Shortly before the 1989 bicentenary of the ‘founding’ of Australia — in other words, the arrival of the first shipload of convicts and their captors at Botany Bay — two interrelated books were published: Robert Hughes’ popular history The Fatal Shore (1987) and Thomas Keneally’s more ironic novel The Playmaker (1987). Keneally had spotted that, bizarrely enough, the first play to be staged in the ‘new’ Australia, was George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer (1706), with convicts as performers.
The Recruiting Officer was a startling choice, since it depicts officers lying and bribing their way to successful recruiting while also satirising the judiciary. Plume, the central figure, has fathered several children, passing them off as Kite’s, his sergeant’s. Kite puts the children on the roll, so that he can draw their pay. Both the army and the law are depicted as thoroughly corrupt. The justices in The Recruiting Officer are comic figures, arbitrarily sentencing people, and conniving in the recruiting officers’ dodges.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
