llareggub, and these have been detailed by Professor Walford Davies in his Introduction to the definitive edition of Under Milk Wood.Davies, W., and R. Maud, eds (1995), Under Milk Wood: the Definitive Edition, Everyman. The most important of these was Quite Early One Morning,The script can be read at R. Maud, ed. (1991) On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts, New Directions. Thomas' description of a walk around New Quay, broadcast by the BBC in 1945, and described by Davies as a "veritable storehouse of phrases, rhythms and details later resurrected or modified for Under Milk Wood."Davies, W., and R. Maud, eds (1995), Under Milk Wood: the Definitive Edition, p. xviii, Everyman. For example, the "done-by-hand water colours" of Quite Early One Morning appear later as the "watercolours done by hand" of Under Milk Wood.In First Voice's "To begin at the beginning."