Howard Barker's Historiographic Metadrama

TÜRKİYE CUMHURİYETİ
ANKARA ÜNİVERSİTESİ
SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ
BATI DİLLERİ VE EDEBİYATLARI
(İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI)
ANABİLİM DALI
RECONFIGURATION OF HOWARD BARKER’S THEATRE OF CATASTROPHE AS
HISTORIOGRAPHIC METADRAMA: NO END OF BLAME, THE POWER OF THE
DOG, PITY IN HISTORY, SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION AND BRUTOPIA
Doktora Tezi
Yiğit SÜMBÜL
Ankara, 2018
ii
ANABİLİM DALI
Doktora Tezi
Yiğit SÜMBÜL
Tez Danışmanı
Prof. Dr. Nazan TUTAŞ
Ankara, 2018
iii
ANABİLİM DALI
PhD Thesis
Yiğit SÜMBÜL
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nazan TUTAŞ
Ankara, 2018
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis has been written in a relatively short period of time; yet it is a product of years of
reading and research, and of my indefinable fascination with the late-20th century British
political drama.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Nazan
TUTAŞ for her invaluable support and guidance throughout this project; and also to my
committee members Assoc. Prof. Dr. Şebnem KAYA and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sıla ŞENLEN
GÜVENÇ for having faith in me all the time. I also feel indebted to all academic staff of the
Department of English Language and Literature at Ankara University for their welcoming
smiles whenever I appear at their doors. In addition, I will forever be thankful to my former
professors at the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University,
from whom I received priceless education during my undergraduate years as well as to Prof.
Dr. Behzad Ghaderi SOHİ and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hasan BAKTIR from the Department of
English Language and Literature at Erciyes University for their endless encouragement. I
wish to extend my gratitude to all academic staff of the Department of English Language and
Literature at Gazi University for their kindness and patience in my troublesome times.
Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to TUBİTAK (The Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey) for the financial support they gave me during
my graduate education and for the infinite support and contribution they make to the
scientific, artistic and cultural development of Turkey every year by granting scholarships
for young researchers from all around the world.
Yiğit SÜMBÜL
ANKARA 2018
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….1
CHAPTER 1- The Evolution of a Genre: Historiographic Metadrama………………..14
1.1. The Theory of Historiography in the Modern Times: From Hegel to White14
1.2. A Brief History of Metadramatic Theatre in the Modern Times…………...47
1.3. From Historiographic Metafiction to Historiographic Metadrama……….77
CHAPTER 2- The Tenets of Howard Barker’s Theatre of Catastrophe……………….91
2.1. Tragedy, Death and the Catastrophic Effect………………………………..98
2.2. Language, Obscurity and the Question of Anti-Catharsis………...………109
2.3. Political, Moral and Aesthetic Functionlessness…………………………...116
CHAPTER 3- Rereading Howard Barker’s Plays as Historiographic Metadrama….130
3.1. No End of Blame and the ‘Terrible’ Power of Art………………………..133
3.2. The Power of the Dog and the Question of ‘Appropriate’ Art……………..153
3.3. Pity in History and Art as ‘Vulgar Ostentation’……………………………173
3.4. Scenes from an Execution and ‘What the Circumstances Require’ for Art188
3.5. Brutopia and Art in the Face of Censorship………………………………..203
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………….…….219
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….232
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...247
ÖZET……………………………………………………………………………………..249
1
INTRODUCTION
Howard Barker’s talent as a dramatist, essayist and stage designer has demonstrated
itself in huge volumes of plays, books of theory of theatre and performance as well as a
substantial number of domestic and international performances of his plays let alone a theatre
ensemble dedicated to the staging of his drama. Rabey reminds the reader that Barker has
been described as ‘England’s greatest living dramatist’ in The Times and as ‘the Shakespeare
of our age’ by Sarah Kane with respect to the playwright’s prolificacy in writing, authenticity
of style and mastery of the English language in its most poetic form (2009:3). Barker’s drama
stands somewhere between the mainstream political theatre of the late 20th century and the
expressionistic experimental drama of the turn of the century, which manifests itself in his
interest in the historical subject matter, themes of death and desire for power and an intense
theatrical self-reflexivity. In this respect, his plays have been interpreted in their relations and
potential responses to the mainstream political drama of the Brechtian vein -represented by
dramatists like Caryl Churchill, David Hare and Howard Brenton- as well as to the
experimental drama of playwrights like Sarah Kane.
Barker’s work has drawn intense critical attention for the last few decades in terms
of his unconventional approach to the role and functions of drama in the social, political and
moral contexts. Many researchers have positioned Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” up
against the long tradition of Aristotelian catharsis and Brechtian epic theatre, which attribute
various functions to the dramatic work and its representation on the stage. However, such
discussions are inevitably contingent upon a blind acknowledgment of Barker’s drama as a
decisively and perfectly functionless kind, as proposed in the playwright’s theoretical
treatises on drama and performance. The studies conducted on Barker’s theatre so far have
focused on its thematic richness with an insistence on the subject of death, violence and
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sexual desire as well as its technical aspects like the use of poetic language, asides and its
attitude towards the audience. Among these studies are Charles Lamb’s Howard Barker’s
Theatre of Seduction (1997) and David Ian Rabey’s Howard Barker: Ecstasy and Death
(2009), both of which examine Barker’s career as a dramatist with respect to his alleged
aloofness from politics and moralism.
However, this study focuses on the relationships between the contemporary
postmodern theories of history and literature and Howard Barker’s dramatic works and his
theoretical works on the art of theatre from a different point of view. It examines to what
extent Howard Barker’s plays are suitable for categorization as ‘historiographic metadrama’
and how much these plays contribute to the development of the genre. Such a reading is
expected to reveal the playwright’s views of history and art in general along with his use of
those historical and metadramatic references as a means to address contemporary political,
moral, ethical and aesthetic issues. To that end, this study also discusses how such a reading
of Barker’s plays is potentially subversive of his theatrics of “Theatre of Catastrophe”
proposed in his theory books on theatre and performance.
Such an objective begins with an attempt to come up with a new definition of the
contemporary dramatic genre, historiographic metadrama, with respect to the treatment of
historical data and process of artistic creation in Howard Barker’s selected plays. In addition,
it requires a re-reading of the plays concerned within the framework of historiographic
metadrama in an effort to reveal the playwright’s political, moral and artistic stance through
intertextual elements in the plays and, thus, challenge his arguments constituting his “Theatre
of Catastrophe”. This dissertation analyses Barker’s plays No End of Blame, The Power of
the Dog, Pity in History, Scenes from an Execution, and Brutopia in the light of post-modern
theories of historiography and literature to display their thematic common threads like
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distortion of documented historical data, the struggle of the artist against the authority,
responsibilities of the artist towards society and functions of art in a chaotic, ugly world. To
that end, it compares the arguments deduced from the analyses of the plays with Barker’s
principles for his “Theatre of Catastrophe” to reveal the contradictions between what the
playwright proposes and what he produces.
As mentioned above, a new perspective is required to the analysis of Howard
Barker’s, one of the leading figures of contemporary British drama, work in order to reveal
the playwright’s contributions to the development of a new genre, historiographic
metadrama. Using Linda Hutcheon’s proverbial theory “historiographic metafiction”, a
potently self-reflexive genre with a challenge to validity of historical knowledge, and its
applications to drama, this study offers a new aspect to ‘historiographic metadrama’ and
discusses Barker’s famous works in terms of their use and problematization of historical data
and their self-reflexive commentary on issues like artistic innovation, freedom of expression,
censorship, the artist’s struggle against the authority and the ethics of art. It also relates this
discussion to Barker’s self-crafted genre ‘the Theatre of Catastrophe” as detailed in his
dramatic manifesto, Arguments for a Theatre, with particular emphasis on his views
regarding functions of art, responsibilities of the artist and art’s relation to politics, morality
and history. Consequently, it is assumed that the playwright’s tenacious use of documented
history as the time and setting for his plays and his metatheatrical references to the nature of
art stem from his will to address contemporary political, moral, ethical and aesthetic issues,
and, thus, seem to contradict what he proposes in his theorization of “the Theatre of
Catastrophe” about functionlessness of art and irresponsibility of the artist.
The discussions here derive mainly from the concepts of metadrama and
historiography with respect to Howard Barker’s plays within the context of historiographic
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metadrama. The term metatheatre is used in accordance with Lionel Abel’s 1963 formulation
of this new genre with particular emphasis on self-reflexivity, self-referentiality, artificiality
and illusoriness of dramatic works. In addition, Richard Hornby’s definition of metadrama
as the kind of drama in which “the subject of the play turns out to be, in some sense, drama
itself” (1986:31) is also utilized along with the ‘varieties’ of metadrama listed in his Drama,
Metadrama and Perception (1986) as the play-within-the-play, the ceremony within the play,
roleplaying within role, literary and real life reference and self-reference. This dissertation
also refers, in the discussion of Barker’s claim to history-writing, to the seminal postmodern
works on history-writing like Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973) in which he defines a historical work as “a verbal
structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of
past structures and processes in the interest of explaining what they were by representing
them” (2).
Bringing together the two concepts defined above, the present study discusses
Howard Barker’s selected plays as historiographic and metadramatic texts which inevitably
deal with historical events in a subversive way and comment on the nature of drama or, in
general, art itself. In the re-readings of Barker’s plays as historiographic metadrama, it also
refers to Alexander Feldman’s definition of ‘historiographic metatheatre’ as “those works,
and parts of works, in which self-reflexive engagements with the traditions and forms of
dramatic art illuminate historical themes and aid in the representation of historical events”
(2013:2-3). Finally, the outcomes of the above-mentioned analyses are juxtaposed with
Howard Barker’s fundamental principles in his formulation of the “Theatre of Catastrophe”,
particularly the ones related to functions and responsibilities of art, to reveal the playwright’s
self-contradiction.
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The first chapter of this dissertation gives a brief account of the historical
development of historiography which is born with the premises of an objective, scientific
discipline and, then, transformed into a subjective means of narrativizing the past. The
beginning of studies in historiography is attributed to the German philosopher Hegel who
discusses the concept of history under three sub-headings: original history, reflective history
and philosophical history. In his discussion, Hegel emphasizes the role of the historian in the
representation of historical events which ultimately determines the level of objectivity of the
given historical account. From Hegel onwards, the arguments related to history possess
similar motivations, treating history either as a science or as an art. Lord Acton, in the 19th
century, draws attention to the political implications of historical accounts and the qualities
that distinguish historiography from historical literature. Acton believes that history has the
power to aggrandize or stigmatize nations and, in this respect, ideological intervention in the
writing of history is inevitably necessary for the good of the majority.
With an eye to Hayden White’s discussion of the evolution of historiography in a
chronological order, the first chapter also includes a review of the ideas put forward by the
philosophers of the German tradition like Droysen, the Anglo-American philosophers of
history like Walsh and Gardiner, the French Annalistes like Foucault and Le Goff, Marxist
critics like Jameson and the hermeneutic philosophers like Ricoeur and Gadamer. Basically
referring to Droysen’s Historik (1868), it also discusses how he sees history as a
representation of the past, not the past itself, serving the dominant ideology and morality.
Droysen relates historical knowledge and representation ultimately to the interpretative
mechanisms of a given era, ideological group and individual historian motivated by his
immediate needs. Foucault, on the other hand, refers to the accumulation of historical
knowledge as a process of linguistic encoding and decoding in an attempt to interpret and

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make sense of a past on which present-time knowledge is quite limited. The representative
of Marxist historiography, Jameson emphasizes the necessity of a narrative structure in an
accurate representation of historical events with respect to the cause and effect relationship;
and he attributes great powers to that narrativity in the dialectical process of cultural
development. The difference between the French Annalistes and the Anglo-American
philosophers of history in terms of their approaches to the element of story-telling in
historical representation is also discussed with particular references to the representative texts
of the two schools of thought. Ricoeur, on the other hand, along with other hermeneutic
philosophers, discusses historiography as an act of narrativizing the past through which
historical accuracy and understanding can be achieved without a necessity to explain the past.
He argues that, without a plot, historical accounts are deficient and it is the narrative structure
which gives a historical temporality the shape of a logical account with an emphasis on
reasons and consequences.
In the last few decades, the discussions over historical narratives have focused on the
possibility of achieving the status of a science for historiography when stories as its basic
source material and its ideological and mythical nature are taken into consideration. For
contemporary French historians, the Annalistes for instance, it has always been crucial to
eliminate storytelling from historical representation if historiography is meant to be a science.
For major Anglo-American philosophers of history like Walsh and Gardiner, however,
storytelling is not only an inseparable organic component of historiography, but the most
appropriate way in representing the past, as well. What distinguishes historiography from
fiction, in this sense, is the former’s subject matter being what is real and lived whereas the
latter’s being what is imagined and liveable. Separating storytelling from historiography, for
these Anglo-American philosophers, is an unnecessary measure, as the past itself was

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comprised of individual stories to be transformed into historical accounts thanks to the
historian’s storytelling capabilities. However, in the postmodern way of thinking, there is no
clear-cut distinction between a historical account and a fictional work that claims to be
dealing with lived events in the past, based on the textuality of history and the historicality
of texts. As White argues, “history as a discipline is in bad shape today because it has lost
sight of its origins in the literary imagination” (1978:99). This complication calls for a close
analysis of the narrative structures of the texts, fictional or non-fictional, with respect to the
three basic types of narrative discourse being mythic, historical and fictional to which Paul
Ricoeur turned his attention in the 70s.
In the second part of the first chapter of this study, a brief history of metadramatic
theatre is given from Lionel Abel’s coinage of the term ‘metatheatre’, through Richard
Hornby’s elaboration on the qualities and varieties of ‘metadrama’, to the contemporary
contributors like Calderwood, Egan and Homan. Abel, in his definition and discussion,
focuses on the issues of play-within-the-play and self-dramatization of the characters in the
long tradition of western drama from Shakespeare to Brecht. With an emphasis on the
technical aspects of dramatic works he deals with, Abel names the genre “metatheatre”,
whereas, in other studies on this newly emergent self-reflexive tradition in drama, the term
metadrama was also used interchangeably with Abel’s metatheatre, as in Richard Hornby’s
monumental Drama, Metadrama, and Perception (1986). Despite the dominant
interchangeable use of the two terms, there has lately been a tendency to categorize technical
self-reflexive elements of a dramatic work related to staging, acting or performance, such as
a play within the play or role-playing within the role, as metatheatrical while the textual self-
reflexivity and intertextual elements in a dramatic work related basically to content or reading
are categorized as metadramatic.

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Abel attributes the beginnings of metatheatre to the 16th and 17th centuries when the
idea that all the world is a stage and humans are just actors playing the parts cast for them is
popular. Referring specifically to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Tempest, Marlowe’s Doctor
Faustus, Moliere’s Tartuffe and Calderon’s The Great Stage of the World, Abel discusses
how the characters in the plays, who have already been dramatized by the playwright’s
imagination, dramatize themselves and the other characters with a playwright’s
consciousness. Similarly, in the following centuries, plays like Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Genet’s
The Balcony and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot among many others, give voice to characters
who are already dramatized by their personal histories, fates and the people around them.
After Abel’s introduction to this new genre, Richard Hornby sets the basic principles of what
he calls ‘metadrama’ with particular emphasis on both technical and textual aspects of
dramatic works. Hornby specifies the six elements that constitute metadramaticality in a play
as the play within the play, the ceremony within the play, role playing within the role, literary
and real life reference, self-reference and disruption of perception (1986:32). He refers to
famous plays like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy for the play within
the play, to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth for the ceremony within the
play, to Shakespeare’s Othello and Jonson’s Volpone for role playing within the role, to
Shakespeare’s famous history plays and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
for literary and real-life reference, to Shakespeare’s Henry IV for self-reference and finally
to Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Ibsen’s The Master Builder for perception.
The third part of the first chapter deals with the birth of a new genre, historiographic
metadrama, out of the merging of the postmodern conception of historiography and the
potentials of metadrama. In the formulation of a genre to be named ‘historiographic
metadrama’, all discussions inevitably derive from Linda Hutcheon’s seminal essay on
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postmodern fiction- particularly its self-reflexive, intertextual and historiographic nature-
titled “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and Intertextuality of History”. The defining
elements of Hutcheon’s ‘historiographic metafiction’ including self-reflexivity,
intertextuality, parody and a claim to historical knowledge become an inspiration for Richard
Knowles, the Canadian scholar of drama who coined the term “historiographic metadrama”
in 1987. In his extended research on contemporary Canadian playwrights like Salutin,
Reaney and Pallock, Knowles defines and exemplifies historiographic metadrama with
respect to these playwrights’ subversion of history with their own subjective accounts and
use of metadramatic elements like ceremony within the play and literary and real-life
reference. He also observes that historiographic metadrama has taken root in the whole
western drama, not only in Canadian drama, and it has become the defining genre of the
postmodern dramatic literature. Very much like Knowles, Alexander Feldman also attempts
at a definition of this genre which he names “historiographic metatheatre” and puts the
emphasis on the theatricality of history and the historicality of theatre as reflected in
contemporary plays.
The second chapter of this study attempts to determine Howard Barker’s place in a
long tradition of British political drama based primarily on Brechtian epic theatre in terms of
both form and content. Starting his literary career in the 1970s, Barker gradually lays the
foundations of his genre “Theatre of Catastrophe” which culminates in the establishment of
“The Wrestling School”, a theatre company devoted to the staging of Barker’s plays, in 1988.
Barker sets the principles of his self-crafted genre in two seminal books on the art of theatre
titled Arguments for a Theatre (1993) and Death, the One and the Art of Theatre (2005) in
which he elaborates on issues ranging from functions of art, the places of death and tragedy
in contemporary drama, language and obscurity to acting and staging of his plays. In these
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books, Barker also makes a list of elements that distinguish his theatre from what he calls the
humanist theatre or the theatre of conscience dominating the stage from Brecht onwards. His
“Theatre of Catastrophe” basically refuses to possess any function whatsoever, including an
interest in giving political, moral or aesthetic messages to an audience whose responses to
the play must not be a collective, but an individually distinctive one. Barker also draws
attention to the supremacy of the tragic form and the element of death in dramatic works, as
death means a moral and political nakedness, the ultimate ambiguity and mystery, and the
means of the final judgment, all of which Barker embraces with his drama. His “Theatre of
Catastrophe” also designates a much more poetic language, obscurity in meaning and an
avoidance of purgation of feelings on behalf of the audience in Aristotelian terms.
The first part of the second chapter deals with a catastrophic effect which lies in the
centre of Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe”, a feeling of dignity felt even on the verge of
death, a feeling that makes the theatrical experience worthwhile for the audience. Barker
contends that the best form to convey this catastrophic effect to the audience is the tragic
form in which the audience learns the value of suffering and extracts the spirit of resistance.
The second part of the second chapter mentions how Barker’s catastrophic theatre opposes
the idea of clarity of meaning and the authoritarian view of art as ‘saying’. Instead, his theatre
aims to offer a very different kind of artistic experience by confusing the audience to the end
that it realizes the absence of generalizing, all-encompassing meanings. He criticizes the
popular political theatre of the previous decades for reducing the audience to an ‘intellectual
servility’ in which it craves for a message, as if knowledge was public property, and pushes
the experience of art into the background. Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe”, on the contrary,
strongly distances the audience from the feelings of empathy and self-assertion, and never
satisfies the audience with a restoration of any kind. It does not burden the audience with any
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kind of truth, but privileges it with the knowledge that truth never exists. The third part of
the second chapter, on the other hand, discusses Barker’s deliberate liberation of his drama
from contextual meaning mechanisms including ideology, politics and public morality. He
sees “Theatre of Catastrophe” as a cure for this sickness intensified by the mechanical and
ideological theatre of his time which selfishly keeps the right of moral speculation to itself.
He claims that his theatre never makes circles about the audience’s perception, never assumes
any kind of ideological responsibility, never strives to elucidate or to amuse, never promises
to remain within the crippling framework of the facts and never fusses about the truth. His
“Theatre of Catastrophe” does not create the illusion that the audience is watching something
of its own, something it itself has already experienced in a certain part of its history.
The third chapter of this study discusses five selected plays from Howard Barker’s
most prolific years, all written and published during the 80s, with special emphasis on the
playwright’s use of documented historical events for his plots, famous historical personages
for characters and specific historical dates and settings for backgrounds along with artists for
his protagonists and works of art for the central motifs in order to express his ideas about the
accuracy of historical knowledge, freedom of expression, censorship, artistic innovation, the
artist’s struggle against the authority and the ethics of art. In the first part of the chapter, the
playwright’s 1981 play No End of Blame is discussed within the reaches of historiographic
metadrama by referring primarily to the protagonist’s, a Hungarian cartoonist named Bela,
struggles to liberate his art from the attempted governmental interventions spearheaded by
actual historical figures like Lenin and Churchill in a long period from the First World War
to the end of the Second World War. In the second part, Barker’s other 1981 play The Power
of the Dog is subjected to a similar scrutiny with a discussion of the protagonist’s, a Polish
photographer named Ilona, hardships when she is hired to photograph Stalin’s face in a post-
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Second World War setting. In the third part of the chapter, Barker’s 1984 play Pity in History
is discussed with special references to the protagonist’s, a sculptor named Gaukroger,
questioning of honesty in art while subjecting himself to the wishes of the Cromwellian
government and the Puritan Church during the English Civil War. The fourth part, on the
other hand, is concerned with the playwright’s other 1984 play Scenes from an Execution in
which the protagonist, a free-spirited female painter named Galactia, defends her freedom of
expression against the pressure of the government on her depictions of the famous Battle of
Lepanto between the fleets of the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire. Finally, the fifth
part of the chapter discusses Barker’s 1989 play Brutopia with a focus on the issue of political
censorship by the King Henry VIII himself who sentences Thomas More to death due to his
‘overambitious thoughts’ and refuses to publish the book written by Cecilia, More’s daughter
and an ambitious female author, without ideological ‘proofreading’.
Finally, this study juxtaposes the outcomes of the discussions of Barker’s plays as
“Theatre of Catastrophe” and historiographic metadrama to display whether the playwright’s
work has been a continuation of a long-term political and moral drama- although the
playwright decisively considers his theatre separate from the cathartic Aristotelian moralism
and political Brechtian aesthetics- or not. The selected plays - No End of Blame, The Power
of the Dog, Pity in History, Scenes from an Execution and Brutopia – differ from the rest of
Barker’s plays in that they are all concerned with the same struggle of an artist against a
totalitarian authority in a time of catastrophe. All written in the 80s, these plays draw the
picture of a political, moral and artistic environment which strongly resembles the
atmosphere in contemporary England in terms of political, moral and aesthetic discussions.
Although Barker also wrote historical plays around the same time like The Castle (1985),
which uses a medieval setting during the time of the Crusades, and The Europeans (1990),
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which depicts the catastrophic environment in the 17th century Vienna after the invasion by
the Ottoman Empire, such plays don’t seem to be making an attempt on disrupting historical
data or making political and moral criticism of any kind -at least overtly-, or using an artist
as the protagonist. Along similar lines, Hurts Given and Received, one of Barker’s latest
plays published in 2010, reflects the psychology and troubles of a poet-protagonist whereas
the play is not concerned with history or historical representation at all. Barker’s Blok/Eko
(2011) similarly depicts a poet-protagonist’s last stand in the name artistic perfection before
he sacrifices his body, not his soul; however, this play also does not concern itself with the
issues of historical representation and political as well as moral criticism. In this respect, the
selected plays prove rather coherent for a simultaneous analysis in terms of subject matter,
style and time of publication. This study offers a new dimension to the newly-emergent genre
‘historiographic metadrama’ through these plays and opens up new windows to the
playwright’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” with a challenge to it from within. In all these respects,
Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” proves to be an inherently functional kind of drama with
the playwright’s problematization of historical knowledge and veiled comments on the nature
and ethics of art in the face of his political, moral and aesthetic concerns.
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CHAPTER 1
THE EVOLUTION OF A GENRE: HISTORIOGRAPHIC METADRAMA
1.1. The Theory of Historiography in the Modern Times: From Hegel to White
The study of history and historiography in the modern sense can be traced back to the
late 19th century, to Hegel’s seminal lectures on the philosophy of history. Hegel begins his
discussion of the study of history by listing three methods of treating the historical subject
matter: original history, reflective history and philosophical history. The first method refers
to the classical understanding of history writing, of famous historians like Herodotus and
Thucydides, whose treatment of the past does not go beyond recording the deeds, dates,
names of people and events to which the historians themselves were eye-witnesses. In this
method, the historian’s job is limited to reflecting what happens before his eyes to the paper
by excluding his emotions from the representation, which is the basic different between him
and the poet. Hegel also acknowledges the fact that it is impossible for a historian to ‘see’
everything and historians also treat the events which are capable of ‘being seen’ to serve
faithfully the conceptive faculties of humanity, by which regard he must exclude such
imaginary and improbable events heard in legends, ballads and myths. However, this has a
crippling effect on the scope of the historian’s work, as such data require the historian’s
participation in a certain event at a certain place and time, very much like a painter painting
a scene with no touch of imagination. The duty of the classical historians or annalists is
transferred to the monks in the middle ages whose deliberate isolation from the general public
crippled their vision and their records could not go beyond naïve chronicles with a very
limited scope. However, in the modern times, the roles of the historians have gone under
drastic change and historical records have gained a narrative structure with vivid descriptions
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and to-the-point details: “In richness of matter and fullness of detail as regards strategic
appliances, and attendant circumstances, they [have become] even more instructive” (17).
The second method, Hegel argues, extends the scope of historical representation from
the actual time and place in which the historical events took place to an undefined, unlimited
future; and the historian manipulates his subject matter to achieve a universal image of the
past by his own spirit and from his own point of view. However, the individuality of the
historian’s tone often disrupts the authenticity of the historical events when the historical
personages are given voices from the ‘future’ mouths. For Hegel, a historian who endeavours
to achieve universality must attempt to capture the past events as they really happened. Such
a representation must “foreshorten its pictures by abstractions; and this includes not merely
the omission of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought is, after
all, the most trenchant epitomist” (19). Besides its claims to universality, reflective history
also strives to be pragmatic or didactic in the sense that it creates a present out of the
documented past based on the moral lessons derived from the experiences of previous
generations. Forming historical relations between the past and the present, such a pragmatic
approach proposes idealistic doctrines of behaviour and conduct in particular cases, which
must be supplemented with the reanimation of that historical spirit to better the present
circumstances. Reflective history can also take the form of criticism which investigates not
the history, but the history of history, that is the validity of other historical narratives to reveal
the level of subjectivity and the true intentions of the historian if there are any. One last face
of reflective history is that it reflects history’s own fragmentary nature by focusing on
particular subject matters like the history of art, history of medicine or history of law from a
general point of view. This approach is helpful in the constitution, though superficially, and
16
development of fields of research and sets the tenets of each field as an inward guide to the
following generations.
Philosophical history, the third method in Hegel’s classification, is defined as
“nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it” (22) in the simplest sense of the term. Even
though he admits that, in the study of history, thought looks inferior to the facts, Hegel sees
an inevitable connection between the subject matter of history and philosophy in their
treatment of what happens and how it relates to the following periods of time. As history
records the rational development of humanity, philosophy catches up with it in reason’s
domain, which is contemplated as the essence of the universe in his philosophy even if it
presents nothing more than the ideal, the intentional and the speculative. Hegel, here,
acknowledges that philosophers have always been accused of forcing the ‘a priori’ into the
history of mankind, and he professes that speculation is a central ambiguity in history writing.
For him, “[e]ven the ordinary, the ‘impartial’ historiographer, who believes and professes
that he maintains a simply receptive attitude; surrendering himself only to the data supplied
him — is by no means passive as regards the exercise of his thinking powers” (24). The
historian brings his contexts into the text and, if history is to be regarded as a science, he
gives way to the free play of reason and speculative reflection. Hegel views history as the
result of the doings of active reasoning and the investigation of that history is an act to search
the ‘Spirit’ that triggers the reason’s actions: “Universal History […] is the exhibition of
Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially” (31). In
that respect, true historical process is a self-revelation of the rational ‘Spirit’ which
constitutes the overall nature of the subjective and the objective cumulatively leading
humanity through historical stages to an infinite consciousness.

17
Lord Acton, in his famous lectures on the study of modern history published
posthumously in 1906, draws attention to the inevitable relationship between history-writing
and politics, and he grants the latter with the power to save history from the domain of ‘mere
literature’: “[T]he knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is
eminently practical, as an instrument of action, and a power that goes to the making of the
future” (3). He attaches great importance to historiography in that it contributes to the
advancement of both science and government by always keeping the tradition in view as a
role model. However, he admits that history must be concerned with accuracy whose origins
cannot be sought in the darkness of the Middle Ages, but in the Renaissance when the
perception of the world, notions of economy, law and government and even the trends in
education gained momentum towards an ‘untried experience’ stimulated by an ‘unknown
influence’. With an eye to that sharp disengagement from the past, Acton views 16th century
as the beginning of modern history: “It was then that History as we understand it began to be
understood, and the illustrious dynasty of scholars arose to whom we still look both for
method and material” (11). Beginning with the Renaissance, historians leave the ‘twilight of
fiction’, promises of invention and trusting false witnesses, and they begin to see
historiography as a duty to detect verifiable truth rather than the forgery of a past: “Taking
little for granted they have sought to know the ground they stand on, and the road they travel,
and the reason why. Over them, therefore, the historian has obtained an increasing
ascendancy” (12). Naming a few forerunners of history-writing like Leopold von Ranke,
Henry Hallam and S. R. Gardiner, Acton speaks optimistically of the future of history-writing
with his contemporaries’ disbelief in weak assumptions and generalizing narratives along
with their dependence on subjective conjectures: “We are still at the beginning of the
documentary age, which will tend to make history independent of historians, to develop
18
learning at the expense of writing, and to accomplish a revolution in other sciences as well”
(19). Acton believes that a neat study of history and careful archiving have the capacity to
uplift nations, very much like the study of the ancient texts uplifted European civilization
during the Renaissance. He accepts that history is a narrative that is created by and creates
national heritage based on the shared experiences of all the citizens by their collective efforts:
“To men in general I would justify the stress I am laying on modern history, […] by the
argument that it is a narrative told of ourselves, the record of a life which is our own, of
efforts not yet abandoned to repose, of problems that still entangle the feet and vex the hearts
of men” (19). Acton is also assured that the study of history is always rewarding to improve
one’s character by providing him with the ability of ‘historical thinking’, devoid of illusions
and biases, at least in private and public relations.
On a national basis, then on a universal one, Acton touches upon the relationship
between religion and the birth of modern history. After the Restoration of the Stuart dynasty
to the throne, the triumph of reason over belief and historical thinking over dogma takes place
in England giving superiority to freedom and human rights as learned from the cycle of
history. The cycle of events in question has taught humanity the lesson that the true religious
motive is not to seek perfection by the example of Christ, but to improve the world by that
example: “[T]he wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement
of the world; and that achieved liberty is the one ethical result that rests on the converging
and combined conditions of advancing civilisation. Then you will understand […] that
History is the true demonstration of Religion” (31-32). As humanity is indebted to the Dutch
Revolution for freedom of belief, to the English nation for constitutional state rule, to the
American nation for federation republicanism, to the French Revolution for equality,
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fraternity and freedom, modern man’s share is to study these historical turning points to make
the world a better place.
Acton points to the second half of the 19th century as the time when historiography
and studies of history reached a kind of climax with the opening of papal archives to more
researchers and the rise of documentary studies. Although these sources have long been
available to the individual members of privileged circles, the true historians and researchers
of history have lately understood that “the main thing to learn is not the art of accumulating
material, but the sublimer art of investigating it, of discerning truth from falsehood, and
certainty from doubt. It is by solidity of criticism more than by the plenitude of erudition,
that the study of history strengthens, and straightens, and extends the mind” (40). This
investigation of the historical material brings about the questions regarding the reliability of
the sources, as historians have so far done nothing more than interpreting some other texts,
which are interpretations themselves. Along with these, history-writing is always questioned
with the level of the historian’s impartiality in terms of his political, religious and moral
stance as juxtaposed with his target material. To overcome such potential charges, Acton
argues that “history, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on
opinions […] Ideas which, in religion and in politics, are truths, in history are forces. They
must be respected; they must not be affirmed. [B]y a timely and discreet indifference […]
history might be lifted above contention, and made an accepted tribunal, and the same for
all” (45-46). Acton’s conviction stems obviously from a naïve belief that true sincerity is
possible in narrating historical events, as he looks convinced that an unshakable devotion to
‘evident morality’ in history-writing has the power to piece opposite poles together. He sees
it as the historian’s moral duty to refrain from any kind of judgment and to investigate the
past with neutrality and dubiousness in the face of political, religious and moral imperatives.
20
History, for Acton, is also an inevitably cumulative entity that relies on the principle
of causation in the form of a never-ending chain of events. It is liable to the “law of
continuous growth which has transformed history from a chronicle of casual occurrences into
the likeness of something organic” (56). In such a long, ceaseless tradition of recording the
truthful past, the modern historian is expected to take their forefathers as role models in talent
and knowledge, but not to remain limited within their horizons. The historians of the modern
era, compared to the old ones, have the capacity and chance to stay “more rigidly impersonal,
disinterested and just […] and to learn from undisguised and genuine records to look with
remorse upon the past, and to the future with assured hope of better things” (74). Acton
concludes that, by keeping this idea in mind, history keeps nations standing with strong ties
of religion and state power.
Hayden White, in his seminal study on the contemporary historical studies titled The
Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, discusses the place
of narrativity in historical representation and traces the journey of historical theory from
Droysen’s Historik through Foucault and Jameson’s ideas to Ricoeur’s philosophy of history.
In this respect, following White’s chronological classification will give a comprehensive
understanding of the contemporary theory of history and historiography with special
attention to the development of historical thought and changing the perception of the same
concepts.
White begins his discussion of history as a form of narration with the inevitable
human impulse to ‘narrate’ what really happened and to assimilate experience into more
fashionable facets in such a disruptive way that reality is transformed step-by-step into
unauthentic versions. In his understanding, such an urge leads narrator only to the extremes
where meaning is always refused. He names some historians or, to be more precise,
21
historiographers like Tocqueville, Huizinga and Braudel who choose not to use the forms
that are generally associated with storytelling in their treatment of historical data. Such an
approach helps White distinguish between the two basic historical discourses: one that
narrates without using the traditional ‘triangular’ structure of a story and one that narrativizes
using literary techniques of plot construction; “between a discourse that openly adopts a
perspective that looks out on the world and reports it and a discourse that feigns to make the
world speak itself and speak itself as a story” (2). White questions historiography’s stance
in-between these two approaches to reporting of the real and asks whether it is possible for
the ‘history-tellers’ to refrain themselves from the attractiveness of the imaginary over the
actual. He rightfully assumes that, whether narrated or narrativized, real events are doomed
to pass through the filter of ‘representation’ pretending to be the reality itself.
White mentions three nonnarrative forms of historical representation – annals,
chronicles and history proper – the first two of which do not satisfy the expectations from a
set of historical events to have a structure, interconnection, logical sequence, cause and effect
relation and overall meaning, where narration treads the borders. The annals, among these
two forms, are always incomplete in their listing of the historical events, as they are never
interested in hows or whys, but in whats and whens, though inaccurately. In any case, these
representative records disguise themselves under the veil of the ‘real’ rather than the
‘imaginary’, even though they lack the stimulation to attribute social, political or moral
importance to the events they catalogue. The participation of narrativity stems from an urge
to moralize the historical events within the political, social and moral system in an inevitably
authoritative way. The chronicle, on the other hand, is known to be a superior form of
historical representation in comparison with the annals, in the former’s classification of its
subject under coherent titles and detailing of the events chronicled. However, modern
22
scholarship denies the chronicle the claim to official history due to its failure to provide these
chain of events with a proper closure, connection or an all-encompassing meaning even if it
provides the reader with specific subject matter, location, and point of view. The narrative
structure of each article in the chronicle brings the form close to modern-time historical
narratives, but it, at the same time, decreases its objectivity in line with the ‘point of view’
included. And it is also crucial to note that, by the time the chronicle began to be used as a
form of historical representation, history-writing had already become an institutional
endeavour, mainly hovering around the church, and it inescapably represented the authorial
understanding of the past rather than the past as it really was. Speaking of an authorial
influence on history-writing, White mentions a multi-layered structure including the patrons,
the sources of inspiration and the historian himself as parties that impose shapes to the
shapeless past. The history proper, in that respect, differs from the other two in its
acknowledgment of the necessity to give historical data a coherent, desirable discourse
without missing out the fact that every narrative is open to argument and refutation in its
claim to originality: “In order to qualify as historical, an event must be susceptible to at least
two narrations of its occurrence. Unless at least two versions of the same set of events can be
imagined, there is no reason for the historian to take upon himself the authority of giving the
true account of what really happened” (20). By offering closure and meaning to the past
events, the history claims that it gives the ideal shape to reality among many other options.
The version of reality that can give the most desirable shape to it achieves recognition by the
majority.
The fact that historical narratives bring about the desire for a meaningful conclusion
can closely be related to the moral guardianship of the authority figures in the history of
mankind. Once the narrative gets involved in the recording of historical events, some
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invisible force fills in the gaps, offers moral solutions to some social or political ills and
centralizes some ideological outlook while marginalizing the others. By doing so, historical
narratives survive within those moral and ideological outlooks as well as helping them
survive, too. The moral message drawn from the set of historical events also strengthens the
sense of closure in the way a didactic literary work leaves the reader satisfied and more
comfortable. Furthermore, such moral preoccupations give the historical narrative a
‘realistic’ consciousness, as it leaves no room for the imaginary gap-fillings of the addressee
of that historical narration and it also satisfies the desire to find consistency, relationality,
completeness and stability in the representation of real events.
White, then, moves on to the examination of the concept of ‘narrative’ in the
representation of historical events which lays claim, in itself, to the domain of sciences. He
openly questions the validity of narrative structures in the scientific field and describes the
narrative mode of representation as “an index of a failure at once methodological and
theoretical […], one that investigates its data in the interest of telling a story about them
[which] appears methodologically deficient” (26). Although the extent to which narrative is
used in the representation of historical data depends on the focus point of the historiographer
being the event itself or the analysis of its circumstances, the issue of narrativity, by
definition, is inevitably bound to the intrusions of imagination. In this respect, the distinction
between the documented history and fiction lies in their subject matter rather than their mode
of representation. The more faithfully a narrative describes a historical event, the more easily
it can be taken as a true historical account: “The story told in a narrative is a mimesis of the
story lived in some region of historical reality, and insofar as it is an accurate imitation, it is
to be considered a truthful account thereof” (27). However, the dissertative tendencies of the
historian must also be taken into account in order to distinguish the amount of facts from
24
comments or historical accuracy from interpretation. To emphasize the necessity for such a
distinction, White quotes Hegel in the latter’s search for a ‘pragmatic’ interest that stimulates
the historian’s desire to narrate and preserve certain historical happenings. As Hegel relates
that pragmatic motivation to politics, it is justifiable that professional historiography has
always had an ideological side to it, as it basically served as a means of representation and,
thus, maintenance of the political identity of nations.
The discussions over the nature and functions of narrative structures in historiography
can be categorized under four approaches that dominated the theory of history in the second
half of the 20th century. First among these comes the Anglo-American philosophers of
narrative including Walsh, Gardiner, Dray and few others who stressed the inseparable ties
between narratives and reality which make it a suitable mode for historical representations.
The second group includes such French historians as Braudel, Furet and Le Goff among
others who endeavoured to disconfirm narrative’s claims to historical truth in an attempt to
exclude history from the domain of science. The third approach to the theory of history is
initiated by some other French philosophers of literature including Foucault, Derrida,
Barthes, Todorov and Genette who questioned the nature of narrative as a linguistic referent
of history. And finally comes philosophers like Gadamer and Ricoeur who focused on the
hermeneutical nature of narratives as time-bound accounts (31).
Among these four theoretical positions, White pays special attention to the second,
which he names shortly as the French ‘Annales, in their critical approach to representative
potentials of narratives in history-writing. For these theorists, documented history in the
narrative form has always been closer to literature than science in terms of its fictive
representation of mainly political turning points and the content of historiography must be
limited to more objective processes like economics and demography rather than politics.
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They believe that “narrative is inherently ‘dramatizing’ or ‘novelizing’ of its subject matter,
as if dramatic events either did not exist in history or, if they did exist, were by virtue of their
dramatic nature not a fit object of historical study” (33). However, White draws attention to
the fact that narrativizing is possible without dramatizing, and dramatizing is possible
without theatricalizing; thus, the Annales’ discontent with the potentials of narrative sounds
conclusory. The philosophers of the following generation obviously do a better job in terms
of revealing narrative’s partiality and susceptibility to ideological interventions. Among
these structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers, Claude Levi-Strauss treats narrative
historiography as pure ‘myth-making’ which is incorrectly taken for granted as what really
happened in the past: “The specific chronological scale used for this ordering procedure is
always culture-specific and adventitious, a purely heuristic device the validity of which
depends upon the specific aims and interests of the specific discipline in which it is used”
(34). In this respect, the number of historical narratives is dependent on the number of the
interested parties, which shakes their safe ground as representatives of human history.
Similarly, Roland Barthes’ seminal essay “The Discourse of History” (1967) also
questions the seeming difference between the discourses used in historiography and fiction,
by pointing out the ideological nature of any narrative account and referring to historical
narratives as ‘constructs’ rather than ‘discoveries’ put on paper: “[H]istorical discourse is in
its essence a form of ideological elaboration, or to put it more precisely, an imaginary
elaboration […], a speech act […] through which the utterer of the discourse (a purely
linguistic entity) ‘fills out’ the place of the subject of the utterance (a psychological or
ideological entity)” (Barthes, 1986:138). White explains Barthes’ distrust of historical
discourse with respect to its subjective nature by which it is used to make definitions of
communities in a narcissistic way and to make meanings rather than discover realities.
26
The discussions about narrative historiography in the last century have all been based
on the efforts to put it under the category of ‘science’ or, contrarily, to reveal the ideological
subjectivity that stimulates the writing of the historical account. The first vein of argument
treats historical narratives as a means of communication between different periods of time
by which a message is transmitted from the past through the present time to an infinite future
and interpreted from the present point of view. The central incentive in this process of
interpretation is human logic which, at the same time, is the active force behind the validation
and coherence of that interpretation, by consigning the representation to the domain of
causality. In this respect, there is a reciprocal relationship between two historical events in
their narrative representations, as the former explains the existence of the other whereas the
latter illuminates the importance of the former. Besides the necessity for a causal coherence,
believability of a historical narrative is also linked to the correspondence of the story to the
facts in the most faithful way possible. The historical account must be so accurate that it
should still invoke the same causality, coherence and correspondence in the minds of the
readers even when the narrative structure is extracted from it: “[T]he narrative code adds
nothing in the way of information or knowledge that could not be conveyed by some other
system of discursive encodation” (41). In short, the theorists who emphasize the
communicative function of historical narratives pay more attention to the content of the
narrative rather than its form and connotations of fictitiousness, which stands only for
embellishment.
The first line of argument, however, bears in itself a huge controversy in terms of its
openness to innumerable possible interpretations regarding the cause and effect relationship
between two events in the same historical line or that the sense of logical coherence easily
differs from one point of view to the other. As the interpretation concerns not a single event
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in history, but a chain of events that affect each other, the complexity of the account reaches
unimaginable levels along with the number of differently-interpretable encoded messages:
“Every narrative code consists […] of a complex set of codes the interweaving of which by
the author – for the production of a story infinitely rich in suggestion and variety of effect
[…] – attests to his talents as an artist, as master rather than servant of the codes available for
his use” (42). As an opposition to this communicative model, the other line of argument deals
with the narrative not as just a tool for conveying information from the referent to the
recipient, but as an active participant in the meaning-making process. In other words, the
narrative structure is not just a structure that gives just the shape to the objective
representation, but an intrinsic element of the story which ‘contaminates’ the content in some
ideological direction. This is the basic difference between a chronicle and historical narrative,
not in terms of a difference in their content, but in terms of their treatment of the same
informational content. In other words, ‘narrativization’ is different from ‘chronicalization’ in
that the former “impos[es] a discursive form on the events that its own chronicle comprises
by means that are poetic in nature” (42), which gives prominence to the stylistic outfit of the
narrative discourse. Compared to the chronicle, historical narrative offers not only the event,
but also a comment on the event in an attentively-woven cultural context directed to an
intended population. However, this does not mean that historical narratives do not possess
any grain of truth; they obviously take a share from the actual past in the way works of fiction
are not totally independent from reality. To elaborate more on the relationship between
historical narratives and literature, White continues:
Historical discourse differentiates itself from literary discourse by virtue of its

subject matter (‘real’ than ‘imaginary’ events) rather than its form. […] The
historical narrative does not […] dispel false beliefs about the past, human
life, the nature of the community, and so on; what it does is test the capacity
of a culture’s fictions to endow real events with the kinds of meaning that
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literature displays to consciousness through its fashioning of patterns of

