Equss Vs Amadeus By Peter Shaffer

In both Equus and Amadeus Shaffer shows insanity in his characters. He does this not only to stress the characters feelings and state of mind of which they are in. Also, he attempts to cast a blanket over the reader; it gives the reader the feeling that Shaffer designed the characters to express and reflect the beauty in insanity and to convey the ugliness on normality.

"Madness, if not out rightly divine, is at best preferable to the 20th century's ruthless and uninspired sanity, is in this play, as it is so much fashionable philosophizing, totally dependent on a pleasant, aesthetically rational form of derangement for the credibility of its argument" (Richardson 389). Shaffer brings us into these feelings with the story of Alan Strang, a seventeen-year-old British boy. He has been sent to Rokeby Psychiatric Hospital in southern England to get "help" for the crime of blinding six horses that he worked with.

"Equus.... surgically probes man's continuing fascination with violent forms of belief" (Gill 387). Shaffer makes this all so obvious to us. Alan is an insane young man with no justification and quandary that must be dealt with. His therapist Dysart sees that this boy is troubled and can be helped, but fears that there might be something deeper. "Dysart recognizes also that the boy he is treating has experienced 'a passion more ferocious that I have felt in any second of my life" (Real389). Clearly he envies this.

In turn Dysart fears that the passion of the boy, not because he can't understand it, but because he does. "The inference is that, once cured, that is, rid or his 'divine' suffering, Alan will become a dullard like most normal people" (Clurman 388). Shaffer is trying to illustrate that "normality" is not good, but bad and that the only way to be divine is this state of mind is to go by Shaffer's idea of "insane."

Shaffer wants us to think in the mindset of the boy and see what he sees. He wants us to feel the insane thoughts of Equus and experience the urge to follow to voice, but we must ask our selves; what divine spirit is this we see? There is nothing to it but the pure crazed madness of a boy. After reading the play you are left feeling sorry for the poor soul because he was never able to fit into society and the normality, but hear he is being forced into it. Shaffer uses the word insane is strong context because as the author he has control of how it will be read as a defined. With this power, Shaffer rolls the word off each readers tongue as if it were a holy name of god.

Shaffer is questioning the notion or sanity and normality and this intrigues the reader. But when it comes time for Dysart to do his job, what will happen to the boy? "There's no question that the boy himself is in deep pain and distress" (Shaffer 356). Is Dysart the savior to the hell that Alan is going through or is he the fiend that will show Alan the hell that is normality?

Amadeus begins with the "savage whispers" and snakelike hissing" of the Ventricelli, the two Little Winds who appear throughout the play, spreading rumors. They spew forth words from their mouths like curses, First "Saliere" and "assassin" emerge, followed by the talk of Mozart's death, or murder, and the question that we are left with: Did Saliere murder Mozart? If he did, why did he wait thirty-two years to make his confession (Morace 37)?

Saliere starts his story off by telling us about his bargain with God. He says that in exchange for God's making him a composer, he would dedicate his art to God and his life to serving God and man (Morace 37). This is the Saliere with love in his heart and good fortune in his future, but he soon changes his way of looking at the good that God does.

"The Saliere of 1781 is an honored and prolific composer in the court of Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, who he has dedicated his life and his talents to the greater honor and glory of God and has obtained fame. Salieri belongs to a clique of Italians who have culturally colonized the court. His composure is shaken when Mozart, an upstart Austrian prodigy from Salzburg, comes to Vienna and makes a favorable impression on the Emperor. Though he never questions Mozart's talent, Salieri becomes insanely jealous" (Welsh 34). "Mozart challenges all Salieri's assumptions: social, religious, and aesthetic" (Morace 37).

"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the genius composer, is presented as a crude, vulgar, and tactless young egotist who has absolutely no modesty with regard to his talent. The victim of the drama, Mozart is innocent and naпve in the devious world of court politics, too tactless to veil his contempt for the Court Italians and