Billy Shaw
By Joe Corrie
- Price:
- £1.00
Item attributes
- ISBN:
- Acts:
- 1
- Females:
- 4
- Males:
- 2
Item details
Scottish Play: No. 156
From Wikipedia, Joe Corrie (13 May 1894 – 13 November 1968) was a Scottish miner, poet and playwright best known for his radical, working-class plays.
He was born in Slamannan, Stirlingshire in 1894. His family moved to Cardenden in the Fife coalfield when Corrie was still an infant and he started work at the pits in 1908. He died in Edinburgh in 1968.
Shortly after the First World War, Corrie started writing. His articles, sketches, short stories and poems were published in prominent socialist newspapers and journals, including Forward and The Miner.
Corrie's volumes of poetry include The Image O' God and Other Poems (1927), Rebel Poems (1932) and Scottish Pride and Other Poems (1955). T. S. Eliot wrote "Not since Burns has the voice of Scotland spoken with such authentic lyric note". He turned to writing plays during the General Strike in 1926.
More information can be found on his Wikipedia page; Joe Corrie.
Billy Shaw, an old agricultural labourer, is about to celebrate an unexpected turn in his fortune, and is sparing no expense to make it a grand occasion, even to the extent of having servants in his cottage.
He invites his son and daughter-in-law, who have neglected him for years, but he doesn't disclose what his good fortune is. The daughter-in-law woos him in the expectation of benefiting from the great "windfall", but much to her disappointment it is different to what she has expected. It has an unexpected ending for Billy too.
