BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER
I would prefer not to
About the play
How do you get along with someone when they don’t play by the rules you know? If you are by no means able to figure out why they act like that, will you ever start to question your own behavior?
In 1853, American writer Herman Melville created characters with such a weird yet realistic relationship in his novel ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street’.
In Wall Street at the end of the 19th century in the United States, the boss of a law firm hired a young man named Bartleby to copy instruments for himself. At first, Bartleby was seen as a silent and hardworking boy by his boss, who was proud of finding such a reliable employee. But before long before the lawyer started to be aware of something weird about Bartleby: the boy never took started a conversation with colleagues in the office, and always gave the briefest answers to other’s questions. He never left the office, locking himself in the corner behind the screen where he belonged.
During that period of time, when there was no printer, Bartleby the scrivener was like a copier placed in a corner, silently spitting pages of copied words without making any noise, in sharp contrast with the hustle and bustle of Wall Street.
