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Hemingway, Ernest (American playwright, novelist, journalist, 1899-1961), “Today Is Friday,”

a __-minute drama in English, set in a drinking-place, eleven o’clock on night of Christ’s crucifixion,

4m;

  •  © 1926 by Ernest Hemingway;  •  in Ernest Hemingway’s Today Is Friday (Englewood, New Jersey, The As Stable Publications, 1926), LCCN 44-18648.  •  Cited by Miriam Mandel (mbmandel@post.tau.ac.il) via postal letter, English Department, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel, July 16, 1995; Mandel adds,

  §  Dramatis Personae _____ (m), Roman soldier; _____ (m), Roman soldier; _____ (m), Roman soldier; _____ (m), Hebrew wine-seller.

  §  Synopsis “The three Roman soldiers have been drinking for some time; they discuss various crucifixions, including that of Jesus Christ, at which they had officiated earlier that day. . .  [The] Hebrew wine-seller knows better than to get involved. The three soldiers . . . display a variety of responses: the first one admires Christ’s stoicism, repeatedly remarking that ‘he looked pretty good to me in there today.’ The second soldier asks questions and provides historical background, and the third soldier is mostly concerned with his own feelings: ‘I got a gut-ache . . . I couldn’t feel any worse . I feel like hell.’

  §  Comment “Hemingway’s publisher was and is Charles Scribner’s Sons (out of New York). Hemingway wrote only two plays: The Fifth Column (three acts, set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and first published in 1938) and ‘Today Is Friday,’ the one-act play written in 1926, at the same time that he was working on two short stories: ‘Ten Indians’ and the famous masterpiece, ‘The Killers.’ Although The Fifth Column has been produced, the earlier play has regularly been treated as if it were a short story: Hemingway himself included it in collections of short stories (Men Without Women, 1927; The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, 1938). Posthumous editions have continued the practice. ‘Today Is Friday’ is set ‘in a drinking-place at eleven o’clock at night.’ The three Roman soldiers have been drinking for some time; they discuss various crucifixions, including that of Jesus Christ, at which they had officiated earlier that day. Like Sam in ‘The Killers,’ the Hebrew wine-seller knows better than to get involved. The three soldiers, like the three ‘boys’ in ‘The Killers,’ display a variety of responses: the first one admires Christ’s stoicism, repeatedly remarking that ‘he looked pretty good to me in there today.’ The second soldier asks questions and provides historical background, and the third soldier is mostly concerned with his own feelings: ‘I got a gut-ache . . . I couldn’t feel any worse . I feel like hell.’ For a thorough review of publication history, sources, influences, and criticism of this play, see Paul Smith’s essay on ‘Today Is Friday’ in his A Reader’s Guide to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.: G. K. Hall, 1989), pp. 154-58. Kathleen Verduin connects ‘Today Is Friday’ to the Hemingway oeuvre in ‘The Lord of Heroes: Hemingway and the Crucified Christ,’ Religion and Language, 19.1 (Spring 1987), pp. 21-41.

“Among Hemingway’s stories, the following are some of the most famous—and could easily be turned into plays. Some stories, most notably ‘The Killers’ (7 characters) and ‘The Snows o Kilimanjaro’ (see below), have been made into full-length movies (the original material was padded out, not very successfully); ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ (see below) was made into a short television movie (also padded). You might want to consult Frank M. Laurence’s book, Hemingway and the Movies (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981). Movies made from Hemingway’s stories and novels are notoriously unsuccessful. . . . Short stories which depend heavily on dialog and which have four or fewer characters: ‘A Canary for One,’ 1m2f (a second man appears briefly at the end but does not have a speaking part); ‘Hills Like White Elephants,’ 1m2f (several characters are offstage; they are neither seen nor heard); ‘A Day’s Wait,’ 3m (father, son, doctor); ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’ 4m (two others, a girl and a soldier, walk by but do not speak; full text online at http://www.nwlink.com/~bnl/shorts/stories/cleanplc.html); ‘One Reader Writes,’ 1f; ‘Cat in the Rain,’ 2m2f (this is an incredibly rich story); ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’ 2m1f (a fourth character, male, can play the parts of servant and driver; you would also need buffalo, lion—this is a hunting story, very famous); ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro,’ basically 1m1f (two more men needed to play the servants; several flashbacks).”
 

 •  Research could include Ernest Hemingway’s The Fifth Column (New York: Scribner, 1938, LCCN 38-27930;
 •  also, research could include Ernest Hemingway’s The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The First Forty-Nine Stories and the Play The Fifth Column, The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books series (New York: Modern Library, 1942), first published in 1938 under title: The fifth column, and the first forty-nine stories, LCCN 42-36273 r964;
 •  also, research could include Ernest Hemingway’s I quarantanove racconti (Torino, Italia [Italy]: Einaudi, 1948), LCCN a49-3942;
 •  also, research could include The Fifth Column, and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (New York: Scribner, 1969), LCCN 69-17057 r952;
 •  also, research could include The Fifth Column (London: Cape, 1939, 1968), LCCN 45-46341, LCCN 68-102709;
 •  also, research could include Ernest Hemingway’s Storie della guerra di Spagna (Milano, Italia [Milan, Italy]: A. Mondadori, 1972), LCCN 73-302216, The Fifth Column and four stories of the Spanish Civil War in Italian.
 

 •  Not to be confused with Peter Simonds’ (1906-____) The Fifth Column: A One-Act Play ([n.p.] 1940, LCCN 47-41391;  •  also, not to be confused with John Langdon-Davies’ (1897-____) Fifth Column (London: J. Murray, 1940).

 •  Today is Friday (Englewood, New Jersey: The As Stable Publications, 1926), LCCN 44018648, 7 pp., is in the Library of Congress, Rare Book/Special Collections Reading Room (Jefferson LJ239). A photocopy of the manuscript is available upon request.

  §  Themes Bible, biography, Christ, crucifixion, drinking, history, Jesus (aka Jesus Christ, aka Christ Jesus, aka Jesus of Nazareth, aka the Son of Mary, source of the Christian religion, Savior in the Christian faith, circa 6 B.C.-circa A.D. 30), Jewish, New Testament, soldier, stoicism, wine. Three hundred numbered copies of Today is Friday were printed, two hundred and sixty for sale.

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Page mounted July 16, 1995, and updated February 12, 1996, September 18, 2001, May 22, 2002, by the Webmaster.