Politics and Society

Abstract

We have been finding that these plays present us with contradictory and competing discourses. They pose questions and give two or more very different answers, and the text does not allow us to make settled judgments. This is particularly true when we come to consider politics and society. In each of the three plays there is a dominant discourse concerning authority and the proper functioning of society, and if we listened to this narrative alone and uncritically we would have to call all three plays politically conservative. On the other hand, alternative voices subvert and undercut the proposed political order, and events leave authority in an ambiguous moral position.