In the short documentary clip above, Meryl Streep performs a few scenes from Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage — including one in which she delivers the following lines from the play:
“I’m not courageous, only the poor have courage, why? Because they’re hopeless. Just to get up every morning, to plow a potato field in war time or to bring kids with no prospects into the world. Yeah, to live poor, that takes courage. No, they trudge along uncomplainingly, carrying the emperor in his heavy throne and the pope in his stone cathedral. They stagger, starving, bearing the whole thundering weight of the…wealthy on their broad stupid backs. Is that courage? It must be, but it’s perverted courage. Why? ‘Cause what they carry on their backs will cost them their lives.”
When asked in the documentary if Mother Courage is a tragic figure, Meryl responds: “I think of her as you and me. You know, we all live off the war, whether we acknowledge it, she’s just more dirty and in the trenches. We all live off the war.” In the clip below from the end of the first act, Meryl artfully sings “The Song of the Great Capitulation” — which plays like a master class in acting, while revealing Mother Courage’s philosophy of life.
