The Dance of Death (Auden play)

This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Dance of Death is a one-act play in verse and prose by W. H. Auden, published in 1933.

The Dance of Death is a satiric musical extravaganza that portrays the "death inside" the middle classes as a silent dancer. The dancer first attempts to keep himself alive through escapism at a resort hotel, then through nationalistic enthusiasm, then through idealism, then through a New Year's party at a brothel, before he finally dies. Karl Marx appears on stage and pronounces the dancer dead. "The instruments of production have been too much for him."

The play was published by Faber & Faber in 1933, with a dedication to Robert Medley and Rupert Doone. It was performed by the Group Theatre (London), in 1934 and 1935. It was widely interpreted as pro-Communist, but Auden later wrote in a copy of the printed text, "The communists never spotted that this was a nihilistic leg-pull".

• Auden, W. H.; Isherwood, Christopher (19 February 2019). The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Plays and Other Dramatic Writings, 1928-1938. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-65614-4.
• Fuller, John (1998). W.H. Auden: A Commentary. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-07049-0.
• Mendelson, Edward (22 May 2000). Early Auden. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-52695-5.

• The W. H. Auden Society