‘imaginary’ events. (44-45)
This brings the discussion of historical narratives, in the structuralist and post-structuralist
sense, to the conclusion that historical narratives are still somehow within the domain of
reality even though they display ideological additions; this makes such accounts not literary,
but allegorical on the level of meaning suggestion.
The hermeneutic philosophers, on the other hand, emphasize the potentials of
translating one discursive formation to another in the making of historical meanings.
Gadamer and Ricoeur argue that interpreting one discursive account from another temporal
standpoint within the same tradition is sufficient to achieve historical accuracy. Their view
of history gives prominence to understanding the past rather than explaining it, by which they
dismiss history from the domain of sciences, very much like understanding a literary text
without the prior need to explain it. “In the process of attaining this understanding,
explanations of various sorts are called for, in much the same way that explanations of ‘what
happened’ in any story are called for on the way to the story’s full elaboration” (50). Ricoeur
forms an analogy between human actions in the past and written texts, and calls for an
understanding of the historical events as a whole by paying special attention to the causes,
circumstances and consequences in the same way a reader has to understand the connections
between individual sentences to grasp an overall meaning of the text itself. He sees plot as
an essential motive in historical representation, as it is the element that organizes the events
in a logical order which is what makes the composition meaningful; in other words, historical
narratives can make sense only when they present the historical event in a way to be easily
pictured by the reader. Ricoeur, in this way, places narrativity within the category of symbolic
configuration whose significance does not lie in its factuality or believability of content, but
29
in its character as an image to be interpreted and made sense of. “For Ricoeur, then, narrative
is more than a mode of explanation, more than a code, and much more than a vehicle for
conveying information. […] It is a means of symbolizing events without which their
historicality cannot be indicated” (53). So, the historical knowledge lies in the decoding of
the symbolic meaning attributed to the linguistic representation of the historical event; in
other words, the accuracy of the historical representation is ultimately connected with the
success of the narrative structure in coherently encoding the symbolic meaning within the
language.
It is crucial to understand what White means by “the politics of historical
interpretation” in order to grasp how historical narratives are created and why they are chosen
among many other potential interpretative strategies. For White, a disinterested interpretation
is never possible when the interpreter’s political and moral tendencies are taken into
consideration; yet, it is always possible for the interpreter to ‘dissolve’ these political and
moral impulses into a strategy of interpretation through which he comes up with a new
discipline; hence, discipline and sublimation. History as a field of study is one of the few
disciplines among all social and practical sciences that do not claim the authority to ‘explain’
the causes and consequences of their subject matter, but comply with just ‘understanding’ it.
However, in the modern times, there has always been a tendency to make a discipline out of
historical studies by using or abusing the frailty of history’s narrative and interpretative
nature into certain political directions. White attributes the beginning of such tendencies to
the early 19th century in which history was used as a political and social tool to consolidate
the power of the newly-rising bourgeoisie. With an aim to reconstruct the nation-state on new
social and political bases, the bourgeois authorities encourage their historians to interpret and
re-interpret historical sources to come up with an ‘official’ history with a claim to the highest
30
standard of realism. White refers to Hannah Arendt’s seminal essay “The Concept of
History” to explain that, after the French Revolution, politics began to contaminate historical
accounts more in favour of the totalitarian governments against the rising individualism and
statements of human rights: “The politicalization of historical thinking was a virtual
precondition of its own professionalization, the basis of its promotion to the status of a
discipline worthy of being taught in the universities, and a prerequisite of whatever
‘constructive’ social function historical knowledge was thought to serve” (62). The discipline
of history is the product of a ‘utopian’ outlook upon which the authority bases the past in
accordance with the ideal present it aims to build, setting the morals, values and rules on its
inferences from the lived past.
The conception of history as a discipline leaves the floor open for a never-ending
battle between historians and history philosophers in their different approaches to the same
subject matter, a clash between disciplined and undisciplined thinking, in search of an
ideological explanation to the past and an attempt to expose it, respectively. Before the 19th
century, which marks the beginning of historical studies as a scientific discipline, the study
of history had more of an eclectic nature, an interdisciplinary essence, as it was handled as a
supplementary field in the study of politics, philosophy, arts and science. The past, in the 18th
century understanding of history for instance, was seen as a model from which moral lessons,
traditional ties and cautionary drives were extracted by means of a chronological ordering
and classification, as can be seen in the annals tradition. Such conception of history served
two purposes, one being the teaching and expansion of Christian ideals, and the other being
the development of the western civilization, which led to the Enlightenment, by the lessons
taken from the tradition. White, here, evokes Kant’s examination of historical knowledge in
which he came up with three potential outcomes of the historical process; the first being a
31
constant development of humanity in any possible way, the second being a constant
retrogression of human kind in any possible way, and the last one being humanity making no
headway at all. He, then, comes to the conclusion that, in the three possible ways, the
politicalization of historical knowledge is inevitable and the turning of studies of history into
a discipline ultimately establishes it as the “arbitrator of the realism of contending political
programs, each attended by its own philosophy of history” (65).
From Aristotle on, liberating history from political rhetoric has always been an
attempt to emphasize the necessary distinction between the real and the imaginary, between
the verifiable data and fictitious creation. Such a distinction cripples the potentials of
imagination in historical thinking and dooms historical knowledge to the listing of provable
facts and short descriptive captions. With the initiation of the romantic aesthetics, the concept
of imagination was basically associated with sentimentality, personal taste and sensitiveness
to external stimuli; the same principle entailed historical representation to be proper, within
the framework of what is considered ‘beautiful’, along with having a proper object:
The imagination […] operates on a different level of the historian’s

consciousness. It is present above all in the effort, peculiar to the modern
conceptualization of the historian’s task, to enter sympathetically into the
minds or consciousness of human agents long dead, to empathize with the
intentions and motivations of actors impelled by beliefs and values that may
differ totally from anything the historian might himself honour in his own life,
and to understand, even when he cannot condone, the most bizarre social and
cultural practices. This is often described as putting oneself in the place of past
agents, seeing things from their point of view, and so forth, all of which leads
to a notion of objectivity that is quite different from anything that might be
meant by that term in the physical sciences (67).
In this respect, modern theory of history emphasizes history not as an imaginary account, but
as an imaginative one written by historians whose capabilities are not limited to the recording
of minute details, but sufficient to make them think in the way the agents of the past thought
from the latter’s perspective. However, imagination must not be forced into the domain of
32
fabrication and the imaginative historian must stick to verifiable, interpretable sources in his
relation of the texts to the contexts.
In the fourth chapter of his The Content of the Form, White refers to the German line
of historical studies that flourished especially after the Second World War as a means to deal
with the nation’s turbulent immediate past. As White argues, this German vein of historical
discourse excavated the glorious idealistic past of the nation to extract some lessons to use
that glory this time without verging on extremisms like Nazism. Along with Treitschke and
Sybel, Droysen is one of the pioneers of the German tradition of historiography which he
keeps subjectively related to politics, and his historical writings have been accused of having
deep moralistic and ideological undertones. “He is now generally regarded as the founder of
a discourse that, while both theoretical and systematic, is consistent with the ideals of the
humanistic tradition incarnated for many Germans in the figure of Goethe” (84). Droysen’s
seminal three-volume work Historik deals with a long range of time from Alexander the
Great through the Hellenistic period to the contemporary Prussian monarchy which he views
as the successor of the former two. Droysen believes that history writing is motivated by an
urge to put theory into practice in a sceptically speculative way to achieve realist bourgeois
morals. White describes this as an “in house discourse, product of a discussion within the
dominant class on how to give its own historically determinate existence the odour of
ideality” (86). In this respect, Droysen seems fully aware of the political and social powers
of ‘his’ historical discourse by which he reappropriates the moral judgments of the dominant
group, the estates of Schleswig and Holstein in the Prussian case, as ‘the’ law by which all
citizens must wholeheartedly abide. Such an approach turns historiography into a means of
representation of what happened in the past rather than the thing itself, a category of values
rather than an objective account of the lived past.

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Droysen’s open acknowledgment of the moralistic and ideological nature of historical
accounts incapacitates the whole tradition of historical criticism which challenges originality
of historical writings by their subjective tendencies. In this respect, his conception of
historiography offers less “a theory of historical composition than a kind of phenomenology
of historical reading [and] he instructs historians in how to produce different readings of
history so as to engender different kinds of moral perspectives in their readers” (88), which
is why his work is often classified under the title ‘historical hermeneutics’ rather than
constrained categories that view history as a science. This view begins historical accounts
with the determination of the norms by which the historical event will be represented along
with the objectives to be pursued. Droysen regards the past as a domain which is distant to
the present in its ‘pastness’, but also somehow related to it with respect to the cause and effect
principle. He leaves an open door to the free play of human imagination in interpreting the
historical past, as he believes that the past is comprehensible as long as it is imaginable from
the present point of view, and realistic as long as it creates a sense of ‘real’ in the mind of the
reader. “[I]n his discussion of the problem of representation, Droysen makes clear that he
regards the content of the historian’s discourse, not as the facts or events that comprise his
manifest referent, but as his understanding of these facts and the moral implications he draws
from their contemplation” (90).
Droysen, in a way, equates the content of historical discourse with the objective of it,
listing four potential categories by which the discourse acquires a character: investigative,
narrative, didactic and discussive. Even though the subject of different historical discourses
may be the same, the motivation of the historiographer in writing about that particular
historical event changes the discourse’s character. Among these four kinds, Droysen gives
priority to discussive form of historical discourse, as he believes it is the one which achieves
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the highest level of relevance between the time in which the account was written and the time
in which it is being read. Droysen’s ‘presentist’ tendencies are displayed more clearly in his
conception of the nature of historical knowledge which he connects directly to its traceability
in the present time: “This gives the ‘form’ of a specifically historical existence, which is
nothing other than the sense of the historicity of the present engendered by the intuition that
we are at once continuous with our past and distinctly different from it” (92). Offering an
understanding to the remains of a particular historical event in the present time calls for the
interference of ‘interpretation’ as the only means to make sense of the past, inevitably from
a particular ethical, ideological and intellectual point of view.
Droysen lists four operative motivations in the interpretation of historical data being
“(1) the individual’s immediate practical aims and needs, (2) the material conditions of his
time and place, (3) the character type and elements of personal will of the individual, and (4)
the moral principles of the culture to which the individual belongs” (92). Some, or all, of
these categories inform the historian’s understanding and interpretation of the historical
matter in question and these categories define four basic types of interpretation of historical
events; pragmatic, conditional, psychological and ethical (93). With reference to these types
of interpretation, Droysen challenges the claim of the realist vein of historians to absolute
truth, and reduces those representations to the category of ‘plausible’ rather than ‘realistic’,
the category Aristotle attributed to poetry. He contrasts the job of a historian with that of a
landscape painter in that the latter’s object of representation lies before his eyes whereas the
former’s is both present, in the form of inherited images to be assimilated into human
understanding, and absent to him. Droysen lists four stages of historical representation
through which the historical past is brought to ‘light’ and made sense of in the present time:
investigation, narration, didacticism and discussion. First of all, the historical object of
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inquiry is located by the historian in a chain of documented past events, then this object is
patterned into a narrative structure by which it represents the historical action in a plausible
cause and effect framework, and then the narrative is interpreted to extract a moral for
instruction of the present readership, and finally the moral extracted is discussed within
contemporary social, political and moral contexts. Droysen also relates these four stages of
historical representation to the earlier four modes of historical interpretation, the stages in the
former category being applicable to any mode of interpretation in the latter. The ultimate aim
of the historian, Droysen concludes, is not to fabricate an objective, impartial account of the
historical event, but to put forward a ‘proper’, inevitably partial version of it to the
understanding of an intended readership: “Since man has his historical existence in his
membership in a number of fragmentary circles of ‘commonality’ […] –natural, ideal, and
practical – his perspective on reality is necessarily ‘parteilich’” (95).
In Droysen’s view, historical representation is more or less a secular version of
theology in that both investigate questions concerning the whole humanity and try to reach a
universal moral framework for the benefit of it. In the same respect, the number of historical
realities being multiple can be related to the number of moral ideals extracted from the same
religion being multiple. Droysen, here, puts the emphasis on the concept of freedom of belief
and choice by which every single individual interprets the same historical event from
different points of view and reach different moral lessons:
The historically real is never given by naked ‘experience’; it is always already

worked up and fashioned by a specific organization of experience, the praxis
of the society from within which the picture of reality is conceptualized. This
is why, no doubt, he placed such emphasis on the possibility of conceiving
alternative but equally valid images of historical reality and sought to classify
them and to rank them by type. Such images would be as various as the kinds
of socially organized experience permitted by the praxis of any given age (98).
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Such a subjectivity, however, never appears to bother Droysen in the way that it discomforts
philosophers like Marx and Nietzsche who always challenge history’s claim to historical
truth as a grand narrative. Droysen views this subjective, fictitious nature of historical
representation as a necessary element by which the bourgeois standpoint he has long adopted
gains its strength and its values are justified. In this respect, Droysen’s conception of history
is “nothing but a sublimation, a raising to consciousness, of the practice of society itself […]
given a specific content that can be identified with the social praxis of the historian’s own
lived present” (96-97). White approaches Droysen’s conceptualization with the
understanding that history has always been inquired in its potential relations to the social,
political, economic, moral, religious, pedagogical realities of the time of the inquiry. From
this point of view, it is quite understandable that Droysen viewed history and historical
representation as a means to validate, to advertise and to promote the bourgeois ideology and
morality in the 19th century when these were promising a new social and economic order
feeding on the premises of French Revolution and Romanticism. Although Droysen’ outlook
disconfirms history’s claims to the level of objective sciences, it must still be regarded as, in
White words, a “cultural superstructure of an age, as an activity that is more determined by
than determinative of social praxis” (101). Through its own historical representation, each
social praxis contributes to the formation of a ‘reality’ which can also be traced in the rise of
‘realism’ in literature in the 19th century, especially in the naturalistic novel tradition in which
each story poses its own claim to writing a history.
Foucault’s arguments about discourse in its obscurity and extravagance characterize
his whole philosophical system which depends on his refusal of an origin and centre for the
Western thought, culture and civilization. In his close inquiry of the genealogy of these, he
traces the turning points in the history of science, philosophy and arts to come up with a
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chronicle or an archaeological structure of ‘knowledge’ or to prove the nonexistence of it.
The histories that Foucault offers us are always fragmented, disconnected stories that provide
no logical cause and effect relationship or a coherence with a set of gaps inbetween, as the
discourse always stems from an individual, subjective desire to know and to achieve power.
However subjective, the individual’s discourse is always informed by the ‘external restraints’
that determine the right, reasonable, proper and central on the one hand, and wrong,
unreasonable, improper and marginal, on the other, in a social structure. Foucault aims to
frustrate the attempts to centralize discourse under the domination of a subject or a means of
representation by what he calls the conventionalist theories of discourse. By doing so, he
strives to liberate the discourse for its natural free play in order to make the individual ‘will
to truth’ dominant. Therefore, Foucault argues that, since language was located at the centre
of all representative activities, there has been a critical ‘mutation’ in the development of the
Western thought in that each discursive representation has obscured reality. In other words,
“reality inevitably took on the aspects of the linguistic mode in which it was presented to
consciousness” (123). In this respect, the whole historical knowledge appears to be the
product of a linguistic system that derives its motivation from the discourse of power in its
endless conflict with the discourse of desire. Foucault also realizes that the line of historical
knowledge is a fragmented structure, full of gaps inbetween the distinctive movements of an
epoch, as history only sees wherever the knowledge looks, displaying no origin or
connection.
In his Order of Things, Foucault deems history the oldest of human sciences, going
all the way back to the beginning of human culture and memory. History has always been in
the background of other human sciences, informing them in the form of ‘traditions’ and
enabling them to be passed down across centuries. History had been following a straight
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chronological line until the 19th century, Foucault argues, when there occurred a revolution
in the way human beings had the knowledge of things, and a discovery that every single
individual being had its own independent history from the master historical narratives. At
that time, “the historicity discovered within man was extended to the objects he had made,
the language he spoke, and – even further still – to life” (402). From then on, human beings
subjected themselves to the histories of others in order to verify their existences. Human
beings acquired the knowledge that they contributed to the continuance of a historical line of
thoughts, actions and habits and, at the same time, attributed an identity to their own existence
by the same line; they defined and were defined by it. Foucault claims that 19th century marks
the beginning of historical studies as an independent discipline, as history-writing abandoned
simple chronicling of events and began to pay attention to the historical progress as a whole
with respect to the developments, turning points, cause and effect relationships and
generalizing laws in due process.
In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault elaborates on the changing nature of
historical studies, saying: “history has altered its position in relation to the document: it has
taken as its primary task, not the interpretation of the document, nor the attempt to decide
whether it is telling the truth or what is its expressive value, but to work on it from within
and to develop it” (6). In other words, Foucault emphasizes the fact that history has
transformed from an attempt to transmit documents across generations into a discipline that
writes, rewrites, explains, defines and assigns new meanings to the past in order to make it
more understandable for the present human consciousness. History has the power to change
memories into texts and texts into monuments by revealing the silent or silenced voices or
‘inert traces’ underneath what is being shown to the present consciousness. Foucault lists
three types of historical analysis separated from each other in their approach to the
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constitutive elements of a field of study. In the first category, the history of a given discipline
is treated as a clinical case in which the historian makes definitions of discovered historical
items, forms connections between them, arrives at a cause and effect relationship and finally
forms generalizations useful for the formation of that discipline. Second category of historical
analysis approaches the historical data in a similar scientific way, not to understand and digest
them into the formation of the discipline, but to reveal the secret metaphorical meanings lying
beneath the surface indications in order to understand why and how a certain concept comes
to meet the necessities in that particular discipline. In the third way of historical analysis, on
the other hand, scientificity is set aside in the name of displaying the linguistic and discursive
structures that attribute meanings to the historical knowledge used in the formation of that
discipline (189-190).
White claims that Marxists have a different view of history, regarding it not as a
means to know what happened in the past, but as a source to determine the social, political
and economic laws operative in the formation of social structures in the past, and thus,
influential on present ones. And contrary to the general view, Marxism has not only been a
critical social philosophy, but a constructive and therapeutic outlook which found a voice in
the visionary, sometimes utopian, discourse of the artists of the early 20th century. These
Marxist artists have made use of history as a catalogue of attempts at human liberation on
various levels, mostly unsuccessful, and offered alternative paths to redeem those
victimizations. Works of art, in this respect, come forward as the proofs that humans are
capable of constructing better social formations and political systems, or at least imagining
them. Fredric Jameson, the Marxist literary theorist best known for his The Political
Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), invests narrative with the
authority to turn raw material or the content of art into a meaningful entity to realize the
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abovementioned utopian visionary outlook. In Jameson’s understanding, adopting a Marxist
critical approach to literary texts is never enough; instead, true Marxist critics must develop
“something like an ultimate [Marxist] semantic precondition for the intelligibility of literary
and cultural texts” (60). The literary and cultural texts, in Jameson’s Marxist approach, are
to be pictured as a web of symbols related to political history, the social context in question
and the relevant history of social and economic systems. In other words, all texts have to be
read as the product of the political, socio-economic and moral conditions of the time they
were written in with special attention to the ideological messages embedded in symbols.
White asserts that literary and cultural texts are “rendered intelligible […] by their
systematic insertion into ‘history’ that is conceived to be not only sequenced but also layered
in such a way as to require different methods of analysis at the different levels on which it
achieves the integrity of what is normally thought of as the ‘style’ of a ‘period’” (146). A
Marxist critic, in this respect, is expected to pay special attention to the causality behind every
text’s expressive particularities comprised solely of the author’s or the age’s desire to be
situated in a particular historical sequence rather than a necessity to be situated in any other.
This opens the issue of historical representation, going back to Aristotle, to the charge of
imaginary intrusions of what could have happened in the form of what really happened. As
historical experiences cannot be experienced again under the same circumstances, at least not
in the same temporal conditions, historical knowledge gains a similar status to that of
rhetorical discussion or textualized imagination, which is never more than what literature sets
forth. Jameson, as a Marxist critic, deals with the realist texts’ ideological nature and claims
to historical truth and argues that the capacity to narrativize equals the capacity to locate a
particular event into the chain of history; and in texts whose narrative structure is either
fragmented or non-existent, it is not possible to find a patterned plot to be documented as

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historical representation. In other words, narrativity becomes a necessity for literary and
cultural texts to achieve historical accuracy of whose promises a ‘future present’ will define
itself as a fulfilment: “Considered as a transition between a past and a future, every present
is at once a realization of projects performed by past human agents and a determination of a
field of possible projects to be realized by living human agents in their future” (149). Jameson
calls this process ‘narratological causation’ which can best be observed in artistic and cultural
movements like modernism or romanticism, as they are the cumulative and dialectical
representations of earlier experiences. For instance, romanticism can best be defined as a
combination of a nostalgic idealization of a remote past – basically the medieval times- and
the premises of the French Revolution among other motivations. This view liberates
historical accounts from the accusations of time- and place-boundedness, as, in Jameson’s
understanding, “historical epochs are not monolithically integrated social formations but, on
the contrary, complex overlays of different modes of production that serve as the bases of
different social groups and classes and, consequently of their world-views” (156).
In a direct Marxist outlook, Jameson also attributes great powers to narrativity,
because the historical epochs gain their status by uncovering the historical processes that lead
to their own formation in a narrative structure in this long chain of causations. He believes,
in White’s words, that “narrativity not only represents but justifies, by virtue of its
universality, a dream of how ideal community might be achieved. […] The dialectical
movement by which a unity of plot is imposed upon the superficial chaos of story elements,
narrative serves as a paradigm of the kind of social movement by which a unity of meaning
can be imposed upon the chaos of history” (157). As many Marxist literary critics do,
Jameson directs his attention to the realist texts, especially novels, of the 19th century as the
detailed narrativized versions of a lived history in the form of social and cultural documents
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that reveal the consciousness, aspirations and fantasies of the bourgeois class. He attributes
considerable importance to the novel genre as a mode of historical representation, as it turns
out to be the ideal means to reveal the ideological implications beneath the surface human
actions and the very form of the representation, which is the narrative. He believes that the
realist novel paved the way for narrativity to be presumed as a means of historical account
keeping, and the modernist novel established it as a source of innumerable versions of
historical interpretation. And White contends that, in Jameson’s view, a personal history
gains validity as long as it is appropriated into a story which is only a small ring in a chain
of stories; thus, the matter is not representing the past in the most faithful way, but having
enough power, political in this sense, to be able to narrativize the personal past to the attention
of a bigger number of concerned parties and turning these narratives into master narratives.
In his monumental three-volume book titled Time and Narrative (1983,1984,1985),
Ricoeur attempts to come up with new definitions of narrativity and historical discourse as
understood in the modern times, and defines historical narrative as “a kind of allegory of
temporality, but an allegory of a special kind, namely, a true allegory […] assigned [with] a
specific task in the representation of a reality that presents itself to human consciousness […]
as an insoluble but ultimately ‘comprehensible’ mystery” (White, 171). In other words, the
mystery of temporality is made sense of as long as it finds a voice in the discourse of
narrativity and the historical events inherently possess a structure of narrativity, which natural
events do not, in the form of causes, effects, consequences, chronological order, human
agents and their actions leading to one another in a logical sequence. However, Ricoeur’s
conception of narrative history differs dramatically from a story reporting events that have
taken place in a specific past as they happened, of which any newspaper article or official
bill of indictment is also capable. He attributes an inherent ‘structure of temporality’ to the

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historical discourse which provides it with an air of ‘historicality’ or ‘Geschichtlichkeit’ as
Heidegger puts it (Ricoeur, 1990:62). According to Ricoeur, what grants historical discourse
‘historicality’ is a greater structure of meaning rather than individual sentence meanings, a
greater structure of plot that changes the historical accounts from chronicles to narratives.
Emplotment invests the temporality of human experiences with meaning; but in doing so, it
does not stem from the historian’s imaginary and inventive capacities, but his skills in the
discovery of the already-invented meanings by the actual active participants of the concerned
past. That is, historiographic emplotment is a poetic act not in the sense that it writes stories
on its own account, but that it gives historical events the shape of a narrative without the help
of the historian’s associative faculties (Ricoeur, 1990:68-70). Ricoeur is also aware that
historians have a broader view of the historical events than the performers of them, thanks to
‘the advantages of hindsight’, as White calls it, including the knowledge of all reasons,
motivations, consequences and other forces taking part in the historical agents’ actions.
Ricoeur acknowledges historical discourse’s similarities with literary discourse in
terms of their narrative structure not as a disadvantage for the former on the way to a scientific
status, but as an advantage, because this means that historical discourse achieves that
symbolic linguistic nature, always associated with literary works, which liberates it from
technical and mathematical terminology. This technical and mathematical discourse refers to
the structure of the chronicle, in Ricoeur’s understanding, and it is both unnatural, as the
events are isolated from the contextual elements in such a representation, and selective in the
way that it leaves out some potentially significant details which might have otherwise helped
the reader have a better understanding of the historical event. Yet, Ricoeur does not totally
discard the chronicle out of the process of historical representation. He views the chronicle
as the first level of historical symbolization which, though plotless, gives the historical
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account its ‘within-time-ness’ or, in other words, its historicality. By historicality, he means
not a simple sequence of events, but an experience of the historical past as a process through
which the knowledge of beginnings, successions and endings of events along with transitions,
transformations and evolvements (White, 1987:177). The part the modern historian must do,
here, is to narrativize these already-historicized accounts and strengthen the accounts’
believability to the human consciousness.
On the level of representation, Ricoeur describes narrative history as a combination
of the historian’s mimetic and diegetic skills going hand in hand to form a factual discourse
whose subject matter is solely the historical past. According to Ricoeur, “narrative discourse
does not simply reflect or passively register a world already made; it works up the material
given in perception and reflection, fashions it, and creates something new, in precisely the
same way that human agents by their actions fashion distinctive forms of historical life”
(White, 1987:178). In the way human agents of the past attempted to give symbolic meanings
to the world around themselves coming up with what we call ‘culture’ today, the historian
uses the symbolic discourse of the narrative to make sense of the same past in the form of an
allegorical temporality.
White argues that the focus of contemporary historical studies has moved away from
the ideas of such philosophers as Hegel, Marx and Dilthey towards new approaches initiated
by thinkers like Benjamin, Barthes, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Foucault and Derrida who
emphasized the treatment of the discourses of historical texts in relation to the discourse of
their contexts. The necessary linkage between the historical texts and contexts seems to
possess a difficulty in itself in deciding the boundaries of one from the other; yet, White sees
this issue as an advantage on behalf of the intellectual historian, as this will lead him/her to
a more dialogistic interpretation than a mere judgmental one. However, White abstains from
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privileging the Structuralist or Post-Structuralist linguistic approaches to historical
representations, as the former bears the risks of ‘ahistoricity’ whereas the latter cannot set
measures to the imaginative fantasies of the historian (187). In any case, historians of an era
come face to face with the choice between just ‘explaining’ the historical past and
‘interpreting’ or ‘speculating’ on it, which eventually determine the representation’s level of
‘scientificality’ or ‘fictionality’. This calls for a discussion regarding to what extent the
historian is, if at all, responsible towards society or the level of moral and political
intervention in the historian’s representation of the past. As historians have always resorted
to some other branch of social sciences in their historical analysis, their representation can
be said to have always been motivated in one way or another as long as narrativity is involved
in the process. The historians of the 20th century are known basically with their tendency to
adopt a linguistic model in their investigation of historical texts especially after Saussurian
theories come into fashion, as they see their jobs in ‘translating’ the textual meanings encoded
in linguistic structures into the present meaning patterns.
White mentions four ways in forming a relation between the linguistic signs and the
world outside: Language as “(1) a manifestation of causal relationships governing the world
of things in which it arises, in the mode of an index; (2) a representation of that world, in the
mode of an icon (or mimesis); (3) a symbol of that world, in the mode of an analogue […];
(4) […] a sign system […], a code bearing no necessary, or ‘motivated’ relation to that which
it signifies” (189). The first of these approaches is represented by major Marxist and social
determinist intellectuals who understand language as a culmination of social and cultural
forces that has organic observable connections with them. The second outlook has been
adopted by historians and thinkers like Spitzer and Auerbach who view language not as
indicating, but as representing the world outside by means of linguistic rules of grammar and
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syntax in the way a painting depicts a landscape. The third approach refers to the Hegelian
conception of language as the transformation of the world into symbols that are expected to
have a natural connection with the object in question in the eye of general humanity. In
opposition to these three views of language which presuppose a predetermined connection
between the linguistic sign and the world, the fourth outlook refers to the Saussurian idea
that denies any natural connection between the two, emphasizing the arbitrary nature of
linguistic signification. White claims that this fourth conception of linguistic representation
has not yet been comprehensively adopted by contemporary intellectual historians, which
eventually led to the free play of ideologies in historical interpretation. Using Althusser and
Jameson’s terminology, White problematizes the concept of ‘meaning’ which has always
been produced as a result of the juxtaposition between ideology and science; and thus, reveals
the subjection of historical representation to distortions related to the meaning-making
mechanisms. This issue leads historians to the inevitable choice between a purely linguistic
theory of interpretation, which requires a clinical and analytical approach to the text, and a
semiological effort to form referential connections between the text and other systems of
signs. This second attitude calls for certain scepticism towards the meaning structures
encoded within linguistic signs in terms of their possible privileging of one ideological
referent over another.
There lies a bigger problem under the fact that the sources the historians use in their
narrative histories are themselves ideologically shaped accounts of a given past, as “everyone
recognizes that the way one makes sense of history is important in determining what politics
one will credit as realistic, practicable, and socially responsible” (73). In this respect, the
semiological perspective in historical representation assumes an ideal reader, the target of
the ideological code-shifting, for the text in question whereas the linguistic outlook contents
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itself with the shapes on the paper and their immediate meanings without the intervention of
any contextual interpretation. The former “seeks, first of all, to identify the hierarchy of codes
that is established in the process of the text’s elaboration, in which, one or more emerge as
seemingly self-evident, obvious, natural ways of making sense of the world” (202). This
process always involves what White calls ‘the dissolution of the ego’ into a mode of
representation and setting the boundaries of meaning to avoid certain readership while
inspiriting some other. As historical events are only accessible through their ‘artefacts’ which
are textual in essence, all historical texts display at first glance a direct referential structure
according to the one-to-one correspondence principle, each sign corresponding to one, and
only one, referent in the past in question. But what is called a historical inquiry must concern
itself with the metaphorical and rhetorical aspects of the linguistic system, the indirect
referentiality of linguistic signs, too.
1.2. A Brief History of Metadramatic Theatre in the Modern Times
What characterizes post-modernist drama, even post-modernist literature in general, is an
intense self-reflexivity and self-referentiality used as techniques to address contemporary
debates like the ethics, responsibilities and functions of artistic works along with an attempt
to problematize the process of artistic production beyond meaning-making. After the term
metafiction gained high popularity in the theorization of modernist and post-modernist
fiction, a similar tendency occurred in the description of some modernist and post-modernist
dramatic works, leading to Lionel Abel’s coinage of the term ‘metatheatre’ in his 1963 book
titled Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form. In the preface to the book, Abel calls for
the necessity to designate a term for a new wave of dramatic works, having its roots within a
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long tradition from Shakespeare to Brecht, even though he expresses his openness for a
change in the naming of the genre. He defines metatheatre as “a dramatic form for revealing
characters whose self-consciousness create their dramatic situation” (2003:6).
In his reassessment of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Abel argues that the play has mistakenly
been labelled as a tragedy throughout centuries without particular attention to the
playwright’s potential artistic and philosophical intentions. He claims that Shakespeare is
trying to make a point in Hamlet’s delaying of action and philosophizing at the very moment
in which he is expected to take his revenge. Shakespeare, in this sense, changes the play’s
direction from a tragedy into a self-reflection in which all characters constantly dramatize
themselves and the others, culminating in the famous play within a play scene where Hamlet
reveals his uncle’s guilty conscience. As an example to this, Abel mentions the scenes in
which Gertrude urges Hamlet to change his mood for the better towards his uncle, now the
king, and the ghost tries to sow the seeds of revenge into Hamlet’s mind. In such scenes,
Abel argues, “the reaction of Hamlet is that of a man with a playwright’s consciousness who
has just been told to be an actor, and is now determined to make an actor of the very
playwright who had cast him for an undesired role” (47). From that perspective, Hamlet
appears to have found himself in a conspiracy for the throne and a web of domestic intrigues,
all of which attribute different roles to the prince. The same situation applies to other
characters as well, as Claudius plays the part of a mournful brother who has recently lost his
brother and king, Polonius plays the part of a wise counsellor to the new king along with
casting various roles for his son and daughter, Gertrude pretends to be a grieving loving wife
to the late king and imperatively dutiful queen to the new one, and even Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are featured by Claudius as loyal friends to Hamlet in appearance, but spies in
reality. In this respect, Abel categorizes the characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as either
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fundamentally dramatists or fundamentally actors, the first group including Hamlet, the
Ghost, Claudius and Polonius while the second group includes Gertrude, Ophelia, Laertes,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, above all these internal dramatists and actors, the
central dramatist of the play turns out to be ‘death’ which makes the existence of all
characters theatrical towards an inevitable end by revealing their masks. Death’s dramaturgy
leads the characters to a ‘staged’ duel at the end of which all the major characters die as
‘themselves’ for the first time in the play, that is, without their masks and with the realization
of their true faces.
Having attributed dramatizing qualities to the ‘dramatist’ characters in Hamlet, Abel goes
deeper in his categorization of this type and describes Claudius and the Ghost as writers of
melodrama within the frame play, evoking feelings of hatred, revenge and pity in both
Hamlet and the audience. Compared to these two, Polonius appears to be a minor writer
whose script is basically comprised of misconceived ideas about the future of the court and
a sentimental attempt to secure his daughter’s marriage to the prince. Hamlet himself, on the
other hand, seems trapped between his uncle’s and the Ghost’s melodrama and his
melancholic questionings taking him to the verge of tragedy (50-51). Hamlet proves to be a
superior dramatist to all the other characters in the play, as indicated in his masterful
suggestions, related to staging and performance, to the actors that are going to perform the
‘Murder of Gonzago’ in front of the courtly audience. Above all, Hamlet falls victim in the
plot of the biggest dramatist, death, within the frame play after he fails to realize the necessary
steps dictated by melodramatic and tragic tendencies. Yet, Abel believes that Hamlet is the
first character in the history of drama with a playwright’s consciousness, one who is totally
aware that he has been and he is being dramatized by many other forces both within and
outside the play, by both the other characters including death and Shakespeare himself.
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Abel furthers his arguments by designating a special kind of play, generally having
comical tendencies, whose characters are aware – as well as making the audience aware –
that the whole play is the invention of the playwright’s imagination. He refuses to reduce
these plays to having a play-within-a-play scene which is just a device in such plays, though
not a must. The plays Abel tries to designate appear to have one central common element:
all of them are theatre pieces about life seen as already theatricalized,
[meaning] that the persons appearing on the stage in these plays are there not
simply because they were caught by the playwright in dramatic postures as a
camera might catch them, but because they themselves knew they were
dramatic before the playwright took note of them. What dramatized them
originally [was] myth, legend, past literature and they themselves (60).
These plays represent on the stage a life which is interesting as long as its theatricality is
assumed well by the dramatist with the addition of his thinking on that life and its active
participants on a new level of dramatization. As an example to this, Abel invokes Moliere’s
Tartuffe, whose hypocritical hero of the same name is aware of his theatricality among other
characters and, thus, dramatize the ones around him to the end that the play turns into a
criticism of what the playwright tries to criticize. In other words, Tartuffe negates Tartuffe
as soon as the audience relates the plot to the world outside the play, that is to the 17th century
France with the dominating moral, political and religious hypocrisy. In a similar way,
Tartuffe and Hamlet go beyond the dramatic situations drawn for them by the playwrights
thanks to their own dramatizing abilities very much like Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus who is
less a tragic victim in the Devil’s drama than a self-conscious, strong-willed dramatist who
subjugates the Devil to his (Faustus’) wishes. Abel explains this further with the assumption
that Hamlet, Tartuffe or Faustus, or even Falstaff from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, are superior
characters to what their inventors intended them to be, flowing over their dramatized
personages and completing their development by dramatizing themselves and the others
around them.
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Besides Hamlet, Shakespeare’s The Tempest bears metatheatrical characteristics with
the protagonist Prospero being the ultimate dramatist who has an island for a stage, real
enemies for villains, Ariel for a choreographer, Caliban for a stagehand and other characters
for bit players (69). Prospero has also been examined by many scholars as a parallel to
Shakespeare’s own self as an artist, as the former’s retirement from magic is likely to stand
for the latter’s retirement from art. Prospero also refuses to be an actor in some other
character’s drama, which is perhaps why Shakespeare abandons writing having realized that
he has finally achieved what he has been trying to do through his art, a character larger than
even himself. In comparison to Shakespeare above plays, Calderon’s Life is a Dream is a
lesser metaplay, in Abel’s opinion, even though it contains a well-organized play-within-a-
play at its centre. Abel still praises Calderon’s ability in giving Basilio great dramatizing
skills by which he both saves his own life and restores his son back to himself. After being
told by a prophet that his newly-born son will terminate his life when he comes of age, King
Basilio imprisons his own son Sigismund for twenty one years. Unable to fight his conscience
and impatient to see the outcome of the prophecy, Basilio uses his playwriting skills and
stages a plot for his son to act freely after being convinced that all he has gone through so far
was just a dream. After Sigismund refuses to take his father’s life, King Basilio’s drama
succeeds in overcoming Calderon’s intentions for a tragedy; in other words, metatheatre
disempowers tragedy.
Abel turns his attention to the examination of some ‘modern’ plays which bear
significant resemblances to what he imagines to be ‘metaplays’ like Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
Calderon’s Life is a Dream or Moliere’s Tartuffe. He claims that metatheatricality to modern
dramatists is what tragedy was to the Greek masters of this art, and it finds one of the most
effective representations in Jean Genet’s The Balcony whose protagonist “casts, directs, and
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co-ordinates performances in a house of infinite mirrors and theatres” (Rosen, 1992:516).
For Abel, what Genet’s play shares with those Elizabethan and Spanish plays of the same
time is a subtle self-consciousness on behalf of the playwrights and the protagonist. It is the
same self-consciousness which rules out great Shakespearean plays like Hamlet – Abel
excludes Macbeth from this perspective – from the categorizations as ‘tragedies’, as the
protagonists of such plays were more active writers of their own fates than passive
participants in some other writer’s story about them. Furthermore, the whole western literary
tradition is built upon a liberal and sceptical outlook, compared to the Greeks, which is why
certain self-consciousness overcomes those unshakeable Greek values and external forces.
The playwrights of the modern times, from the Renaissance on, are obviously aware that the
world is a stage and individual lives are plays written by self-conscious actor-dramatists, as
Jacques from Shakepeare’s As You Like It and Calderon in his The Great Stage of the World
indicate. In this respect, “illusion becomes inseparable from reality” (79) in modern plays.
Abel also adds that there is always a fantastic dimension to modern metaplays, as illusion
goes hand in hand with reality while dreams and acting stand for real life and real human
actions.
Turning back to Genet’s The Balcony, Abel describes Madame Irma’s brothel, the
setting of the play, a place where reality is replaced by illusions and real faces with masks
and pretensions. The three men coming to the brothel, for instance, dramatize themselves
from the very beginning as a bishop, a general and a judge, having worn appropriate costumes
for these roles and expecting due treatments from the prostitutes while a revolution is taking
place outside the brothel, which is the ultimate ‘real’ opposite of the illusoriness inside. Genet
makes his characters change their attire not offstage, but right in front of the audience to
display that there are at least two levels of reality in his play, dramatized first by himself,
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then by the characters themselves. The revolutionaries plan to design a role play in order to
make the public sympathize with their causes by killing a prostitute from Madame Irma’s
brothel and advertising her as the martyr-saint of the revolution. Through such interactions
between what is inside and outside the brothel, The Balcony blurs the distinction between
what is real and what is illusion in the world of the play dramatized by characters who are
already dramatized by Genet himself. Abel concludes that the modern metaplay justifies the
claim that the whole world is just a stage on which roles are played and lives are just dreams
acted out by self-dramatizing characters (83).
In a similar approach, Abel describes Beckett’s drama as metatheatrical, even though
there is not a single play-within-a-play scene in any of the latter’s plays. With respect to
Waiting for Godot and Endgame in particular, he argues that Beckett’s characters are
dramatized not by the playwright through the lines written on the page or spoken on the stage,
but by their individual pasts that have happened to them. It is for the same reason that memory
and remembrance hold a very significant place in Beckett’s character formations, for instance
in Krapp’s revitalization of his self through the tapes from his youth or Estragon’s problems
with remembering even the immediate past. Abel relates Beckett’s insistence on the theme
of time and memory to his ‘nostalgia for eternity’ which finds a voice in his suggestion that
“the actual characters are themselves the scenes of an invisible action” (85). He also contends
that, due to the same preoccupation with human memory, Beckett’s plays are metatheatrical,
because characters build themselves upon the remains of their personal histories; in other
words, they dramatize themselves on the face of passing time. Time in Beckett’s plays stands
for the element of metaphysical wonder very much like death in Shakespeare’s ‘tragedies’.
When it comes to Brecht, Abel begins his examination by stating the two central
constituents of the former’s literary career, rejection of the individual and the exclusion of
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moral experience through art. To communist literary theorists’ surprise, Brecht as a
communist playwright refuses to use realism in the writing and the Stanislavskian method in
the performance of his plays. Although the communists view art as a means of moral and
political propaganda of the values of the Party, Brecht regards the representation of the
individual on the stage as pointless and giving moral messages to the audience as comical.
As a result of these principles, tragedy as a dramatic form does not appeal to Brecht’s schema,
which culminates in his development of Piscator’s epic theatre as an opposition to what the
former calls the ‘Aristotelian’ theatre. Recalling his definition of metatheatre on the basis of
two principles, the world being a stage and life a dream, Abel claims that Brecht had no other
option than drawing upon these two in order to attribute a form to his plays, having already
rejected moralism and individualism. As Brecht emphasizes that an actor must not identify
himself with the character he is portraying, then the actors on the stage are well aware of the
notion that they dramatize themselves in the identity of another in a stage-like world, whether
or not Brecht did this on purpose. Similarly, as the audience is not obliged to any moral
deduction from the action on the stage, the play is more a representation than reality itself,
hence dream-like: “Certainly Brecht’s idea of recalling the spectator back from involvement
would be a contradictory one had Brecht been trying to write tragedy or realism; it is not
contradictory, considering that what he actually wrote was metatheatre” (106). Abel comes
to the conclusion, after his discussion of Brecht’s plays, that the German playwright’s theatre
is to be easily categorized as metatheatre with respect to his highlighting of the central role
of performance in human life and detachment of the actor and the audience from the realm
of reality, which is the core of his ‘alienation’ effect.
Referring to Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Abel concludes his treatise on the formulation
of this new dramatic genre which he calls ‘metatheatre’. For him, Peer Gynt proves the
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greatest playwright of the 19th century even though Ibsen had no intention to give a
metatheatrical essence to any of his plays, as he was extremely limited to the bringings of
European naturalism and Sophoclean tragic form. The expectations of the bourgeoisie and
the rise of realism throughout Europe taken into consideration, Ibsen’s literary agenda looks
reasonable and effective on the 19th century stage. However, his Peer Gynt, “a kind of milder,
more mediocre, and more bourgeois Faust” (108), does not share the passiveness of other
Ibsen characters, such as Hedda Gabler and Rosmer, under the whipping of an all-controlling,
scowling Fate. Ibsen’s contemporary Chekhov, on the other hand, does not sacrifice his
characters’ free will to predestination and gives them certain self-consciousness regarding
the consequences of their actions in a world of performances. “Thus Chekov could produce
a kind of metatheatre while remaining genuinely realistic. The characters he described were
already theatrical” (109). What distinguishes Ibsen’s drama from Chekov’s, in this sense, is
that the former’s ‘tragic’ outlook to life leaves no room for the flourishing of ideas, as his
characters, or even the playwright himself, are caught in the web of submission to external
forces. Such a way of looking at life and potentials of dramatic art, for Abel, is what
characterizes the most famous generation of American playwrights, as well, including
Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Despite being a follower of Ibsen’s
footsteps, George B. Shaw, however, manages to liberate his theatre from the constraints of
tragedy and attributes an intellectual character to it which Ibsen’s theatre is lacking. For this
reason, Abel describes major plays of Shaw, including Don Juan in Hell, Pygmalion and
Saint Joan, not as comedies, but as metaplays (111). Abel sums up his discussion with
reference to the Italian playwright Pirandello, specifically to his metatheatrical play Six
Characters in Search of an Author, as the epistemologist of the new genre thanks to his
blurring of the distinction between reality and illusion, and to Brecht as the logician of it
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thanks to introduction of self-conscious, alienating characters to the modern stage. Tragedy,
in this sense, turns out to be the opposite of what Abel defines as ‘metatheatre’, as the former
suggests a well-structured world of ultimate realities whereas the latter conceptualizes a
world of performances built on shaky grounds where the ultimate projector is human
imagination and consciousness. In other words, “[t]ragedy, from the point of view of
metatheatre, is our dream of the real. Metatheatre, from the point of view of tragedy, is as
real as are our dreams” (113). All these aspects taken into account, Abel wholeheartedly
welcomes metatheatre as the refined dramatic form of the post-modern era having deposed
tragedy from its cold, anti-intellectual throne.
Richard Hornby’s treatise on metaplays, titled Drama, Metadrama, and Perception
(1986), differs from Abel’s in its theoretical approach to the mentioned type whereas the
latter’s remains more analysis-based than definitional. Hornby aims to come up with a
definition and fundamental principles of the genre with greater emphasis on the textual
elements of the plays in question rather than the ones related to performance, which is
perhaps why he chooses to name the genre ‘metadrama’ instead of ‘metatheatre’. He begins
his discussion with the assumption that dramatic criticism has always been dominated by
realistic critical approaches even if the work being treated is not necessarily realistic at all,
thanks to derivations like ‘unrealistic’, ‘surrealistic’ or ‘revolting against realism’: “Whether
one likes realism or not, the defining trait for the theatre is always how ‘close to’ or ‘far from’
everyday life it seems” (13). In a rather post-structuralist attitude, Hornby questions such
binarism as crippling with regard to the nature of certain categories and claims that such an
outlook has been dead for the last few decades, including the realistic-antirealistic dichotomy
in the theory of drama. However, he calls for a distinction between realism as a form of drama
and realism as a category encompassing all drama, the latter of which leads to the above
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problematic polarization of genres while the former finds its roots in the Aristotelian concept
of ‘mimesis’. Very much like other binary oppositions, realism and anti-realism in dramatic
theory validate and define each other’s essentialities, leading to a clearer understanding of,
for instance, Stanislavskian and Brechtian conceptions of writing, acting and staging of
dramatic works (16). Hornby also turns his attention to the ‘advising the actors’ scene in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, though with different motivations than Abel. Even though he finds
Hamlet’s preaching to the actors rather Stanislavskian with expressions like ‘holding a mirror
to nature’ in the art of acting, Hornby doesn’t obviously believe that Shakespeare’s blank
verse lines prove realistic in Hamlet’s mouth. The problem, in this case, seems to stem from
a forced imposition of the contemporary understanding of ‘reality’ to the Elizabethan mind
as well as the evaluation of the ‘naturalness’ of the prince’s inflated poetic character with
respect to today’s standards. Hornby asserts that the role of mimesis in drama has been
subordinated by contemporary critical theories to the analysis of the ‘poetic’ aspects, stylistic
innovations and technical diversities of a work.
Hornby finds the obsession with realism in dramatic and performance studies very
disadvantageous on behalf of the actors, playwrights and even directors, as it narrows down
the artistic potentials to be put on stage by all these entities. To overcome this confinement,
the idea that drama is a reflection, rather than a representation, of real life must be abandoned.
What he proposes as an alternative to this view lies in the structuralist and poststructuralist
dramatic theory, mainly of Roland Barthes and Northrop Frye, whose ideas can be listed as
below:
1. A play does not reflect life; instead, it reflects itself.

