Stirling Newberry: >The relationship in Peter Grime, the subtext, is of the societal view >of "the love that dare not speak its name". Where is the evidence for this? There is no Bosie to Grimes's Oscar! The point about Grimes is that he is incapable of love, either of Ellen or anybody else. You could conjecture that a loving homosexual relationship for Grimes might be a fine thing indeed, perhaps just what he needs, but the point is precisely that no sort of loving relationship is possible for him. >More over - the loss of innocence, and particularly the loss of >young manhood - is the subtext in Billy Budd, in the War Requiem ... But the point about Billy, for Britten and I think for Melville too, is not loss of innocence but preservation of innocence. In spite of all that has happened Billy is not brutalised, and goes to his death with remarkable serenity and still as a child of nature, at one with his shipmates, and a lover of the endless ocean. "Starry Vere, God bless you!" The subtext is not the loss of innocence but the triumph of innocence: the wholly good and innocent Billy innocently dispenses justice in becoming the instrument of the death of the evil Claggart. As far as the War Requiem goes, of course it was the menfolk, young and older, who were sent into the trenches to die as cattle. That does not make it a gay thing: it was always thus in war. And those who died were sometimes more misguided than innocent, especially those teenage boys with an agenda (three of my uncles among them) who had to add a year or two to their real age in their determination to enlist. The older ones, conscripts, might have been more innocent. So it is in Budd. Red Whiskers, Dansker, and the rest -- these are the real victims of the savage regime: ordinary folk who are pressed into service most unwillingly and unfairly, while Billy joins HMS Indomitable eagerly and happily. Alan Moss