''The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where is Francis? A Play in Three Acts'', by

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

and Christopher Isherwood, was the first Auden-Isherwood collaboration and an important contribution to English poetic drama in the 1930s. It was published in 1935 and first performed by the Group Theatre in 1936. The play describes the quest by the hero Alan Norman to find Sir Francis Crewe, the missing heir of Honeypot Hall in Crewe. The quest takes him on a satiric journey through Europe and England, accompanied by a large dog, who proves to be Sir Francis in disguise. Auden and Isherwood wrote two versions of the end of the play. In Isherwood's version, which appears in the printed text, Sir Francis denounces the villagers and leaves to join a vaguely defined revolutionary movement. In Auden's revised version, which was performed on stage, Sir Francis denounces the villagers and is killed. The play is based in part on two earlier plays by Auden alone, "The Fronny", written in 1930, and mostly lost except for a few fragments printed in the edition of Auden's ''Plays'' listed below; and "The Chase", written in 1934, and also printed in the edition of Auden's ''Plays''. Auden sent a copy of "The Chase" to Isherwood, who suggested revisions that eventually transformed the play into ''The Dog Beneath the Skin''. In "The Fronny" the central character (who is referred to as "Fronny" in the surviving fragments) was apparently based loosely on the archaeologist

Francis Turville-Petre Francis Adrian Joseph Turville-Petre (4 March 1901 – 16 August 1942) was a British archaeologist, famous for the discovery of the ''Homo heidelbergensis'' fossil Galilee Man in 1926, and for his work at Mount Carmel, in what was then the Briti ...

, but the character of Sir Francis in ''The Chase'' and ''The Dog Beneath the Skin'' has no resemblance to Turville-Petre.

References

*Auden, W. H., and Christopher Isherwood. ''Plays and other dramatic writings by W. H. Auden, 1928–1939'', ed. by Edward Mendelson (1988). * John Fuller, ''W. H. Auden: A Commentary'' (1999). *

Edward Mendelson __NOTOC__ Edward Mendelson (born March 15, 1946) is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the au ...

, ''Early Auden'' (1981).

External links

The W. H. Auden Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dog Beneath The Skin Plays by W. H. Auden Plays by Christopher Isherwood 1935 plays Collaborative plays Random House books