Abstract
Of his best-known plays, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus and Amadeus, Peter Shaffer comments: ‘all three pieces share a common preoccupation with worship and man’s attempts to acquire or murder a special divinity’.1 This vital thematic link between these dramas (manifested as well in several others) is the subject of this chapter. Here Shaffer’s dramatic and theatrical obsession with the idea of worship is examined from two central points of view: firstly, what ‘worship’ as a concept means to this playwright and to the protagonists he creates will be discussed; this emphasis feeds directly from the focus on alienation (its causes and effects) outlined in the previous chapter; secondly, Shaffer’s constant return to meditations on the nature of religion will be assessed, this involving a brief consideration of his use of myth. These emphases will then be applied to The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus and Amadeus, immensely popular plays in which gods in various guises are created, hunted, and ultimately destroyed.
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Notes
Peter Shaffer quoted in Christopher Innes, Modern British Drama 1890–1990 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 ), p. 406.
Peter Shaffer, quoted in Virginia Cooke and Malcolm Page (eds), File on Shaffer ( London: Methuen, 1987 ), p. 61.
Alexander S. Murray, Who’s Who in Mythology: Classic Guide to the Ancient World: Revised Edition ( London: Bracken Books, 1995 ), p. 7
Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double: Essays by Antonin Artaud, trans. by Victor Corti (London: John Calder, 1981 ), p. 21.
Joseph L. Henderson, ‘Ancient Myths and Modern Man’, in Carl G. Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols (London: Picador, 1978), p. 98.
John Russell Taylor, Peter Shaffer (London: Longman, 1974), p. 31.
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© 1998 Madeleine MacMurraugh-Kavanagh
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MacMurraugh-Kavanagh, M.K. (1998). Murdering Divinities. In: Peter Shaffer Theatre and Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372955_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372955_5
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