2. At the same time, it relates to other plays as a system.
3. This system, in turn, intersects with other systems of literature, non-
literary performance, other art forms (both high and low), and culture
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generally. Culture, as it centres on drama in this way, I shall refer to as the

‘drama/culture complex.’
4. It is through the drama/culture complex, rather than through individual
plays, that we interpret life (Hornby, 1986:17).
The first objective derives from the structuralist belief that language, or writing in this case,
is a self-sufficient entity, independent from any contextual referents, including the author,
once put on paper. Instead of reflecting an external world, the text itself ‘becomes’ a world.
Similarly, the second objective derives from the Saussurean structuralist idea that individual
linguistic utterances are inevitably bound to an invisible linguistic system which each speaker
of the concerned language must have acquired to make sense of those utterances; hence
parole and langue (Saussure, 1986:9-10). In this respect, a literary text makes sense to the
readers or the audiences as long as they have already had a sense of the linguistic system, the
literary tradition related to that text and the archetypal knowledge. Neither the author nor the
audience changes the direction of the text against a wall of reality, even if the text had a claim
to reality in the first place, but both parties bend the reality outside the text to make sense of
the one inside it. “A good production of a good play seems isolated and self-contained […]
Its self-contained quality derives from the intuitive sense of what a play is […] As it does for
the playwright, the play for the audience reflects primarily inward, and secondarily outward,
to the unstated but crucial conventions of the theatre” (19). Furthermore, a dramatic work
goes beyond its reaches as a work of art and relates itself to a whole literary and artistic
tradition, to codes of behaviour, conventions of eating and dressing and every single social
institution, not in an imitative but a representative way. And thanks to the cultural knowledge
treasured up from the first human interaction on, the audience and the author interpret ‘life’
represented on the stage.
Having recognized a dramatic work as an autotelic, self-contained entity with no
direct connection with what is outside the text, Hornby moves on to an examination of the
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theatrical experience of the audience both as a product of the play’s independent internal
system and of the audience’s prior knowledge that a play is a play and it has to be experienced
in a certain way. As an example to this, he takes Falstaff from Shakespeare’s Henry IV whose
personality is enjoyed thanks to both his actions in that particular play and the audience’s
archetypal knowledge of the type character he represents. The same aspect applies to
Shakespeare’s unconscious resort to the archetypal cultural knowledge as he develops the
character as well as to the audience’s former experiences with the performances in their daily
lives, hence the drama/culture complex (21-22). For Hornby, the plays which draw attention
to these textual and cultural interconnectedness comprise a new kind of ‘original’ drama,
putting a critical distance between the audience and the performance on the stage, an
alienating or defamiliarizing effect to put it in Brecht’s or Shklovsky’s terminology. In other
words, success and originality of a dramatic work lie behind its ability to attribute new
meanings to what is traditional and well-known, not cutting loose from it, because the
worldview of the audience is ultimately and inevitably determined in relation to those
traditional, familiar values.
Hornby views Brecht’s epic theatre as the culmination of originality in dramatic art
in the modern times, as Brecht was somehow able to present accustomed situations
happening to accustomed characters whose actions lead to unaccustomed outcomes, almost
in a parodic way. Hornby believes that all ‘great’ art is a ‘serious’ and ‘complex’ parody of
some sort, and, “in parodying the received dramatic tradition, the serious playwright is
attacking and ultimately altering the means by which people think, behave and decide” (25).
Serious artists like Brecht do not strive to validate the established social, moral and political
order, but investigate it with the objective to change it for the better. Just as the 20th century
linguistic theories have changed the definition of language from a one-to-one written or
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spoken version of reality to an operative, culture-based system with arbitrary, changeable
meaning structures, the dramatic theory of the past century has also altered expectations from
this art form. Drama, in the contemporary sense of the word, does not reflect life in a realistic
manner anymore, but operates on it with an attempt to change the drama/culture complex,
which is doomed to change anyway, in a favourable direction. Hornby also argues that there
would be no point in studying drama if it were just holding a mirror up to nature and reflecting
life as it really was. Instead, drama must achieve the opposite of this, breaking that mirror of
slavish imitation to have a say on what is being discussed, which is what Brecht did with his
epic theatre.
Hornby complains about the fact that there has been a huge lack in the study and
systematic theorization of metadramatic theatre apart from such analytical treatises on
Shakespeare’s drama as Calderwood’s Shakespearean Metadrama, Egan’s Drama within
Drama and Homan’s When the Theatre Turns to Itself. He also finds seminal books like
Abel’s Metatheatre and Schlueter’s Metafictional Characters in Modern Drama rather
narrow and limited in scope and unsatisfactory in treating the metadramatic genre in
philosophical terms as a whole. In this respect, Hornby sets out to define metadrama as a
genre and come up with a list of its characteristic elements. He defines the genre as “drama
about drama [which] occurs whenever the subject of a play turns out to be, in some sense,
drama itself” (31). To achieve this metadramatic effect, Hornby thinks, all drama inevitably
and unconsciously derives from the playwright’s perception of and vocabulary about his art
along with his connection with the external world. When this metadramatic effect is
consciously sustained by the playwright with the intention to alter the audience’s or readers’
perception of fiction and reality, the play in question must be categorized as ‘metadramatic’
and analysed in terms of the ‘varieties’ of metadrama listed by Hornby as:

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1. The play within the play.

2. The ceremony within the play.
3. Role playing within the role.
4. Literary and real-life reference.
5. Self-reference (32).
Hornby also mentions a sixth element in the formation of the metadramatic effect, one that
targets the recipients’ perception of reality with an aim to dislocate it. However, he does not
lay it down as a condition that all metadramatic plays must include all these varieties at once,
and speaks of a ‘degree of intensity’ in a dramatic work’s metadramatic tendencies.
The first of these ‘varieties’, the play within the play, refers to a scene in a play in
which some or all characters discuss, rehearse or perform another play, often reflecting the
‘actual’ playwright’s ideas about the art of playwriting. Hornby divides the play within the
play technique into two as the ‘inset’ type and the ‘frame’ type, the former subordinating the
inner fictional play to the frame play like the ‘Mousetrap’ scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
and the latter treating the frame play as supplement to the fictional play’s plot like the ‘kind
of history’ induction in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (33). The degree of integration
of the inner play into the frame play may differ according to the playwright’s objectives in
using the play within the play technique, which, in turn, indicates the possibility to define the
play in question as ‘truly’ and ‘consciously’ metadramatic. For instance, Shakespeare’s plays
like Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream form an essential
connection between the plots of the frame play and the inner play while Brecht’s epic plays,
like A Man’s a Man, make use of inner plays, dance shows or songs as a means of relieving
the tension, changing the mood or alienating the audience. Full integration is sustained by
the frame play’s characters’ acknowledgment of or awareness to the inner play, or vice versa,
as well as the presence of self-contained plot structures and full characterization for the
characters in both plays.

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Hornby attributes the beginning of the conscious use of play within the play as a
metadramatic element to the English Renaissance, as classical and medieval western drama
makes use of such elements like choral intervention as a means of commentary on the central
plot or comic relief detached from it. The technique, however, is frequently used in English
drama of the late 16th and early 17th century, including Lyly’s Endymion (1588), Marston’s
The Dutch Courtesan (1603-5), Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale (1595), Beaumont’s The Knight
of the Burning Pestle (1607-1610) and particularly Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1584-9)
alongside Shakespeare’s abovementioned plays. However, play within the play falls from
favour in the following centuries, which Hornby relates to a change in the worldview from
mid-17th century on (39-40). Apart from a few occasional appearances, play within the play
vanishes from the stage in the neo-classical, romantic and ‘realist’ eras, which continues until
the turn of the 20th century when Chekhov’s The Sea Gull (1896) and Strindberg’s A Dream
Play (1902) were published. Both plays start a revolution against the one-layered, well-made
realism on stage and privilege obscurity, self-reflexivity and subjectivity.
The use of play within the play, then, evolved into a new kind with the Absurdist
drama of the mid-20th century which played with the audience’s perception of reality with its
strong dream-like quality. Along with such plays as Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Genet’s
The Blacks and Stoppard’s Travesties, Hornby attaches particular importance to Luigi
Pirandello’s metadramatic trilogy including Six Characters in Search of an Author, Each in
His Own Way, Tonight We Improvise, in which he annihilates, according to various critics,
the border between reality and illusion as well as commenting on the nature of dramatic art
through his characters. Yet, for Hornby, there is always a clear-cut distinction between
various layers of ‘plays’ within Pirandello’s plays, but the playwright constantly subordinates
one play’s believability to the other’s and he mingles one play’s characters and plot with the
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other’s (43). However, Pirandello never gives priority to either the frame play or the inner
play in the development of his plots and the passage of characters from one to the other is
always an option. Hornby observes that the final representative of this play within the play
vein in the 20th century drama is the epic theatre of Vakhtangov, Piscator and Brecht along
with their minor successors. Using the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky’s terminology,
Hornby finds that the epic theatre uses its layered structure to ‘alienate’ (ostraneniye in
Russian) the audience from the illusion of reality into a critical attitude towards the
performance. Epic plays, to this end, generally use an inner play, which is particularly a
familiar play from the familiar history, and a narrator for the frame play who is/makes aware
that what is going on in the inner play is just a representation, not the reality itself. Hornby
concludes his chapter on play within the play with the observation that the frequency of the
use of the technique changes across centuries in close connection to the way the people of
those centuries perceive life (46-47). This explains why it was frequently used during the
Renaissance and the 20th century, as the people of the former had a perception of life as a
stage and humans as puppet-like ‘actors’ under the control of a greater power while the
people of the latter had no trust in any system of thought or institution whatsoever.
The second variety Hornby designates for metadrama is ‘the ceremony within the
play’ which appears in the form of performances both in serious plays like tragedies and less
serious plays like comedies. Among ceremonies carried out on the stage in the history of
drama are “feasts, balls, pageants, tournaments, games, rituals, trials, inquests, processions,
executions, funerals, coronations, initiations” (49) depending on the genre and themes of the
play. However, it must be noted that actions which have ritualistic or ceremonial tendencies
without a full formal structure as a ceremony do not count as metadramatic, because the
characters are performing no roles other than themselves in such cases. A full formal
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ceremonial scene implicates characters’ acting out roles ascribed to themselves; for instance
as grooms and brides for wedding ceremonies at the end of traditional comedies or victims
and executioners commonly seen in traditional tragedies. However, ceremonies in real life
are not necessarily akin to dramatic performances, as they are less plot-based, more serious
and rigid in terms of rules, and the characters they contain are rather flat than round compared
to theatrical performances. Hornby observes that theatre is always associated with ceremony
not because of they are identical, but because “theatre is metaceremony [and] incorporates
ceremony in order to verify it, to examine it, or even to attack it” (55). And ceremony within
the play is metadramatic, as it represents the drama/culture complex through performance-
related means.
Hornby separates ceremony within the play into two in terms of the ceremony’s
completion or abortion for some reason, which can loosely be associated with the play’s
comic and tragic effect, relatively. The fulfilment of a ceremony within the play gives the
audience a feeling of closure, order and peace like the trial scene towards the end of
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice giving relative satisfaction to the audience.
Contrarily, a ceremony within the play being interrupted for some reason leads to feelings of
restlessness, gloom and displeasure in the audience like the banquet in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth being aborted by the appearance of Banquo’s ghost to Macbeth. Hornby also
observes that tragedies having fulfilled ceremonies and comedies having unfulfilled ones
bring the plays to the verge of being characterized as ‘tragicomedies’. There are also two
types of unfulfilled ceremonies within the play, one being the already-mentioned abortion of
the ceremony for some reason and the other including the perversion of a ceremony to the
opposite of what is intended with it. The second type includes examples like weddings ending
with multiple murders, homecoming ceremonies turning into funeral rituals and celebrations
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proving to be scenes of unmasking (57-58). These classifications mainly belong to the time
from the Greek and Roman classics to the end of Shakespearean era in which tragedy and
comedy had relatively clearer border lines.
From the 16th century onwards, the ceremonies are carried out offstage or absent in
some sense, but still bear the same significance in a more symbolic way. Hornby divides
these ceremonies into three main types: the offstage ceremony, the anti-ceremony and the
quasi-ceremony (58). The removal of these ceremonies from the stage has various reasons
depending on the era in which the plays were written. The offstage ceremonies are frequently
used in neoclassical drama, as festivity and sentimentality on the stage contradict neo-
classical literary ideals, which is why these events are just reported by some characters to the
others and the audience. Similarly, this type can also be seen in the naturalist drama of the
late 19th century, this time not with the intent of restraint, but with the motivation to show the
effects of incidents on the characters rather than the actions themselves. The second type, the
anti-ceremony, is a characteristic of Romantic drama in which traditional rituals and
observances are parodied to the end that they are transformed into the opposite of those rituals
and observances. The quasi-ceremony, on the other hand, pertains to contemporary drama,
especially to theatre of the absurd, in which ordinary events and actions are carried out in
such a way that they gain ritualistic qualities, possibly with an aim to reveal their spiritual
and symbolic emptiness (59-61).
Unlike the play within the play, the use of the ceremony within the play as a
metadramatic technique is not limited to a particular era or movement, but frequent in the
whole history of dramatic literature. Hornby relates this to the connection between
ceremonies and the issue of stability and change in the social life, and the evolutionary nature
of social systems gives way to ceremonies either for celebrating the new or lamenting the
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old. However, since the turn of the 20th century, the concept of ceremony has begun to lose
its spiritual and symbolic meaning as a mode of expression, which found considerable
reflections in contemporary drama. The dramatists of the late 20th century has turned their
attention to the creation of personal ceremonies with an attempt to restore the order in their
own terms. This results in the neurotic inventions of a nostalgic mind which characterizes
the drama of the present time as a fiercely self-reflexive and metadramatic kind.
The third variety of metadrama indicated by Hornby is ‘role playing within the role’
on which Lionel Abel has also centred his discussions regarding metatheatre. Even though it
is a separate element in metadramatic plays, role playing within the role is inevitably
connected to the former two varieties, as they both depend on certain kinds of performance
of the characters who are already being performed by actors. However, Hornby puts the
emphasis in this chapter not on the role playing of characters in inner plays or ceremonies,
but on characters’ adoption of certain masks or faces in the development of the ‘actual’ play
in order to hide their true personalities. As examples to this, Hamlet’s feigned madness,
Iago’s feigned honesty, Volpone’s feigned sickness can be given to reveal the characters’
skills in hiding their true personalities behind invisible masks as strategies to unmask, mock
or avenge themselves against other characters (67-68). Such a multilayeredness gives the
metadramatic characters a huge depth in terms of characterization and becomes too
demanding for the audience to understand the true nature of the action on the stage.
Reflecting on contemporary psychoanalytical theories of ego and identity, Hornby
draws attention to the fact that characters’ role playing within the role has always had strong
ties with the psychological, sexual and physical development of individuals in a given period,
which is best observed and reflected by the playwrights of the time. In this respect, there
must be a particular reason behind, for instance, Shakespeare’s use of cross-dressing,

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madness and physical deformity in his plays. Therefore, “role playing within the role sets up
a special acting situation that goes beyond the usual exploration of specific roles; it exposes
the very nature of role itself. The theatrical efficacy of role playing within the role is the
result of its reminding us that all human roles are relative, that identities are learned rather
than innate” (72). Having this in mind, the audience of theatre must be aware of the true
potentials of the characters on the stage who are actually made of the same essence as
themselves.
Like the other varieties, Hornby makes a division within role playing within the role
itself and designates three subcategories to the variety: voluntary, involuntary and allegorical
role playing within the role. As the name suggests voluntary role playing refers to a
character’s conscious pretention to be another person or to have a different personality. Feste
from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, for instance, disguises himself as a curate named Topas
in order to make fun of the imprisoned Malvolio while Richard from Shakespeare’s Richard
III pretends to be a devout Christian, despite not changing his attire, before the council that
is going to offer him the crown. Involuntary role playing within the role, on the other hand,
is a result of a character’s exposition to external factors which change his personality
temporarily or permanently, or of the character’s own distinctive emotional weaknesses
abused by the others around him, if not both. Hornby gives the example of Malvolio from
again Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in which he is easily manipulated by other characters,
primarily Maria and Sir Toby, into thinking that he is the ideal partner for her mistress Olivia.
Even though his being manipulated is more his fault than anybody else’s, Malvolio is still
different than Feste and Richard, given in above examples to voluntary role players, in that
he is unconsciously driven towards such conclusions by the others around him and he
genuinely believes that he is actually fit for a marriage with Olivia. Lastly, the third type of
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role playing within the role refers to the qualities given to a character by the playwright which
connotates another character from the history or literary tradition with the same qualities. As
the character is unaware of this allusion and his allegorically meaningful position, this type
of role playing does not count as a voluntary one; and it cannot be regarded as involuntary
role playing either, due to the lack of internal or external (within the play) interventions on
the character’s personality. Shakespeare’s As You Like It, for instance, deals with the struggle
between two brothers named Orlando and Oliver over supremacy, which makes the story a
direct allusion to the creation myth with the Orlando’s father figure’s name being Adam and
the setting being the Forest of Arden (74). In such cases when a character is aware of the
allusions he is making by the role he is playing or he is forced into that allegorical role by
other characters, allegorical role playing can be both voluntary and involuntary. Hornby
argues that role playing within the role becomes more interesting when there is a shift
between these types of role playing during the course of the play.
The use of role playing within the role can be traced back to the ancient Greek drama,
and it contributes to the development of many stock characters throughout centuries. Hornby
mentions two stereotypes from the ancient times, alazon and eiron, who are known to be
pretentious characters who see themselves better or worse than they actually are, as boastful
impostors or lowly nonstarters, respectively. It is also possible to find the first examples of
cross-dressing in the ancient Greek drama which resurrects more vividly in the Renaissance
drama. In medieval drama, role playing within the role is basically used to make biblical
allusions with the popularity of morality plays whose central literary element is allegory.
Role players are also seen in the Italian Commedia dell’arte in such stock characters as
Pantalone and Il Capitano who constantly pose as somebody other than themselves by using
their intellect to make profit or thanks to the fact that none of the locals know them,
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respectively. Renaissance drama, on the other hand, is rather eclectic in the use of role
playing techniques of the characters and makes use of almost all the role playing stock
characters of the previous drama, culminating in plays like Webster’s The White Devil or
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello and Richard III. The question of identity continues to occupy
the agenda of the stage in the following centuries, finding voice in the Restoration comedy
of manners with stereotypical characters like the Fop and the Country Bumpkin whose entire
popularity depends on their ability to sell themselves to the others around them in a fashion
beyond themselves. In the 19th and the 20th centuries, the role playing evolved into something
more than a technique, into a main theme of modern plays whose characters are depicted in
constant struggle to find a ‘proper’ identity for themselves by fulfilling any role possible
without knowing that the core of their personality is inevitably hollow. In the second half of
the 20th century, blurring the identities of characters has become a popular technique, as
people themselves have been shifting from pose to pose with existential questions after global
catastrophes. Besides such modern innovations, traditional modes of role playing have still
been kept especially in modern versions of old dramatic genres such as the comedy of
manners, to which Hornby gives the example of Jack in Wilde’s The Importance of Being
Earnest who leads a double life and pretends to be a decent man in the country and lives as
a libertine in the city (81). Another famous example of role playing within the role from
modern drama, this time an involuntary one, is Shaw’s Pygmalion in which Professor Higgins
imposes the manners and appearance of a lady on a poor flower girl, leading to her
transformation into something totally alien to her own self.
When the issue of acting and role playing is on the table, it is inevitable to incorporate
the Stanislavskian/Brechtian contradiction into the discussion. Modern theories of acting
based on the Stanislavskian method do not lean towards role playing within the role, as the
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actors are expected to digest their personalities into that of the characters they are performing
without a tendency towards other poses. In contrast, the ideal Brechtian actor is expected to
put a distance between himself as an actor and his role as a character with an aim to alienate
both himself and the audience for a critical reception of the play. However, Hornby argues
that “in both cases, the actor’s ego boundary remains intact; one places the performance
entirely inside that boundary, the other, entirely outside, but the boundary (i.e., the actor’s
sense of everyday self) does not change” (84). In the Cartesian way of thinking, every single
individual is a role player in real life with at least two identities in private and in public; and
on the stage where the individual’s duty is to ‘act’, the multiple layers of potential role
playing become dazzling. As this Cartesian dualism of the self dominates the world of ideas,
role playing within the role becomes more and more popular in the world of drama and
evolves into an acknowledged technique rather than a mere character trait.
The fourth, and perhaps the most frequently used, variety of metadrama indicated by
Hornby is literary and real life reference within the play, which functions as a means of
alienation for the audience depending on the degree the audience is able to determine its
relation to other literary works or real life happenings. In such cases, the illusion created by
watching a play is broken for a moment and this leads the audience to reflecting and
elaborating on the allusion in a more critical way than simply digesting it as a part of the
performance. However, a metadramatic allusion to other literature and real life situations
must be distinguished from non-technical quotations, adaptations and borrowings. The same
question goes for the allusions which have acquired the status of cliché, and thus, do not need
a critical effort from the audience to make sense of. In addition to that, the references to well-
known mythological, religious and cultural sources are more parts of the linguistic system
itself than metadramatic allusions. However, when these non-technical borrowings and
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allusions are made by means of a parody, the critical audience is expected to experience
certain degree of estrangement with a reflection on the use of that source material in its
original way at the back of their minds, which makes the allusion a metadramatic one (88-
90).
Like the other varieties, Hornby subdivides literary references into four types being
citation, allegory, parody and adaptation. He contends that these are all metadramatic,
perhaps with the exception of parody, in that they are “direct, conscious allusions to specific
works […] that are recent and popular” (90). By citation, he refers to the playwrights’ direct
references to or quotations from earlier literary works with the exact wording that appears in
the quoted text. The use of citation as a metadramatic technique dates all the way back to the
classical Greek drama, but such usage naturally loses its familiarity and alienating effect on
behalf of the audience as the quoted work falls out of favour in time. Another function of
literary reference is to draw attention to the work’s own fictionality or ‘dramaticality’,
because “when literary citation within the play moves towards literary criticism, it also moves
toward the play as self-reference” (92), as in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster, Shakespeare’s Hamlet
and Chekhov’s The Sea Gull. Such a metadramatic effect makes it easier for the audience to
form analogies between the literary reference made on the stage and the play they are
watching as a literary artefact.
In a similar way, allegory is used as a means to allude to previous works of literature
and other art in an attempt to comment on the nature of the play that contains the allegory.
Hornby gives Shaw’s Pygmalion as an example to metadramatic allegory by means of literary
reference, as it bears explicit traces of such tales as “Cinderella” and “The Ugly Duckling”
as well as of Ibsen’s The Doll’s House in a critical reading (93). Parody as a metadramatic
technique, on the other hand, may appear in the form of the former two types with the addition
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that the subject matter is purposefully mocked by the playwright. Parody in its purest form
is to be easily found in the classical Greek comedy in which the comic effect is registered by
the ridicule of the works and even personalities of other playwrights, generally from among
the same generation. As a matter of fact, such parodies comprise a big part of neo-classical
drama as reflections of satire, the most popular genre in prose, on dramatic literature.
Parodies do not necessarily limit their scope to characters and actors, but they give voice to
playwrights’ concerns regarding criticism, a whole literary genre, certain styles and uses of
language. Last but not least, adaptations from earlier literature can be regarded as
metadramatic as long as the adaptation and the source work are not indistinguishable by the
audience so as to create estrangement on their behalf. Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, for instance, engenders a powerful sense of alienation in the audience
at the back of whose mind is Shakespeare’s Hamlet as they proceed with the play (94).
Adaptations have become really popular at the second half of the 20th century and such plays
have created a sense of doubleness in the eye of the audience even though the playwrights
and the directors do their best to make the setting, characters and events relevant to the
contemporary contexts. As metadramatic adaptations require the prior knowledge of the
audience regarding the source texts, such plays have always been labelled as an intellectual
kind with a highly specific target audience.
The real life reference, equivalent to metadramatic literary reference, refers to a
playwright’s conscious and direct allusion to real personages, happenings and places which
necessitate the audience’s immediate recognition to achieve its metadramatic effect.
However, it must be noted that all real life references are not metadramatic, because an
allusion to unfamiliar people, events or places makes sense to the audience not as an
alienating technical element, but as an integral part of the play’s content. Very much like
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literary reference, real life reference also loses its metadramatic effect in time in proportion
to the memorability and popularity of the referenced item. Hornby argues that the same
internal division of literary references into citation, allegory, parody and adaptation goes for
real life reference as well (95). When the words of a real person are quoted with the exact
wording he/she has used before, or when that real person is depicted as he/she really is in
real life, the metadramatic citation as real life reference is in full function. Aristophanes, for
instance, depicts his contemporary playwright Euripides as his central character in The Frogs
with an aim to ridicule the latter and his works. Shakespeare’s historical plays also depict
real historical personages as they have earlier been depicted in historical accounts popular
during his time. Howard Brenton, on the other hand, uses the Romantic poets Byron and
Shelley as his protagonists in his Bloody Poetry.
More common but less metadramatic at first glance, allegorical references to real
people, events or places abstain from depicting these elements as they really are, generally
thanks to a name change; but still they attribute recognizable traits from their real life features
to them. Caryl Churchill’s Marlene in her Top Girls, for example, obviously stands for
Margaret Thatcher in a microcosmic office atmosphere, though with a different name.
Playwrights seem to choose such allegorical references more often than citation in order to
make their plays more suggestive and demanding or simply not to face prosecution. Parodies
regarding real life people, events and places appear in the form of satire in dramatic works,
whose scope is really limited compared to the former two types of real life reference. A
parody of real life people or events is not metadramatic unless the element of satire in the
play is already a literary convention in the general framework. For instance, ridicule of a
character who is immigrating to the United States with the great American Dream at the back
of his mind becomes metadramatic only if the play turns this ridicule into a satire of a whole
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literary tradition having used the American Dream as its central subject matter. In a similar
vein, adaptations from real life can never be metadramatic, as the mimetic nature of all drama
requires such transition from real life onto the stage where even an extraordinary element is
treated as real by the audience within the dramatic illusion created by the play. However, if
the emphasis is put on distinguishing the fictitious ‘real’ from the real ‘real’ in a play, as the
mimetic approach suggests, then the audience can be alienated into thinking critically of the
fictitious elements as a metadramatic technique (95-97).
Hornby contends that real life reference as a metadramatic technique has become
more popular in proportion to the advancements in technology, which culminated in Piscator
and Brecht’s epic theatre when slideshows, voice records, photographs and even videos were
introduced into plays to toy with the audience’s sense of illusion (97). Even if the play
performed on the stage creates an illusion of reality within itself and attributes new meanings
to people, objects and places, the audience watches the play with a preconditioning coming
from their real life experiences, which makes them understand that a chair used in a play is
both a prop in that performance and a chair in essence. The audience’s theatrical experience,
thus, is always informed by their real life existences, which is easily exploited by avant-garde
playwrights and directors to create a metadramatic effect. The possibility of this effect stems
from the art of theatre being a live, immediate, performance-based, on-the-spot experience
which makes it easier for the play to foreground the audience’s real life existence in the
background or make it stay where it is as long as it takes.
The last variety of metadrama listed by Hornby is self-reference which gives the
strongest metadramatic feeling to the audience as well as the characters, because the dramatic
work acknowledges its own dramatic nature and constantly reminds the audience of it. Very
much like in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, where Prince Hal addresses
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the audience directly, in self-reference “the play stops. The audience is made to examine the
play as a play; an artificial construction with events that […] are not to be taken seriously”
(103). Self-reference is inevitably related to the other varieties of drama, though the former
differs from the others in its immediate and direct acknowledgment of its fictionality rather
than an indirect suggestion. However, a distinction has to be made between self-reference
and presentational techniques like aside, monologue and narration in which there is also a
direct acknowledgment of the audience by the actors on the stage. The latter category does
not break the dramatic illusion created by the play, but extends it to include the audience into
the fictional world with no particular acknowledgment of the play as a play. Prologues and
epilogues, on the other hand, are more metadramatic in essence compared to such
presentational techniques with an acknowledgment of the play as a play; yet they function
like a presentational frame which does not break either the action or the illusion that goes
with it (104-105).
It is crucial, at this point, to understand the nature of the illusion being broken by the
metadramatic self-reference not as a delusion, but as a virtual reality in which the audience
enjoys its vitality but remains internally connected to the actual world. Quoting Susan K.
Langer’s monumental book on aesthetics titled Feeling and Form (1953:77), Hornby
describes theatre’s dramatic effect as a passage into ‘a hypothetical state of existence’, one
of a temporary trance rather than a permanent madness (106). In Freudian terms, however,
the aesthetic experience is always a going back into the depths of the unconscious, a surfacing
up of certain psychosexual impulses inevitably limiting the aesthetic effect to an illogical
process of responding to an external stimulus. Hornby argues against such a Freudian
conception of aesthetic experience and emphasizes the crucial role of the active, intuitive and
intellectual participation of the audience. He says: “The dramatic illusion provides us with
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an intuitively comprehensible imaginary presence rather than direct stimulation. The
dramatic experience is not like drinking a glass of beer or receiving a kick in the pants, but
is instead a form of knowing” (112, emphasis in the original). Even though the individual
members of the audience are directed towards an identification with the characters and
empathy with the events on the stage, it is not possible to speak of a complete displacement
of the self, but perhaps an expansion of it to contain more than one personality.
Despite the fact that self-reference is the most metadramatic one among other
varieties, it is not a popular one in the history of drama. Some rare examples are to be found
in such Shakespeare plays as Henry IV, Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra in which
the characters directly address the audience to express their expectations about the future
recognition of the play they are a part of. In the modern times, the use of self-reference is
also considerably rare compared to other metadramatic elements like play within the play.
Self-reference proves a very effective technique in epic drama, as it immediately breaks the
dramatic illusion and alienates the audience into a critical attitude towards the play. In this
respect, self-reference turns into a tool for moralistic purposes to teach something to the
audience rather than letting the theatrical experience turn into an escapist activity. In other
words, the serious playwright makes use of self-reference to “alter the drama/culture complex
rather than simply exploiting it without changing it” (117). When it is taken into
consideration that self-reference scenes in a play are generally the funniest ones, it becomes
easier to do two jobs with one metadramatic play, which is reminiscent of the ancient Roman
idea of literature, teaching and delighting at the same time.

