Under Milk Wood

Under Milk Wood begins “at the beginning” (3), one night in the fictional Welsh coastal town of Llareggub (the town’s name is the vulgar British slang term “bugger all,” which means “nothing,” in reverse). The play employs two narrators, First Voice and Second Voice. First Voice speaks directly to the audience, welcoming them to Llareggub. The town is small and somewhat in decline. The nighttime scene is quiet, the sky is dark and without a moon, and First Voice guides the audience along the cobbled streets and the nearby forest known as Milk Wood. Milk Wood is locally known as a place for secret meetings between lovers.

Together with Second Voice, First Voice enters the townspeople’s homes and describes their dreams and nightmares. Just as First Voice is keen to move on, Second Voice insists that they linger with Captain Cat. The retired sea captain is now blind. His dreams are haunting visions of his friends and colleagues who drowned at sea. They long to return to the land of the living. Captain Cat also dreams of Rosie Probert, a woman he once loved. The narration moves to the town draper and dry goods seller, Mog Edwards, who is “mad with love” for a local dressmaker named Myfanwy Price (7). As Myfanwy sleeps, Mog composes love letters in which he reveals his affection for her. He loves her more than anything else in the world, but he has never told her. Unknown to Mog, Myfanwy feels similarly about him. She writes her own unsent love letters, in which she promises to knit fine gifts for him.

Jack Black is the cobbler in Llareggub. A fiercely moral man, he dreams about “chasing the naughty couples” who meet in Milk Wood and revealing their sins to the town (8). The local undertaker is named Evans the Death. In his dreams, Evans sees himself as a child, stealing currants when his mother isn’t looking and eating them in his bed. Elsewhere in the town, a man named Mr. Waldo imagines all the women he once knew and compares them to his sleeping wife. Their marriage is not a happy one. Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard has been married two times. Both her husbands are now dead. In her dreams, they are still alive. She imagines herself issuing orders to the dead men, nagging them just like when they were still living. First Voice suggests that this overbearing attitude may have led to the men’s deaths.

The voices of the townspeople overlap and mix. Organ Morgan, the church organist, dreams of “perturbation and music” in the streets (14). The cocklers, Mr. and Mrs. Floyd, sleep “like two old kippers in a box” (15). Mr. Utah Watkins dreams of sheep leaping fences, bleating just like his wife. Ocky Milkman drunkenly vomits into Dewi River and weeps. Cherry Owen dreams of a tankard that turns into a fish.

The local mailman, Willy Nilly, dreams about taking a long walk, while his wife dreams of being late for school. Sinbad Sailors owns the town pub, the Sailors Arms. In his dreams, he hugs his pillow and pretends that it is Gossamer Beynon. A poor, lonely woman named Bessie Bighead dreams of the only time a man kissed her. Mrs. Beynon is married to the local butcher. She dreams of government inspectors coming to arrest her husband for selling “owl meat, dogs’ eyes, manchop” (16), meaning the meat of unsuitable animals. Their daughter, Gossamer, works as a teacher in the Llareggub school. Gossamer dreams about falling in love with a “foxy darling,” a man who has a bushy fox’s tail. The priest, Reverend Eli Jenkins, dreams about an eisteddfod, a small community festival. Sinbad’s grandmother Mary Ann has religious dreams about the Garden of Eden. Polly Garter dreams about babies. A tolling bell signals the end of night.