Speed-the-Plow and Speed the Plough: The Work of the Earth

Speed-the-Plow and Speed the Plough: The Wark of the Earth TONY J. STAFFORD David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow opened on Broadway in May of 1988 with a flourish of mass media attention and one million dollars in advanced ticket sales. This rare phenomenon for a straight play by an important American playwright is explained mostly by the fact that the rock star Madonna played the part of Karen. Almost every reviewer addressed the question of whether Madonna could or could not act and of why such a casting choice was made. lt tended to be a media event, attracting "the wrong kind of attention,'" and many reviews left little space for considering the implications of the play itself. Those reviewers who did address the play's broader concerns found little to agree on. One caHed it a "satiric comedy about Hollywood'" and another criticized it for saying "nothing about Hollywood that hasn't already been said many times before."3 Robert Brustein argued that it is "not, as some critics have misconstrued it, a satire on movie hucksters'" and, looking back to Mamet's earlier works such as Glengarry Glen Ross and American Buffalo, stated that it is an examination of "friendship between males and personal loyalty among the corrupted as virtually the last remaining values in an increasingly hypocritical and decaying society.'" William Henry countered with the opposite view that it is about "the evil that men do unto each other in the name of buddyhood.'>6 Jonathan Lieberson, while agreeing with Henry that the "characters use each other in the name of love or loyalty or friendship ,"7 disagreed with everyone by dismissing the whole thing as "a disappointment , [...J morally unchaHenging, even insipid."7 While some critics puzzled over the curious title, Speed-the-Plow, few approached it as a clue to decoding the play's meaning. William Henry called it an "odd title" and correctly noted that it finds its origins in the medieval blessing, "God speed your plough,',8 but he made no application of it to the play. The actor Ron Silver, who played Charlie Fox in the original producModem Drama, 36 ([993) 38 Speed-the-Plow and Speed the Plough 39 tion, said that it means "Do your work, and God will help you,"9 while his director, Gregory Mosher, suggested that the phrase "has to do with tuming fresh earth - and of course there is a sexual pun."'o Only the critic Gerald Weales observed that a previous play had used the same title, Thomas Morton 's Speed the Plough, which was originally performed in London in 1800." Unfortunately, Weales tried to connect the two plays by discussing the unseen character of Mrs. Grundy in Morton's play and arrived at the astonishing conclusion that the unseen audience of movie-goers, like Mrs. Grundy, is the main character of Mame!'s play." A closer examination of Morton's text reveals a more likely and meaningful relationship between the two plays.'3 The medieval expressions "God-speed" and "God speed the plow" are blessings, comparable in modem English to wishing someone "Good luck." The Oxford English Dictionary defines the expression specifically as "a wish for the success of one who is setting out on some journey or enterprise." or as a "parting wish for one's success." Applied thus to Mamet's play, the appropriateness of the title is obvious in two ways. First, Bob Gould, just before the play begins, has been promoted to Head of Production, and the title wishes him success in his new "enterprise." Second, at the play's close, Gould and Fox are about to undertake the making of a new film, and the title invokes a blessing for them as well, giving them a "parting wish for [their) success." Thomas Morton's Speed the Plough may provide yet another clue to the significance of Mamet's title, for Morton seems to have chosen his title simply because the catalytic event of his play is, literally, a plowing contest, held for the purpose of encouraging "industry" among England's youth. If Marnet's play owes anything to Morton's play, it would seem to be...