Abstract
D. H. Lawrence is not the most likely figure in the English canon to have had a musical dedicated to his life. Yet we live in an unlikely world. Lorenzo and Lady C (2017) is framed by R v Penguin Books Ltd, the watershed 1960 case which led in the same year to the first legal unexpurgated publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) in the UK. It then flashes back to tell his story, ‘From humble beginnings as a Nottinghamshire miner’s son’, through his ‘profoundly moving and turbulent public love affair with Frieda von Richtofen’ and onwards into his novels, travels, troubles with the law, and his worsening tuberculosis. The musical ends with Lawrence ‘glimps[ing] a future where he will at last be recognised as one of the greatest English novelists of the 20th century’ and the Old Bailey issuing the ‘Not Guilty’ verdict. This moment ‘sets the stage for a new beginning where the spirit of D. H. Lawrence is vindicated and proudly proclaims: “I will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of my life.”’1
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