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1.3. From Historiographic Metafiction to Historiographic Metadrama
One of the milestones of postmodern literary theory is undeniably Linda Hutcheon’s
seminal treatise titled “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and Intertextuality of History”
in which she lays the theoretical foundations of a newly-emerging genre that she names
‘historiographic metafiction’. Hutcheon begins her formulation of this genre with the
assumption that what characterizes postmodernist literature is an “intense self-reflexivity and
overtly parodic intertextuality” (3). In her A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory,
Fiction, she observes that “self-reflexivity […] strengthens and points to the direct level of
historical engagement and reference of the text [which] define[s] the new postmodern
seriousness that acknowledges the limits and powers of reporting or writing the past, recent
or remote” (1988: 117). She also finds the equation of postmodernism with metafiction, “a
term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to
its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and
reality" (Waugh, 1984:2), inadequate. Instead, she calls for the necessary addition of “an
equally self-conscious dimension of history” (3) to this metafictional essence. Each
postmodern text, for Hutcheon, is inevitably ‘historical’ in its formation of itself on the
grounds of the earlier texts consciously. However, what distinguishes a postmodern novel
taking its subject as history from a traditional historical novel is that the former makes room
for itself within history without posing as something other than fiction, thus displaying the
fictionality of the whole historical discourse: “Historiographic metafiction works to situate
itself within historical discourse without surrendering its autonomy as fiction” (4). Hutcheon
also emphasizes that history, viewed as the common property by historians and writers of
fiction, is inevitably to be traced in texts that have no more secure claim to reality than a
fictional work. In postmodern literature, however, “conventions of both fiction and

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historiography are simultaneously used and abused, installed and subverted, asserted and
denied” (5). Historiographic metafiction sees history as a safe ground on which it rests its
foundations while shaking it from within at the same time. It situates itself within a historical
discourse which it sees “only in aesthetic terms” (5). On behalf of the postmodern text, to
parody the past means both to acknowledge its existence and, paradoxically, to falsify it.
Intertextuality liberates the textual meaning from the monopoly of author-reader
interaction and leaves the meaning-making to the text itself in its relations with the preceding
texts or the history of discourse, or the tradition. With references to other authors such as
Barthes and Eco, Hutcheon emphasizes that intertextuality is an integral part of textuality
and each text echoes other literary materials one way or another, consciously or
subconsciously, very much like those texts having already echoed their own predecessors.
With this idea in mind, though, a text can no longer claim originality, as it owes its sense-
making to the accumulated discursive knowledge. A postmodern text consciously and
proudly embraces its inevitable relationality with preceding texts to the end that it parodies
them and arouses awareness in the readers to the fictionality of documented history (6-7).
Historiographic metafiction, in this sense, shares the modern historiography’s outlook
regarding the essence of history as a narrative rather than an objective documentation, thus,
prone to additions, omissions, alterations and shadowings. Historiographic metafiction
problematizes history’s familiarization of the unfamiliar through revealing its own textual
formation; for, as a ‘filtered’ narrative, the fictional work echoes the production process of
historical accounts and their openness to interpretation: “The past really did exist, but we can
only ‘know’ that past today through its texts, and therein lies its connection to the literary”
(10). Hutcheon also refutes the accusations towards postmodernism of being ‘ahistorical’ and
professes that it is overtly and inevitably historical in its attempts to disarm that history from
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its claims to the truth: “Historiographic metafiction [...] is overtly and resolutely historical-
though, admittedly, in an ironic and problematic way that acknowledges that history is not
the transparent record of any sure ‘truth’” (10).
In Hutcheon’s understanding, a text is never original in terms of content, but it can be
original in its approach to the already-existing content, in its treatment of the intertextual
data. Historiographic metafiction does not limit the potentialities of either history or fiction,
but expands their scope as well as adding to their value, “by locating the discourses of both
[...] within an ever-expanding intertextual network that mocks any notion of either single
origin or simple causality” (11). Hutcheon coins the term ‘interdiscursivity’ to denote the
multiplicity of textual voices in a given text, which, she believes, gives prominence to the
ex-centric, the marginal and the other in an otherwise one-dimensional perspective. This
approach frees fiction and history from the tyranny of the ‘dominator’ and gives voice to the
‘dominated’. In Historiographic Metafiction, thus, a historically marginalized, or perhaps
non-existent, character is used to subvert the clichés of the whole literary canon, such as the
heroism of the heroes or exaggerated reflections of historical events. Such elements force the
reader “to rethink and perhaps reinterpret history [... through] the dilemma of whether we
make history or history makes us” (17).
Hutcheon backs up her argument with a quotation from Doctorow who claims that there
is no clear-cut distinction between a work of art and of history. In Historiographic
Metafiction, the author arranges fictional meetings between historical figures and fictional
characters, though without privileging one over the other. The function of fictional characters
in those meetings is just to emphasize the narrative essence of historical data and that history
could have been written in different ways if the focus of the historian had been different:
“Narrativized history, like fiction, reshapes any material (in this case, the past) in the light of
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present issues, and this interpretive process is precisely what this kind of historiographic
metafiction calls to our attention” (22). This issue perhaps adds a political dimension to
historiographic metafiction, as it makes use of history to comment on or have an
understanding of the present. This ‘double contextualizability’ of intertexts, as Schmidt puts
it, leads the readers “not only to double [their] vision, but to look beyond the centres to the
margins, the edges, the ex-centric” (25). After all such inferences, Hutcheon concludes that
historiographic metafiction is the ‘most didactic of postmodern forms’, as it brings together
history and literature which both “make and make sense of our world” (28).
The term historiographic metadrama was coined in 1987 by the Canadian literary scholar
Richard Knowles in his seminal article titled “Replaying History: Canadian Historiographic
Metadrama”. Building his arguments on another Canadian's, Linda Hutcheon's,
abovementioned epochal theory of historiographic metafiction, Knowles defines this new
genre, in an extended study published a decade later, as “the dramaturgies that concern
themselves with theatrical process (rather than product) as attempts at democratization; with
explorations of history and historiography as themselves self-reflexive probings into present
constructions and reconstructions of a unifixed and ever-changing past through which we
(continually) remake what we ‘are’” (1999:77-78). He begins his discussion with an
elaboration on the postmodern conception of history and historiography not as an unearthing
of facts of the past, but as creative writing. “Historiography, then, becomes the ongoing
process of remaking history, of ‘making it new’, as fiction and myth” (1987:228). In a similar
vein, literary scholars and the writers of fiction have lately concentrated on the instability of
textual meaning with an emphasis on the readers' capacities of rewriting the texts which
already have a metafictional ‘consciousness’.

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Knowles draws attention to the increasing popularity of contemporary Canadian plays
which deal with historical topics from a present-time perspective in an attempt to rewrite
those ‘histories’ as well as commenting on their own dramatic conditions and meanings. He
argues that this metadramatic consciousness can be traced back to the 16th century, to
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, who made use of chronicles and other historical
documents as the basis of their plays. Similarly, in the 20th century, political dramatists
“since Brecht and Piscator have employed presentational, audience-centred forms of
documentary drama to deconstruct traditional 'authoritative' views of history and replace
them with self-consciously revisionist and populist re-presentations of history as
performance and process” (229). Contemporary Canadian playwrights have unsurprisingly
followed the footsteps of their European pioneers and directed their attention to political non-
illusionistic drama in a presentational style. Among these playwrights, three representatives
come to the fore with their exceptional political and historical consciousness along with a
self-reflexive style: Rick Salutin, James Reaney, and Sharon Pallock.
Salutin’s drama functions like an archaeologist's project which reveals the details of
Canada's cultural history from a nationalist's perspective. In his plays, he “subverts the very
concept of historical or dramatic 'authority'; and he avoids illusionistic naturalism [...] in
favour of a presentational metatheatricality that similarly subverts traditional Aristotelian
concepts of empathy and catharsis in drama” (230). In his 1837: The Farmers’ Revolt (1976),
for instance, he uses a documented historical event as his subject matter, the Mackenzie
Rebellion of 1837, by which he encourages the audience to relive the rebellion and rewrite
history from their own point of view. At the same time, he forms an obvious analogy between
the historical event and contemporary politics, especially the 1973 issues regarding cultural
and economic oppression in Canada. Salutin’s play also includes metadramatic elements with
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the use of a storyteller within the play who narrates and, from time to time, acts out his story
to the other characters in the play. Similar metadramatic and historiographic elements are
also traceable in Salutin’s other play, Les Canadiens (1977), too.
James Reaney approaches the issues of history from a similar angle, seeing history as a
set of representations and drama as a means of reimagining that history with an attempt to
extract personal or collective myths. He openly views history as a stage on which the
powerful act out roles that they attributed to themselves. He attempts to 'explode' those false
historical myths and tries to 'correct' them in his own more realistic understanding. Knowles
gives Reaney’s Sticks and Stones (1975) as an example to historiographic metadrama with
respect to the playwright's parody of the historical Donnelly family's case and the
metadramatic medicine-show scene. As Knowles points out “Reaney’s interest in historical
subject matter, then, has to do with continuing the universal process of creation by
transforming history dramatically into pure story, extending that process by involving the
audience in it” (235). Very much like Salutin, Reaney invites his audience to piece up
fragments of the past to come up with a historical account as valid as the ‘official’ one widely
acknowledged. Such a “method suggests that the play's metatheatrical self-consciousness, in
which characters stand outside of the play to comment on their own roles, is designed to
contribute to the elevation of audience engagement above empathy with character and plot
to the level of imaginative engagement with the artist, and with the creative act of inventing
the past” (235-236). The play, thus, turns into a page on which history is re-written and made
new by the audience through the window the playwright has opened for them.
Knowles separates Sharon Pollock from the other two playwrights, not in her use of
metadramatic devices, but in terms of her use of historical settings and costumes for her
historical plays. Pollock’s drama from the very beginning of her career has always been
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linked to exploration of the past on personal and social levels, and she views drama as a tool
to recognize the past to be able to design the future, for which she emphasizes the
performative nature of both history and drama itself in her major works. Her 1973 play
Walsh, for instance, deals with actual historical personages like Major Walsh and the Sitting
Bull, the former of which is depicted with a fluid identity, acting out roles as a government
officer and an ordinary individual. With this role playing within the role along with the
framing vignette at the beginning of the play, Pollock achieves to “present the play as a
demonstration” (237) and to shake the established belief in the minds of the audience
regarding the myth of the Indian and the Nationalist Canadian. Pollock’s Blood Relations
(1980) also employs similar metadramatic techniques like a frame story within which a
historical event is re-enacted and characters being forced upon roles to act out. The re-
enactment of Lizzie’s murder of her father and stepmother gives the audience and the other
characters a chance to revaluate the history from another perspective before condemning
Lizzie as an ill-hearted murderer.
As a conclusion to his article, Knowles observes that historiographic metadrama begins
to take root in Canadian dramatic literature as a self-contained tradition with quite a number
of representative playwrights not limited to the three mentioned. What characterizes the work
of these playwrights is an attempt to reveal the fictional nature of documented history by
means of a presentational, self-reflexive style which underlines the fact that history, very
much like the play being staged, is a scene for role-playing and representation. These
playwrights all make use of “the techniques of self-reflexive theatricality […] to deflect
cathartic engagement with character and plot, in order to produce a more active and ongoing
engagement associated with the imagination and the will, and to open their dramas outward
to the world as they lay open their documentary sources, for re-construction” (241). Very
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much like its counterpart in fiction, historiographic metafiction, Knowles’ historiographic
metadrama obviously has a potential to become the defining genre of the whole contemporary
western drama, as it gives voice to both central postmodern reservations: historical accuracy
and soundness of textual meaning.
In line with Hutcheon’s and Knowles’ ideas above, Alexander Feldman comes up with
the term ‘historiographic metatheatre’, which he describes as historiographic metafiction’s
“self-conscious counterpart to dramatic art– theatre’s acknowledgement of its own artifice—
[…] [which] by exposing the theatricality within theatre, provoke[s] questions as to the
artifice, the spectacle, and the dramatic constructs of the world beyond” (2013:3). He calls
for a necessary distinction, though, between ‘historical’ and ‘historiographic’ and definition
of ‘metatheatrical’ on the basis of ‘theatricality’. With the use of the word ‘historiographic’,
he draws attention to, not only the historical events, but also the circumstances under which
those historical events are ‘narrated’ in a particular discourse, from a particular point of view
on a particular ideological basis. The term ‘metadrama’, on the other hand, refers to the
illusoriness of theatrical performances and their assumption of a representative voice which
is identical to real life. Feldman also draws attention to the self-reflexive nature of
‘historiographic metatheatre’, justifying his location of his formulation on the axis of
Hutcheon’s theory, as his idea, very much like hers, emphasizes the “seminal significance of
self-reflexivity in modern and contemporary history plays [which] share numerous features
with the novels under Hutcheon’s purview. [He] explore[s] interrogations of historical
understanding and historical representation, as she does, within art-works which may be
considered characteristic of late twentieth-century theatre” (5).
Feldman applies his theory to a number of British and German plays with an emphasis
on the use of play-within-the-play as the key, but not the only, factor in self-referentiality.
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As Feldman also argues in his discussions of the plays, the primary contention of
‘historiographic metatheatre’ is becoming “a seminal mode of political and ideological
engagement in post-war European theatre. As well as staging history, these plays reflect upon
the pressing issues of their own periods. Dramas of the past they may be, but they thinly veil
their critiques of the present” (5). Feldman admits that his formulation has its roots in the
traditions of European historical drama along with the seminal theoretical texts of the
postmodernist vein including Hutcheon’s ‘historiographic metafiction’. To his
understanding, history and drama share an inevitable connection in terms of their essences
being representation, both creating a set of characters, attributing certain roles to them and
pretending that what they are telling or showing is real. This connection stems from the fact
that “it is one of the insights of postmodernist historiography […] that the fictionalising
process—the assignment of roles and the plotting of events— is crucial to the historian’s
practice” (7) the same way it is crucial to the dramatist’s. When the traditional idea of ‘the
world as a stage’ is taken into consideration, Feldman’s definition of history as ‘the theatre
of the world’ and of drama as ‘the theatre of the book’ makes perfect sense in revealing their
interconnectedness. Historiographic metatheatre, in this sense, brings these two interpretative
activities together to reveal the theatricality of history and the historicality of theatre.
Feldman also evokes Lionel Abel’s definition of metatheatre in a critical manner, as he
believes that the latter’s equation of metatheatre with a blurring of the distinctions between
reality and illusion is inadequate. Furthermore, Abel’s discussion revolves mistakenly around
the assumption that a play is metatheatrical as long as it deals with life ‘as already-
theatricalised’ being theatricalized once more on the stage. What Feldman proposes as an
opposition to this is an emphasis on the metatheatrical potentials of the play-within-the-play
scenes that acknowledge the performance on the stage as a performance and tries to reveal
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the already-theatricalised nature of roles played by the actors with a strong self-referentiality
and self-consciousness. Such historiographic metatheatricality goes even beyond reflecting
on fictionality of history and drawing on the play’s own dramaticality, and it engages in a
“pursuit of political themes and ideological arguments” (16), which dominated the post-
Brechtian stage in the West. Feldman finds the basis for this domination not only in the
growing interest of professional historians in the fictional nature of historiography, but also
in the contemporary dramatists’ increasing political consciousness in an attempt to reveal the
histories of the oppressed to put it in Walter Benjamin’s terminology. These politically-
conscious playwrights of the second half of the century “began to explore alternative,
supressed versions of history, histories that could not be considered a linear flow of the past
into a progressive present, and to demythologize hegemonic representations of history as a
tawdry illusion” (Middleton and Woods, 2000:155). In doing so, they prove that history
writing is no different than interpreting the past from a present-time point of view and their
version of history is as valid as a professional historian’s, as both are subject to subjective
ascription.
Even though political awareness and dramatic self-consciousness bring these works
closer to the Brechtian epic theatre, historiographic metatheatre departs partially from the
Brechtian legacy in its inclusion of the audience to the illusion created on the stage. Actually,
the illusion becomes the central function of the metadramatic play, as it tries to put its version
of history over the one the audience has long been fooled with. Historiographic metatheatre
requires the performance of a naturalist play in a naturalist fashion, or whatever the
mentioned historical period calls for, rather than the epic style, to have a full command of
historical referentiality with a strong claim to historical accuracy in order only to prove that
it does not exist. In other words, it problematizes its own attempt to achieve historical
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knowledge to display that such a thing is out of question. Very much like the professional
historical account, historiographic metatheatre “refer[s] to events that have taken place, in
one way or another, but the manner of their presentation subverts, or at least destabilises, the
referential capacity of [all] stagings. The ‘metatheatrical awareness’ […] renders all histories
suspect, contingent, provisional” (23). To that end, historiographic metatheatre draws
attention to the constructedness of its own plot, the affectedness of its characters and
illusoriness of its own action. Feldman ends his introduction to this new genre with a
quotation from Howard Barker, the pivotal subject of this study, who argues that “the theatre
is not a disseminator of truth but a provider of versions. Its statements are provisional”
(1993:45).
In a similar approach, Zapkin analyses two of Tom Stoppard’s plays, Travesties (1974)
and Arcadia (1993), in terms of their treatment of documented historical data and questioning
of the stability of textual meaning, the playwright being a representative of the ‘postmodern
scepticism’. Zapkin classifies these plays as historiographic metatheatre, the former being an
overt and the latter a covert example. Stoppard appears already to be the playwright showing
the highest interest in the issue of history, with plays set completely or partially in the past,
along with offering commentary on “epistemological issues [such as] reliability, the limits of
knowledge, and how humans experience the laws of the universe” (2016:308). Stoppard’s
plays display what Hayden White describes as ‘historical emplotment’, the activity of giving
interpretations a factual framework thanks to a formation of cause and effect relationships by
means of a plot. In other words, as Belsey puts it:
History is always in practice a reading of the past. We make a narrative out of

the available ‘documents,’ the written texts we interpret in order to produce a
knowledge of a world which is no longer present. And yet it is always from
the present that we produce this knowledge: from the present in the sense that
it is only from what is still extant, still available, that we make it; and from the
present in the sense that we make it out of an understanding formed by the
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present. We bring what we know now to bear on what remains from the past
to produce an intelligible history (1985:1).
Stoppard seems fairly aware of this narrativity inherent in historical accounts by which any
individual can assume the right to write ‘a’ history. Using historical settings and personages
at the centre of his plays, he does not claim that his ‘version’ of history is correct, but proves
that, with deficient arguments based on subjective accounts, it is never possible to have direct
access to history (Mıyares, 2008:7). Zapkin is obviously of the same opinion as Mıyares
when he argues that “historiographic metatheatre such as Stoppard’s confronts both history
and science as epistemological discourses, exposing the limitations of narrative through a
historiographic reliance on error. Stoppard’s historiographic metatheatre accepts error not
just as inevitable but as part of the fabric of historiography” (312).
Stoppard’s Travesties arranges a fictional meeting among four famous historical
personages – Henry Carr, Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara – in the Zurich of
1917, with no written historical document indicating that these characters all met each other.
The events in the play are narrated by the now-elderly Carr whose contradictory statements
draw attention to the unreliability of his account regarding the past which has already been
fictionalized by Stoppard himself. As Carr’s account is being acted out by actors on the
stage, some of them even twice in different ways, there is a discussion going on between
Joyce and Tzara over the potentials of art in conveying historical ‘facts’ accurately, which
problematizes historical knowledge by self-referentiality. Less obviously, Arcadia also offers
commentary on historical accuracy by means of metatheatrical references. The play is set
partially in the past and partially in the present in the same household and there are constant
passages between the two thanks to flashbacks, memories told and accounts re-enacted. Two
central characters from the present-time setting, writer Hannah Jarvis and professor Bernard
Nightingale, both investigate the history of the household and rewrite the history of it in due
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process while the flashbacks prove them substantially wrong. In the play, “Stoppard stages
the past as a tool for critiquing contemporary historiographic discourses and epistemologies
[…] [and] goes beyond staging compromised histories and sets a trap for viewers and critics
to examine their own historiographic thought processes” (319). In doing so, however, he
never changes the décor or the props inbetween the two temporal phases, by which he
constantly reminds the audience that what they are watching is a fictitious performance very
much like the history the characters are trying to unearth.
With an eye to the ideas above, there is no doubt that historiographic metadrama has
been one of the most popular dramatic genres in the last few decades of western literary
tradition in line with the increasing postmodern scepticism towards generalizing narratives
like history. In English drama in particular, historiographic metadrama has found a place for
itself among the political playwrights – besides Stoppard – who have been categorized as
Brechtian by the literary scholarship, including David Edgar, Howard Brenton, David Hare
and Trevor Griffiths. In addition to these playwrights, Howard Barker stands out as a
practitioner of historiographic metadrama even though his drama is described by Barker
himself as one that abstains from any commentary and message whatsoever. In fact, a great
number of Barker’s plays take their subject matters from documented history, though in a
subversive way. Barker situates his plots right within the defining moments in history with
actual historical personages as his characters who are depicted as the opposites of what they
are in the history books. Along with such interest in historical knowledge, Barker’s drama
also stresses self-reflexivity, self-referentiality, artificiality and illusoriness of dramatic
works, particularly by the use of artists as his protagonists in the middle of their struggles
against authority, use of works of art at the centre of the events and discussions related to the
ethics and functions of art in the face of politics, morality and society. In this respect, Barker’s
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drama bears strong potentials to be read and categorized as historiographic metadrama; but,
before that, it is necessary to comprehend Barker’s understanding of art as manifested in his
self-crafted genre, The Theatre of Catastrophe.

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CHAPTER 2
THE TENETS OF HOWARD BARKER’S THEATRE OF CATASTROPHE
Howard Barker’s drama has always been juxtaposed with the generation of British
political playwrights including Howard Brenton, David Edgar, Edward Bond, John McGrath
and Caryl Churchill whose works dominated the stages in the last decades of the twentieth
century. These playwrights have been regarded as the torchbearers of the Brechtian tradition
of political epic theatre in Britain in terms of both content and technique. However, Howard
Barker’s self-crafted path as a playwright and the character of his drama definitely deserve
to be taken into account individually and independently. Even though Barker’s departure
from his contemporaries in terms of artistic character and motivation becomes clear in the
late 80s, his interest in political writing along with his admiration for the tragic form dates
back to the staging of his first plays at the Royal Court almost two decades earlier. Wilcher
attributes the beginning of Barker’s career “as a stage dramatist [to] the production of Cheek
in the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in September 1970” (1993:176). Towards the end of the
decade, Barker has already found a place for himself among the famous generation of the
abovementioned playwrights due to his political orientation reflected in his early plays.
However, Barker’s plays remain unrecognized by the general public for a long time, as they
are not staged as widely as those of his contemporaries. Megson points out that Barker’s early
work “has [often] been received with marked circumspection if not outright hostility by
reviewers and, with occasional exceptions, has been rejected by major theatre establishments,
most notoriously the National Theatre” (2006:489). Despite occasional appearances on
mainstream stages, Barker keeps his plays off the market intentionally until the establishment
of his own theatre company named The Wrestling School in 1988. Until then and even after
that, Barker remains “essentially a fringe dramatist, and he is keenly sensitive to the fact”
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(Rusinko, 1989:139) and this “uncompromisingly avant-garde stance has meant that some of
his plays have remained unperformed for years, and although the Royal Shakespeare
Company has mounted a number of productions, they have been confined to its studio
spaces” (Wilcher, 1993:176).
The Wrestling School was founded by a group of actors with the sole purpose of
staging Howard Barker’s plays in 1988 and, since then, the company has devoted its attention
to introducing the playwright’s highly distinctive style and techniques to an eximious group
of spectators who are in search of a distinctive theatrical experience. Since the opening
performance of Barker’s The Last Supper (1988), the company has staged around 40 of
Barker’s plays, “many of them [being] the English language premieres as well as workshops,
readings and public discussions to over 56,000 people in nine countries”
(http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/tws.html). Thanks to the its stance inbetween
mainstream and fringe theatre, the company has also found the chance to work in
collaboration with other companies including the Royal Court and Joint Stock, as pointed out
by Lamb (2005:14). The Wrestling School, in time, has turned out to be an experimental
theatre company which “explores the dynamic between language and communication,
performer and audience, […] and works to develop new forms of expression for text-based
drama” (http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/tws.html). The company takes its name from
the idea that each member of the audience as well as the actors performing a play must
‘wrestle’ with the innumerable possible meanings that the text suggests in order to come up
with an independently authentic, personal interpretation.
Barker’s already-distinctive dramatic style gains a theoretical foundation with the
publication of his monumental treatise on the art of theatre and performance, titled Arguments
for a Theatre, in 1993. In this work, he basically sets his ‘art of theatre’ or ‘the new theatre’
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or ‘The Theatre of Catastrophe’ up against what he calls simply ‘theatre’ or ‘the humanist
theatre’ or ‘the old theatre’ referring to a whole tradition of Western dramatic theory from
Aristotle to Brecht. Barker views the old theatre as an act of marketing in which the actors
assume the role of a salesperson trying to promote his product to the taste of the audience
who is presented as a mere consuming entity. In such cases, the audience’s satisfaction
becomes “the necessary end of the performance” (67). However, the new theatre liberates
both parties from such an imposed exchange and expectations, and takes the experience of
theatre beyond purgation of any kind to the feeling of exclusiveness on behalf of the
audience: “To escape the pernicious memory of the market place, the new theatre will
dethrone its audience. […] It will not be encouraged to think itself a jury, obsessively
judgmental” (67). Barker then calls for a distinction between the ‘important plays’ and the
‘disappointing plays’. He believes that a play cannot achieve importance by remaining in the
framework of the existent ideology in which the good and the bad are predetermined. Instead
of satisfying the audience’s need to be rewarded with habitual outcomes, it must deliver a
wound which is “the aim of the new theatre and the intention of the actor” (68). As the wound
in the heart of the audience keeps bleeding, they will look for alternative ways to heal the
wound outside the framework of the dominant ideology.
Barker makes a list of assessments from which his “Theatre of Catastrophe” takes its
shape. The list includes the assumptions that “information is a universal commodity [,] that
knowledge is forbidden [,] that imagination has been maimed by collectivist culture [,] that
in this maiming the public itself has colluded [and] that this collusion is nevertheless detected
and is experienced as shame” (69). The below chart effectively summarizes Barker’s points
in his distinction between the ‘humanist’ theatre and his Theatre of Catastrophe:
The humanist theatre

We all really agree.
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When we laugh we are together.

Art must be understood.
Wit greases the message.
The actor is a man/woman not unlike the author.
The production must be clear.
We celebrate our unity.
The critic is already on our side.
The message is important.
The audience is educated and goes home happy or fortified.
The catastrophic theatre
We only sometimes agree.
Laughter conceals fear.
Art is a problem of understanding.
There is no message.
The actor is different in kind.
The audience cannot grasp everything; nor did the author.
We quarrel to love.
The critic must suffer like everyone else.
The play is important.
The audience is divided and goes home disturbed or amazed. (71)
Barker sees his theatre as an honourably barbaric act in an environment where civilization
means political and social gibberish in the name of a moral unanimity. The theatre is, and
must be, protected by the invisible walls of this barbarism against a sea of moral and political
impositions and discussions while, inside those walls, the imagination continues its free play.
Barker concludes that when the audience experiences ‘the terrible ambitions of the human
spirit’ in silence and darkness beyond the constraints of ideology and education, it leaves the
premises between those walls not as ‘changed’, but ‘confused’ beings, which is the sole aim
of theatre (78).
The political theatre, for Barker, disregards complexity in its pursuit of exposure and
promotion, and assumes a ‘common morality’ in the background of the audience’s
perception. Such a theatre underestimates its audience’s meaning-making capacities and
serves it ready-made, ideologically-shaped meanings in the way a journalist or a
documentarian does in the public arena. Such an obsession with realism and accuracy
deprives theatre of its poetic potentials which should have been the sole motive determining
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the way the author writes, the actor plays and the audience watches. As an anti-thesis to this
kind of theatre, he gives some examples from his own, from the productions of his plays such
as The Last Supper, The Possibilities, The Castle and The Bite of the Night. He claims that
these plays are indigestible, rather than incomprehensible, in their disruption of the moral
substructure they are expected to stand on. His catastrophic theatre is never afraid of the
audience’s potentials; instead, it challenges the audience to overcome the deliberate obscurity
on the stage and to prove that clarity murders imagination. Barker detests the theatre’s self-
assured authority on the audience which laughs or cries when the play motivates it to laugh
or cry. He bestows the medal of success to the theatre when it achieves to unleash the
individual members of the audience from the constraints of collectivity and meaning (79-82).
Barker’s understanding of theatre is a safe haven for the audience from the bombardment of
compelling comments “in an age of persistent meaning, of relentless indoctrination, not only
from the state, but from the artistic community, the commercial empires and the propagandist
forces of an information network” (82). In Barker’s catastrophic theatre, the audience enjoys
the ‘multitude of possibilities’ none of which assumes superiority over its receptive
capabilities or tries to change the audience’s moral or political standpoint.
Barker engages in a war against the crippling and narrowing reaction to his theatre in
terms of accessibility and obscurity; as he does not believe that obscurity stems from an
inability to communicate the message or that accessibility is solely related to such issues as
intellect, class and wealth. He, at the same time, regrets to admit that the value of a work of
art is determined in the present time by its understandability, digestibility, contemporaneity,
relevance and openness. However, what he still proposes is an obscure theatre whose “very
obscure transgressions occur which make it deeply unsympathetic to existing practice – the
first of these being irresponsibility” (88). Barker’s theatre of obscurity takes its leave from
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the domains of the liberal-humanist theatre in its rejection to deal with the conscience or to
have a social purpose. In the chart below, Barker points out the battle his catastrophic theatre
wages against outdated perceptions of art, moral and political structures in society and
shallow critical methods of his time:
Table 1: The fortification of an imaginative work
Barker’s new theatre subordinates both author, who has been seen as an omniscient entity
since Brecht, and actor/director, who has taken ideological impositions as his duty so far, to
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the audience, who are left insecure and confused to the end that their imagination is
‘stimulated’ and “the structures of morality are tested, even if only to be affirmed” (54).
However, it is noteworthy to emphasize that Barker never calls for a collective stimulation,
but for an individual assessment of moral values: “My own theatre has never aimed for
solidarity, but to address the soul where it feels its difference. It is intended to plunge beneath
the ground of common belief and to test the ground of first principles” (54). He compares his
understanding of tragedy with the Aristotelian understanding of it, which offered nothing
more than a generalizing public moral ‘correction’ generally stimulated by the death of a
morally idealized hero whose moral outlook reflects the playwright’s or the ruler’s. He lays
the burden of constructing morals onto the shoulders of the individual members of the
audience, reducing his role as an artist just to opening the gates of ‘knowledge’ and leaving
them on their own: “This knowledge, because it is forbidden by moral authoritarians of both
political wings, becomes the material of a new drama that regards men and women as free,
cognitive, and essentially autonomous, capable of witnessing pain without the compensation
of political structures” (50). He concludes that “the real end of drama in this period must be
not the reproduction of reality, critical or otherwise, […] but speculation – not what is […]
but what might be, what is imaginable” (38).
After such a brief introduction to the theoretical aspects of Barker’s drama, it is
crucial to make an in-depth analysis of the playwright’s books on the art of theatre and
performance to get a full understanding of his “Theatre of Catastrophe”. In this respect, the
following sub-sections deal with Barker’s insistence on the tragic form as the basis for
effective dramatic effect, his technical developments that distinguish his self-crafted genre
from the deep-rooted Aristotelian ethics in the history of drama and the prominent Brechtian
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formula dominating the works of Barker’s contemporaries and the levels of deliberate
functionlessness in Barker’s drama.
2.1. Tragedy, Death and the Catastrophic Effect
The only point where Howard Barker agrees with Aristotle is perhaps his
acknowledgment of tragedy as the highest form of art, as it restores the privilege of
experiencing the pain of life to the individual. In an interview he gave to Nick Hobbes, Barker
argues that tragedy is “unsentimental, it takes us seriously as human beings, it is not
condescending. Paradoxically, by seeing pain we are made greater, it becomes a need. There
is nothing 'pessimistic' about this. […] Tragedy tells us what the world is - it doesn't explain
the world” (The Wrestling School, 2004). He sublimates the audience’s confrontation with
this pain as the ultimate reality of life and views this confrontation as a means to achieve self-
fulfilment in the face of imposed generic communal moral values. He abstains from
attributing a moral dimension to his tragedies, but describes them as catastrophic “because a
breakdown of order - social or personal - is always the starting point, and the protagonist
must invent himself out of the ruins of a life. Often this journey leads to a bitter solitude. But
so what? Theatre isn't a massage. We ask it to take us seriously. (The Wrestling School,
2004). Tragedy also liberates the individual member of the audience from banal collectivity
and separates one from the rest into questioning his subjective existence. In other words, “in
tragedy, the audience is disunited. It sits alone. It suffers alone. In the endless drizzle of false
collectivity, tragedy restores pain to the individual […] when society is officially philistine,
the complexity of tragedy becomes a source of resistance” (Barker, 1993:19).
For Barker, tragedy is the most appropriate art form for the 20th century in which
humanity suffered severely from authoritarian regimes, as tragedy aggrandizes even the
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otherwise most trivial human experiences as well as liberating human speech from the
constraints of everyday habituality: “After the tragedy, you are not certain of who you are
[…] Tragedy liberates language from banality. It returns poetry to speech. Tragedy is not
about reconciliation. Consequently, it is the art form for our time. Tragedy resists the
trivialization of experience, which is the project of the authoritarian regime” (17-18). To save
the individual from banal collectivism, tragedy emphasizes the incalculable value of
subjective meaning-making capacities of humans, and Barker, in opposition to the
Aristotelian obsession with arousing pity and fear in tragedy to make the audience better,
attributes no function to tragedy other than shaking the audience out of its deadly routine:
“Tragedy does not stoop to hate life, for loving life and hating life are equally infantile, the
philosophical equivalent of a nursery rhyme. Tragedy has no opinion” (34). Barker portrays
death not as a means to arouse pity and fear, but as a reminder of the ultimate reality of human
life: “By making death the sacred object of our meditations the art of theatre at once dispenses
with the pitiful paraphernalia of representation that so disfigures the stage of the theatre, with
its shrill and infantile assurances we are in a real place” (53). In order to represent death on
stage in an appropriate way, Barker suggests that one has to abolish the idea that death is the
ultimate equalizer and the long-awaited retribution for the shortcomings of life: “To stage
death we must – let us admit it, and affirm it – abolish the critical regard – a regard so fissured
and cataracted as to have become in any case a condition of the blind” (54).
Barker contends that the greatest duty to realize the true nature of death falls primarily
to the tragic protagonist who must first deprive himself of his conscience, then experience
the atmosphere of death independently of the feelings of fear and empathy, and finally convey
the same experience to the audience in the most faithful way: “The artist who dares to be
tragic, the actor who is unafraid of tragedy, lives at the expense of his conscience, lives
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outside conscience. He sins for the audience, living on the very fringes of morality” (77). On
behalf of the audience, on the other hand, who witnesses the fall of the tragic protagonist on
stage, there is no instruction intended by Barker’s conception of tragedy; on the contrary, the
audience is expected to be uneducated of his imposed limitations. In Barker’s own words,
“in the fall of the tragic protagonist we witness therefore the exhaustion of the conjuror . . .
in this spectacle we are privileged to know the supreme law of limitations but simultaneously
to be ecstatically uneducated by it” (93). The fall of the tragic hero in a classical tragedy is
an inevitable outcome of the hero’s fierce struggling against the forces beyond his strength;
and the hero sets a model for the audience in the face of the potential dangers rooted in their
fate. However, Barker’s understanding of tragedy acknowledges the tragic fall, which usually
manifests itself by means of death, not as a warning, but as an acceptance of life’s harsh
reality: “The failure of even the tragic character to overcome the gravitational pull of all
things, the impossibility of sustaining his conjuring of values, does not educate us against his
arts. Let us repeat: Tragedy is not a warning” (93).
Barker once more explains his theatre’s departure from the long tradition of realist
political drama that has dominated the 20th century stage under the influence of first Ibsen
and then Brecht. He claims that his tragedy evokes no sentiments in the audience regarding
any political, moral or social issues, and never seeks to amend or correct; on the contrary, it
sees immediate sentimental reaction on behalf of the audience as a sign of cheap emotional
abuse: “Tragedy shrinks from empathy, disdains sympathy and recoils from all the pseudo-
emotions of realism in the theatre, practices designed to generate the fatuous complacency
of identification or recognition. To announce, as the audience, ‘I identified with him’ – a
mark of failure” (86). Barker’s tragedy seeks to eliminate moral and political judgment from
the stage and the collective opinions offstage, as these kill the actual value of the theatrical
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experience of the individual actor as well as the individual audience: “The public game of
the foyer is the coda to all dramatic art (the foyer being the rally of the party faithful). Here
opinion is official, but opinion is the enemy of tragedy . . . the foyer after the tragedy therefore
. . . a casualty station for the moralists” (94). In Barker’s ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’, tragedy
turns into a means to fight against the use of art as political and moral propaganda, because
it “eliminates conscience from the stage, and [serves] no political purpose” (96).
In his “Death, the One and the Art of Theatre”, Barker also pays particular attention
to the reasons why he has chosen the tragic form. He argues that the art of theatre must be
liberated from all forms of transitory, earthly idealism and must be organized around the
theme of death which is the dissolution of all ideals represented best in the tragic form:
All cultures are enslaved by idealism – they are defined by their servitude to
the ideal. Only tragedy locates the ideal in death, but because death is the first
enemy of political systems, tragedy is caricatured as negativity. The bravery
of tragedy – where not even sexual love is sufficient to abolish the fascination
of death – lies in its refutation of pleasure as an organizing principle of
existence. Who would deny that this contempt for pleasure is also an ecstasy?
(2005:3)
As the tragic art of theatre does not aim to tell, or to teach, or to preach, it is not plausible on
behalf of the audience to expect messages from a dramatic work whose motivation stems
only from a will to pay respect to the sole reality defining human existence. Barker elaborates
on this issue further saying: “To ask for truth in theatre is contradictory, a repudiation of its
essence. Consequently, death, a subject for which true statements are, a priori, inadmissible,
is the subject most perfectly suited to the form of theatre” (4). Barker acknowledges that the
hovering of death on a piece of work inspires negative feelings on the audience by which the
quality of a dramatic work is determined, as the art of theatre is realistic as long as it gives a
faithful representation of death and invokes an individually generated feeling in the audience
accordingly: “The art of theatre was fear-inspiring. The Humanists, who know of no use for
fear, nor can imagine the sublimity of fear, abolished it from the stage. We talk, however, of
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theatre as crucially an art of death. We assert the dominance of fear in the life of the
characters. In this we are, paradoxically, realists” (7). He blames ‘humanist’ dramatists of
the late 20th century for banishing death from the stage or abusing it for emotional
exploitation whereas his ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’ restores death to its deserved place at the
centre of all great art. Barker suggests that “death is the preoccupation of great art even where
it is not the subject of it. When the utilitarians seized the theatre death simply stood in the
foyer, as patient as a chauffeur” (7).
Barker elaborates on the subject of death in drama with respect to the question of
catharsis on behalf of the audience, and argues that once death is on the table, the audience
is automatically alienated from other contextual feelings and passions like political views
and moral outlook: “To enter the space silently. To enter it thinking of death. To make death
the whole subject even when laughter discloses the ambiguity of our passions. To admit
death. To admit death . . . to know now what you knew but were denied consciousness of . .
. that all is predicated on death . . . is this political?” (7-8). Even though this fact has been
blatantly obvious to previous generations of political dramatists, they have turned a blind eye
to the grandeur of the subject of death in their works for the sake of not scaring the audience
and cheap ideological aspirations. However, Barker describes death as a natural human
apprehension which starts with the birth as a separation from nothingness, goes throughout
life which is a road to death and the final breath as an arrival to it. In Barker’s own words,
“we should all like to choose our deaths, both the moment and the manner. We should like
to control this as all the episodes of life. But death is not an episode of life, it is beyond life
and nothing that pertains to life pertains to death. It was the same with the birth agony. We
were coming into a place. With death we are going into a place. Or, if we are not going into
a place, certainly we are leaving one . . .” (9). To acknowledge such a natural human
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apprehension in art brings about the highest form of realism which is liberated from any other
apprehension at the same time. Great art is tragic in the sense that it deals with death for
death’s own sake and obliges individual members of the audience to revaluate their value
judgments to see if they are genuinely theirs or they are imposed upon them by collectivist
social, moral and political projects:
Profound emotional experiences even where they fill the audience with
despair (perceived ‘negativity’) serve to increase resistance to social coercion
(the more so since all social coercion justifies itself on the pleasure principle).
The pessimistic work of art – who dares talk of death as pessimism? –
strengthens the observer by obliging him to include death in his categories of
thought. How do we sense the infinite value of death as the subject of artistic
undertakings? By reference to the hostility shown to it by authoritarians and
democrats alike, who identify it as inimical to their collectivist projects. This
alone endows it with charm, even – vitality . . . (13-14).
However pessimistic it may seem, Barker’s insistence on a confrontation with death in art
seems rather realistic in the face of the idealist political drama that has assumed the seat of
realism in dramatic art after Brecht. He contends that the ‘humanist’ dramatists among his
contemporaries have deliberately targeted tragedy and death, as their political projects
necessitated the sublimation of life in the most rationalistic and idealistic way possible.
Barker’s ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’ functions only to remind the audience of what he has been
distracted from by the political and moral agenda of the power-holders: “We go to the tragedy
to know what we already know, what we have known since birth, that our lives are dedicated
to death, a knowledge all other forms of social existence contrive to conceal from us, with
our connivance. Tragedy was attacked so long as death was attacked, a state of affairs so
preposterous it could not last, a state of affairs induced by a reckless, blind and alcoholic
rationalism. . .” (18).
Barker attributes great powers to tragedy both in terms of confronting the audience
with the ultimate reality of human existence and of offering them the purest form of beauty
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in its most direct, courageous and sterile condition. “In the art of theatre beauty is
characterized by its brevity, its instability, its ill-health. Whereas death is the nightmare of
cheerless democracies, abolished from consciousness by the nauseating complicity of
medicine and leisure, death in the art of theatre is the condition of beauty and anxiety the
price of its revelation. Would you be seduced effortlessly?” (26). He views ‘humanist’ theatre
as a marketer of false hopes in line with so-called democratic projects and abolishes hope
from his own stage leaving his characters inbetween positive and negative attributes with an
open door for both miracles and catastrophes:
Tragedy is hope-less. Death is hope-less. Neither is bereft of hope, rather they

have dispensed with hope. They exist in a vortex, not of hopelessness (‘the
situation is hopeless’ always contains the plea for a miracle) but a vortex
without categories either of optimism or pessimism. Who would say tragedy
is pessimistic? Only a fool, for the tragic gesture demands the abolition of
pessimism at the outset, it identifies it as a redundancy, along with its opposite
(32).
As tragedy is inclined to frustrate all attempts at expectations on behalf of the audience, it
gives them a feeling of catastrophe unaccompanied by a feeling of waste, contrary to what
Bloom argues in his discussion of Hamlet. Barker observes that “tragedy is never about
waste, the source of the pain that surrounds the accident” (55); on the contrary, the tragic
hero(ine) is always aware that death is perhaps a better alternative to his/her life which has
already brought him/her to the verge of that catastrophe: “Pain is mesmerizing, let us admit
it. The tragic protagonist observes her own pain without asking to be saved. Saved for what?
For more of this life? But she has already repudiated this life . . . ! This is the secret
intelligence of the tragic experience, that the world is inadequate. Without this recognition,
how can she negotiate her own death?” (33).

