Two Plays: Couvade and A Pleasant Career

Both of the plays in this volume focus closely and dramatically on the pressures on the creative imagination of the writer and artist in the Caribbean. Couvade, which was first performed in Guyana in 1972 and published in 1974, references the Amerindian ritual where the man takes to his bed and “suffers” some pains equivalent to the pangs of childbirth while his female partner is in actual labor. On one realistic but symbolic level, Lionel’s wife Pat is in the latest stages of her pregnanc...