Under Milk Wood - Origins and Development

Origins and Development

When Dylan Thomas was staying at New Quay, Ceredigion in West Wales one winter, he went out early one morning into the still sleeping town and verses came to his mind about the inhabitants. He wrote the account of this as a short story named Quite Early One Morning (recorded for BBC Wales on 14 December 1944 and broadcast 31 August 1945). He continued to work on the idea for the remaining eight years of his life.

In Quite Early One Morning there are numerous ideas and characters which would be further developed for Under Milk Wood. For instance, the short story includes a 28-line poem of which this is the fourth verse (the name and the final line reappear in Under Milk Wood).

Open the curtains, light the fire, what are servants for?

I am Mrs Ogmore Pritchard and I want another snooze.

Dust the china, feed the canary, sweep the drawing-room floor;

And before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes.

Thomas wrote to his wife, Caitlin, (about 23 May 1953, from the USA, on notepaper from The Poetry Centre), towards the end of a long letter : 'I've finished that infernally eternally unfinished 'Play' & have done it in New York with actors.'
He had, in fact, promised to deliver the work on his arrival in New York on 21 April, but had completed it, in the afternoon of the day it was to be premiered, only after being locked in a room to finish it by his literary agent Liz Reitell - the last lines of the script were handed to the actors as they were putting on their make-up.

The same year, he read a part of the script in public for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts at The Poetry Centre. Soon after, with others, he sound-recorded a performance at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

On 9 September 1953, he delivered a full draft of Under Milk Wood to the BBC as he left for a tour of America, intending to revise the manuscript on his return. But on 9 November 1953 he died in New York.

Dylan Thomas is reported to have commented that Under Milk Wood was developed in response to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as a way of reasserting the evidence of beauty in the world.