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Barker emphasizes the secret quality of death which is not within anybody’s
knowledge, as there hasn’t been anybody going there and coming back. In this respect, death
becomes the opposite of all functions, because it represents not knowledge, but a freedom
from knowledge; not an explanation, but inessentiality of explanation; not meaning, but an
escape from meaning. For him, “death communicates nothing. To describe it as mute is to
speak only part of its mystery. It is not to be found on the surface of the cadaver (however
one strains to make meaning from the cadaver, it yields nothing, it resists meaning, or if it
owns a vocabulary we do not know it)” (34). However, Barker’s understanding of tragedy is
completely incompatible with the blood tragedies in the Senecan sense, because the
catastrophic effect is never about the fear of the visible, but of the invisible, mysterious and
insolvable: “Death is not in the remains […] Tragedy, like death, is concerned with what is
not self-evident (the cadaver is not death, only the detritus of death. Death is the secret of
secrets, the origin of the idea of the secret, of which desire is the highest manifestation in
life” (34-35). In Barker’s ‘Theatre of Catastrophe”, the audience is not intended to achieve
the secret knowledge of death or what comes after it; on the contrary, the audience is
reminded of the fact that death is real and realistically unpredictable, strengthening that
catastrophic effect: “The art of theatre, which recognizes in tragedy the greatest gift of the
thinkers-of-death to the yet-to-be-dead, disposes of the self-evident with every gesture. In
other words, it deems all acts both possible and justified, thereby countering the humanist
slogan ‘we are all human’ with the terrible riposte ‘this is human also’” (35). The human
incapacity to know death for sure enhances tragedy’s catastrophic effect on the audience who
feels terror not at the potential pain accompanying death, but at its blindness to the only
reality surpassing human existence. Barker argues:
The greatest mystery of the universe is death. Unlike other mysteries, the
mystery of death is characterized by terror. Only tragedy makes death its
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exclusive concern. It therefore enters willingly into terror, without presuming

to disarm it. More than ever tragedy is necessity, for we have passed through
the extinction of religion only to encounter the extinction of science. Admire
death for its disdain of these tranquillizing mythologies. Its obscurity is
impenetrable (48).
Tragedy also reminds the audience that death is for all and beyond human powers, and with
a faithful representation of death on the stage, the audience leaves the theatre with his
anxieties increased and tolerance tested. Tragedy plays with the audience’s ignorance when
it comes to the only reality in life and treats the audience like an innocent child who doesn’t
even know the difference between death and dying and is in constant pursuit of discovery
after discovery.
As for the tragic protagonist, Barker departs completely from the Aristotelian
understanding of tragedy as a culmination of human flaw and wrath of fate. He describes
such an understanding as the dimsightedness of sociological critics who evaluate the tragic
hero within the frame of a forced definition of ‘the perfect man’ (84). On the contrary,
Barker’s tragic protagonist is in full control of the action going on around himself and he is
aware of everything but the fact that he is being hunted down by death. Barker elaborates:
The tragic protagonist is not tired of life, nor thwarted, both conditions which
provide pretexts for evasion (and are the substance of the play of the theatre .
. .). On the contrary, he has an excess of existence to his credit, both of a
material and spiritual kind (authority, sexuality, imagination). It is true to say
of the tragic character that he lacks nothing – unlike in the political play, lack
is not the material of the drama, nor is it the source of his contempt. He might
alter everything to his will (becoming a ‘good’ king) but such considerations
are irrelevant to one who seeks, and is sought by, death (84).
In this respect, Barker’s tragic protagonists are never depicted as weak creatures in the face
of political, moral and social impositions, and they refuse any kind of authority trying to
cripple his spiritual capacities until death equalizes the table. Barker’s tragic heroes, or
heroines mostly, express their independence from social institutions with a moral, sexual and
political nakedness of which they are never ashamed. However, his tragic protagonists never
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display superhuman qualities in their fight against institutional oppression, but they redefine
the limits of human capacities by stretching the borders of the familiar, stereotypical and
known (86).
The air of death pervades all of Barker’s plays accompanied by a catastrophic effect,
which manifests itself in a sense of futility and impression of waste regarding the fate of the
protagonist who ends up in a place where he never deserves to be. In Barker’s No End of
Blame, for instance, the image of the war is usually kept in the background with references
to the First and the Second World War. The protagonist of the play, Bela Veracek, journeys
through the war-torn Europe, from the Hungarian front and Moscow to London, and his
cartoons always take their subject matter from the greatest catastrophes taking place at the
time, like Hitler massacring huge numbers of people or soldiers being killed in the name of
a false sense of glory. As he himself is constantly being threatened with death by government
officials for the sharp edges of his art, Bela sways from one side to the other, ending up as a
mad man in an asylum at the end of the play after his failed suicide attempt. The play proves
quite tragic in the sense that nothing good comes to flourish whereas the bad keep
determining the way of the world. Similarly, in The Power of the Dog, Barker draws the
picture of the war-torn Europe after the Second World War with political figures like Stalin
and Churchill trying to snatch as much from the map as they can like ravenous vultures
hovering over dead bodies. The image of death stay at the background throughout the play,
with Ilona’s dead sister’s body coming and going, or Victor being shot towards the end of
the play, or Stalin’s obsession with his own death. In Ilona’s and Victor’s failed attempts to
reflect the war as it is in their photographs, not as the authority orders them to, Barker again
gives a sense of waste which is accompanied by McGroot’s defamiliarizing references to
other catastrophes around the world like a woman being raped by ten soldiers in Manchuria.
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In Pity in History, the air of death and the catastrophic atmosphere are intensified
with the background of the Civil War, one of the bloodiest and darkest times in English
history, along with the constant screaming of Murgatroyd, the wounded army cook, whose
damnation of war echoes at the backstage throughout the play. The tragic impression of waste
is strengthened in the play with the fact that such a talented sculptor like Gaukroger has to
sell his artistic talent for a small amount of money in such a chaotic environment and that the
sculpture he has been working on since the beginning of the play is knocked down by some
vandalistic parliamentarian soldiers. In Scenes from an Execution, on the other hand, death
is at the centre of the whole plot with Galactia’s, the protagonist of the play who is a painter,
insistence on depicting the historical Battle of Lepanto as mere carnage in her painting
despite the fact that the officials’ commission asks for a celebration of the glory over the
Turks. Galactia points out the catastrophic side of the battle by emphasizing the mutilated
body of a veteran instead of depicting the commander of the Venetian armada leading a huge
victory. However, the same sense of futility and impression of waste are created again with
Galactia’s loss of her sanity along with her dominant character over the Duke and the
Cardinal. The play comes to a close in such a tragic way that the free-spirited Galactia leaves
her dignity aside in order not to be cast aside as a penniless and notorious painter. Finally, in
his Brutopia, Barker uses the execution of Sir Thomas More as the background story while
he explores the endeavour Cecilia, More’s youngest daughter, is making in order to be able
to get her book published by the king at the cost of losing her chastity as well as sanity. Even
after More’s death towards the end of the play, the catastrophic effect is sustained with King
Henry’s psychological instability and hot temper which culminates in Cecilia’s being
severely beaten and subjected to the king’s humiliations and insults. The same feeling of
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waste is aroused when Cecilia cannot even find a proper means to distribute her published
book Brutopia and ends up falling into her greatest enemy’s clutches.
Barker’s ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’ is defined by such a preoccupation with death as a
central motive characterizing the whole action and pervading the general atmosphere along
with the protagonist’s spirit. To give death its due representation, Barker chooses the tragic
form with its graveness and loftiness compared to other forms of drama. He also prefers the
tragic form in order to sublimate death over all other human endeavours, which situates his
drama apart from the mainstream political theatre and theatre of violence popular among his
contemporaries. With the presence of death at the centre of his plays, Barker creates a
catastrophic effect first on his characters and then on the audience whom he aims to awaken
to the ultimate reality of human existence and shake out of their habitual political and moral
intoxication.
2.2. Language, Obscurity and the Question of Anti-Catharsis
Barker, in his Arguments for a Theatre, also gives a list of technical qualities that
conform with the tragic form he adopts as the representative form for his “Theatre of
Catastrophe” ranging from the language of his plays to the staging of them and further to the
level of the audience’s participation in the action and identification with the actors on the
stage. He sees a more poetic, rhythmical and lyrical language appropriate for the tragic form
he adopts in his plays and welcomes the obscurity of meaning and open-endedness coming
with it. He also attacks the Aristotelian concept of catharsis in drama, as he believes that such
solidarity among the members of the audience means nothing more than an orchestrated
mimicry.
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For his “Theatre of Catastrophe”, Barker designates a special type of language,
bringing back the elaborated, rhetorical speech of the ancient Greek tragedies and liberating
the dramatic discourse from the banality of common speech. Barker’s designation connotes
“a new language whose rhythms and syntax are not those of common speech. It is a speech
as contrived as poetry, dislocated, sometimes lyrical, often coarse whose density and internal
contradictions both evoke and confuse” (1993:81). His attitude regarding the use of language
in drama verges on elitism, as he argues that his theatre departs drastically from naturalist
theatre in the latter’s target audience being the general public whereas the discourse of
“Theatre of Catastrophe” possesses an inflated diction with swift changes in tone and ruptures
in order. Barker elaborates on this issue as:
The characters speak not only in a fashioned way characteristic of me, but also
fully in a way that is impossible in naturalism. They have excess articulation,
no matter what their class or education. I aim deliberately at plethora, knowing
full well the public can’t keep up. The speeches are broken, themes dropped
and recovered again, strange, swift perceptions suddenly described, then
buried under a coarse banality. That’s their pattern of speaking. In terms of
their motivation, I’m unconstrained by Stanislavskian or Brechtian ideas of
truth. Since I have nothing to tell, I don’t need to adhere to laws of theatre that
are primarily to do with telling. And is the chaos in the minds of my characters
less authentic? Hardly, I think (177).
The deliberate complexity of the language of Barker’s catastrophic tragedies stems from the
playwright’s idea of truth as something not offered to the audience in a ready-made form, but
dug out by the individual members of the audience after much struggle with the meaning
mechanisms. However, this complexity is enhanced with the use of pauses and silences as
technical devices sometimes meaning more than the words uttered by the characters. Barker
explains this in his Death, the One and the Art of Theatre saying: “Silence is the consequence
of too-deep knowledge in some, of ignorance in others” (3). In other words, Barker gives as
great significance to silence as he gives to speech, and speech only matters as long as it
matches the grandeur of death that pervades the play. Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” takes
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heed of liberating the language of art from the banality of everyday speech and attributing
grander powers to it: “In the art of theatre we acknowledge a solitary obligation – to save
speech from itself” (3-4).
Barker defines drama as “not life described, but life imagined, it is possibility and not
reproduction” (30). His characters speak accordingly, having an imaginative, rather than a
descriptive, quality verging on poetry. Barker sacrifices clarity of language to lyricism and
the language his characters speak defies any kind of censorship, either institutional or social,
leading the protagonists to the margins of the society. Barker, in Arguments for a Theatre,
openly accepts that his language is meant to be obscure and ungraspable to lead the audience
to a productive confusion and questioning:
If the words are forbidden to the artist, the body reverts to the doctor, I would
suggest that the aim of the language censor is to return the body to the biology
class where eroticism is displaced and desire corrupted into a squalid
fetishism. […] I place the words in the mouths of certain characters […]
always with the deliberate intention of creating the unease in the audience
which is for me the condition of experiencing tragedy, an unease which is at
the opposite pole from the apathy an audience feels in a state of entertainment
(1993:30).
Barker sees obscurity of language and uncertainty of meaning as a necessity for the art of
theatre, as they are meant to create a disturbance in the habitual perceptions of the audience
in order to shake them out of their bystander apathy. This, in Barker’s opinion, is what
distinguishes the experience of tragedy from the experience of other forms of drama,
especially comedy, in which the audience is reduced to consumers of meaning in the manner
of crowds chanting banal tunes in unison.
When it comes to this question of collectivism in theatre, Barker comments on the
condition of English theatre in the present time as problematic, subordinating its great
potentialities for the sake of solidarity among the audience. For him, the audience of the
present time needs to experience pain instead of “contempt masquerading as comedy” (45),
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dislocation instead of solidarity. His critique here is directed to a long tradition of theatre
whose central aim is to collect the individual members of the audience under one generalizing
moral message and enlighten them accordingly. Such an attitude is no different than a
marketing of values for Barker, and he, in his “Theatre of Catastrophe”, sacrifices collective
intelligibility to nonuniformity of meaning, saying: “The theatre suffers from a numbing
aesthetic of solidarity, elucidation, clarity, and so on, a sort of debased democracy that insists
on shared values and enlightenment. It is as if the culture was in dread of dissonance.
Personally, dissonance is where I feel at home” (2011:177-8). Barker refutes the inspirational
Aristotelian understanding of catharsis in theatre, and denies attributing such purgative
functions to the art of theatre as making the audience better or cleansing it by means of
feelings of fear and pity. The audience must never be meant to assume the personality of the
characters depicted on the stage, and for Barker, the art of theatre deserves more than an
experiential outlook: “The appetite for identification, which characterizes the theatre, has no
place in tragedy, where the death of the protagonist is perfection, i.e. never a cause for tears
. . . debased democracies make tears the lingua franca of collectivity (‘See how human I am’
says the weeping politician, ‘I’m just like you . . .’)” (Barker, 2005:90). However, Barker
never claims that the art of theatre must shake the audience out of its habitualness into a
critical attitude, like Brechtian political drama does. On the contrary, the art of theatre, in
Barker’s opinion, prohibits such premeditated reactions by the audience. Barker argues that
“the problem is not to make the audience critical (the collective sigh of orchestrated dismay
. . .) but hazardous . . .” (104). The art of theatre drives its audience to a questioning of a
personal kind and expects each member of the audience to come up with his own
understanding of the play rather than forcing packaged meanings into his mind.
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The art of theatre uses a language of its own which denies the power to attribute
meanings to the words the characters are using in their speeches. Barker views this new kind
of language as a means to confuse the audience and send them to different directions in their
fluctuations in their search for a stable meaning. Barker elaborates on this issue saying: “The
art of theatre, in its impatience with the world, utters in its own languages. Moreover, it
understands these languages to be the means by which its public is cleansed of the detritus
of familiarity, domesticity and recognition” (7). Barker is quite serious about the lack of
meaning intended for his “Theatre of Catastrophe”, as he sees an inherent beauty in
oscillating between meanings and assumes that what matters is not the meaning of a dramatic
work, but the experience of tragedy: “Not understanding the point. The ecstasy of vanishing
meaning. Hiding in plethora. In the forest of concepts a pure stream” (14). Even though the
theatre expects a huge applause from the audience as a sign of their understanding and
agreement, the art of theatre cherishes the silence of the audience as a sign of success. For
Barker, the audience of “Theatre of Catastrophe” is never meant to understand, but to
experience the production on the stage after which silence means more than words. He states:
The theatre prefers the easy way because the audience prefers the easy way,
and the theatre defers to the audience; it is, in every sense, made from it. Of
those few who repudiate the easy way, fewer still can tolerate the silence of
the audience. They receive it as a wound. In the art of theatre not only do we
expect the audience to be silent, we demand it of them, we demand it as the
confirmation of our intentions. We concede there are many silences, but we
discriminate among the silences (17).
With the same motivation in mind, Barker proudly announces that his theatre never offers a
resolution to the actors and the audience, and his tragedies possess a deliberate open-
endedness which confuses the audience more into thinking and questioning. The audience is
always led into an unease, staying unsatisfied of answers from the beginning of the play till
the end. Barker puts it saying: “In the art of theatre we recoil from the idea of satisfaction,
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either of the public or of ourselves. Satisfaction derives from resolution. Nothing in the art
of theatre tends towards resolution. We elevate anxiety over all things but beauty” (25). The
art of theatre is denied the satisfaction of the audience, because it does not have the
satisfaction for itself, either. Barker argues that the art of theatre renounces its potentials for
having knowledge and representing reality unlike the theatre: “The art of the theatre knows
nothing. It relegates knowing to the theatre, the place of commodities. In place of this
knowing, it affirms the integrity of fictions . . .” (46).
The language used in the plays concerned in this study, No End of Blame, The Power
of the Dog, Pity in History, Scenes from an Execution and Brutopia, never yields easy
meanings to the audience and celebrates obscurity as a means of saving dramatic experience
from populism. The language of the plays never tells directly, but suggests veiled political,
moral and aesthetic judgments on behalf of the playwright. For instance, the protagonists of
the plays never directly voice their political views to the face of the representatives of
authority, but suggest a perspective with the use of their arts. Bela uses his cartoons, Ilona
her photographs, Gaukroger his sculpture, Galactia her painting and Cecilia her book as a
reaction to the established, rotten system of political oppression only on a symbolic level and
they never resort to physical activism in order not to reduce their language to the banality of
the politicians’ speech. His characters reveal Barker’s leftist tendencies using language as
the ultimate means to come against political extremism, their distinctive intellectual language
substantially overwhelm that of the power holders. There are constant shifts of tone and
elaboration of speech from character to character throughout the plays. For example, in No
End of Blame, Bela outwits the committee of artists in Moscow while they are sunk into banal
formality with letter-perfect expressions. Similarly, in The Power of the Dog, Ilona’s
temperate speech is heavily contrasted with, for instance, Sorge’s military indelicacy of
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speech. In Pity in History, on the other hand, the same observation can be made in the
differences between the ways Venables and Sergeant Boys speak. In a similar way, Galactia,
in Scenes from an Execution, outwits Cardinal Ostensible and Duke Urgentino with her
intellectualism beyond their capacities reflected in her brilliant argumentation. In Brutopia,
lastly, Barker makes quick shifts between Cecilia’s witty, sarcastic expressions and King
Henry’s bawdiness and incivility as reflected in his manners.
Barker explains the question of intellectual satisfaction on behalf of the audience in
theatre in his Death, the One and the Art of Theatre with an emphasis on the long-term
contributions of the art of theatre to the audience’s understanding whereas the theatre
complies with the audience’s immediate responses like applause and critical acclaim. The art
of theatre sacrifices such immediate responses from the audience to a deliberate
postponement of meaning and denial of resolution, as it attaches more importance to the
theatrical experience than to the theatrical meaning. Barker states that “the theatre gratifies
when it gives no more than is expected of it ... the art of theatre gratifies when it violates the
tolerance of its public (is this not a contradiction? But the effects of the work of art are
characterized by delay...)” (103). The same denial of meaning applies to the actors as well,
as they are not given a language that serves to mean, but to speak up. In a similar vein, the
actions of these actors on the stage do not necessarily have consequences and their actions
are not to be questioned by the audience with respect to a moral criterion. As long as the actor
is successful in serving his own desire and conveying the tragic beauty to the audience, he
stays faithful to his duties as an actor and instincts as a human. For Barker, “the art of theatre
replaces the question by the vortex of desire. We do not ask of a character ‘should he have
done that?’ He does what he does. We do not state ‘she is unforgivable’. She acts as she wills.
To bring the habits of questioning to the art of theatre is to be lost at the outset, rather as a
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stranger to a locality, unable to speak the language, substitutes for his ignorance by shouting
. . .” (58). Barker sums up his argument regarding the art of theatre with the assumption
central to his “Theatre of Catastrophe” that true theatre exists only in the independence of
theatrical experience from the constraints of political, moral and even intellectual contexts.
2.3. Political, Moral and Aesthetic Functionlessness
Amanda Price, in her introduction to the second edition of Barker’s Arguments for a
Theatre, forms an analogy between the functionlessness of the playwright’s new style and
Roland Barthes’ seminal essay “The Death of the Author” in their deliberate liberation of the
text from the monopoly of the godly author “as the central organizing agent of truth” (4) and
proposition of a critical, distanced audience appointed with a role ‘outside’ the text. Thus,
the extermination of the author leaves the audience inbetween a huge number of ideological
suggestions and moral messages none of which has a claim to ‘the’ truth and, within that
multidimensionality, the audience is given a chance to do nothing else, but to experience the
theatre instead of its content. Barker creates this multidimensionality by not only his refusal
to attribute his characters ideological identities, but also by reflecting their ambiguous
personalities: “The only certainty Barker offers his spectator is that he will not purport to tell
the truth” (6). Barker’s plays demand a mutual struggle for meaning between the audience
and the actors on stage, which does not provide them with a meaning, but the struggle itself
which is what matters in the playwright’s terms.
Barker, in his distinction between the humanist theatre and his catastrophic theatre,
argues that the humanist theatre, which has been dominating the stage for the last few
decades, possesses a fatherly dutifulness to instruct, to make morally better and to cure social
sicknesses. He resembles such an effort to a utilitarian approach towards goodness and

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happiness of the majority very much in the way that a shepherd drives the herd. He calls such
kind of theatre ‘the theatre of daylight, clarity and dubious truths’ whose most important
activity is to ‘research material’, “an activity closely related to the business of ‘dramatizing’
things” (73) to an inevitably didactic end. He condemns the humanist theatre’s misleading of
the audience to the assumption that whatever happens on stage is real, which actually does
nothing more than depriving theatre of its true potentials of unsettling and revolutionizing.
He addresses the humanist theatre as ‘The Theatre of Conscience’ which is “essentially a
mass declaration of loyalty to moral principles […] an activity that never sins” (74). In an
analogy between Schrödinger’s cat and Brechtian theatre, Barker critiques the latter’s
obsession with light and enlightenment whereas the former, in its acceptance of the potentials
of darkness, permits the river of innumerable possibilities to flow. He views darkness as a
triggering force for the audience’s imagination and light as a crippling effect that limits the
audience’s vision to what is seen. For him, a play should never be reduced to the stale ‘did
you know…’ attitude, but it should be dealing with ‘what ifs’ (75). Barker goes on by
accusing contemporary theatre of centring on questions of morality as strictly as possible and
of contributing to the rise of an audience of social conformists. Instead, “great art lives
outside the moral system, and its audience, consciously or unconsciously, demands it,
particularly in theatre whose very darkness is the condition of a secret pact, the pact of wilful
infringement, of the suspension of conscience, between actor and audience” (77).
In a deeper analysis of the ‘humanist’ or ‘liberal’ theatre of the present time, he
criticizes its insincere interest in giving messages to play with the audience’s conscience,
even though no one ever believes them even when they are applauding: “We are in a profound
contradiction when the audience claps what it no longer honestly believes” (45). He also
expresses his discontent with the liberal theatre’s reduction of the audience to the level of
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passive consumers, always seeking ways to lead them to truths or meanings instead of, more
appropriately, providing versions: “A new theatre will not be ashamed of its complexity or
the absence of ideology. It will feel no obligations to lived life or to the journalistic impulse
to expose conditions. […] Consequently, what is achieved by [the new theatre] is achieved
individually and not collectively. There is no official interpretation. […] We need a theatre
of Anti-Parable, in which the moral is made by the audience, not by the actor” (46). He also
adds that his new theatre liberates the artist from his responsibilities to the public, to an
ideology or to himself, and he emphasizes the role of imagination as a superior means of
meaning-making than ideological reasoning: “The drama which I practice creates its own
world, it does not require validation from external sources, either of ideology or of spurious
realism, which is itself an ideology. It is compellingly imaginative and without responsibility
to historical or political convention” (29).
In his brilliant imaginary Socratic dialogue with the Jacobean dramatist Thomas
Middleton, whose famous tragedy Women Beware Women he rewrote, Barker defends his
theatre of catastrophe against the former’s accusations of ‘encouragement to bad morals’ and
distortion of his play’s essence. Middleton describes Barker as “an irresponsible optimist
[who] ha[s] deprived the audience of its right to moral satisfaction” (25), to which the latter
responds stating that “it is simply unrealistic to inflict slaughter on all the participants in the
interest of morality (25). In a comparison between the Jacobean England and the
contemporary political atmosphere, the deceased playwright complains about the crown and
the church as mechanisms of censorship in his era, which is why he had to keep away from
politics in his works in order not to end up in jail. He also blames Barker for removing the
‘moral spokesman’ from his play, but the latter argues that such conventional preaching does
no longer have a place in theatre. For Barker in the dialogue, the present time requires a
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different form of drama in which the audience is not tantalized with false heroism, optimism
or poetic justice, but awakened to the dignity of human struggle and power of its creative
abilities: “Failure is unimportant, the attempt is all” (27).
Barker extends his arguments to what he calls the fundamental debate over the
function or, rather, functionlessness of art and claims he has never written a word for the
betterment of the public or for telling right from wrong: “The theatre I have chosen to
embrace is one which makes no compact with its audience as to entertainment, ideological
instruction, humanist celebration or changed perceptions” (89). He defends his theatre’s
suspension of any morality or ideology which he sacrifices to the artistic experience on behalf
of the audience. Barker draws attention to the contemporary dramatists’ self-deception that
the success of their work depends on their affirmation of the public morality. He admits that
there is certain safety in the satisfaction of the audience’s expectations, which secures the
artist’s popularity and the play’s rating at a high level; yet, such an approach enslaves the
artistic creativity within the cages of habitualness, repetition, servility and responsibility. For
Barker, the theatre in the 1960s and 1970s sacrificed its artistic innovative practice to the
political program of the period, reduced itself to a tool in the name of ‘contributing’ to an on-
going debate: “[They] are simply artistic arms of the national conscience – and the theatre of
the margins. […] What occurs is the routine massaging of collective values that passes for
‘communication’, communication being territorial familiarity, acts of recognition, the
stimulation of sympathy with the catalogue of known and revered victims” (92-93). In
opposition to this, Barker proposes his own understanding of theatre in which works of art
take their value not from the amount of entertainment they offer or the degree of change they
cause in the audience, but from the distortion they create in the core of those collective
wisdom, values and perceptions which reduce the individual artistic experience to common
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servility. For him, “the governing principles of the contemporary theatre – still wholly
Stanislavskian and Brechtian in nature – are rigorously anti-speculative, obsessed with
intentions and objectives, and oppressive in their severe delimitations offstage action and
actors’ invention” (94). These principles, which specify any challenge to reality as heresy in
the face of the ‘flawless’ collective morality, have dominated the recent history of theatre
and, for Barker, debarred theatre from poetry. Barker’s catastrophic theatre, however, does
not expect the audience to be disciplined by forced meanings, but to speculate on the
possibility of those meanings to dislocate the familiar, the habitual and the collective.
Barker repeats his intentions to attribute the rights of interpretation to the audience,
which can only be achieved by abandoning two outmoded habits of contemporary theatre,
realism and clarity, both of which presuppose moral and intellectual weakness in the
audience. He acknowledges the fact that realism and clarity used to be necessary components
of theatre when there was certain moral and intellectual concurrence among the playwright,
the actors and the audience. Yet, in the present time when chaos prevails over all moral
deliberations, the function of a theatre should be “to return the responsibility for moral
argument to the audience itself […] [to ask] the audience to test the validity of the categories
it believes it lives by” (52). He acknowledges that the issue of ‘telling’ is no more the
playwrights’ job which has always been a means to undermine the audience’s capacity of
understanding and reasoning:
In a conscience-free theatre, there is, of course, no telling. It is the farthest

reach from the Brechtian demonstration. There is no ‘telling’ because the
writer had nothing to tell – his play was a journey to him as it is a journey to
the actor, the outcome of which was unknown at its beginning […] This is the
very act of honouring […] of an audience by refusing the simple satisfactions
of reiteration, affirmations, congratulation – the sort of theatre in which the
morality was fixed in advance, and the writing, and the narrative was a means
to an end (77-78).
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However, interestingly and self-contradictiously, Barker calls for a covert, indirect political
involvement in theatre, not through stale didacticism, but through the use of complexity
against the present society’s coarse but equally deep-rooted moral values. He declares that
ambiguity itself is a powerful political weapon which does not impose a ready-made morality
upon the audience, but deliberately leads them into a moral conflict in themselves: “The play
which refuses the message, the lecture, the conscience-ridden expose, but which insists upon
the inventive and imaginative at every point, creates new tensions in a blandly entertainment-
led culture” (48). Although he admits that some of his own plays seem to possess direct
political identities, Barker never claims responsibility for circling about the audience’s
imagination and conscience, as he is not a ‘tailor’ of ideologies but an ‘exposer’ of them. He
openly blames the authorial voice of misdirecting the audience to political and moral
imperatives, rather than to themselves, a voice which, striving to illuminate the blind,
“prevents the proper focus of meaning in a work of art” (49). Barker, for instance, describes
Claw (1975), one of his earlier plays, as a “didactic play of politics demonstrating false
consciousness, […] whose didacticism is scattered in a surge of terror” (55-56). However, he
does not sacrifice the catastrophe’s grandeur to the potential message given by the play. He
shatters the audience’s expectations for a resolution and optimism for a restoration of the
order, and although the hero dies in the end, what matters is not his death, but the way he
dies at the end of the process of his struggle against the authority. He, in a way, subordinates
the political message to the language and the grandeur of the action. The hero’s death on the
stage is subordinated to his unquestioning acceptance of death without any resistance: “The
potential slogan is always suffocated by the complex beauty of language delivered of its
naturalistic bondage” (56). The terror the audience feels upon the action on the stage pushes
the didacticism to the background, as the audience is left unable in-between an exploded
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optimism and the complex beauty of the language. Barker admits that the covert political
message veiled behind the context of terror and beauty in the scene has a stronger subversive
power than the direct didactic approach. The play deliberately fails to deliver a message and
obliges the audience to process the ending of the play in order to make up a message for
himself (57).
Barker also addresses his criticism to money-driven playwrights of his time whom he
describes as “the tin crusaders of the new populism, with a positively renaissance appetite
for personal gain on the one hand but a knocked-together ideology on the other” (34). The
new populism he mentions here refers to public acknowledgment as a result of the validation
of the dominant ideological and moral habituality, which necessitates the emergence of a new
genre, like his “Theatre of Catastrophe”, not to cure these sicknesses, but to raise an
awareness to them:
The deterioration of habitual moral and political assumptions was the sole
means by which a change in form became possible […] The tension between
the audience and the play became for me an aesthetic, the nature of experience.
This involved challenges to common morality, common socialism, even what
passes for common humanity […] The task of serious art is to describe not
wickedness but collision, not simply authority but submission […] A moral
theatre is not one which separates the sheep from the goats (the exploited, the
exploiter) but accuses the exploited also (22-24).
In Barker’s view, the playwright or simply the work of art possesses no responsibility towards
the dominant moral codes in a given society, as morality is not external, but internal to the
play, not validated, but created in the play by exposing the audience to “pain and the
illegitimate thought” (47). In other words, “the play is not a lecture and therefore owes no
duty of lucidity or total coherence” (55). Barker repeats the same objectives in an interview
that theatre, or at least his theatre, is a means to escape from practical and ideological
‘functions’, it is rather a glorification of the theatrical experience on behalf of the audience
and the actors who are the sole possessors of meaning and morality in their most individual
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manners: “It is wilful suicide for theatre to permit itself to be annexed to functional ends […]
My obligation as director is to create metaphorical truth. For me theatre is about suggesting
things, not about telling everything” (2011:175-176). On behalf of the playwright, on the
other hand, theatre is not a means to serve in any possible meaning of the word, but a chance
to achieve beauty liberated from any forced background connotations: “It may sound […] as
if I believed in moral responsibility in artists, but I don’t, and it is anyway a false dichotomy.
The artist has no duty except to himself, by which I mean to say, to his instinct (not his
conscience…). If he obeys this injunction to speak his darkness, he will – inevitably – serve
a public, for theatre speaks what is not spoken elsewhere, it is its supreme beauty” (179).
A similar approach to political, moral and ideological involvement in theatre, or in
art in general, is present in Barker’s minor theoretical treatise titled Death, the One, and the
Art of Theatre (2005). He starts with a distinction between the theatre, which represents the
mainstream political drama popular among his contemporaries, and the art of theatre, which
refers to the ideal form of drama immune to political and moral interference – to which his
“Theatre of Catastrophe” has a claim. He calls for the necessity to come unstuck of the idea
that theatre buildings are built to cure socio-political sicknesses or to promote and sublimate
the ideological agendas of certain political parties: “Since theatre ceased to make death its
subject it surrendered its authority over the human soul. Since it allowed itself to be
incorporated into mundane projects of political indoctrination and social therapy it abdicated
its power. […] Whilst many have tried to make hospitals from theatres we keep our stage
infection-free” (2). He deems the art of theatre more intimate and honest with the audience,
as it never attempts to commercialize ready-made meanings and underestimates the
audience’s capacities:
The theatre resents the art of theatre, sensing its deeper intimacy with its
public. All the lavish endowment of superficial skills and décor, the critical
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allegiance, the celebrity actors, the vulgar imprimatur of the patronage of the
state with its palaces of art and its marketing bureaucracy (would you require
to market a need?) cannot conceal the unhealthiness of the transaction. The
intimacy that characterizes the art of theatre derives from the very condition
the theatre is at such pains to eliminate – anxiety. In the theatre they talk of
‘the show’. Does this not tell us everything about their condescension? But
even they still possess sufficient modesty not to describe their efforts as
revelations . . . (40-41).
Barker voices his criticism of the political dramatists of his time, who follow the Brechtian
legacy in drama, for turning the theatre buildings into marketplaces and art-making into show
business. However, he traces the sources of this politicization of the dramatic art back to the
very beginning of dramatic criticism, to Aristotle who “forced politics onto the supremely
apolitical” (68) by means of catharsis. The modern-time representatives of the same outlook,
the so-called ‘humanist’ dramatists of the late 20th century, do it by means of trading human
conscience for a stale political message (96).
Barker persistently elaborates on the necessary distinction between theatre and the art
of theatre in terms of their moral, social and political preoccupations with an emphasis on the
functionlessness of the latter whereas the former is always dependent on a background. He
argues that “the art of theatre has many of the characteristics of religion. For example, it finds
so much theatre anathema. It excommunicates. Its methods are akin to prayer. What
distinguishes it from all religion is this, however: that it recoils from truth. It repudiates truth
as vulgarity” (2). In his comparison between the art of theatre and religion, Barker
emphasizes that the former has strict rules of conversion whereas it never assumes the role
of selling a false hope regarding an ‘other’ world. On the contrary, it attempts to awaken the
audience, as well as the actors and even the playwright himself, to the beauty of thinking for
the sake of thinking: “We repudiate all those who find theatre congenial. The art of theatre is
constructed on the premises that the creation of happiness is no part of its function. Nor does
it have a function” (4). In doing so, the art of theatre never deems itself responsible for
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reproducing real life unlike the realist drama which dominated the late 19th and the early 20th
century. He clarifies this point saying: “So essential is theatre to the idea of life it cannot be
compromised by making itself the imitation of life. It cannot be humiliated by rituals of
reproduction. The theatre reproduces life. The art of theatre invents life. This act of invention
may be perceived as a critique of the poverty of existence. It is not social criticism” (6).
Barker seems to admit that Brechtian influence has dominated the European theatre
in the last decades of the 20th century and he views this as a blow inflicted on the aesthetic
potentials of the dramatic art on behalf of the audience, the actors and the playwright due to
its emphasis on outmoded, stale moralism: “The theatre – why did the moralists collect there?
Why had they always brought their gnawing missions to the stage, and why were they so
enraged when the art of theatre revealed its aesthetic incompatibility with morality? (It did
not stoop to repudiate what in any case was alien to it, a fundamental contradiction.)” (23).
In this respect, the sole function of the art of theatre, for Barker, may be to make its intended
addressees realize that they all are ignorant creatures in a world where light always means
deception and ignorance is bliss: “The art of theatre is a rehearsal for death but more, a
confession of ignorance, of the limits of knowledge. . .” (32). In a similar vein, the art of
theatre cherishes ‘not knowing’ or, rather, ‘not knowing for sure’ in a world where
knowledge means misapprehension, prejudgement and indoctrination. For the same reason,
the art of theatre never aspires to teaching, as teaching is just another name for brainwashing:
“The art of theatre aspires to a moral nakedness. It is the antithesis of education therefore,
which is clothing, which is a suffocation in ethical garments […] The art of theatre takes pain
as its subject, not to exploit it for political ends, as a lesson in moral obligations but as an end
in itself” (33). In an era in which nothing is actually for itself, Barker’s “Theatre of
Catastrophe” brings a huge challenge to the ongoing system by not offering any messages to
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its audience whose interpretation –not collectively, but individually- matters above all.
Barker contends that, unlike the theatre, “the art of theatre exists for itself. How hard this is
to say, to mean, hard because the prejudices of contemporary morality abhor ‘things for
themselves’, demanding ‘meaning’ and ‘use’ in every man and every thing” (38). Although
the theatre authoritatively tells the audience what it needs to feel, the art of theatre draws
attention to the fact that the audience does not know what it feels or that it is not aware that
it possesses certain feelings.
The art of theatre falls within the realm of imagination, of which it seems to be really
proud, and takes the premises of realism as ultimate dishonesty towards the playwright
himself, the actors and the audience. Although the theatre has long taken the role of the realist
educator on itself, the art of theatre privileges itself with the loss or absence of realistic proofs
that pull the artistic endeavour into the domain of vulgar consumption. He states:
In the art of theatre something is always lost. In a world of relentless

