Author: PEAKE, Mervyn
Title: The Cave or Anima Mundi.
Description: Maurice Michael, 1961. 4to. pp. 82. In manilla binder. Contemporary xerox copy of the typescript produced for Mervyn Peake's drama agent Maurice Michael in around 1961. With a typed covering note regarding the authentication by Maeve Gilmore of this copy. The typescript was produced from the author's manuscript [now in the British Library]> a small number of copies were made for circulation to potential directors and theatre management. Rare. Only a small handful of copies have emerged over the last 40 years, this is the second which I have handled. Peake wrote at least 10 plays, only one of which, "The Wit to Woo" was produced in his lifetime, to poor reviews. In his introduction to the facsimile reissue of The Cave in 1995 Brian Sibley writes "It is not difficult, perhaps, to see why The Cave was never staged: it is a highly problematic piece of theatre - not because of its bizarre, ritualistic style or its eccentric structure, more suggestive of a series of tableaux than a conventional three-act play - but because of its bleak, almost nihilistic, philosophy."

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