Peter Shaffer's Recurrent Character Type

Peter Shaffer's Recurrent Character Type JOAN F. DEAN PETER SHAFFER'S The Royal Hunt oj 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 oj 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 oj the Sun and Equus were hailed for their spectacular dramaturgy, The Battle oj 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). ShatTer has since returned to the play, rewriting it as Shrivings (1974). In its present form, Shrivings demonstrates more significant affinities with The Royal Hunt oj 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 regu297 298 JOAN F. DEAN larity. 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. Shaffer's frequent use of geographical associations provides a key to characterization. Even in as early a playas Five Finger Exercise, he uses nationality as a springboard to character definition. Louise Harrington , falsely claiming descent from the French aristocracy, insists that her heritage has imparted to her an appreciation of beauty and art. Her resolutely British husband, Stanley, maker of what their son describes as "shoddy and vulgar'" furniture, is too concerned with making money, too prosaic in every way to share Louise's affected aestheticism. Walter, the German tutor who refuses to teach any language save French, fervently denies the existence of his ex-Nazi family. To insult Walter deeply is to accuse him, as Clive does, of actmg very German. However misguided or inappropriate these national stereotypes may be, they are the principal means through which these characters find their identities and, consequently, a significant index to their interactions. In a similar vein is Shaffer's recurrent characterization through association with a specific culture. In The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Atahuallpa is representative of the ancient Incan society, whereas DeNizza embodies and enunciates the spirit of sixteenth-century Spain. Pizarro and Martin Ruiz stand midway between them: both are spellbound by their native country's vacuity and equally entranced by the vitality of Incan society. In Equus, Martin Dysart escapes the emptiness of his twentieth-century clinical life by dreaming he is a high priest in ancient Greece, making pilgrimages to the Peloponnesus and spending his leisure moments paging through art books on Hellenistic civilization. Mark Askelon, the "Sage of Corfu,'" arrives at Shrivings bearing an emblematic gift, an ancient Greek libation cup, "from the sixth century Before Cant" (p. 133). Askelon, Dysart, Martin Ruiz, and Pizarro are in this way all linked: each is intimately associated with an ancient culture. Corfu, the Peloponnesus, Cajamarca are the refuges these characters take from Western Europe. That each of these four characters is closely associated with the heart of a primitive culture is no accident, for each recognizes that these ci'.'ilizations can fulfill spiritual needs in a way that Western culture and its Christianity cannot. Underlying Shaffer's use of place as an index to character is an unrelenting disparagement of the traditions of Western European civilization in...