Guy Butler

Guy Butler (1918-2001) was a poet, playwright, cultural activist and leading academic.

Biography

Born Frederick Guy Butler in Cradock (21 January 1918), he was educated there, then studied at Rhodes University, receiving an MA in 1938. After marrying Jean Satchwell in 1940 he left South Africa to fight in the Second World War, when he also began to write his first creative work. After the war, he read English literature at Brasenose College, Oxford University, graduating in 1947, before returning to South Africa to become a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand (1948-1950). In 1951, he returned to Rhodes University in Grahamstown (presently known as Makhanda) to take up a post as a senior lecturer, and a year later was made professor and head of English (1953 to 1987). After retirement, he was appointed Emeritus Professor and Honorary Research Fellow there.

Guy Butler had an enormous influence not only on Rhodes University, but on South African English culture in general, and particularly South African writing in English. In this respect, he fought to have writings by South African authors recognized and included in school and university syllabi.

He died in Grahamstown in 2001.

Contribution to South African letters, arts and theatre

Butler’s involvement in the theatre began at Oxford, continued during his years at Wits University and gained momentum at Rhodes University. He’d worked as a stage manager, employed his carpentry skills in set construction and then produced (i.e. directed) productions. He was determined to get a proper theatre for Rhodes – which he eventually did – and, starting with an open-air production of Julius Caesar in 1951, staged a play almost every year.

He was the driving force behind the founding of a number of university departments (Rhodes University Drama Department), Linguistics and English Language, and Journalism and Media Studies), helped set up a number of institutes and societies (the Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA), the National English Literary Museum (NELM), the Shakespeare Society of South Africa). Perhaps his most notable achievement, however, was the founding of the 1820 Settler's Foundation, which led to the building of the Monument Theatre in Grahamstown and thus to the annual Grahamstown Arts Festival.

Butler was also a leading figure in such organisations as the English Academy of Southern Africa (for which he was President from 1966 to 1969), NTO, CAPAB, and a board member of the Oude Meester Foundation for the Arts.

As director

1951: Julius Caesar

1968: Doctor Faustus

1971: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Plays

Among his best known plays are:

Everyman: A Morality Play. A Modernised Version of the Medieval Interlude of the Same Name (1950 - unpublished manuscript held in the NELM archives)

The Dam (Van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival award-winner, performed by NTO, 1952, published 1953 )

The Dove Returns (performed 1955, published 1956)

Remembrance Day (1965)

Cape Charade (1968)

Take Root or Die (1970 – written for 1820 Settlers’ centenary celebrations)

Richard Gush of Salem (1982)

Demea (1990)

He also co-edited the collection Plays from Near and Far (with Tim Peacock, 1972).

Other works

Autobiography

Karoo Morning

Bursting World

Poetry

Stranger to Europe (1952)

Anthologies

A Book of South African Verse (1959)

A New Book of South African Verse in English (with Chris Mann, 1979)

In 1965, he founded the poetry magazine, New Coin.

Awards, prizes

He won the first prize for the SABC Poetry Competition (1949) and second prize for the same competition in 1953. His play, The Dam won first prize of the (Van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival in 1952. He won the Central News Agency award for Selected Poems in 1976.