Peter Shaffer's Recurrent Character Type

Abstract

PETER SHAFFER'S The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964) and Equus (1973) were both produced by the National Theatre Company; they enjoyed even greater critical and commercial acclaim than his earlier successes. The Battle of Shrivings, however, received almost unanimous scorn from the London critics when it was produced at the Lyric Theatre in February 1970. While The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus were hailed for their spectacular dramaturgy, The Battle of Shrivings was seen as a retreat to the comfortable ease of the well-made plot and the domestic setting which worked effectively in Five Finger Exercise (1958) and Black Comedy (1967). Shaffer has since returned to the play, rewriting it as Shrivings (1974). In its present form, Shrivings demonstrates more significant affinities with The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus than with his earlier works. These three plays, his most recent full-length dramas, form an impressive triad in which Shaffer recurrently employs certain themes, techniques of characterization, and motifs. They are best considered complementary pieces, shedding and reflecting light upon one another. All three portray a middle-aged man in a crisis of faith: Pizarro and Martin Ruiz in The Royal Hunt oj the Sun, Martin Dysart in Equus, and Mark Askelon in Shrivings all experience profound dissatisfaction with their cultures and their very existences. For each of them, contact with a primitive and vital culture exacerbates this crisis of faith and fuels their need for belief. Though Shaffer's dramatic techniques vary widely among these plays, his most important themes and character types appear with considerable regularity. The failure of modern society to provide a constructive vehicle for man's religious impulses and need for ritualistic worship, the decrepitude of Western religion, and the resultant fragmentation of personality form an important thematic nexus among Shaffer's recent works.