Abstract
Abstract All plays are implicitly political by virtue of the subject-matter, form, and linguistic registers they contain, and the audience for whom they are intended; all productions are implicitly political because the resources they consume are denied to another play, company, and space. Plays may also explicitly deal with governmental policy, as the anti-apartheid play Siswe Bansi is Dead (1972) by Athol Fugard (b.1932) and the socialist plays Maydays (1983) and The Shape of the Table (1990) by David Edgar (b.1948) do. An author may use explicit politics to cover implicit ones, as Miller’s The Cmcible (1953) explicitly deals with superstitious seventeenth-century witch-hunts but implicitly concerns anti-communist witch-hunts led by Joseph McCarthy (1909-57). A director’s interpretation can make an implicitly political play explicit, or impose an agenda different from anything the play wright intended:
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