Abstract
Peter Ansorge, in Disrupting the Spectacle,3 makes the overt critical connection between the political plays which emerged in the 1970’s and ‘the obsessive, murderous plots and characters of the late Jacobean dramatists’, thus likening Brenton, Hare and Snoo Wilson to modern versions of the ‘sixteenth and early seventeenth century “university wits” … who drew their inspiration from the most violent and scandalous events of their own epoch, which proved the most vital in our dramatic history’. The thematic and stylistic correspondence now verges on being a critical cliché, and requires both expansion and qualification.
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This is a nightmare. This doesn’t happen in England.
Sus 1
They want to make me into art, do you know why? ’Cos art don’t hurt. Look at Goya. His firing squad — I seen it on stockbroker’s walls! But I still hurt, see? I touch their little pink nerve with my needle, like the frog’s legs on the bench. I shock their muscle and they TWITCH! They don’t want to twitch, see? They’re so much happier lying dead! But I twitch ’em! I SHOCK THE BASTARDS INTO LIFE!
No End of Blame 2
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Notes
Barrie Keeffe, Sus (1979) p. 26.
Howard Barker, No End of Blame (1981) p. 49.
Peter Ansorge, Disrupting the Spectacle (1975) p. 2.
William S. Burroughs, The Ticket that Exploded (1968) p. 151.
Heathcote Williams, AC/DC (1972) p. 50.
Trevor Griffiths, Comedians (1976) p. 20.
David Hare, Plays and Players, (1972).
Howard Brenton in interview, ‘Petrol Bombs Through the Proscenium Arch’, Theatre Quarterly, v, no. 17 (March-May 1975) pp. 4–20 (12).
Howard Brenton, Magnificence (1973, 1980) p. 39.
Howard Brenton, Revenge (1970) p. 51.
Howard Brenton and David Hare, Brassneck (1974) p. 86.
Howard Brenton, The Churchill Play (1974) p. 51.
Howard Brenton, Plays for the Poor Theatre (1980) p. 23.
Howard Brenton, Epsom Downs (1977) p. 55.
Howard Brenton, Thirteenth Night and A Short Sharp Shock! (1981) p. 80.
Howard Brenton, The Romans in Britain (1980) p. 77.
Howard Brenton, The Genius (1983) p. 39.
Howard Barker, The Hang of the Gaol (1982) p. 11.
Howard Barker, On ‘The Hang of the Gaol’ (RSC Warehouse Writers 1, 1978) p. 2.
Howard Barker, Stripwell & Claw (1977) p. 115.
Howard Barker, Fair Slaughter (1978) pp. 25–6.
Howard Barker, On ‘The Loud Boy’s Life’ (RSC Warehouse Writers 9, 1980) p. 2.
Barrie Keeffe, Barbarians (1978) p. 103.
Barrie Keeffe, Stages in the Revolution (1980) p. 247.
Barrie Keeffe, Frozen Assets (1978) p. 18.
Howard Barker, That Good Between Us (1980) p. 22.
Howard Barker, On ‘The Love of a Good Man’ (RSC Publications, 1980) p. 2.
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© 1986 David Ian Rabey
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Williams, H., Griffiths, T., Brenton, H., Barker, H., Keeffe, B. (1986). Cartoon Nightmares. In: British and Irish Political Drama in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21106-7_9
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