Plays 1 - John Arden

'The modern English theatre has had its poets and it has had its dramatists but in John Arden it has acquired its first dramatic poet since - well, let's be rash - the days of Shakespeare.' - Sunday Times.

The Waters of Babylon: 'This wild, acidly funny and oddly tragic story of London low-life... reveals Arden's tough linguistic freedom and the free-wheeling ease with which he switches from prose to verse and back again' Sunday Times

Live Like Pigs: 'Thrilling theatre... a rumbustious delight, outrageously funny, powerfully dramatic and, when you least expect it, genuinely moving... a modern classic' Daily Telegraph

The Happy Haven (written with Margaretta D'Arcy): 'This rare and excellent revival perfectly reflects the play's bizarre atmosphere, its potent mixture of farcical prose, rhymed poetry, its marked avoidance of schematic moral codes' Time Out

Serjeant Musgrave's Dance: 'A modern classic... a white-hot piece of work... Since its first appearance in 1959, the play has advanced towards us as if in a slow prophetic march' The Times

Also included in the volume is When is a Door not a Door?, a one-act 'industrial episode'.