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"God-Hunting": The Chaos of Worship in Peter Shaffer's Equus and Royal Hunt of the Sun

1978; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/md.21.1.13

1712-5286

Barbara Lounsberry,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

EQUUS and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer's masterpieces to date, are mutually revealing. In fact, the historically removed and more elaborate Royal Hunt can help the reader penetrate the starker Equus, as well as the confusion which its modern psychoanalytic metaphor has unfortunately occasioned. For Equus is only peripherally related to the pitfalls of modern psychiatry, just as Royal Hunt is concerned only incidentally with the rape and massacre of the Incan civilization by the Spanish conquistadores. Despite these compelling settings, each play is really an exploration of man's search for gods, what he does when he seems to find them, and how they ultimately elude him.