Biography Essay

After seeing the first production of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey in May 1958, Lindsay Anderson said of the play in Encore: "To talk as we do about new working-class audiences, about plays that will interpret the common experiences of today—all this is one thing and a good thing too. But how much better even, how much more exciting, to find such theatre suddenly here, suddenly sprung up under our feet!" He went on to call A Taste of Honey "A work of complete, exhilarating originality," which "has all the strength and none of the weaknesses of a pronounced, authentic local accent," and proclaimed it "a real escape from the middle-brow, middle-class vacuum of the West End." His view was shared by many critics, and although Delaney's second and only other stage play was later pronounced a flop, it was generally accepted that this...