ARDEN, JOHN

born Oct. 26, 1930, Barnsley, Yorkshire, Eng. one of the most important of the British playwrights to emerge in the mid-20th century. His plays mix poetry and songs with colloquial speech in a boldly theatrical manner and involve strong conflicts purposely left unresolved. Arden grew up in the industrial town of Barnsley, the character of which he captured in his play The Workhouse Donkey (1963). He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and at Edinburgh College of Art, where fellow students performed his comedy All Fall Down (1955), about the construction of a railway. He continued to write plays while working as an architectural assistant from 1955 to 1957. His first play to be produced professionally was a radio drama, The Life of Man (1956), about the fatal voyage of a boat captained by a madman. The Waters of Babylon (1957), a play with a roguish but unjudged central character, revealed the moral ambiguity that troubled critics and audiences in later dramas. His next two plays, Live Like Pigs (1958) and Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (1959), also caused controversy. In 1957 Arden married Margaretta D'Arcy, actress and playwright, with whom he wrote a number of stage pieces and improvisational works for amateur and student players. The Happy Haven, produced in 1960 in London, is a sardonic farce about an old people's home. The Workhouse Donkey is a crowded, exuberant, and comic drama of municipal politics. Armstrong's Last Goodnight (1964), written in lowland Scots vernacular, is a drama of struggle between a courtier and a freebooter, pointing to resemblances between 16th-century Scotland, its setting, and the contemporary Congo region. Left-Handed Liberty (1965), written on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, characteristically dwells on the failure of the document to achieve liberty. The True History of Squire Jonathan and His Unfortunate Treasure (1968) is an erotic duologue adapted to the then current fad of nudity on stage, and The Island of the Mighty (1972), written in collaboration with Margaretta D'Arcy, is a non-Romantic ballet-drama about King Arthur. Later plays include The Non-Stop Connolly Cycle (1975), Vandaleur's Folly (1978), and The Little Gray Home in the West (1982).