Glass Eels is a play written by Nell Leyshon, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2003. The play has also been performed on stage at the Hampstead Theatre, it is the second part of a planned quartet of Somerset plays covering the four seasons the first being the award winning Comfort Me with Apples.
The play is set on the Somerset Levels one August, probably on the River Parrett. While it explores a young girl's sexual awakening, and her acceptance of past loss, it also concerns eel fishing and a dying rural way of life.
Famous quotes containing the words glass and/or eels:
“Here in the centre stands the glass. Light
Is the lion that comes down to drink. There
And in that state, the glass is a pool.
Ruddy are his eyes and ruddy are his claws
When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Going down for the last time, the last breath lying,
I grapple with eels like ropes—it’s ether, it’s queer
and then, at last, it’s done. Now the scavengers arrive,
the hard crawlers who come to clean up the ocean floor.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)