aggregation, to lose might be a lightness, an intoxication. What is it that is
lost? The burden of your moral convictions. This is a loss that might be
experienced as a privilege . . . […] The art of theatre holds evidence in
contempt. Its propositions require no proof, nor are they susceptible to the
trivializing objections of empiricism. It consigns all questions of proof to the
realm of prejudice. […] The art of theatre does not occupy itself with the
amelioration of human existence. This alone distinguishes it from all other
theatre practice, whose goodwill is a vulgarity. All that may come to be
described as the satisfactions of the art of theatre are accidental, byproducts of
an ordeal (41-48).
However, Barker admits that the urge to teach is a natural human motivation which manifests
itself in the vilest form of preaching with the assumption that one’s moral and political
outlook is superior to the other. It is the playwright’s point of honour, in Barker’s view, to
suppress that base compulsion and transform his moral and political self into a neutral,
conscience-free voice whose sole determination lies in the achievement of the beauty of
theatrical experience. Barker argues that this is only possible through the tragic form with an
emphasis on death which is itself a symbol of darkness, obscurity, loss and unknowing:
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The art of theatre is a darkness, because it speaks to a darkness. How does it

protect the wealth of its darkness from the enlighteners? How does it protect
its darkness from its own will to abolish this darkness – for, let us confess it –
there is no man alive who lacks the compulsion to teach? In the first instance
we scrupulously cleanse ourselves of all those moral, medical and political
neuroses pertaining to the improvement of mankind. We deny ourselves the
coercive pleasure of instructing the public. The annexation of theatre as a
platform for the conscience of the author we deem barbaric. Second, we
discard all obligation except the supreme obligation to intensify the hazard of
the performance, to the public and to ourselves alike. In this determination to
imagine beyond the perimeters of experience the art of theatre reveals its
absolute identity with the tragic form (49).
Barker, here, reminds his readers of the presence of death both as the ultimate form of reality
and the antithesis to all worldly endeavours including morality and politics. Thanks to its
interest in death, the art of theatre triggers the audience’s urge to discover what is yet
unknown to it and shakes it out of its habitual perception of the external realities. But the art
of theatre does not use the hypocritical techniques of preaching which belong to the theatre
of “second-order dramatists”, it does not “contaminate” the audience’s theatrical experiences
with the stain of “function” (57). As it never holds a claim to the representation of any reality
whatsoever, the art of theatre is also exempt from meaninglessness or coherence of any kind,
“repudiat[ing] the will to influence as a perversion shared by elements of the theatre as
diverse as socialist realism and the Broadway musical (how diverse are these on close
inspection?). Only in the abolition of the will to influence does the art of theatre begin to
recognize itself” (64). For the art of theatre to recognize its own potentials, it must first get
liberated from the quest for the truth and seeking a targeted audience for itself:
The abolition of function and influence determines the moral condition of the
production. In discarding the baggage of sordid ambitions that identifies the
theatre – the dispensing of ‘truth’, the ‘correction of attitudes’, the ‘giving’ of
pleasure – the art of theatre creates an immunity for itself. An immunity from
what? All transactions […] We cannot repeat it too often – the art of theatre
does not seek an audience, it acquires one . . .” (64-65).
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Barker views an obsession with the truth and representing the reality as a perversity on behalf
of the social realist playwrights from Ibsen through Brecht to his contemporaries who
enslaved their pens to the political agendas of certain political and moral parties. He also
contends that, in the modern times, seeing is mistaken for belief, but what is shown to the
audience is nothing more than political and moral propaganda to which Barker intends his
plays to be an alternative. He believes that “in the art of theatre the more we exert ourselves
to abolish the real (the damage done to us by the recognizable) the nearer we approach the
known” (68). As what is shown to the audience to be the reality is a set of values, somebody
else’s values, in contemporary art, abolishing the real means abolishing the values, and thus,
the audience can be given a chance to stand against what Barker calls the moral police: “Since
[the art of theatre] was liberated from the obligations of realism it finds meanings both in its
form and in its content. The theatre by contrast can suggest no more than it is provided with,
it is miserably accident-proof” (91-92). The theatre, in Barker’s understanding, loves control
and fears autonomy very much like the authoritarian regimes in the history of mankind.
However, the art of theatre embraces autonomy as a central tenet of all artistic endeavours
towards a freedom from political and moral slavishness.
Barker summarizes his ideas about the functional nonalignment of his “Theatre of
Catastrophe” with a list of keywords that best defines the art of theatre, including “infinite,
functionless, intractable, nowhere, incalculable, illogical, arbitrary” (92) which are already
the attributes of death as the enemy of all ideological and moral preoccupations. He resembles
the theatre to an old woman on the verge of death, which is why it sticks to moral rules, and
concludes his views with an advice to the audience: “Like the old woman who shortens her
walk with every passing day the theatre is afraid to quit the moral perimeters of the domestic
. . . but this house stinks . . . ! You must get fresh air . . . !” (104). However, a reinterpretation
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of Barker’s plays within the context of historiographic metadrama contradicts his designation
of his “Theatre of Catastrophe” as a politically, morally and aesthetically functionless kind.
His interest in historical subject matters and his use of artists as the protagonists of his play
come to have deeper meanings when these are examined in parallelism with the political,
moral and aesthetic environment in Barker’s time, and these turn out to be a means of veiled
criticism despite the playwright’s claims regarding his art as a non-didactic kind. In this
respect, the following chapter brings a new perspective to Barker’s selected plays written in
the 80s in order to reveal the political, moral and aesthetic consciousness beneath the surface
of Barker’s interest in history and arts for the subject matter of his plays.
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CHAPTER 3
REREADING HOWARD BARKER’S PLAYS AS HISTORIOGRAPHIC
METADRAMA
Howard Barker’s career as a dramatist took a different direction in the 80s in line with
the playwright’s interest in history, the developments in England regarding the licensing of
art culminating in The Theatres Act in 1968 and the surreptitious censorship still going on
even after the preclusion of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office from taking such measures.
Rusinko observes that Barker’s interest in the study of history results in and stems from his
MA at Sussex University in history (1989:138). Most of Barker’s plays written during the
80s take their subject matter from history, documented or imaginary, with an aim to rewrite
history or reinterpret the historical events from an artist’s perspective. Barker himself
acknowledges that history has a significant role in his career as a playwright: “But history is
a vastly important factor in my plays. It broods over most of my work, it lurks in the back of
the characters’ minds, and is a persistent justification for action. The right-wing characters
invoke it continually and the left fret about its judgment” (in Trussler and Hay, 1981:30).
In another interview, Barker touches upon the relation between politics and history in
a different way explaining his choice of history to convey an indirect political message: “My
political sense derives from the past, and I view the present from the perspective of the past,
at least as I have constructed it, in imagination. […] I am acutely conscious of the collapse
of a political ethic in my own time, but my sense is always that we have been here before”
(39). Thus, it is seen that Barker differs from his contemporaries in the way he makes use of
the historical subject and setting in his plays. The past is a means for Barker to come up with
remedies for today’s shortcomings. This makes Barker a historical as well as a political
playwright even though he speaks otherwise in the formulation of his “Theatre of

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Catastrophe”, as he turns a critical eye to the past without losing sight of the present in his
works. In his seminal Arguments for a Theatre, Barker confesses that he has a disbelief in
the premises of history as it is recorded in books written by ideologically-concerned
historians:
History is where I had begun, neither official history nor documentary history,
whose truth I deny but the history of emotion, looking for a politics of the
emotions, I discovered that the only things worth describing now are things
that do not happen, just as the only history plays worth writing concern
themselves with what did not occur. […] Writing now has to engage with what
is not seen (i.e. imagination) because real life is annexed, reproduced,
soporific (23).
To emphasize the differences between his theatre and the so called ‘humanist theatre’, which
he also calls ‘theatre of journalism’, Barker draws attention to art’s relationship with what is
out there, what is experienced by real people and what is known to have happened, in other
words with history: “An artist uses imagination to speculate about life as it is lived, and
proposes, consciously or unconsciously, life as it might be lived. The more daringly he
dreams, therefore, the more subversive he becomes” (36). From this comparison, he moves
on to his suggestion of the appropriateness of his “Theatre of Catastrophe” for the present
time, a new kind of theatre which, in order to be taken seriously, must abandon first comedy,
then factuality, and then an unquestioning trust in what is seen, and finally seeing itself
superior to its audience. Barker’s catastrophic tragedies, in this sense, set the rules for a new
kind of drama which “is not about life as it is lived at all, but about life as it might be lived,
about the thought which is not licensed, and about the abolished unconscious” (52).
Barker’s interest in the representation of history on stage is accompanied with a
concern with the artistic perspective in the historical representation. As a free-spirited artist
himself, Barker chooses his protagonists for his historical, or rather historiographic, plays
from among artists from whose perspective documented historical events are reinterpreted.
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In the introduction to Barker’s Arguments for a Theatre, Price describes Barker’s theatrical
method as one that “determines to show not the author’s destination, but rather the process
of struggle which initiates artistic endeavour” (1993:6). In his major historiographic plays,
Barker pits the free-spirited artist against a superior, generally political, power and generates
a moment of crisis, which he calls the moment of beauty: “The moment of beauty is the
moment of collision between two wills, the will of the irrational protagonist (the non-
ideological) and the will of the irrational state (the officially ideological)” (Barker, 1993:59).
Barker glorifies this individual resistance against institutional or social oppression in many
of his plays and calls for again an individual, rather than a collective, deduction of morality
by the deliberate ‘removal of moral climate’ or ‘suspension of moral predictability’. His plays
do not “aspire to indicate ‘correct’ action, or ‘correct’ analysis” (59). Instead, they create
certain moral and political anxiety in which the audience, having been forced to be the judge
of what Barker calls the ‘wrong’ action or injustice on the stage, feels provoked to reconsider
his own moral and political outlook along with those of the characters. He explains the
reasons for his choice of characters from among artists saying: “I found in the study of the
artist himself […] the cause that was neither wholly self nor the rattling egotism of
entertainment. […] This was a sense of artistic responsibility both to order and to violation,
on the one hand to language and the literary culture […] and on the other, to the furtherest
reaches of speculation whether of desire or dissolution” (24). By the artist’s responsibility to
speculation driven by desire, Barker refers to the historical representation’s speculative
nature and its equal status to artistic endeavour in the representation of the lived past filtered
through imaginative faculties of an author.
With respect to these two points, Howard Barker’s historiographic plays which take
an artist or artists as their protagonists can be examined within the framework of the popular
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dramatic genre which has earlier been discussed in this study. Barker, in the selected plays
to be analysed below, deals with documented history as a grand narrative whose claim to
accurate knowledge of the past is the product of an illusion or the imaginative faculties of a
‘narrator’. In doing so, he puts an artist at the centre of the historical events already known
to the readers and researchers of history and questions the validity of historical accounts by
writing an alternative account which, he claims, is as valid as any other historical writing on
the same topic. In addition to that, he uses these artists as a mouthpiece to form parallelisms
between the past and the present in order to voice his criticism of deep-rooted political, moral,
aesthetic and social shortcomings of his own time. With the struggle of his artist-protagonists
against various kinds of authoritative forces, Barker also expresses his views about such long-
debated issues as censorship of art, freedom of expression and the use of art as a means of
political propaganda. By referring to first documented historical events, then to other forms
of art and finally to themselves as works of art, Barker’s historiographic plays in question
display a metadramatic essence with an eye to Hornby’s list of varieties of metadrama. In
this respect, Barker’s famous plays written in the 80s- No End of Blame, The Power of the
Dog, Pity in History, Scenes from an Execution and Brutopia- are to be discussed as early
examples of the genre “historiographic metadrama” by taking into consideration the
historical texts dealing with the same period in history and the elements of metadrama
discussed before.
3.1. No End of Blame and the ‘Terrible’ Power of Art
Published in 1981 and staged every once in a while so far, Barker’s No End of Blame:
Scenes of Overcoming is one of the playwright’s historiographic plays which takes its subject
matter from the documented events of the European history and revolves around a free-
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spirited artist who struggles against diverse forms of institutional oppression over the course
of a few decades. The play follows the footsteps of a Hungarian cartoonist named Bela
Veracek through some of the milestone stages of European history including the Hungarian
front of the First World War, the early years of the Soviet Union and the English-German
war in the Second World War. With Bela’s never-ending conflict with the power-holders on
the potential functions of his cartoons, Barker draws attention to contemporary issues
troubling the artists like political intervention in art, violation of freedom of thought and
speech and the question of responsibilities of an artist towards his society.
The play opens in a remote setting in the Carpathian Mountains at the end of the First
World War with two Hungarian soldier-artists, Grigor Gabor and Bela Veracek, a painter and
a cartoonist, working on a drawing titled ‘Soldiers Bathing’ and examining the saggy body
of a naked Romanian woman who serves them as a model at gunpoint. As Bela attempts to
rape the naked woman, Grigor interferes, causing the woman to escape, and Grigor begins to
draw now-naked Bela instead of the woman. Then, the two artists engage in a hot debate
concerning the question of morality and Bela accuses Grigor of being a ‘moral hero’ “in the
midst of all [the] sin and shame and human vileness, where [they] eat [their] breakfast off a
man’s divided trunk” (1990:77). Their discussion is interrupted with the entrance of a group
of Hungarian soldiers who, syllogising from Bela’s nakedness, accuse the two of
homosexuality and desertion, which are both serious crimes to be punished with death. The
moment the soldiers get ready to execute the artists, some Red Soldiers, or communists as
one of the soldiers puts it, flood in and save the two from the execution, giving Bela a chance
to shoot the officer who has intended to execute him a few minutes before. Bela takes the
officer offstage, one gunshot is heard and he comes back in to tell the Red Soldiers that he
has shot the Hungarian officer. Upon hearing about the deed, Grigor refuses to stay friends
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with Bela who explains his friend that he has let the man go, and the two depart to go home,
as the war is officially over.
The second scene moves the setting to the Bucharest of 1921 where Bela and Grigor
are working on a sketch of a female model named Stella at the institute of fine arts. As the
two are having trouble with the model girl who keeps moving and spoiling the moment, the
head of the institute, named Billwitz, appears in the room with a paper in his hand, a cartoon
titled ‘We Will Revive the Spirit of Hungary’ which he deems a humiliation to the grand
duties of art due to the grotesque images of ‘two soldiers beating a man to death’. Upon
learning that the cartoon has been drawn by Bela, Billwitz asks the others to leave and begins
preaching about the functions of art and the duties of an artist to represent truth as if it really
existed. He, then, informs Bela that he is to be expelled from the country for his provocative
drawings and behaviours which have long been attracting the attention of the police. Bela
responds to the man saying: “My art speaks, then! […] I stirred the police, therefore, I
touched the truth” (85). After Billwitz’s departure, Bela meets Grigor again to persuade him
to go together out of that dead place. Grigor hesitates first and expresses his contentment
with a little corner where he can paint and a diploma which Bela describes as a “shabby bit
of paper for performing dog” (86) emphasizing the governmental interference in art. The
scene ends with Bela, Grigor and Ilona, a fellow female art student who is apparently in love
with Bela, determining to go to Russia together.
Four years later, Bela appears in Moscow in front of a jury in the artists’ union where
the jurors praise his cartoons which also attracted Lenin’s attention. They inform him that
Lenin gives high prominence to art, implying that he views art as a means of political
propaganda. The jury of five artists, including a poet-sculptor, two critics, a painter and a
graphic artist, engage in a hot debate regarding the power of art and freedom of expression
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or artistic vision from the bourgeois constraints, though not from political interference. All
seem to agree that art has “a terrible power […] of addressing hearts and minds, articulating
the unspoken will of peoples, […] a power which in the case of the very greatest artists, may
be beyond even the control of genius itself” (94). The central topic of the meeting turns out
to be a particular cartoon titled ‘The New Economic Plan’ drawn by Bela which depictures
a capitalist stealing from an old Bolshevik while Lenin stands behind a wall turning a blind
eye to it. The jurors question Bela for the cartoon’s “tendency to criticize the line that
Comrade Lenin is advancing” (96) and warn him that he has to keep his head down for the
sake of the Bolsheviks’ great undertaking, even if Lenin has some apparent mistakes. Bela
refuses to be restrained by any force, whether it be political or social, as he puts freedom of
expression above all. To this, the jurors respond with a stress on the social and political
dimension of art, for they believe an artist’s freedom is bound to his society’s freedom. When
Bela openly confesses that he disapproves of some of Lenin’s undertakings, all the members
of the jury protest that he has to keep a low profile and, if he has to criticize, he must do it
some other way “in the wider interests of the people” (97).
In the fourth scene taking place in 1934, the setting moves to a garden in the suburbs
of Moscow where Grigor, Ilona and Bela discuss Grigor’s plans to live in the woods to expose
himself ‘unhesitatingly’ to his human essence. Bela protests that their real fight against
worship and surrender of oneself necessitates their stay in the heart of the events while Grigor
and Ilona, who is now Bela’s wife with a child, leave to realize the former’s plan. After the
departure of his wife and best friend, Bela meets Ludmilla, who was one of the members of
his jury in the related scene and with whom he is now apparently in a relationship; and she
informs Bela that Stalin himself wants him to have a holiday, most probably to keep his nose
out of the government’s practices. In the following scene, Bela arrives in England and kisses
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the ground with the belief that he has finally drawn a free breath. In the customs shed of
Dover, Bela is treated like a beggar by two officers until Sir Herbert Strubenzee, a knight
with whom he has probably earlier made acquaintance, takes him through the customs onto
the so-called free English soil while, around the corner, “a Hitlerine bat […] casts a shadow
over the European portion of the globe” (104). The first act ends with a violent set of sound
effects including the firing of a gun and Ilona’s desperate screams.
The second act begins with Bela among some Royal Air Force personnel right
towards the end of the Second World War as he shares his views about the function of art
and responsibilities of an artist with them. He makes a distinction between important art and
great art, the former being about the people in general, the latter about the artist himself. He
confesses that the cartoon, his profession, is the lowest form of art, though with a huge
significance in terms of people’s struggles, and he cares more about humanity than himself.
Although he openly appreciates the power of ‘great’ art, like a painting which is ‘plundered’
for its strong private meaning, he believes more in the power of ‘important’ art, like a cartoon
which has only one meaning celebrated by millions: “The cartoon changes the world. The
painting changes the artist. I long to change the world. I hate the world” (108). These
sentences reveal that Bela’s view of art as an independent domain from all ideological
contexts has dramatically changed in time after witnessing all those catastrophic events; and
the political oppression has had an adverse effect on his artistic voice by which he now
condemns any totalitarian idea. However, Bela’s discussion with the English pilots prove that
there is always a bigger personal dimension of art, because an artist cannot reconcile
contrasting ideas in his art and has to be selective about his topic, producing what speaks to
him most.
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Then, Bela meets Stringer, his publisher and the editor of a paper, and the two discuss
one of Bela’s cartoons which depicts an English soldier tackling with Hitler while a
‘profiteer’, probably a reference to Winston Churchill himself, is trying to bowstring the
soldier behind his back. Stringer warns Bela that he has to be ‘small’, ‘error incarnate’ and
praise the king and the parliament in front of the upcoming board of auditors, otherwise the
government has the power to shut down the paper under the pretext of ‘the Defence of the
Realm Act’. When the officials arrive, they get to the point swiftly and inform Bela and
Stringer that ‘Winston’ does not approve of their latest work, to which Stringer responds
mildly while Bela keeps ironically praising the kingdom and the parliament. The officials
compare Stringer’s paper with Mirror which has been uncritically supporting Churchill’s
campaign and assure the editor that they have the power to shut all the papers down if they
want to. Upon being questioned about his political orientation, Bela argues that his politics
are to look for the truth and to shout it when found; and Stringer defends his freedom of
expression and publication in the name of democracy for which England seems to have been
fighting. After being covertly threatened by the officials with imprisonment and shutdown,
Stringer and Bela decide to rub the officials the right way only to secretly be a law onto
themselves.
The short third scene of the second act takes place in London in 1960, with Bela
approaching the now-deranged Grigor in a park where the latter works as a street sweeper.
When Bela asks his friend about what happened in the woods during the war, Grigor leaves
him unanswered. In the meantime, Bela’s employer Diver, manager of a daily paper,
interviews another cartoonist named Mik to replace Bela at the express request of Lord Slater
who thinks that a paper does not need a genius, but a sheep to be herded with his cheap sense
of humour. Diver also asks Mik if he has a ‘point of view’ and suggests the new cartoonist
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to adopt Lord Slater’s, that is, being against the trade unions. After Mik’s departure, Bela
walks in and spars with his employer, comparing him to the colonized natives fooled with
‘liquor and cunt’ and to parasites living underneath the smooth perfect ceilings. He also
accuses Diver of being the source of a dirty stream washing the common people away with
a bunch of lies every single day. Diver notifies Bela about the board’s decision of firing him,
but also informs him that ‘The Corporation’ is willing to publish Bela’s works in a special
edition. Bela fiercely rejects the offer; as he is aware that the publication will reduce him to
‘great art’ like Goya’s paintings, but he wants to keep his art ‘important’. The following scene
presents Bela on the parapet of Tower Bridge with the intention of ending his life while a
Beckettian pair of the river police try to talk him into cherishing his life. Bela jumps and is
saved by the police officers. In the last scene of the play, Bela ends up in an asylum where
he meets his old friend Grigor being made fun of and a bet on, though the two cannot
recognize each other. The play ends with Bela advancing the audience to ask for a pencil
after Doctor Glasson reminds him of the little temple in the bottom of his brain in which there
is a little flame of truth to be worshipped.
As a background for his play, Barker chooses the chaotic atmosphere in Europe
between the two world wars in which everything, including specifically arts, is politicized in
the service of great world powers struggling to achieve domination over each other. Instead
of using imaginary settings and events, Barker places his character in the middle of what is
familiar and known to shatter the audience’s expectations from a historical play and to
disclaim historical accounts’ pretence that they are the one accurate source to bring the past
to the understanding of the present.
Barker opens a new chapter to the history that has been recorded in books and taught
to generations with a claim to accurate knowledge of the past. In doing so, he gives voice to
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the potential silenced individuals of that time who are depicted as real as those well-known
historical figures such as Lenin, Churchill and Hitler, though they are purely imaginary. What
Barker emphasizes here is that great historical personages mentioned in history books are
products of imagination just like his own characters, as he blurs the distinction between fact
and fiction. He draws attention to the narrative nature of historical accounts and attributes
similar powers of historical representation to his own play.
Barker reveals his historical consciousness at the very beginning of the play in which
the setting and time are specified as the Carpathian Mountains, a mountain chain stretching
over a number of Eastern European countries today, and 1918 with a Hungarian soldier
present in the scene. To the attentive reader, this information is sufficient to infer that the
subject is somehow related to the First World War, which is justified by Bela’s statement:
“We have butchered two million Russians, a million Italians, half a million Poles, the same
number of Roumanians, some Greeks, some French, a few thousand English, a division of
Bulgarians by mistake” (76). With the coming of the Red Soldiers announcing the ending of
the war, Barker gives an instant from the past which no history book has ever mentioned
before; however, he is aware that his imaginary version of the First World War scene is as
valid as any other version written in other historical accounts.
In the third scene of the first act, Bela appears before a jury of comrades in the
Writers’ and Artists’ Union of Moscow for his caricature titled “The New Economic Plan”
depicting the Soviet leader Lenin in a negative way. At this point, Barker’s imaginary artist
interferes in the life of one of the greatest power-holders of the time and the image of Lenin
is depicted once again through the eyes of an insignificant historical subject whom, as a part
of Barker’s scheme, history has omitted. The image of the Soviet leader that Barker draws in
the play is one of a destructive cunning and ambition who is wholeheartedly trying to use
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Bela’s art as a means of propaganda for his Communist Party. This image complies with the
Lenin depictions made in history and biography books. For instance, Read observes that,
after the Great War, “in addition to newspapers, all print media and eventually all means of
artistic expression, including film (in which Lenin was to show increasing interest), theatre
and music, were under the supervision of a censorship apparatus which began to formalize
itself from 1918 onwards” (2005:236). Correlatively, the Fourth Comrade among the jury
informs Bela that “Lenin holds cartoons in the highest regard” (91) and the First Comrade
adds that Lenin is disturbed of Bela’s “tendency to criticize the line that Comrade Lenin is
advancing. Which is – which is – unhelpful –” (96). The New Economic Plan that gives
Bela’s cartoon its subject matter is also a “fact” found in history books with the name The
New Economic Policy, in which all economic enterprises in a free market system are
controlled by the State for maximum State profit (Lenin, 1965:196). Barker’s imaginary hero
criticizes the shortcomings of this economic plan refusing to keep a low profile unlike the
actual artists of the time who chose to keep their heads down to stay within the borders drawn
by the censors and were eliminated from documented history. Towards the end of the first
act, Bela’s insistence on keeping his art politics-free causes him to lose his job and
citizenship, as the Fourth Comrade informs him: “[Lenin] wants you to have a holiday” (103).
Bela’s cartoons keep getting him into trouble and strengthen the historically conscious
background with, for instance, a depiction of a ‘Hitlerine’ bat spreading its wings over
Europe evoking the coming of the Second World War.
The second act of the play continues to refer to historical events like “Hitler [having]
been gassing kids since 1938” (109) or one of the British airmen in the Royal Air Force being
named Kenny after the American general George Churchill Kenney who fought during the
war as the commander in chief of the Allied Air Forces in the Pacific (Wolk, 1988:93). In
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addition, Bela’s troubles with the authoritarian government continue in England where his
cartoons attract the attention of state offices. The cartoon titled “There always was a Second
Front” depicts a ‘profiteer’ strangling a British soldier from behind when the soldier is
fighting against Hitler, and the suggestion that the profiteer is the English prime minister
Winston Churchill causes Bela huge trouble with the government. Bela’s editor in the
newspaper, Stringer, reminds him of the government’s right to close any newspaper on the
basis of “The Defence of the Realm Act” which was an actual Act having passed the English
Parliament right after the beginning of the First World War and continued to be enforced
during the Second World War. The act depends basically on the suppression of any
contradictory view that has the potential to harm governmental policies during states of
emergency like the war, saying: “No person shall by word of mouth or in writing spread
reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm among any of His Majesty's forces or among the
civilian population” (London Gazette, 1914:6968). With reference to this act, Barker
potentially forms a parallelism between the past and the present, evoking the long-debated
problem of censorship of art in England, culminating in the abolishment of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Office’s functions on theatre in 1968.
Very much like in the scene about Lenin, three governmental officers come to warn
Stringer and Bela about their biting tongue interfering in the government’s business and they
do not abstain from using Winston Churchill’s name. Deeds, one of the officers, openly
threatens the two with shutting up the newspaper completely saying: “Look, don’t want to
lose the entire morning over this, so get to the point swiftly, shall we? Winston doesn’t like
this […] I can assure you first thing in the morning he was practically pissing blood […]
Winston is thoroughly cognisant about the press. But feels you have abused his trust” (112-
113). Bela, at this point, observes that the British public is deceived by the government about
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their enemy, they think that they are fighting against Hitler, but it is actually their own
government who is dealing the biggest blow on their democracy: “They are under the cruel
misapprehension that it is Nazi bombers that are blowing their limbs off and killing children
in their beds! How has this wicked deception been permitted?” (115). Winston Churchill has
always been known to take a firm grip on the press and art for the sake of the British
government’s soundness, which could also be observed in his establishment of the Press
Bureau in 1914 and his documented statements like “I think you ought to realize the harm
that has been done… I never saw such panic-stricken stuff by any war correspondent before;
and this served up on the authority of The Times can be made, and has been made, a weapon
against us in every doubtful state” (in Haste, 1977:33). The historical background is
strengthened by Barker with the reference to the Special Powers Act of 1922, an act giving
the civil authority the right to “take all such steps and issue all such orders as may be
necessary for preserving the peace and maintaining order” (in Donohue, 1998:1091), which
was obviously abused by the government in matters of censorship. Barker draws attention to
this abuse in the dialogue between Deeds and Stringer in which the former gives a notice to
the newspaper on the basis of this act saying: “This is a mighty piece of paper, Bob. […] This
paper says troops with bayonets on all the doors and lock the printers out” (116). Barker, in
a way, points at a historical ‘truth’ which was known by many but kept quiet about even by
history books.
Towards the end of the play, Barker refers to two daily newspapers of the communist
parties of Russia and China at the time, Pravda and Peking People’s Daily in a dialogue
between Diver, Bela’s current editor, and Mik, the cartoonist to be hired in Bela’s place on
condition that he will keep a low profile unlike Bela. Diver informs Mik that “Lord Slater
has owned nearly every paper in the world at some time or the other, excluding Pravda and
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Peking People’s Daily, and he has come to the conclusion, in his wisdom, that human beings
need to laugh” (122). Barker’s reference to the newspapers seems more than coincidental, as
the papers were widely accepted as the highly-ideological and sided voices of the
governments during world war and cold war years. Pravda, for instance, had such a world-
wide notoriety, along with the other Russian newspaper titled Izvestia, that there occurred a
saying like “there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia” (Overholser, 1987), ‘pravda’
meaning ‘truth’ and ‘izvestia’ meaning ‘news’ in Russian. Pravda also turns into a symbol
of partisan press in Pravda (1985), a satirical drama written collaboratively by Howard
Brenton and David Hare, exploring the use of media as a means of political propaganda.
Similarly, Peking People’s Daily is described as “the ideological leader responsible for
delivering updated values and directing ideologies to the public. The newspaper is also well
known as the spokesperson of the State Council. Views therein are believed to reflect the
voice of authorities” (Zhang, 2014:183). Barker forms a relation between these newspapers
and the dominant press of his own time, as all have turned into mouthpieces of the dominant
ideology of the time and freedom of expression is wholeheartedly sacrificed to winning the
favour of the powerful.
All references that Barker makes to historical events, personages and institutions are
easily reinforced with historical, biographical or other non-fictitious texts in a conscious
parallel reading. These references also draw advantage from the collective memory, rumours,
tales and urban legends along with his personal observations and readings regarding those
historical issues. What differentiates Barker’s version of history from historical texts about
the same subject is that he brings a new perspective to these historical issues with an aim to
disrupt their referentiality to truth, to ultimate reality of the past as it was actually experienced
by the past agents. In doing so, Barker also draws attention to the parallelisms between the
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past and his own time to voice his criticism regarding political intervention in arts, press and
violation of freedom of speech and expression. Barker shakes the grounds of historical
representation as a grand narrative with a claim to historical knowledge and, for him, any
account related to the past, including his own play, has an equal right of historical speculation
with an equal degree of validity.
Barker’s use of historical sources and his references to historical personages, events,
and institutions do not only show the playwright’s historical consciousness, but they also
have a metadramatic contribution to the overall meaning and presentation of the play when
Richard Hornby’s aforementioned varieties of metadrama are taken into consideration.
Hornby, in his Drama, Metadrama and Perception, notes that “real-life reference includes
allusions to real persons, living or dead; real places; real objects; real events” (95). In this
respect, Barker’s references to Lenin, the Communist Party, The New Economic Plan, Hitler,
the Royal Air Force, Churchill, the Defence of the Realm Act, the Special Powers Act and
the newspapers Pravda and Peking People’s Daily among many others are all metadramatic
elements that give the play a deeper dimension of meaning and another layer of
representation. These elements do not only “mean”, but also “suggest”, saving the play from
the monotony of drama whose meaning is only consumed by the audience and attributing it
a metadramatic outlook whose meaning is discovered and reproduced by the audience at
every turn.
However, Hornby also adds that real-life references tend to lose their metadramatic
potentials in time, as the referenced event or person or object loses its popularity among
public along with their referentiality: “Mentioning Jerry Falwell would be more intrusive on
a play than mentioning Southern Baptists generally; a reference to the American invasion of
Granada, soon after the event, would be more intrusive than merely referring to American
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imperialism generally […] A reference to the Reverend Falwell will obviously have no
special impact after most people have forgotten who he was” (95). In this respect, Barker’s
historical references possess a metadramatic effect as long as the referenced historical
personages, events or objects make sense to Barker’s audience watching the play at a given
time. To secure the metadramatic quality of his historical ‘real-life’ references, Barker
constantly forms connections between the historical referent and the contemporary persons,
events and objects, by which he both voices his criticism of his time and enriches the meaning
of his play. For instance, by referring to the political intervention in art and official censorship
in the Soviet Union during Lenin’s rule and Britain under Churchill’s governance, Barker
evokes the long-debated issues of censorship of art troubling dramatists of his time, violation
of freedom of expression leading to student riots and conservative administrative mentality
under Margaret Thatcher.
Along with these real-life references, Barker alludes to other works of literature, or
forms of literature, that have come before him and dominated a certain period of time
establishing a tradition of their own. The fact that the first part of the play takes place in
Eastern Europe at the end of the First World War and then in Russia under the Soviet rule is
not a coincidence. Lenin’s insistence on politicizing art is quite reminiscent of the agitprop
convention, using arts and popular media as a means of agitation and propaganda as the name
itself suggests. The fact that Bela is a cartoonist adds more believability to such an
assumption, as cartoons were one of the most powerful weapons that the Communist Party
used in order to play with the public conscience and change their perceptions. Bodek argues
that the agitprop tradition gave rise to the agitprop drama first in Russia and then in the
Western Europe culminating in the political drama of Bertolt Brecht (1998:7). There is no
doubt that Barker was aware of the Brechtian political tradition from which he decisively
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separates his “Theatre of Catastrophe” because of the former’s overt politically and morally
functional essence. In Hornby’s formulation, “there are many ways in which a play can refer
to other literature. In each case, the degree of metadramatic estrangement generated is
proportional to the degree to which the audience recognizes the literary allusion as such”
(88). With an eye to this statement, Barker’s insistence on a political background for his play
looks more functional given that the decade in which No End of Blame was written, the 80s,
witnessed the peak of political drama modelled on Brechtian epic theatre. Even though
Barker rejects any classification regarding his plays on the basis of their political functions,
his remarks alluding to the political issues of his time, such as governmental censorship of
art, violation of freedom of expression and criticism of totalitarian regimes, ultimately
involves his drama in the long tradition of British political theatre. In this respect, such a
politicization of drama is quite familiar to the theatre-going public in Britain when the play
is first staged, which gives the audience a deeper sense of political dramatic tradition, thus
strengthening the play’s metadramatic effect.
Barker’s No End of Blame is strongly self-referential, which stems from the fact that
the protagonist of the play is a free-spirited, left-wing artist very much like Barker himself
and the play revolves around works of art, Bela’s cartoons, through which the playwright
investigates issues like ethics of art, responsibilities of an artist and the process of artistic
production. Hornby refers to self-reference as “always strongly metadramatic with [which]
the play directly calls attention to itself as a play, an imaginative fiction” (103). At the very
beginning of the play, when Bela and Grigor are confronted by the Hungarian soldiers, one
of the officers ask Bela to make up a poem before he is executed. At gunpoint, Bela produces
a quatrain with something of a half-rhyme to which the officer responds saying: “Breast and
bed are not full rhymes. If you had said – forgive me – the blood in scarlet dressed – you see?
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[…] I like rhyme. Poetry without rhyme is laying bricks without cement” (80). Barker, here,
draws attention to the fact that everybody has an opinion about art and everybody feels free
to express their opinions in the manner of cheap criticism. This is probably one of the issues
that troubles Barker himself as an artist in the process artistic production and he voices his
intentions to keep his art opinion-free like Bela himself saying: “He went on about rhyme.
Fuck rhyme. I hate it. […] Balls to rhyme! Balls to the heroic, national style! His brains were
pitiful, the pus of dead imagination on the ground, all his rhyming couplets running in the
mud…” (82). After the war, Bela appears in the Hungarian Institute of Fine Arts in Budapest
where he engages into a debate with Billwitz, the director of the institute, on who an artist is
and what his duties are to the society. What Bela argues is reminiscent of what Barker has
been arguing since the beginning of his career and later expressed in his treatises about theatre
and performance. The dialogue between the two goes like:
BILLWITZ: […] Why are we artists? We are artists because we thrill to

beauty. We look for beauty everywhere. […] Artists are the guardians of
beauty, high priests in the temple Art. Who drew it? […] It is not art.
BELA: I feel it. So it is.
BILLWITZ: It is not true. It is not half as true as any life drawing you did for
me.
BELA: It’s more true.
BILLWITZ: It’s prejudice! […] You will never be a great painter if you do
not tell the truth!
BELA: I don’t want to be a painter. I hate oils, studios, manipulating colours
inches thick. Give me ink, which dries quick, speaks quick, hurts.
BILLWITZ: Heal us, Bela. If there was ever a people needed healing, it is us
[…] I have just come from the police.
BELA: My art speaks, then! […] Did any single picture of yours win you
such an accolade? A visit from the police! There is a diploma, there is a prize!
Now I know I am a genius, now I hang in the echoing gallery of human art! I
stirred the police, therefore, I touched the truth (84-85, emphasis in the
original).
Here, Barker uses Bela as a mouthpiece to voice his own belief about the functions, or rather
functionlessness, of art against Billwitz’s argument that an artist has a duty to represent truth
as if it really existed. Billwitz’s voice in this dialogue must be quite familiar to Barker, as he
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struggles throughout his career against a generation of political playwrights who believe art
to be supposed to have a function in order to change people’s minds and make them better.
In this respect, the dialogue between Bela and Billwitz stands as a self-referential element in
which Bela’s painting stands for the play itself and Bela stands for the playwright.
In the scene in which Bela appears before a committee of artists in the Writers’ and
Artists’ Union of Moscow, a similar discussion comes up regarding the ethics of art and
responsibilities of an artist between Bela and the committee members. Bela defends the idea
that art must be liberated from all contextual impositions including politics, morality and
social utility whereas the committee members are persistent that art is to serve grander
purposes:
FOURTH COMRADE: Lenin holds cartoons in the highest regard.

