Scottish Authors > James Bridie Dramatist 1888-1951

Bridie was born Osborne Henry Mavor in Glasgow on 3rd January 1888. He studied medicine at Glasgow University, qualifying in 1913. During the 1914-18 War he served in the RAMC in the Middle East. He then pursued a medical career, but his passion for the theatre gradually took over and his last ten years were spent solely as a professional dramatist. He died in 1951, the founding father of modern Scottish theatre.

His first play, The Switchback, about a doctor tempted by fame and wealth, was written in 1922 but not performed until 1929. His range was wide: plays medical A Sleeping clergyman, (1933), biblical Tobias and the Angel, (1930), Scottish Mr Bolfry, (1943), experimental Daphne Laureola, (1949).

Bridie is often described as a follower of Shaw in his delight in ideas and debate, but Bridie is never less than interested in people - it is fallible human beings arguing that he loves - a very Scottish trait. He had a gift for dialogue and the retelling of stories. His work is characterised by a celebration of the human spirit, its mixture of "dirt and deity", the opposition of appearance and reality, the deflation of pretension, the investigation of moral dilemmas - presented with irony, wit and serious levity.

These qualities are evident in one of his best plays, The Anatomist (1930), based on events in the life of Dr Robert Knox, the nineteenth century Edinburgh anatomist who was supplied with bodies for dissection by the notorious Burke and Hare. Knox is played as a theatrical dandy - a "barnstormer" - but dedicated to medical research, even if it means implication in murder. He is an ambitious character; there is a worrying glamour about this justifier of the means justifying the end. Knox accepts this and the consequences:

Do you think because I strut and rant and put on a bold face that my soul isn't sick within me at the horror of what I have done? ... No, I carry the deaths of those poor wretches round my neck till I die ...

A major criticism has been Bridie's apparent inability to resolve his plays. To some extent this is the case, but Bridie retorted:

Only God can write last acts, and He seldom does. You should go out of the theatre with your head writhing with speculations.

One Way of Living, (1939)

Bridie pretended to be indolent and retiring. He was actually a workaholic. In addition to writing over forty plays he was actively involved in founding Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1943 and in 1950 the first College of Drama in Scotland. In his day he was highly successful with most of his plays premiered in London. They are rarely seen now. Only The Anatomist and Tobias are in print. It is surely time for a revival - his work is humorous, vigorous, stimulating and, above all entertaining. Bridie had no successor in his style, but perhaps echoes of his whimsical arguments about Life, Death and Art can be heard in the work of Alasdair Gray.

Hamish Whyte

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