Liefde en Plig

Liefde en Plig ("Love and Duty") a play in verse by Jan F.E. Celliers (1865-1940).

Not to be confused with Love and Duty, a title sometimes used for Strathmore, or Love and Duty by John Westland Marston (1819-1890)[1]

The original text

Written in 1909, this was the first play in verse in Afrikaans. Set in the Anglo Boer War, it tells of a young man's conflict between his feelings for his beloved and his sense of duty urging him to go fight in the war.

Published as Liefde en Plig, subtitled an "Afrikaans toneelspel in vier bedrijwe" ("Afrikaans play in four acts") in Amsterdam by the "Maatschappij voor Goede en Goedkoope Lectuur, Amsterdam" ("The company for good and cheap literature"), possibly in 1909.

Liefde en Plig: "'n toneelspel in vier bedrywe vir 15 here en 2 dames en enige figurante" (i.e. "a play in four acts for 15 gentlemen and 2 ladies and some extras") is also catalogued as a publication by the South African publishing house H.A.U.M., listed as part of their series of texts called Suid-Afrikaanse Toneel ("South African Literature", appearing as no's. 23, 43, 54 respectively and first appeared in 1920). Now credited jointly to Jan F.E. Celliers, Martie de Villiers and De Wet Laubscher, this was most probably an linguistically updated, fully Afrikaans, version based on the original early, Dutch influenced, version of 1909.

The second act of the play was also anthologised in the collection Afrikaanse Letterkunde by D.F. Malherbe (1927).