FIRST COMRADE: […] we are trying, quite simply, trying – to evolve a
different sort of art here. All right? An art which is not bourgeois. […] Because
although we have no shoe laces for our boots and no lenses for our spectacles,
our art is free. By free I mean free of bourgeois constraints. By bourgeois
constraints I mean the tying of the creative act to the demands of the private
ego. Individualism, I mean, all right? […] we have exerted our communal will
to rescue artists from their bourgeois habit […] if I say no artist can be wrong
– in the most fundamental sense – because he is obeying an impulse from
somewhere within – […] No artist does wring knowingly. Or else he’s not an
artist. […]
SECOND COMRADE: I think there is only one principle that we ought to be
rigid about, and that is – do we, as artists, serve the people? That’s the only
one, I think. […]
BELA: […] to an artist, freedom of expression matters even more than
nationality. I say that as a patriotic person, a person who loves his country and
his people. Not as a licker of governments. […] to an artist freedom comes
above all things […]
SECOND COMRADE: Wait a minute […] We say an artist is only free if his
society is free. He cannot be free against the freedom of his society. […]
BELA: I disagree with Lenin. […]
FOURTH COMRADE: He is entitled to disagree with anyone he wants.
That’s freedom, isn’t it? But he must be able to restrain his criticism in the
wider interests of the people. That’s responsibility, isn’t it? […]
BELA: But I want to protest! (91-97).
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Putting the committee member comrades, who are also artists, against Bela in this debate,
Barker once more voices his criticism of the use of art as a means of political propaganda;
but at the same time, he also criticizes the artists who become a part of this puppetry by
submitting their art to the interests of political parties. In another respect, Barker also draws
a strict line between his theatre and the political theatre of the dramatists among his
contemporaries in terms of free art. He puts freedom of expression and artistic vision above
all meanings art can suggest, and sacrifices the meaning to the act of protest, the service to
beauty, and the social responsibility to the responsibility towards the artistic endeavour itself.
Barker, through Bela’s mouth, announces that true nationalism is not a cheap patriotism
through political involvement, but a true conservancy of the right to speak regardless of the
subject of the speech. He denies to attribute any duty to art and any responsibility to the artist
other than staying true to pure artistic vision and the impulse coming from within.
At the beginning of the second act, Barker’s own voice is again heard in Bela’s speech
to the officers of the British Airforce as he makes a distinction between important art and
great art. Bela’s speech functions as his artistic manifesto and is reminiscent of Barker’s ideas
discussed before. After giving a brief account about his early life, Bela sets the criteria that
separate his art from the rest, which caused him to be banished first from Hungary and then
from the Soviet Union. He says:
BELA: […] I am a cartoonist. I believe the cartoon to be the lowest form of

art. I also believe it to be the most important form of art. I decided in my
twenty-fourth year I would rather be important than great. I decided this
because I have always preferred shouting to whispering and humanity more
than myself. The cartoon is a weapon in the struggle of peoples. It is a
liberating instrument. It is brief like life. It is not about me. It is about us.
Important art is about us. Great art is about me. I am not interested in me. I do
not like me. I am not sure if I like us either, but that is private and the cartoon
is not private. We share the cartoon as we cannot share the painting. We
plunder painting for the private meaning. The cartoon has only one meaning.
When the cartoon lies it shows at once. When the painting lies it can deceive
for centuries. The cartoon is celebrated in a million homes. The painting is
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worshipped in a gallery. The cartoon changes the world. The painting changes
the artist. I long to change the world. I hate the world (107-108).
Bela’s distinction between the important art and great art is reminiscent of Barker’s
distinction between the art of theatre and the theatre. At first glance, Bela’s statements may
sound a little contradictory with what he has said before regarding the responsibilities of the
artist towards his people and the functions of art as an instrument of any kind. However, after
a second, more critical reading, it is revealed that Bela is being ironical about the adjectives
“important” and “great” in the sense that greatness is calculated on the basis of acceptance
by the dominant ideology rather than being true to truth itself. By important art, Bela
mentions a kind of art which is functional in the long term through the liberation of humanity
from any kind of ideological involvement, an art whose only mission is to awaken people to
seeing the reality with their own eyes rather than showing them the reality.
Barker believes that whether or not art is pre-motivated by external forces, it cannot
and must not be squelched by means of ideological or repressive state apparatuses, in
Althusser’s terminology. In an era when censorship of art is widely disputed and Lord
Chamberlain’s Office’s authority is questioned by the artists and the public – culminating in
the deprivation of its rights to censor – Barker chooses up his sides openly and, through his
characters, expresses his intentions to fight till the end of his career to liberate his art from
any kind of external intervention. In addition to his defence of his art from Lenin’s and
Churchill’s insinuations, Bela lets on about his apolitical stance when it comes to his art
saying: “My politics are to look for the truth, and when you find it, shout it. That’s my
politics” (114). This statement is a paraphrase of what Barker discusses in his theorization of
“Theatre of Catastrophe” in terms of keeping politics offstage and being true to truth only.
Similarly, towards the end of the play, Barker draws attention to the same issue in a critical
way in the dialogue between Diver and Mik. As a replacement for Bela, Mik is questioned
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by Diver regarding his political tendencies before being given a job; and Diver asks him:
“Lord Slater is very keen for you to have a point of view. Do you have a point of view?”
(123). Overhearing the dialogue, Bela intervenes and accuses Diver and his newspaper of
“washing men away with lies, the great flood of dirtiness, hold your heads up in the swell!”
(125). This is exactly what Barker remonstrates in his major prose works on the dramatic art.
For him, once ‘point of view’ is involved, what is produced is not art, but advertisement. In
Barker’s view, art must speak for itself, which differentiates it from cheap propaganda.
Consequently, Barker’s No End of Blame gives a panorama of the great catastrophes
in the 20th century Europe through the spectacles of a free-thinking artist. What makes the
play historiographic is the playwright’s attempt at disrupting the mainstream historical
knowledge and offering an alternative history to his readers and the audience with an equal
claim to historical knowledge keeping the historical background the same with references to
the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Second World War, the atomic bomb
attacks along with the hypocrisy of those who ruled the world at those times. Barker’s version
of history displays how subjective and flexible historical representations are and how they
depend on who is holding the pen. The play is also metadramatic with respect to the real life
references it makes to actual historical personages like Lenin, Hitler and Churchill along with
historical events like the passing of specific acts from the British Parliament and the world
wars. The references to other literature like the agitprop and the political drama strengthen
the play’s metadramatic outlook along with the play’s references to itself through other works
of art. By placing an artist into the centre of the play, Barker finds a voice to express his ideas
about art in general and the issues like censorship of art and freedom of expression in
particular. In his protagonist’s struggle against authoritative governments to purify his art
from ideological impositions, Barker answers questions about the ethics of art and
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responsibilities of the artist using the protagonist’s cartoons as representatives of his own
play. With all these points taken into consideration, Barker’s No End of Blame turns out to
have sufficient elements to qualify as an example of historiographic metadrama.
3.2. The Power of the Dog and the Question of ‘Appropriate’ Art
Written in 1981 and published in 1985, The Power of the Dog is one of Barker’s
famous historical plays that is concerned with the immediate years after the Second World
War, exploring issues like history and art’s place in it as suggested in the play’s subtitle
“Moments in History and Anti-History”. Barker notes that this play has waited for years to
be staged presumably until 1984 when it was first performed by the Joint Stock Theatre
Company (1993:34). The play offers two versions of the same historical events from the
points of view of first Stalin, the centre around which the events revolve, and then Ilona, the
photograph artist who observes those events from the margins with a more objective, critical
view. Weeks observes that the action of the play “unfolds near the end of the Second World
War, around 1944. There are two settings – the Kremlin and the battlefields of Poland – and
three major groups of characters: Red Army soldiers at the Polish front, Stalin and his
entourage at the Kremlin, and two Hungarian photographers, Victor and Ilona, who have
been photographing war atrocities” (2001:62). With the strong historical background and
references to art as a potential means of historical representation, the play possesses
historiographic and metadramatic elements on the way to a classification as historiographic
metadrama.
The first scene of the play, titled “A Great Man Hallucinates”, opens with a Scottish
comedian named McGroot practicing juggling for a feast to be held in the Kremlin by Stalin
himself, including Churchill among the guests. While McGroot tries unsuccessfully to make
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Stalin laugh, the latter discusses, with his secretary Poskrebyshev and a fellow politician
named Molotov, how to put the guests up and expresses a certain uneasiness that has been
troubling him. As the company of Englishmen arrives, the two parties begin to exchange
inflated and insincere compliments while McGroot, “a hilariously de-familiarizing presence”
(Weeks, 2001:59) who functions like the Greek chorus commenting on the others’ speeches
and actions, shows what is beneath their masks. Communicating through an English and a
Soviet interpreter, the two leaders also exchange toasts and gifts over a discussion regarding
the definition of History. Stalin defines it as “the incredulous overwhelmed by the incredible”
which is harshly contradicted by McGroot’s definition of it as “a woman bein’ raped by ten
soldiers in a village in Manchuria”, differing from hysterectomy only in that “one’s done wi’
a scalpel and the other wi’ a bayonet” (4). In the meantime, the interpreters as well as the
other politicians in the company do their bests to hinder any possible controversy between
the two leaders by either omitting some words from the translation or diverting the topic with
an irrelevant toast. The topic of their discussion suddenly turns to sharing out the lands that
have been saved from the Nazis. Churchill wants Italy and Greece, Stalin has already spared
Bulgaria and Poland for himself and they agree to share Romania. At that moment, Stalin
seems to be distracted by a fit of paranoia, thinking that the waiters have been planning to
wipe him away, to remove his face from the walls and to cut him out of the films. When the
Englishmen depart, Stalin asks his men to find the little Polish photographer and to bring the
man to him, which ends the first scene.
The second scene, titled “The Banality of Yet Another Murder”, opens in the Polish
plain where a photographer named Victor takes a picture of his friend, Ilona, under a dead
woman hanging from a rope. Victor protests that Ilona is stealing from the dead bodies,
including the stockings of the hanging woman who turns out to be her own sister. The two
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engage in a discussion concerning the nature of murder before a Russian officer named Arkov
interrupts, questioning whether they have the necessary certificates to photograph the
battlefield. The soldier asks Victor to take his photograph standing next to Ilona if they want
him to ignore the fact that they have no authorization to be there. At last, Ilona remembers to
ask the men about her sister’s burial, which is dealt with by a Russian officer named Sorge
who appears from nowhere and comments that they are living in a wonderful century. The
third scene, titled “The Soldiers Fictionalize Their History”, presents an art student Georgina
Matrimova among Soviet soldiers who appear in her realistic war movie and discuss with her
what additions or omissions have been and should be made. Sorge approaches the group and
shares his own views about the functions of ‘proper’ art saying: “The proper film asks, did
the soldiers die for something, or did they die for nothing? It is a revolutionary question. So
the proper war film is not actually about the battle, it is about the reasons for the battle” (13).
To this, Matrimova responds idealistically expressing her great wish to make a film some
day in the future that will touch upon every political and personal truth possible, contain the
whole reality and exclude partiality. In the meantime, Sorge is confronted by an
infantrywoman named Sonya Tremblayev due to the former’s indifference towards her after
an affair. On the other hand, Ilona enters in search of her sister’s body covered in a tarpaulin.
Unable to find the body, she gives Victor a short history of her ties with her sister, detailing
how she tried to educate herself through experience rather than books. Victor has a very
different plan to write his own history by going to America. As also indicated in the play’s
subtitle “Moments in History and Anti-History”, the play’s preoccupation with personal
histories mistaken for ‘the’ History is clearly reflected in individual characters’ efforts to
change things in the hope of making room for themselves in that line of events.
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A similar example is seen in the following scene titled “The Limitless Absurdity of
Another’s Life” in which the paranoid Stalin discusses with Poskrebyshev his fear of an early
death which he wishes to postpone until the most appropriate moment. In the scene titled
“The Poet Can Be Trusted to Castrate Himself”, Sorge has been expecting Ilona for an
interview regarding her photographs; and in the meantime, he has a talk with Arkov over the
latter’s letters to his wife being censored by the former for putting more emphasis on death
than victory. Sorge tries to channel his junior’s ‘death interest’ to writing poems instead of
letters, as “the letter […] has too much authority, the poem not at all [and] later, the poem
will have the authority and the letter none at all, but by then it won’t matter” (20). With the
arrival of Ilona, the subject changes to the nature of her art, which is not concerned with the
picture, but with the frame for Sorge as an inevitable consequence of the human urge for
selection. He admits that Ilona’s photographs are not to be criticized technically, though he
has certain ‘reservations’ in terms of their content. He openly believes that art must take a
side, for “the idea of a neutral art is utterly redundant” (21). Outside, a group of Russian
soldiers are circled around the assumed dead body of a female SS officer, Gloria, who begins
to move to everybody’s shock and ends up making Arkov shoot himself in the groin as
indicated in the title of the scene.
The following scene titled “The Spontaneous Nature of Historical Decisions” begins
with Stalin preaching about the ‘appropriate’ art which reveals the governmental intervention
in freedom of speech and artistic creations and he resembles an artist’s head to a boiled egg
not to be sliced off, but to be tapped it with a spoon in order to give it a shape. He states:
“[Artists] think they live on their own, but they’re mistaken, they live among us, and they
have to learn they aren’t only birds on the lake. If they want to sing out of tune, by all means
let them do so, but to expect us to construct music halls and pay the wages of the orchestra!
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No, sing in tune or shit in your own nest” (26). He also admits that, as the head of the
government, he is engaged into a terrible struggle with the ‘ruthless’ artists who would do
anything to get past the censor organs. Commenting on a symphony seemingly dedicated to
himself, Stalin even goes so far as to confess that he has tapped the composer’s egg to make
him a better artist and to save him from ‘the wrong street’. He also mentions Khachaturian,
an Armenian composer, whose music has an unquestionably moral content that instructed
him out of the three days of disasters during the war. For him, music is the ‘least susceptible’
form of art to ‘materialist orthodoxy’. The discussion is interrupted when Stalin beleaguers
Poskrebyshev about his potential homosexual tendencies, ending up with the latter attacking
his leader.
In the scene titled “The Indignation of a Mass Murderer”, Matrimova tells an arrested
tradesman named Buber about her new film-making project in which she plans to use three
screens to eliminate the subjective representation of reality as well as to liberate the audience
from its passive role. At that moment, Victor and Ilona enter to take the arrested man’s
photograph for the archives, yet discussing the former’s anxieties that they are going to be
killed by Sorge or turn into the puppets of the government rather than independent artists: “I
said to him, I am an innocent photographer. He said there is no such thing as an innocent
photographer, only photographers with varying degrees of guilt” (30). With the arrival of
Sorge himself, it becomes clear that the photographers have been totally reduced to a
government instrument, appointed to use their camera in the army’s service. The following
scene titled “She Did Not Die for Love, But for Its Impossibility” explains everything about
the fate of Ilona’s sister. It is revealed that Sorge has long been in love with the girl and
arrested Gloria for her murder. The moment Tremblayev enters accusing him of indulging in
personal affairs on duty, a shot is heard from outside, as one of the soldiers shoots Victor
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who has been trying to escape with two crates of photographs. When Sorge informs Ilona
about Victor’s death, she takes it in her stride to the man’s surprise, and Sorge asks Ilona to
be his mistress. As the two make love, Tremblayev appears with a man at the door and arrests
Sorge for inappropriate behaviour on duty. Matrimova, on the other hand, expresses her
admiration for Ilona’s artistic vision before implying that she is to be executed soon.
Towards the end of the play, as the title of the last scene indicates, history encounters
its antithesis when Stalin picks Ilona out of three hundred and forty eight photographers to
photograph him as he is. Obsessed with the representation of his face after his death, Stalin
pressures Ilona to be serious about the work and states: “It is not a face I have here, it is a
history” (42). Knowing that even a great man like Stalin who is known for writing the history
is inevitably dependent on art to achieve immortality, Ilona contributes to ‘that’ history
through her art by immortalizing Stalin. The interdependence of the two, Stalin and Ilona,
for survival is rather ironic, because the play ends obscurely without telling if either of the
two let the other do so.
For The Power of the Dog, Barker sets a similar historical background to his earlier
play, No End of Blame, and once again chooses the Soviet Russia as the setting with a time
shift to the Stalin period, even though the same air of totalitarianism is kept. Barker, in an
unpublished interview given to Lamb in 1987, explains the reasons for his interest in the
Eastern European history and setting saying:
I think history is an invention of both left and right. Both are equally
false.....When I go to east European countries, I usually go to visit what they
call a museum of the working class. And so I did in Prague - an enormous
building in which no Czech ever sets foot; so I had it to myself. Having walked
past enormous statues of Lenin which dominated a red-carpeted staircase, I
then went into endless rooms of photographs, because the photograph is the
icon of the artistic sections of the communist authorities, - room after room
where people are being shot, hanged, executed, being killed in bat ties, or
cheering their cosmonauts. You realise that the party itself has commandeered
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the masses by this means: the photograph itself celebrates the individual face
but, at the same time, by enclosing it in mass cabinets, the masses are
entrapped by the party which claims to speak for them. I find that illuminating
for the theatre in that history is always about the extension of the individual
and one or other political grouping annexes the idea of the individual for some
ideological function. The good history play tries to rescue the individual from
that annexation which is what I'm talking about in subtitling THE POWER
OF THE DOG as MOMENTS FROM HISTORY AND ANTI-HISTORY.
Anti-history is about people who try to resist that occupation (in Lamb,
1992:122).
In this quotation, Barker also reveals the reasons why he chooses to write on historical
subjects, as he believes history to be a narrative written by whoever has the power at the
moment and art is a means to save the individual from such a bag of lies. In another interview,
Barker contends that “the history play is a good thing, because ... it's a metaphor, it enables
you to escape some of the crushing documentary factuality about the world and indulge in a
little ... speculation, and you can do that in a historical period” (in Irvine, 2012). Barker seems
highly aware of the speculative nature of historical accounts and of the power his art gives
him in filling the gaps in those incomplete narratives.
Barker, this time, chooses the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War for the time
of his plot along with the ravished Polish plains and the carnivalesque Kremlin Palace for the
setting. Besides well-known historical figures that give history its direction like Stalin and
Churchill, Barker also gives voice to the silent actors of that historical drama and offers an
antithetical version of documented history through the spectacles of a number of marginal
characters like a comedian, a photographer and an art student. It is not a coincidence that
Barker picks his major characters from among artists, as he uses these characters as a
mouthpiece to voice his own criticism from an artist’s point of view about censorship,
freedom of expression and artistic ethics in the face of the totalitarian Soviet rule. One other
reason why Barker prefers the Soviet history for his subject matter is that, as a left-wing
dramatist, he is already interested in the socialist thinking with a disbelief in its promises as
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practiced by Russian rulers. He confesses that “[he] always knew socialism was tragedy”
(1993:21) in a world where capitalism has already taken the law in its own hands. Thus,
Barker views pessimism and catastrophe as better tools, compared to optimism and
celebration in art, to shatter the audience’s habitual reactions to moral and political
impositions, and condemns political interference in art to use it as a means of propaganda,
which was always experienced in the history of art, particularly under the Soviet rule: “The
left's insistent cry for celebration and optimism in art - sinister in its populist echo of the right
- implies fixed continuity in the public, whereas morality needs to be tested and re-invented
by successive generations” (49). As he believes that socialism is not as promising in practice
as it is in theory, Barker attributes the socialist idealism to art along with the power to imagine
a better society: “We are living the extinction of official socialism. When the opposition loses
its politics, it must root in art […] Art is a problem. The man or woman who exposes himself
to art exposes himself to another problem […] The opposition in art has nothing but the
quality of its imagination” (17-18). In this respect, Barker uses his artistic vision to re-
imagine the practice of socialism during Stalin’s rule and display its shortcomings by
juxtaposing the ideas of the despot and the free-thinking artist.
Barker’s references to documented historical events and personages begin in the very
first scene in which Joseph Stalin, the despotic ruler of the Soviet Union from Lenin’s death
in 1924 until his own death in 1953, hosts a feast in the Kremlin for the British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill. The two leaders are known to have come together several times, the two
most well-known being the Tehran Conference in 1943 (Overy, 1996:245-246) and the Yalta
Conference in 1945 (Plokhy, 2009:34) with the presence of the American President Franklin
Roosevelt. However, Barker refers to another meeting, a private one between Stalin and
Churchill organized in August 1942 in Moscow for the special purpose of quelling the
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German advancement and sharing the lands that the Germans will be leaving behind
(Richardson, 1991:136). In the company of Molotov, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs
of the time, and Poskrebyshev, Stalin’s personal chancellery, the two leaders meet and Barker
parodies this meeting with his never-ending impulse to satirize, which blocks his attempts to
purify his theatre from ‘relevance’ as a means of social usefulness. He mentions this meeting,
in which Churchill and Stalin are seen sharing out the war-torn lands from the map, as an
example to that impulse: “So grotesque was the politics enacted at this moment in history
that I could neither view it objectively nor discover a tragic form for it. The inescapable
baseness of power broking on this scale commanded a satirical response, and it remains
perhaps the finest satirical scene I have attempted, arguably dwarfing the anti-historical
scenes that make up the bulk of the play” (1993:33). One other means by which Barker
parodies the meeting is the Scottish comedian Archie McGroot who functions as “the
spokesperson of Stalin’s political clownery” (Alied, 2014:163) along with the interpreters of
the two leaders who deliberately miss out some words from their interpretation either by their
incapacity or in order to prevent a catastrophe. In Barker’s understanding, his version of the
meeting holds an equal historical validity to the other accounts regarding the meeting, even
though those accounts have autobiographical qualities, as the historian has the chance to
make additions and omissions very much like the interpreters in the banquet.
By attributing a chorus-like function to the comedian McGroot, Barker offers a new
interpretation of history from the point of view of an artist, a marginal figure who was not
even given a place in the official historical records. In other words, through McGroot’s
mouth, Barker gives his audience the anti-history of the silenced. When the subject of the
feast turns to the best definition of history, McGroot counters Stalin’s idealistic definition
with his comparison of history to hysterectomy and refers to a woman being raped by ten
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Soviet soldiers in Manchuria as the ‘real’ history. McGroot’s reference can be traced in the
pages of historical sources, as the Soviet Union is known to have invaded the Japanese state
Manchuria towards the end of the war, simply ravishing the land, the goods and the women
in the territory (Pakula, 2009:530). Through McGroot’s comments, Barker brings to light a
historical event outtalked by Russian historians and reveals how history functions like a
medical operation in which the hands holding the scalpel determine the future of the patient.
In the following scene titled “The Soldiers Fictionalize Their History”, Barker reveals
his historical consciousness again by openly emphasizing the fictional quality of history and
that history is a personal phenomenon defined and filled in by the individual’s point of view.
Matrimova’s WHOLEFILM project is her way of keeping record of her history while Ilona
wants to dig into the mystery of her sister’s death to make sense of her own. Stalin, on the
other hand, seems obsessed with how history will record his story and how he will be
remember by future generations, saying: “History will never forgive me for dying at this
point. […] There must be a proper moment, a moment when history will say, it was right that
Stalin ceased to exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat” (19). Stalin’s paranoid character
urges him to put away all the portraits and photographs of him taken before, as he believes
that those images cannot faithfully represent what he believes himself to be at the moment.
He orders his men to find the photographer who can do justice to his face for the sake of
future generations, and this photographer turns out to be Ilona whose view of history differs
completely from Stalin’s. In a dialogue with Sorge, the Russian secret agent, she defines
history as a mad dog which devours the weak and spares only those who are powerful enough
to stand against it:
When the mad dog comes for you

Don’t run, you’ll only stumble.
Instead, lie down and show your throat,
Some dogs don’t bite the humble… (23).
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Even though Stalin views history as something to be captured, Ilona believes that history is
the one who captures, and only the lucky can survive its bites. Weeks observes that “the
History [Stalin] represents is rhetorically and self-consciously a totality in-the-making and
retains a ‘world-historical’ glow. Ilona is not an agent in these terms; hers is a history ‘from
below’, strategically directed at avoiding the mad dog of power as best as she can” (2001:68).
Stalin obviously believes that it is in his capacity to change the direction of history with an
intervention from above in a very godlike manner. In his discussion with Mme Donkin,
Zdhanov, Lashenko and Poskrebyshev on the nature and functions of art, Stalin mentions the
Soviet Armenian composer named Aram Khachaturian whom he influenced in the
composition of his notes and who influenced Stalin with his music in depressive times of the
war. Khachaturian is an actual historical personage who is known to have achieved
considerable reputation in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime (Huang, 1999:341).
Through Stalin’s voice, Barker draws a different image of the composer as one who lets the
authority ‘tap his head’ in order to give a direction to his art on the way to promoting the
Party’s policies. Similarly, the composer’s music also gives direction to Stalin’s thoughts by
which he gives the gravest decisions about the fate of his nation revealing, as the title of the
scene suggests, “The Spontaneous Nature of Historical Decisions” (25).
The play moves towards a climax when Ilona is summoned to the Kremlin to
immortalize Stalin’s face thanks to her skills in photography. Alied argues that, “returning to
the Kremlin, the final encounter in the play between Ilona and Stalin is an encounter between
history (Stalin’s story) and its antithesis (the foreigner’s story)” (2014:176). Barker brings
together a historical figure and an imaginary character in the last scene of his play, titled
“History Encounters its Antithesis”, by which he proposes that history is not a chronology of
listed truths, but a dialectical process whose meaning is always flexible depending on where
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one is looking at it from. Even though the subject of the dialogue between Ilona and Stalin is
the representation of the latter’s face as it is in the photograph to be taken by the former, it is
quite telling regarding historical representation, as well:
STALIN: You are to photograph me as I am […] It is very difficult to

photograph Stalin as he is. Who is Stalin? One day he was in the film, and the
next they rubbed him off. […] It is fraught with risks.
ILONA: Is it? Isn’t it a face like any other?
[…]
STALIN: Does it not show a profound ignorance of art to think you could put
Stalin next to George VI? It is not a face I have here, it is a history.
ILONA: But at the same time you are very ordinary! […] I wouldn’t look at
you twice in the street (41-42).
Barker, in this dialogue, draws attention to the subjective nature of artistic and historical
representations. While Stalin sees his face as a symbol of power and magnificence evoking
fear in the beholder, Ilona is aware that he has an ordinary face which does not even evoke
attention in her. When this face is conveyed through generations by means of Ilona’s
photograph as a historical proof, the future beholders of it will possibly believe that Stalin
was a man of grandeur, even though Ilona, the eye-witness to that moment in history, knows
that he was a paranoid man with prostate interested more in the future of his face rather than
the future of his nation.
Such historical references to people and events along with minor mentions of other
famous historical figures like Trotsky, Lenin and George VI all contribute to Barker’s
attempts at writing an alternative history, or an antihistory in his own terms. In addition, such
references attribute a metadramatic essence to the play with an eye to Hornby’s identification
of real-life reference as a variety of metadrama. Barker obviously makes use of his personal
interest in history, especially the Soviet history, along with his extensive reading regarding
the Russian history before and after the two world wars. Even though the metadramatic
referentiality of these real life persons and events has lost its effectiveness in time, the image
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of two sovereigns sharing out territories on maps in secret meetings does not sound
unimaginable during the cold war years including the year the play was written in. Barker
shows that nothing has actually changed since the two catastrophic wars of the 20th century
and the world continues turning according to the words coming through the lips of a few
powerful men. His choice of the Soviet history as a subject matter does not seem coincidental
and the Stalin-Churchill meeting is reminiscent of the meeting in the 1961 Vienna Summit
between John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, and Nikita Khrushchev, the
leader of the Soviet Union (Dunbabin, 2014:258) and the 1973 Washington meeting between
Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader following Khrushchev and Richard Nixon, the US
President of the time (Kissinger, 1999:274-275). The professed motivations of such meetings
have been announced to be the betterment of bilateral relations; however, the actual reasons
behind them have always been speculated about.
Barker obviously sees no difference between his own time and the period he deals
with in the play in terms of governmental attitude to art and freedom of expression. In
Arguments for a Theatre, he argues that the artist’s struggle has never changed from the years
of the great wars to the years of cold war, for which art must acquire a different, target-
oriented outlook in order to liberate itself from the discourse that unconsciously serves the
purposes of the authoritarian regime: “In an era of authoritarian government the best theatre
might learn a different function […] it might engage with conscience at the deepest level. To
achieve this it would learn to discard the subtle counter-authoritarianism that lurks behind all
satire, and cease its unacknowledged collaboration with the ruling order by not reproducing
its stereotypes” (48). Such a parallelism attributes a deeper metadramatic essence to Barker’s
play, as its references to real-life historical personages and events still preserve their
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referentiality on behalf of the audience who can easily form the connections between what is
shown to them and what they themselves experience in real life.
The metadramatic character of the play stems particularly from Barker’s abundant
use of self-referential elements both through the character McGroot, who constantly alienates
the audience with his comments on the other characters’ dialogues and actions, and the
central motive in the play being the question of artistic representation as in the case of Ilona’s
photograph or Matrimova’s film. Barker, very much like in Bela’s case in No End of Blame,
uses the artists in the play including Ilona, Matrimova and Victor as a mouthpiece to voice
his ideas regarding the issues like ethics of art, the artist’s responsibility and the hardships an
artist comes across in the process of artistic production. For instance, in the scene titled “The
Soldiers Fictionalize Their History”, Sorge confronts Matrimova and the soldiers cast for the
war film with his ideas about what ‘proper’ art is. He talks like a censor or an art critic in his
argumentation that true art must have a reason, saying: “The proper war film asks, did the
soldiers die for something, or did they die for nothing? It is a revolutionary question. So the
proper war film is not actually about the battle, it is about the reasons for the battle” (13).
Sorge seems ready to attribute a political and moral function to art regardless of art’s duty to
itself, which is inconsistent with Barker’s understanding of art as a completely functionless
endeavour. In opposition to Sorge’s misconception of art’s powers, Barker gives voice to
Matrimova and explains his own ideas about the true nature of artistic vision through her
mouth. Matrimova says: “Sorge, one day I will make a film, and it will tell the entire truth.
It will contain every political truth and every personal truth. It will contain the whole of
reality. I will call it WHOLEFILM. I hate partiality, I hate bits!” (14). This statement, in a
way, justifies Barker’s motivation to keep his art free of political and moral discourses, and
now that a complete aloofness from the realities of life is not possible for an artist, Barker
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observes that an unselective covering of all truths will be equally impartial for an artist in the
face of a political and moral bombardment of meanings.
Similarly, the scene titled “The Poet Can Be Trusted to Castrate Himself” is quite
self-referential, as it refers to the process of artistic production in the face of external forces
of censorship as well as the artist’s unconscious urge for self-censorship as indicated with
the word ‘castration’. At the beginning of the scene, Sorge is seen examining Ilona’s
photographic plates for a test of ‘appropriateness’ while Arkov confronts him with a similar
issue that has been troubling him. Arkov accuses Sorge of reading his letters to his wife and
censoring them even though he believes there is nothing inappropriate mentioned in them.
However, Sorge’s justification is quite telling about the functions of art and the
responsibilities of the artist as viewed from the perspective of the dominant ideology which
Barker himself is known to have suffered from. The dialogue between the two officers go
like:
ARKOV: You are not to censor my letters.

SORGE: There is too much death in them. Write more about victory and less
about death.
ARKOV: I am not interested in victory. […] I detest your facile reasoning.
SORGE: You detest reason altogether. […] Put your death interest in some
poems. This letter, you see, has too much authority, the poem none at all.
Later, the poem will have the authority and the letter none at all, but by then
it won’t matter (20).
Barker draws attention to the long-debated question of censorship of art in this dialogue, a
disturbance to the playwright himself along with a great number of his contemporaries, as
the dominant political parties have always attempted to change the direction of art for the
good of the cause. Barker forms a parallelism here between the Stalinist regime in the Soviet
Union and the Thatcher period in England in the 80s with an attempt to display the true face
of governmental intervention in arts. The fact that Sorge criticizes the abundance of the
images of death in Arkov’s letters also strengthens the scene’s self-referentiality when
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Barker’s aforementioned preoccupation with death and catastrophe in his plays is taken into
consideration. Barker seems to be voicing his own disturbance at the benighted criticism
directed at his plays regarding the air of death and catastrophe pervading them. A similar
parallelism is formed by Barker between the conditions which led to the occurrence of a
literary tradition, the agit-prop, in the Soviet Russia and the conditions which led to the
flourishing of a propagandistic political drama in Britain. Such allusions to other literary
forms and works add to the play’s metadramatic essence and display that Barker lumps the
political drama of his time with any other kind of political concern in art no matter what the
motivation is.
In the same scene, Ilona engages in a similar discussion with Sorge regarding the
nature and functions of her photographs in the face of the so-called greater motivations of
the party. With the dialogue of the two, Barker digs more into the issue of censorship and the
lack of freedom of expression in art in relation with his own time. While Ilona is interrogating
Sorge for the whereabouts of her sister, Sorge keeps questioning her regarding the side her
art is taking in such a chaotic time. He defines the art of photography as one that comes
together with “the problem of selection” (21) drawing attention to the spontaneous and
selective nature of artistic representation. As the representative of the totalitarian ideological
voice, Sorge expresses the authority’s wish to turn art into propaganda saying: “I’ve looked
with great interest at the photographs. Technically, they can’t be criticized. […] It’s not in
the technical area I have reservations. It’s in the content. […] Because I feel sure you will
agree the idea of a neutral art is utterly redundant” (21). Sorge argues that art is naturally
functional, and an artist must pick a side in order not to perish from the mainstream public
recognition. This is an argument which Barker strongly antagonizes, as he believes that art
is not inherently functional and is pure as long as it liberates itself from all these ideological
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and moral functions. The response Ilona gives to Sorge is one that Barker gives to the
mainstream political dramatists of his time who commercialize their art for the sake of
acknowledgment and gain: “My bad breath is legendary. I think your smell comes from your
soul, don’t you? You blame the bowel, but really the bowel is only –” (23). Very much like
Ilona’s, Barker’s ‘bad breath’ obviously disturbs some ‘sensitive’ noses, even though the
bodies they are attached to is rotten inwardly.
Towards the end of the play, Barker, this time, gives a voice to the ultimate despot at
whose will art is given a direction. In the scene titled “The Spontaneous nature of Historical
Decisions”, Stalin openly confesses that governmental intervention in art is a necessity and
a useful move for the betterment of human understanding of beauty. In his conversation with
Mme Donkin over a symphony written in praise of himself, Stalin likens an artist’s head to
a boiled egg which needs some tapping with a spoon in order to give it the desired shape and
a better taste. The dialogue goes like:
STALIN: The artist’s head is a boiled egg. You do not slice it off. You tap it
with a spoon […] I have yet to meet an artist who did not benefit from being
tapped. They think they live on their own, but they’re mistaken, they live
among us, and they have to learn they aren’t the only birds on the lake. If they
want to sing out of tune, by all means let them do so, but to expect us to
construct music halls and pay the wages of the orchestra! No, sing in tune or
shit in your own nest. (POSKREBYSHEV claps).
DONKIN: I think the section praising you is most – appropriate.
STALIN: Which section’s that?
DONKIN: The third movement.
STALIN: Is that in praise of me?
ZDHANOV: It says so in the notes.
STALIN: Of course it says so in the notes. It would do, wouldn’t it? I don’t
read notes. When I’m dead he’ll say it was a trick to get past the censors. No,
they are ruthless, artists, we have a terrible struggle with them. […] I’ve mixed
feelings about it […] He was up the wrong street there. […] But we tapped his
egg, and you see, he has got better!
MME DONKIN: He nearly committed suicide.
STALIN: Did he! Did he really? Never mind, he didn’t, he became a better
composer instead! If they cannot resolve the contradictions, they are better off
dead (25-26).
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In an openly threatening tone, Stalin confesses that the governmental support to the artists is
given in accordance with their servitude to the greater causes of the party. He claims that
such an intervention is motivated by an urge of mutual benefit, as both the party finds a means
to propagandize its policies and the artist gets to benefit from governmental financial support,
to easily arrange a place for exhibiting his art as well as making his art more ‘appropriate’.
The composer Stalin talks about turns out to be the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian,
a very-well known artist in the Soviet Union who was awarded several titles and prizes by
the Communist Party including the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1954 and The Order
of the October Revolution in 1971 (Geodakyan, 1979:18-19). Through Khachaturian’s
music, Stalin expresses his conviction that art has and must have a moral content that changes
the perceptions of its target audience, even if it is music which is “the least susceptible to
materialist orthodoxy” (Barker, 1985:27). He attributes a moral function to art and confesses
that the composer’s music helped him restore his spirit in the most hopeless and troublesome
moments during the war: “There is no question music has a moral content, but how? How
was it Khachaturian restored me at the very moment I felt I had betrayed Lenin and the entire
people? I was mad with guilt, I saw their ghosts crowding round the room, and yet in three
days I was able to emerge and take control” (27). However, Barker immediately refutes this
idea of a morally functional art by giving voice to Matrimova again who gives a detailed
description of what she means by Wholefilm in a dialogue with Buber. She says: “Until now,
all film has been warped by the interpretation of the single eye. The representation of reality
has been incomplete. Wholefilm […] produc[es] an artistic experience which maximalizes
the audience’s grasp of reality and at the same time offers the prospect of genuine socialist
development” (29). With these words, Barker admits, once again, that artistic representation
is an ultimately subjective activity which reduces reality to just one interpretation and has the
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power to blur the distinction between what is right and what is wrong. The solution to this,
however, is not artlessness, but an impartial approach to the reality as a whole with an
emphasis on the artistic experience which the reality leaves on the audience rather than the
reality itself. As Matrimova observes, this is the only way in which a work of art can be
useful without being functional.
Along with Ilona and Matrimova, Victor stands as another self-referential element in
the play with his endless struggle against the censoring mechanism of the authority in order
to keep his art free of political and moral impositions, which is reminiscent of Barker’s own
struggle against such mechanisms. Victor is constantly confronted by Sorge with regard to
the sides his photographs are taking or must take, and Victor informs Ilona that Sorge has
been threatening him to make him work for the cause of the party. Victor tells Ilona: “I said
to him, I am an innocent photographer. He said there is no such thing as an innocent
photographer, only photographers with varying degrees of guilt. What does that mean? It’s a
death sentence” (30). Once again, Sorge attributes political and moral functions to art and
reduces it to an instrument to give direction to men’s thoughts. He openly confesses that
things have completely changed after the war and everybody has a purpose in living rather
than mere survival. When Ilona expresses her wish to go away, Sorge says: “Go where? […]
You see, I don’t think people will be just going - any more. That is archaic. That is very pre-
war, like Cook’s tours of the Danube Principalities. Like beggars, and caviar. Just going. Just
coming. What does ‘can I go’ mean? It means ‘can I avoid’, doesn’t it? I think we should
say, rather, ‘Can I serve?’” (32). Victor cannot stand the pressure anymore and he pays the
price with his life trying to liberate his art from censorship by being shot trying to escape the
compound with his photograph crates in his hand. Ilona, on the other hand, chooses to stand
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against that authoritative mechanism and faces Stalin to prove the inevitable dependence of
earthly things on art to achieve immortality.
Consequently, Barker’s The Power of the Dog gives a panorama of the aftermath of
the Second World War through the spectacles of three artists in the face of governmental
oppression and censorship directed not only at their art but also at their freedom of thought.
The play becomes appropriate for a classification as historiographic in the playwright’s
treatment of the mainstream historical knowledge with an aim to disrupt it and to propose an
alternative version of history with an equal degree of validity of historical representation
thanks to an unfamiliar portrayal of historical personages like Joseph Stalin, Winston
Churchill and other minor figures. Barker’s portrayal of Stalin, for instance, replaces the
familiar image of the fear-inspiring despot with the image of a feeble old man suffering from
paranoia and prostate or the image of Churchill as a reasonable and serious man with the
image of a greedy old man with limited mental capacities. With these equally valid
portrayals, Barker proves the subjective and flexible essence of historical representations
changing according to point of view. The play can also be classified as metadramatic with
the real life references to historical figures and events indicated above. Along with these real
life references, the play is also self-referential in that it uses artists as central characters and
works of art as central motifs around which all the play’s action revolves. In his protagonists’
struggle against the authority, Barker voices his ideas regarding issues like censorship,
freedom of expression and ethics of art, using Ilona’s photography and Matrimova’s film
project as parallels to his own drama. In all these respects, Barker’s The Power of the Dog
appropriately qualifies as an example of the subgenre historiographic metadrama.

