Brecht Collected Plays: 5 Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children

The fifth volume in the Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's best-known plays, Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children . Life of Galileo , which examines the conflict between free inquiry and official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. Mother Courage is also one of Brecht's great creations: she clings to her livelihood-her canteen wagon-in this "chronicle play of the Thirty Years War," while one by one she loses her children to the war. This volume, edited and introduced by John Willett and Ralph Manheim , gives full translations of each of the plays and includes Brecht's own notes and all the most important textual variants.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose work has had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera, Life of Galileo, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.