Not About Heroes
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Not About Heroes is a drama by Stephen MacDonald about the real-life relationship between the poets, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was first performed in 1983.
The play has only two characters: Owen and Sassoon. The story of their friendship is told in a series of flashbacks, narrated by Sassoon who survived World War I (in which Owen was killed). Most of the scenes take place during their time as fellow-patients at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh in 1917.
The title is a quotation from the preface Wilfred Owen wrote in preparation for the publication of his collected poems:
"This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."