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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

We Shall Not Lament the Dead

1945 radio play by Catherine Duncan

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ125097809 ↗
Source-derived summary

We Shall Not Lament the Dead is a 1945 Australian radio play by Catherine Duncan.

The play was offered to the Federation of Commercial Broadcasting Stations for the Anzac Loan War Appeal but they rejected it for being too grim. There was division over whether the play should be performed.

The play was performed live in Melbourne in May 1945, with a cast including Duncan and Keith Eden. This was well received and the play was performed on radio station 3XY later that month.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “We Shall Not Lament the Dead” as 1945 radio play by Catherine Duncan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shall, Lament and Dead.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1945—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Shall, Lament and Dead providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “We Shall Not Lament the Dead”, the useful work is to connect “1945 radio play by Catherine Duncan” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q125097809. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1945.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “We Shall Not Lament the Dead”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow We Shall Not Lament the Dead primary sources, We Shall Not Lament the Dead archive and Shall research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “We Shall Not Lament the Dead”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “We Shall Not Lament the Dead” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.