“The conflict between virtuous mediocrity and feckless genius took hold of my imagination” (“Shaffer, Peter 1926”). The quote by Shaffer himself, helps to explain the reasoning for his plays; both the good and the bad. Throughout the past few decades, Sir Peter Shaffer has brought numerous plays to the stage, with each challenging society to be open minded to change. Sir Peter Shaffer has forever impacted the theatre world by bringing topics such as sexual choices, religion, and family values to the stage that challenged the ideals set by society through his use of plays as a means to help him answer many of his own questions about life.
Shaffer used his own family structure in his stage debut play to challenge what society thought was the family ideal. Shaffer felt he had to show society the flaw in a common family structure. In his play Finger Exercise he depicted a typical British family and its conflicts to help make more real his feelings. He felt it was his way of “expressing [his] social protest” (“Peter Shaffer 1926-“). He was able to show his childhood as broken since his parents divorced which he thought was not acceptable. Through this he “invokes [a] tortured past” (Seigel) which helps him to emphasis his discontent. Overall he showed the theatre world how wrong family values had become when people were allowing themselves to believe verbal abuse and divorces were common and acceptable in families today.
Shaffer used his experience growing up during WW2 and the challenge to his faith that it brought as a base for many of his plays. Throughout his childhood, Peter Shaffer was forced to move numerous times during WW2 as a result of living in Nazi, Germany, and at one point was even caught by the Nazi army and abused....
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...rce society to talk about adult topics that were previously left alone as ways to challenge the typical views of a narrow-minded society. Shaffer was able to depict “mankind’s true metaphysical status” (Giana Karis) as more than what society believed it could be by forcing them to see their flaws and fix them; and for this he should be revered.
Works Cited
Galens, David. “Peter Shaffer.” Drama for Students. Vol 5. 1999; Gale: Detroit. Print.
Giana Karis, C.J. “The Artistic Trajectory of Peter Shaffer.” Peter Shaffer A Casebook. Ed. C.J. Giana Karis. Garland Publishing, Inc, 1991. 3-23. 28 Feb 2010. Online.
Kaye, Helen. “Theater Review.” Jerusalem Post. 11 Dec 2008. 5 Feb 2010. Online.
Seigel, Naomi. “Gifted, Yes, But Not Enough.” The New York Times Online. 8 Jun 2008. 5 Feb 2010. Online
“Shaffer, Peter 1926-.” Proquest Literature. 2002. 12 Feb 2010. Online.
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