Copenhagen

In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends and close colleagues, and they had revolutionised atomic physics in the 1920s with their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. But now the world had changed, and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. The meeting was fraught with danger and embarrassment, and ended in disaster.Why the German physicist Heisenberg went to Copenhagen in 1942 and what he wanted to say to the Danish physicist Bohr are questions which have exercised historians of nuclear physics ever since. In Michael Frayn's new play Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife Margrethe once again to look for the answers, and to work out, just as they had once worked out the internal functioning of the atom, how we can ever know why we do what we do.
The Student Edition of Frayn's multi-award winning play includes a full commentary and notes.
Copenhagen is a play based on a real event which occurred in 1941: a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and explores the moral questions about scientists working on nuclear weapons. The play debuted in London and later won the Tony Award during its Broadway run.Methuen Drama Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. Key Features: • Chronology of the playwright’s life and work. • Synopsis of the plot. • Introduction chapter with commentary on themes, context, characters, language, key words and phrases and play structure. • Questions, notes and a bibliography for further reading. • Text notes to explain unfamiliar terms in the play text.