All the World's a Stage”

The Irish-born British author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919–99) nourished one unfulfilled ambition. Although she was routinely ranked as one of the most important English novelists of the twentieth century, she also wanted to succeed at writing plays. She admitted to finding playwriting difficult. She only managed to complete a few, regarded now as among her least successful works. This paper argues that the composition of The Green Knight (1993) late in Murdoch's career offered her an opportunity to gratify her longing to write a work that was like a play. It is a novel filled with allusions to the theatre. It is divided into distinct acts, populated by actors or by characters who think of themselves as playing parts on life's stage. Murdoch often noted that Shakespeare was her favourite writer, and The Green Knight also represents homage to him in its echoes of As You Like It and The Tempest

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