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3.3. Pity in History and Art as ‘Vulgar Ostentation’
First published in 1984, Barker’s Pity in History is one of the playwright’s
catastrophic plays that explores the limits of human suffering and the motivations behind
historical representations and artistic creations. Setting his play in the chaotic atmosphere in
England during the Civil War, Barker questions the issues like the true functions of art, the
role of the authority in the recording of history and the war as a means of injury on the
physical, emotional and intellectual levels. Barker forms parallelisms between the 17th
century and his own time in order to display that history always repeats itself even though
the agents keep replacing each other and that art must be kept free, at all costs, of any
involvement in material gain or political propaganda.
The play opens in a cathedral, during the English Civil War, where the
parliamentarian Sergeant Boys talks his privates back into discipline while a wounded cook
named Murgatroyd is doing the opposite with his loud cry of damnation of war. After the
soldiers’ departure, the chaplain of the cathedral, Croop, tries to assure the cook that he has
been suffering for a perfect reason, in the name of Christ and political justice. In the
meantime, a mason-sculptor named Gaukroger scolds his apprentice, Pool, for not putting
pickles inside his sandwich although the boy has a valid excuse that the grocer has been
arrested because of the war. In the following scene, Gaukroger walks into the cathedral where
Croop, Murgatroyd and Factor, an officer, have been having a discussion over the nature of
war and idolatry. The sculptor makes an offer to the two officers of building a granite
memorial, an obelisk or a pillar in the memory of the martyrs of the ongoing war, to which
the chaplain responds with an indifferent, ignorant rejection of art, lowering the sculptor’s
spirits and appetite to turn his art into cash. The politically propagandistic chaplain openly
reduces art to the level of ‘pagan ornament’ and ‘vulgar ostentation’ while Factor seems to
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enjoy the artist’s sense of humour and empathize with the man’s grievances regarding art
being not appreciated in the present time.
In another part of the cathedral, Murgatroyd keeps on shouting out the bitter truths to
the face of soldiers, condemning the war, the Cromwellian regime and the House of
Commons while Factor strives to calm him down, ending up confining him to the crypt not
to upset the soldiers anymore. Croop, on the other hand, has been doing the marketing of war
to the soldiers, by spreading fear into their hearts and persuading them that it is Christ’s war
they are fighting when Venables, a Catholic royalist widow, walks in and threatens them with
the King’s and God’s wrath. In the meantime, Gaukroger works on a monument, which later
turns out to be for the widow’s late husband, in some part of the cathedral and preaches his
apprentice about the power of an artist in overcoming time and death through his art. He also
acknowledges the fact that political and religious intervention in art is inevitable at such a
catastrophic time and all the artists are doomed to be “herded [...] like mad sheep, offering
their services to the bishop” (75). Their dialogue is interrupted by Venables who shows up
to see how her husband’s monument is turning out to be. When Gaukroger asks the widow
for some advance to feed himself and the apprentice boy, the latter protests that it is
disappointing to see an artist ‘rattling for grasp and profit’ before giving him the money.
Venables, then, comes across the hopeless Murgatroyd, who cannot even understand if he is
dead and in hell or alive and blind, in the crypt which turns out to be the widow’s secret store
for valuable paintings.
Back in the sculptor’s corner, Factor examines the monument and questions the artist
about the honesty of his art, as he is carving honour for a dishonourable man, a charitable
face, graceful hands and a lovely wig for a lout who was actually a mean, tight-handed man
with lousy hair. Gaukroger coldly responds to the man saying that honesty is not part of his
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commission and his art tells the truth that the dead man was rich enough to buy the artist’s
skill and vain enough to believe what is written in the epitaph. Soon enough, a group of
soldiers, including Pool who has earlier left his master to become a mercenary, shows up in
the gallery with the intention of breaking the sculpture into pieces with Factor’s provocation.
The sculptor does not even try to hinder the soldiers who are scolded by the chaplain for
mistaking property with idolatry.
Meanwhile in the crypt, Venables tries to keep Murgatroyd silent, threatening him
with a blade on his neck in order not to be detected by the soldiers. When the soldiers depart,
she kills the cook coldheartedly, as she believes him to be a traitor to the crown and the God.
She, then, goes up into the gallery only to find the sculptor drunk and thrashing about among
the broken pieces of his sculpture. She tries to fire him with passion to build the monument
again, deeming great art as their only way to demand a place within history, before he notices
the cook’s blood on her dress. She uses the artist’s help to dispose of the cook’s corpse and
leaves for Calais until the end of the war. After the widow’s departure, the sculptor discovers
that Pool has been hiding in one of the tombs, as he deserted from the army. The play ends
with the artist making up with his apprentice to find the language, style and the new manner
for the new situation as all the artists do when History is sticking round their teeth.
Barker reveals his historical consciousness from the very beginning of the play by
setting it in the middle of the Puritan Revolt, one of the bloodiest uprisings in English history
which manifested itself in terms of extensive bloodshed, religious and political oppression as
well as limitation of human rights in all fields of life including arts. The Civil War in England
broke out as “the result of incompetent kingship which allowed religious militants to settle
their disputes about the nature of the church, and therefore of different concepts of the moral
order (Morrill, et al. 1984:19). It resulted in the death of thousands including King Charles I,
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who was executed with the charge of treason, and the alleviation of the domination of the
Church of England in religious affairs and the English monarchy in political ones. However,
the reasons for Barker’s interest in this period in English history lie behind the cultural and
intellectual restrictions in the period, including the closing down of theatres and the violation
of the freedom of expression under Cromwell’s rule. Kastan observes that the Parliament’s
desire to close all theatres during the Civil War was a politically correct move, as theatre has
always been “a contested arena of power and desire, never inherently either an agent of
subversion or an apparatus of royal authority […] it belonged neither to the King nor to his
critics […] [and] was claimed by both, for it was a significant site of voluble articulation, a
locus of the production of meanings and images that could neither be stabilized nor
controlled” (1999:209-210). Barker thinks of these restrictions in parallel with his own time
with respect to the underhanded censorship of artistic activities by political power-holders.
The action in the play takes place in a cathedral right outside the battlefield where a
squad of Roundheads bands back together to tend the wounded and rest for the night. This
scene turns into a meeting among the Soldiers being the voice of the politics, the Chaplain
being the voice of the church and the sculptor being the voice of arts. Through these
characters, Barker shows how interrelated these voices were in the history, politics and
religion being the sole mechanism that gives artistic productions their direction. In his
dialogue with his master sculptor Gaukroger, the apprentice Pool mentions Oliver
Cromwell’s name, strengthening the play’s historiographic essence by looking at the Civil
War from a different angle through the eyes of an imaginary historical figure: “She says
Cromwell’s men tear pictures with their teeth. Do they?” (68). This speculative statement
about a famous historical figure is quite well-placed, though still fictive, thinking that
Cromwell has always been notorious for his attitude towards artistic endeavours, which was
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extensively disapproved by the majority of the public during the Interregnum. Tomalin
observes that the public obviously had “enough of fighting, they never approved the
execution of the king, they resented puritan suppression of Christmas and Mayday festivals,
dancing, the theatre and children’s games on Sunday” (2002:118). Using Pool as a
mouthpiece, Barker voices the disturbance of the general public in the past and of himself in
the present time with such governmental intervention in artistic and cultural activities.
Barker also draws attention to the massive bloodshed and savagery during the Civil
War with an emphasis on the suffering of the wounded army cook Murgatroyd and the
accounts about the battlefield given by the soldiers. In a dialogue between the officer Factor
and the chaplain Croop, Barker expresses the level of butchery during the war which is
somehow justified by the two officers on the pretext that everything is being done in the name
of God:
FACTOR: They went barmy today, killing the killed several times over…
CROOP: They were filled with the fury of God.
FACTOR: At lunchtime the only cadaver they’d seen was their granddad, by
tea-time they’d walked through an acre of brains…
CROOP: What are you saying?
FACTOR: The sergeants could hardly restrain them. Had them drilling and
shouting their names…
CROOP: Was not Samson furious, and in his fury pure? (69).
Interestingly, the incident mentioned by the two men is reminiscent of a documented
historical event, known as the Bartholomy incident that took place during the Civil War in
1646, in which the Parliamentarian soldiers took refuge in a church after a brutal fighting and
more than a thousand casualties. An anonymous parliamentary document of the same year,
titled “Englands Wolfe with Eagles Claws, The Cruel Impieties of Bloud-thirsty Royalists,
and Blasphamous Anti-Parliamentarians, under the Command of that Inhumane Prince
Rupert, Digby, and the Rest. Wherein the Barbarous Crueltie of our Civil Uncivil Warres is
Briefly Discovered”, mentions the incident in such a way that it resembles the soldiers’
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situation in the play: “How could wee forget that bloody massacre of Byron in Cheshire, that
in coole blood murthered no less than 1500, that fled to a Church for shelter” (in Coster,
1999:95). Barker, in this respect, seems to have made use of historical documents with the
addition of imaginary characters and dialogues in an attempt to blur the distinction between
the fictitious and the real.
At this point in the play, Gaukroger approaches the two officers with the intention to
offer his artistic skills as a means of political and religious propaganda in return for a small
amount of money. His comments on the war going on outside the walls is quite realistic, as
he seems aware that History is being written by guns, cannons and swords in the outside
world rather than his worthless efforts in shaping stones: “We listened from the tower, I said
to Pool, I hope this will not be another skirmish, just cuts and grazes, then we heard the
cannonade and I knew, this was History coming over the hill” (69). In another dialogue,
Venables justifies Gaukroger’s hopeless statements about the art in the wartime by referring
to another famous historical figure, Anthony Van Dyck, the Flemish painter of the English
court during Charles I’s rule. She protests that the Puritan revolt affected artistic
developments negatively, saying: “There was an Italian here six months ago, but he fled. You
can’t blame him, the puritans think all Italians are popes…the war has ruined English art.
Look at Van Dyke” (77). The Flemish painter is known to be the most famous representative
of what is called ‘the Cavalier Art’ with his new-fashioned portraits of King Charles I, which
won him extensive reputation. For instance, Levey argues that, in Dyck’s paintings, “Charles
is given a totally natural look of instinctive sovereignty, in a deliberately informal setting
where he strolls so negligently that he seems at first glance nature's gentleman rather than
England's King” (1971:128). In a similar example, Venables also refers to Bernini, the Italian
sculptor of the Baroque style (Boucher, 1998:134-142) in the service of the papacy in the
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17th century, in her attempts to determine the limits of Gaukroger’s artistic skills. Such
references to historical characters of the 17th century place Barker’s play upon more realistic
foundations serving the playwright’s purposes to give documented history and products of
his imagination side by side with an aim to equalize their powers of historical representation.
The list of references to historical personages goes on with Venables’ mention of a
Lady Digby whose china gets lost at sea due to a storm on the way to the continental Europe.
Barker here benefits from his reading of historical accounts and draws attention to the fact
that many Royalist Catholic aristocrats and the rich had to escape England after the victory
of Cromwell’s army, Calais and Antwerp being the most favoured destinations. Jane Digby
is one of those aristocrats who fled the country for political reasons, but made a bigger
reputation with her multiple scandalous marriages including one with an Arab sheikh right
before her death (Keenan, 2000:167). Venables herself plans something similar, to escape
from the country to Calais after the completion of her deceased husband’s monument put up
by Gaukroger. However, Gaukroger expresses his hopelessness and fear that history will
erase them anyway, mentioning only those who are powerful enough to be mentioned. In a
dialogue with his apprentice Pool, Gaukroger, emphasizing the message behind the play’s
title, says: “The plough will go through every palace and the bomb in every bedroom […]
No pity in History” (85). Venables contradicts his hopelessness and fear with her idealism
and enthusiasm regarding art’s power to outlive centuries, echoing Barker’s own view of it,
when she says: “When all the world is tilted, we need people who can keep their feet, who
say of all calamity, this is a setback, but I hold to my own truth, I will not waver. The storm
of history. When it has passed, clean up. Stone on stone. Brick on brick” (89). Venables
admits that history has the power to wipe away, to silence, to change the reality and to
promote one over the other; yet, it still lies in the imaginative faculties of an artist to fight
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against such disruptive powers of history and immortalize historical moments. A similar idea
is voiced by Pool who tries to elevate his master’s excitement about his art in order to save
him from his hopelessness that history will erase him. The dialogue between the two goes as
follows:
GAUKROGER: Frilly cuffs and whispering Catholics, scented fingers made

for intrigues…the new hand will have blunt fingers, not made for running up
a woman’s knee…
POOL: We’ll get it.
GAUKROGER: Can’t teach you. (Pause.) Can’t eat this sandwich, either…
POOL: (aghast.) Can’t eat a sandwich?
GAUKROGER: Something’s sticking round my teeth…I think it’s History…
POOL: (scrambling out the tomb.) Geddup, Gaukroger! […] Find the
language. Find the style. New manner for new situation. When in doubt,
invent. Copy. Cheat. Get by.
GAUKROGER: He lectures me…
POOL: Calamity, all right, bowled over, flat on yer back, looks bad, admitted,
but not fatal, still got ‘ands, still got ‘eyes… (emphasis in the original, 91-92).
Barker, in these scenes, uses Venables and Pool as a mouthpiece to express his ideas about
the equal validity of fictional accounts to historical documents in historical representation
and to attribute greater powers to an artist’s imaginative skills than a historian’s observational
skills contaminated with ideology. The ending of the play is quite telling in this respect, as
the soldiers – including Pool – bring down Gaukroger’s monument in ruins and the sculptor
gets up to rebuild it to leave a trace in history thanks to his artistic skills.
Barker’s references to all these historical events and personages also contribute to the
play’s metadramatic outlook when they are thought in consideration with Hornby’s
designation of real life references as a variety of metadrama. Barker, this time, turns his
attention away from the Soviet history and chooses an important historical event as a
background to his play, one which is expected to catch the audience’s attention thinking that
the immediate target audience is British and has certain knowledge regarding the English
Civil War along with some intellectual capacity. The references to the historical figures like
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Cromwell, Van Dyck, Bernini, Lady Digby and Caravaggio give the play a realistic essence
whereas all the characters in the play are completely imaginary, diminishing that realistic
effect for a bigger purpose. By these real life characters appearing side by side with their
imaginary companions, Barker writes an alternative historical account with an equal claim to
historical reality which doesn’t even go beyond speculation. Barker gives voice to historical
persons who are too insignificant to even appear in historical accounts and offers their
perspective of the famous historical events to emphasize the subjective nature of historical
representations.
Like all real life references, these allusions lose their metadramatic effectiveness in
time as long as they don’t suggest a parallelism with the time of the performance, because
the audience is required to understand that a real life reference is being made and it has a
deeper metadramatic meaning beneath the surface. Barker’s Pity in History sustains a strong
referential relation to the date when it was written considering the playwright’s choice of the
Cromwell period for the time of his play which parallels the 1980s environment in England
under Thatcher’s premiership in terms of issues like censorship of art and freedom of
expression. In his Arguments for a Theatre, Barker himself forms a connection between this
play and the general condition of theatre in his own time, relating an event that takes place
right after a performance of Pity in History in London. He says: “The reaction of an old
soldier, who appeared to have wandered in from the street, bedecked with medals which
clearly demonstrated his rights to his own history - his empirical authority, so to speak, to
debate the subject of war and injury – was profoundly hostile to the portrayal of a dying army
cook […] This old soldier’s bitterness underlined for me the poverty of the common
perception of theatre and its responsibilities that now dominates the realist discourse”
(1993:94). Barker, here, criticizes the contemporary understanding of theatre which comes
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with an obsession with functional and responsible representation on stage as a moral example
to the audience watching the play. Barker fights against such moral and political impositions
on any kind of artistic endeavours and aims to liberate his art from the constraints of what
realism dictates. Very much like the official banning of artistic activities during the English
Civil War, the theatre during Barker’s most prolific years suffers from governmental
interventions as well as the mainstream political dramatists’ futile attempts to come up with
a recipe of proper drama.
This issue is ultimately related to the central subject of the play, the artists’ struggle
against the authority in a chaotic atmosphere, the authority being the church and the
government in the play’s particular case. It is possible that the central characters of the play,
the artist Gaukroger and the art patron Venables, are taken into account as the two sides of
this never-ending discussion between those who view art as a functional activity and those
who view it as independent of any functions. In this respect, the characters’ ideas related to
functions of art and responsibilities of the artist are self-referential in the sense that they stand
for what Barker argues regarding the same matters. At the end of the second scene of the
play, for instance, Pool refers to the attitude of the governmental officials towards works of
art, which is reminiscent of the intolerant attitude in Barker’s time towards the idea of
complete freedom in art. Relating Venables’ statement to his master Gaukroger, Pool says:
“She says Cromwell’s men tear pictures with their teeth” (68). The attitude of the
parliamentarian soldiers stems from a conservative kind of morality pertain to the puritans of
the time in which a strict authoritarian populism is promoted and what is outside of these
moral borders is blindly destroyed. Barker’s relation of this attitude with the attitude of the
government of his time towards art is quite well-placed thinking that what is called the
Thatcherite morality is always associated with a strict moral code reminiscent of the
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Victorian era (Tracey and Herzog, 2016:63-76). In both attitudes, art is reduced to a
governmental instrument which promotes and advertises the mainstream, dominant ideology
and morality or simply vanishes.
A similar attitude is exemplified in the play when Croop, the chaplain of the church,
refers to the statue built by Gaukroger in the place as a means of committing sin whereas he
justifies the killing of Catholic soldiers with being filled with ‘the fury of God’. He describes
the works of art around him saying: “The worship of idols. The mocking of the Lord. […] it
is not a place of worship, it’s a wedding cake. Dead men’s tombs higher than the altar. Vanity
offends Him, pomp makes His wounds bleed” (68). With Croop’s comparison of art with
idols built against God, Barker underlines the false conception of appropriate art once more
and emphasizes the timelessness of the attempts at attributing a moral function to art. He
depicts Gaukroger not as an honourable artist in such a chaotic atmosphere, unlike Bela and
Ilona in the two previously-discussed plays, but as a profiteer who tries to sell his artistic
skills in exchange for a little pension, some cheese and pickles. In the dialogue between
Gaukroger and Croop, the former never stands up to the latter’s propagandistic attributions
to and labelling of art:
CROOP: Do you find something to mock in the army?

GAUKROGER: No, killing must be done or I lose half of my commissions.
(He turns to a nearby tomb.) Here’s a captain of marines got murdered on an
island. I did that twenty years back---I was never very good at skulls, not that
there’s a call for skulls now. Necrophilia’s got unfashionable, they all want
swag and trophies.
CROOP: This is God’s army, and we rinse out all sin…
GAUKROGER: Amen.
CROOP: We demolish all pagan ornament---
GAUKROGER: Well, it’s only mass production, half of it---
CROOP: You ponder the ostentation of the vulgar. Pack up your hammers and
grow potatoes (70).
Even though an ordinary religious officer reduces his art to the level of pagan ornamentation
and vulgar ostentation, Gaukroger does not protest knowing that being marginal means being
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annihilated under a totalitarian regime. The religious official’s ideas are echoed by the
officers of the army, showing that all the apparatuses of the totalitarian government work
hand in hand with an aim to supress opposing views, as seen in Sponge’s words: “That’s
idolatry. Ain’t it? When we got in the big ‘ouse at Harborough […] I went up these stairs
[…] the room looked bigger than a field, an’ it was full of bits, like pictures, an’ this furniture,
an’ it was all there, like it was a church, an’ I wanted to smash it, an’ I smashed it ‘cos it was
idolatry […] I was full of the Lord” (74). Even though Gaukroger seems to be realistically
profit-oriented in this chaotic environment, he does not seem to be completely unaware of
the true power of his art, but he chooses to keep a low profile for political reasons and does
not stand up against such accusations against his art. Such an attitude on behalf of Gaukroger
is used by Barker probably as a means to voice his critique of his contemporaries who know
the power of their pen, but choose to use this power for political ends.
In the sixth scene of the play, Gaukroger teaches his apprentice Pool the greatness
and limitlessness of an artist’s imaginative faculties with the addition that these faculties
mean nothing if the artist does not have an idea about where to use them. He says: “You have
all the sculpture in the world stored in your fingertips if you watch. And if they do not crush
your fingers you can make it all again, like the books can be re-written and all the pictures
painted over again, unless they murder all the painters, which can’t be done because painters
are born every minute, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because there’s too much talent and
it’s got cheap” (75). Even though the sculptor possesses a certain amount of idealism in his
heart, the circumstances seem to be contradicting his ideals and forcing him to be realistic,
as he later tells Pool: “All the masons will be herded in one place like mad sheep, offering
their services to the bishop. Down will come the wages and you will have fifty starving
masons instead of one fed. Stick to where you are. This will pass and you’ll get an income if
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you are patient” (75). In such troublesome circumstances, Gaukroger believes that going with
the flow is the best option for an artist in order not to starve to death, as institutional religious
intervention in artistic activities has been rampant during the Civil War. With the example of
Gaukroger, Barker expresses his ideas about the responsibilities of the artist, in a critical way,
not to himself or any other person or institutions, but to the art itself whatever the
circumstances require.
Towards the end of the play, Barker draws attention to the power of art in terms of
writing history and changing the course of events with the motivation the artist has at the
back of his mind. In the case of Gaukroger, the motivation is one that forces him to build his
representation on lies which turn out to have a valid claim to reality in direct proportion to
the amount of money he is paid by his patron, Venables. In his dialogue with the government
officer Factor, the sculptor defends himself that his commission provides him with an
alternative reality and he relies on the power of his art in representing it as he likes:
FACTOR: Why do you do this? Carve honour for courtiers? Run up splendour
for dishonest men?
GAUKROGER: The honest men have nothing to pay me with.
FACTOR: It’s a lie, this. Bigger than the altar for a lout who spent his life
sipping in clubs and tampering with prostitutes.
GAUKROGER: His blood went bad and blew his heart up three times big,
and his foot came off with his boot…
FACTOR: Show that, then.
GAUKROGER: It wasn’t part of my commission.
FACTOR: His expression is charitable, though he was mean…his hand is
graceful, though it was tight…his wig is lovely, though his hair was full of
lice…
GAUKROGER: It doesn’t look a bit like him, but it has got life…
FACTOR: A bad art, this…
GAUKROGER: Why? It tells the truth.
FACTOR: What truth?
GAUKROGER: That he was rich enough to buy my skill, and vain enough
to believe his epitaph. He could have bought Bernini, but Bernini wasn’t
passing, so he bought Gaukroger for fifteen quid (81-82).
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Like Barker, Gaukroger is also quite aware that art has the capacity to distort the reality or
underline it depending on the motivation of the artist. Even though Barker seems to be
agreeing with Gaukroger on the latter’s belief that reality is what is represented rather than
what really happened, he does not seem to be reading the same page with the character when
it comes to the outcome of this belief. This does not stem from an obsession with realism in
art on behalf of Barker, but from his insistence on the fact that reality is ultimately subjective
on condition that it remains purely unmotivated by external moral and ideological
interventions. With this motivation in mind, Barker criticizes his contemporaries who enslave
their artistic vision to others’ realities and turn their art into a means for political propaganda.
To emphasize this idea, Barker uses Venables as a mouthpiece in her attempts to put some
spirit, idealism and hope into Gaukroger’s heart. After the soldiers break the sculpture into
pieces, Venables finds the already-drunk sculptor among the broken pieces of his work and
tries to talk him back into building. When questioned by the sculptor why he needs to get
back to work in an environment where true art is given no value, she says: “Why, he says.
We need great art, that’s why. […] We have to have art or we don’t know who we are. It’s
very simple. Do get up” (88). However, Gaukroger opens his eyes to the reality only when
his apprentice Pool teaches him one last lesson by telling him “Never” as an answer to his
hopeless statement that art is dead. The play ends in an optimistic way not for any of the
characters, but for the future of art, as the paintings that Venables has been hiding in the
basement of the church are saved from the soldiers and Pool makes Gaukroger realize that
“too much imitation leaves […] nothing for the real” (92).
Consequently, Barker’s Pity in History bears strong resemblances to the previous
plays discussed in the previous sub-sections in terms of theme and subject matter when its
interest in the documented historical events like the English Civil War and famous historical
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figures like Cromwell is taken into consideration. The play possesses a historical as well as
a historiographic essence with Barker’s attempts to write an alternative version of the history
of the English Civil War from the perspectives of historically minor or completely imaginary
characters assembled into the flow of documented historical events. Barker’s version of the
English Civil War is obviously supplied with his readings and research on the event along
with additions of his imagination, and this authentic version of history possesses an equal
claim to historical truth as much as any other historical document, because historical
accounts, in Barker’s view, have the same narrative and imaginative nature as fictional
accounts. Along with such historiographic tendencies, Barker’s Pity in History also possesses
a strong metadramatic essence with its continuous references and allusions to real life events
and people as well as to itself as a fictional account. Barker uses the characters in the play as
a mouthpiece to voice his ideas regarding issues like functions of art, responsibilities of the
artist, ethics of artistic representation, governmental censorship of art and the artist’s struggle
against the totalitarian authority. With his protagonist’s misconceptions about the functions
of art, Barker forms a parallelism between the artist in his play and the contemporary
dramatists in order to reveal their false political and moral motivations behind their writing,
which comes as an insult to art for Barker. Gaukroger’s sculpture and Venables’ paintings
also represent Barker’s views about great art in the former’s failure to survive the chaos and
the latter’s survival through centuries due to the differences in the motivations behind their
existence. In all these respects, Barker’s Pity in History appropriately qualifies as an example
of the subgenre historiographic metadrama.

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3.4. Scenes from an Execution and ‘What the Circumstances Require’ for Art
Originally produced as a radio play for BBC in 1984, Barker’s Scenes from an
Execution was first staged in 1990 in London and reappeared several times after that thanks
to the positive remarks by the critics and the public. Costa describes the play as “the most
famous and accessible play” (2012) ever produced by the playwright even though Barker
himself openly refuses to regard the play as one of his best. Very much like Barker’s other
famous plays written in the 80s, Scenes from an Execution also takes its subject matter from
a historical event which brings an artist and the authority face to face in a struggle for
domination over historical and artistic representation. In an interview, Barker admits that
“state power is figured in a number of [his] plays about 1980/85” (2011:176) and Scenes
from an Execution is no exception to this, as it “explores the struggle between state power
and the power of artistic imagination” (Gritzner, 2012:337) in a 16th century Venice setting.
The play opens at Galactia’s studio in Venice where she engages in a discussion with
another painter and her nude model as well as her lover, Carpeta, over the latter’s intentions
and constant postponement of leaving his wife for the former. From their discussion over
love, marriage and originality in art, it is deducible that Galactia has a much stronger
character and steadier personality compared to Carpeta who is accused by his lover of lack
of originality, as he has painted the same Christ image eight times due to, what he calls, “a
passion for perfection” (2013:10). In return, Carpeta accuses Galactia of being “a woman and
a sensualist” (10) who thrusts herself to get commissions from the State. After Carpeta’s
departure, the scene proceeds with a veteran named Prodo showing Galactia his war-torn,
mutilated and distorted body as a source of inspiration, as Galactia has been painting the
famous Battle of Lepanto under the state commission. In her conversation with Prodo,
Galactia insists that she is not to be referred to as a woman, but as an artist. She also makes
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the definition of an artist as a ‘midwife’ whose duty is “to bring the truth to birth” (14), and
consequently, decides to paint the destruction brought about by war, instead of the glory
gained by her native land.
With the completion of the painting, the scene is moved to the Doge’s palace where
he examines the painting and protests that his brother, the admiral, is not given a proper and
adequate representation in the work. At this point, the Doge’s views of art as mere reflection
of facts, or “an investment” (18), and history as a means of propaganda clash with Galactia’s
who wants to give an experiential experience to her audience. The Doge believes that an artist
has a duty towards his nation as well as ‘certain priorities’. For him, “a great artist must first
of all be responsible, or all his brush strokes, and all his colouring, however brilliant, will not
fit him out of the second rank. […] Great art will always celebrate!” (18-19). After being
demanded a new painting by the Doge, Galactia begins to struggle with the new painting
while engaging in conflicts with her daughters, Supporta and Dementia, and Carpeta. In one
of their discussions, Carpeta reduces art to the feelings of the artist saying: “You are violent,
so you can paint violence. You are furious, so you can paint fury. And contempt, you can
paint that. […] But you aren’t great enough for pity” (23). He also emphasizes the idea that
art can be and should be used as a means of propaganda, so that the artist can benefit from
institutional support and patronage: “If you could paint pity, the Church would stand up for
you, and if you could paint glory, you would have the State. But you will please nobody”
(23).
In the fifth scene, Galactia begins to paint Prodo as a Turkish soldier while engaging
in a fiery discussion with her daughter Supporta on the power of art, relativity of perception,
artistic imagination and social responsibilities of an artist. Although Supporta seems to adore
her mother’s skills and powerful stance against the authority, she reminds her of her
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responsibilities “not to the State, but to Venetian women” (26). The following scene depicts
how Galactia paints the Admiral, Suffici, with an emphasis on their differing views on reality
and ‘truth’. As an artist commissioned by the State to paint the historical and political truth,
Galactia protests that politics and truth cannot go hand in hand, as one defies the other. At
that moment, Urgentino walks in with a female art critic named Rivera with whom Galactia
discusses the source of art as either inspiration or study. Urgentino praises Galactia’s work
so far but reminds her of the fact that it is the gold and silver of the State on her brush.
The seventh scene takes place in a church where the funeral ceremony of a fellow
painter is carried out and Galactia seems to be bothering Carpeta who objects to be seen in
public with her. The two end up being thrown out of the church in public disgrace. The eighth
scene brings back together Galactia and Rivera in the barracks where the former is working
on the commissioned painting while the latter interrupts her to preach on the political
implications of her work, especially if she glosses over the doge’s wishes. The scene ends
with three drunk sailors rummaging the barracks and Galactia determining to paint one of
them as the central figure of the painting. In the following two scenes, the focus shifts onto
Carpeta who appears to have been summoned by Urgentino and Cardinal Ostensibile to the
court along with the fellow painter Sordo with whom he has a quick conversation on the
outdatedness of their non-secular art. In the courtroom, Urgentino informs Carpeta about his
anxiety regarding Galactia’s work; as, for him, art has the undeniable power to create and
change ‘opinions’ which are “the source of all authority” (44). The two officials begin to
question Carpeta about the nature of his relations with Galactia to which he gives vague
replies. Urgentino’s reflections on Galactia’s art reveal that he openly admires, envies and,
most strikingly, fears her artistic talents and impressive willpower. Urgentino and Ostensibile
appoint Carpeta to paint the ‘Battle of Lepanto’ after he cringingly betrays Galactia’s
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morality and sanity to them and expresses his slavish submission to paint ‘what the
circumstances require’. After Carpeta leaves, the two officials decide to give Galactia an
appropriate response by convicting her of immoral behaviour to serve some time in prison.
In the eleventh scene, the setting is moved to the barracks again where Galactia is
ready to show Carpeta the finished ‘Battle of Lepanto’, the first sight of which leaves the
latter in tears, possibly due to the greatness of it which he himself will never achieve or due
to guilty conscience. The following scene depicts Galactia in a harsh quarrel with her
daughter Supporta who admires her mother’s work, but determines to abandon her for the
fear that the government officials will be outraged by the carnage depicted on her mother’s
canvas. Meanwhile in the palace, Urgentino shows the painting to his brother, the admiral
Suffici who becomes enraged upon seeing the grotesque figure that represents himself with
claws for hands and an ‘untrue’ face. Urgentino, on the other hand, believes that only a mental
disorder can make an artist digress so vilely from what her patrons demand.
In scene fourteen, Urgentino is seen scolding Galactia for what she has done with the
painting while Galactia proudly defends herself for being herself unlike all those artists
hanging on the walls. With the coming of a committee into the room, an unofficial trial begins
for Galactia and she engages in a hot quarrel with the officials regarding the differences
between war as a noble struggle for furtherance of political ends and war as mere slaughter.
While Galactia defends her artistic freedom of expression, the committee members focus on
what is ‘behind’ the painting and refuse to hang it somewhere on the streets due to its lack of
morality. They even go so far as to associate Galactia’s dyed, unclean garment and her not
wearing breast supports with her immorality and label her as “an enemy of the Republic”
(57) before confining her to a prison. In the prison where she is denied light, Galactia is
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comforted a little by the voice of the man in the next cell while, in another scene, Urgentino
discusses her punishment with Carpeta.
On the other hand, the two men discuss ‘the lack of celebration’ in Carpeta’s painting
of ‘Battle of Lepanto’. Carpeta cannot take the doge’s endless interruptions anymore and
expresses his wish to see Galactia to which Urgentino responds with a threat to imprison him
if he leaves the painting unfinished. With the arrival of Rivera to the scene, Urgentino blames
her for inseminating him with a passion for arts and the two agree that Carpeta is nothing
more than a hack without imaginative powers. In the following scene, Carpeta pays the now-
bedlamite Galactia a visit in her cell where she asks him to impregnate her so that she could
‘plead her belly’ to avoid execution. However, to everybody’s surprise, she is released from
prison by a letter signed by an unnamed official. After Galactia’s release, her painting is
exhibited in public thanks to Rivera’s efforts and becomes rather successful and popular, also
embraced by fellow painters and government officials including Urgentino and Ostensibile.
The play draws to a close with Galactia among the admirers of her work and Urgentino
offering her a seat in his dinner table.
As a background for Scenes from an Execution, Barker uses one of the greatest naval
wars in human history, Battle of Lepanto (1571), in which the fleet of the Holy League
defeated the navy of the Ottoman Empire and dealt a blow in its dominance in the Western
Mediterranean. Braudel views the victory of the Holy League in the war as “the end of a
period of profound depression, the end of a genuine inferiority complex on the part of
Christendom and a no less real Turkish supremacy” (1973:1103). Even though the defeat of
the Ottoman navy is attributed to the League comprised of the forces of the Papacy, the
Habsburg Monarchy and the Venetian navy, the victory means more to the Venetian Republic
as a compensation for their loss of Cyprus to the Ottomans in the previous year. The victory
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over the Turks is celebrated by the Venetians with huge rapture and pride; however, the treaty
signed between the sides in 1573 reveals that it was the Venetians who suffered the
consequences of the war by renouncing their rights on a number of strategically significant
keeps and accepting to pay heavy taxes to the Ottomans (Yıldırım, 2007:552-553). The
rapture among the Venetian ruling class and the public manifests itself in public celebrations
along with artistic activities as a reflection of the flourishing renaissance art. The
repercussions of the victory find an expression mostly in painting in a number of depictions
commissioned by the notables of the Venetian society, including Tintoretto's “Victory of
Lepanto”, Paolo Veronese’s “The Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto”, Andrea Vicentino’s
“The Battle of Lepanto”, Tommaso Dolabella’s “The Battle of Lepanto” and an anonymous
one titled “The Victors of the Naval Battle of Lepanto” (Gombrich, 1967:62-68).
Furthermore, Dawkins elaborates on these representations and mentions one in which the
Turks are represented in such a disturbing way that it stands as a reflection of the public
opinion about the enemy as barbarous and monster-like (1930:1-3). Among these various
paintings, the anonymous one titled “The Victors of the Naval Battle of Lepanto” is quite
significant in the determination of Barker’s sources for Galactia’s painting in the play, as it
depicts the three admirals of the fleet of the Holy League, Don Juan of Austria, Marc Antonio
Colonna of Rome and Sebastiano Venier of Venice, which is reminiscent of Galactia’s
controversial depiction of admiral Suffici in the play.
At the time of the Battle of Lepanto, the Republic of Venice was under the provision
of Doge Alvise I Mocenigo (Mosto, 1936:10), who served as the Doge of the city state from
1570 to 1577. In this respect, Barker can be thought to have based the character of Doge
Urgentino on Doge Alvise. However, no historical record suggests that the Doge had a
brother who served as the admiral of the Venetian naval forces. In this respect, Barker must
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have formed an imaginary relation between the Doge of the time and the chief admiral by
disrupting the historical data. The data suggest that Sebastiano Venier was the admiral of the
Venetian fleet in the Battle of Lepanto and the next Doge of Venice after Doge Alvise’s death
by suicide in 1577 due to the huge reputation he gained in the war against the Turks (in Laven
and Damien, 2013:14). What saves the allusion from the possibility of a coincidence is that
Sebastiano Venier is known to be the subject of two famous Italian paintings, one by the
famous Tintoretto depicting the admiral in front of a sea-war background and one anonymous
painting titled “The Victors of Lepanto” depicting him alongside John of Austria and
Marcantonio Colonna before a similar background. These paintings give the reader a clue
about the admiral’s interest in the representation of his image, which is reminiscent of
Suffici’s obsession about his representation in Galactia’s painting.
These historical allusions contribute to the metadramatic outlook of the play with an
eye to Hornby’s designation of real-life references as a metadramatic variety. Barker’s use
of a very well-known historical event, Battle of Lepanto, for the background of his play
balances the play’s realistic and fictional qualities, and thus, blurs the distinction between the
speculative and the realistic in historical representation. Even though his characters are
basically imaginary with a touch of historical allusion to real personages, Barker reveals his
observations of the real-life Venice of the time through a number of images. For instance,
the struggle of Galactia against the male authorities first as a free-spirited woman and then
as a female artist is highly realistic when the place of women in the 16th century Venice is
taken into consideration. Rosenthal observes that, in the 16th century Venice, “women
possessed virtually no political power of their own, owing to an oligarchy dominated by men,
and the laws passed by men reveal not only a class bias but a special arrogance toward
women” (1992:15). The way that Galactia is confronted by her partner Carpeta in romantic
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affairs, by her daughters in domestic issues, by the Doge in the political sphere, by the
Cardinal in religious matters and by the critic Rivera in artistic matters is quite telling about
the situation of a headstrong, marginal woman in a society dominated by not only men, but
also women who have adopted male perspectives. In a very idealistic manner, Galactia
refuses to comply with all the political, religious and social impositions and sustains an intact
character till the very end of the play in which she sacrifices her sanity. For Lamb, “[t]hrough
listening to the voices of the dead, Galactia feels obliged to reject the view of History which
the Venetian establishment wants her to paint; she sees that to lie about the past is to
perpetrate future slaughters” (1992:135). Similarly, Barker depicts the Doge and the Cardinal
as ideological public officers who abuse their institutional powers for personal interests as in
the Doge’s threatening of Galactia with imprisonment in order to make her celebrate the
naval victory rather than emphasizing the carnage or the Cardinal’s attribution of a holy
meaning to the war which is purely political. Rabey agrees that Barker’s Scenes from an
Execution is a play in which “the patron is the existential seeker, impatient with material
encumbrances, and the artists and their agents are resentful, superior, disrespectful and
ideologically reductive” (Rabey, 2009:201). This is a quite realistic approach on behalf of
Barker given that the Renaissance indicates a period as well as a movement in which artistic
creativity flourishes alongside institutional corruption.
Above all, Scenes from an Execution possesses a very strong metadramatic character
thanks to Barker’s allusions to the work of art itself, using Galactia’s painting to reflect on
his own drama and speaking through her mouth to express his ideas regarding the ethics of
art, responsibilities of the artist, censorship and freedom of expression. Very much like the
previous plays discussed, Barker places an artist at the centre of his play in her ruthless
struggle against all kinds of authority in a male-dominated society in order to defend her art
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from political, religious and social impositions. The way Galactia defends the freedom of her
art from external constraints is quite reminiscent of Barker’s own defence of the functionless
character of his drama in the face of political and social involvement. At the very beginning
of the play, Galactia confronts Carpeta about the question of artistic originality and
renovation in opposition to an obsession with the artistic perfection: “Carpeta, you know
perfectly well you only stand to benefit from the loss of concentration you have suffered
through loving me. You have painted Christ among the flocks eight times now, you must
allow the public some relief-” (10). To this, Carpeta responds with an accusation that Galactia
is a mere sensualist and opportunist who plays with the public’s emotions to get a
governmental commission whereas he waits for the right time for perfection: “And I have
painted Christ among the flocks eight times not because I cannot think of anything else to
paint but because I have a passion for perfection, I long to be the finest Christ painter in Italy,
I have a longing for it, and that is something an opportunist like you could never understand”
(10). However, Galactia seems to refuse to attribute any duties to an artist, not even when
perfection and beauty are concerned. In a dialogue with Prodo, the veteran sitting for her
painting, Galactia says: “I tell you I would not, I do not trust beauty, it is an invention and a
lie. […] I will paint your violence for all the passing crowds who mock your daft appearance”
(15). In her analogy between an artist and a midwife, Galactia defines her job as not giving
birth to truth, but helping others bring truth to birth. This analogy is quite significant in that
it resembles Barker’s rejection of collectivism in art and suggestion of partiality in its place.
In other words, Barker does not attribute the pregnancy with the ultimate truth to the artist,
but imagines an artist who evokes the masses to come up with their own individual truths.
In the second scene of the play, Barker brings the politician and the artist face to face
and gives voice to his ideas of political intervention in art and official censorship mechanisms
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of authoritarian regimes. In the dialogue between Doge Urgentino and Galactia, Barker first
draws attention to the differences between the politician’s views of art and the artist’s views
of it and displays that the Doge views art as mere reflection of facts and history as a means
of political propaganda, which clashes with Galactia’s understanding of these. Urgentino
says: “I know you are an artist and I am a politician, and we both have all sorts of little
mannerisms, turns of speech, beliefs and so on, which neither of us will be happy to renounce,
but for the sake of easy communication may I suggest we stop the little dance of personal
regard and concentrate on facts?” (17). For him, art is an investment for the realization of
certain political priorities and only celebration and praise make a work of art great in direct
proportion to how much it serves. However, Galactia believes that art must be true only to
itself and defy all functions whatsoever along with a balance of factuality and imagination:
“I believe in observation, but to observation you must lend imagination. The Doge says I am
to submit to him another drawing in which the Admiral is given greater prominence. Well, I
shall do. I shall show him not only prominent but RESPONSIBLE. And a face which is not
exulting but INDIFFERENT” (22). When she is confronted by Carpeta about the motivation
behind her paintings, she expresses her determination to defend her art against any kind of
intrusions:
CARPETA: No. You are violent, so you can paint violence. You are furious,
so you can paint fury. And contempt, you can paint that. Oh, yes, you can
paint contempt. But you aren’t great enough for pity.
GALACTIA: ‘Great enough’?
CARPETA: It’s hard luck on you, because if you could paint pity, the Church
would stand up for you, and if you could paint glory, you would have the State.
But you will please nobody.
GALACTIA: You know what I think? I think you are marvellous at honouring
yourself. Marvellous. But pity’s got nothing to do with greatness. It’s
surrender, the surrender of passion, or the passion of surrender. It is
capitulating to what is. Rather than pity the dead man I would say – there –
there is the man who did it, blame him, identify, locate responsibility. Or else
the world is just a pool, a great pool of dirty tears through which vile men in
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boots run splashing. You paint pity very well, but you endure everything (23-
24).
The way Carpeta reminds Galactia of the necessity of feelings for artistic creativity is an
invitation for Galactia to open up her art for servitude either to the political or to the religious
institutions of the time in an attempt to achieve acceptance and stay unexceptional. There is
an obvious confrontation between the patrons’ demands and Galactia’s self-declared
autonomy and she is determined to overcome this problem with her belief in the
boundlessness of artistic imagination with no regard to however the patrons patronize her.
She seems well aware that the power of her art is limitless and human perception of events
is completely relative culminating in a multiplicity of realities: “So with one figure I
transformed the enemy from beast to victim, and made victory unclean. And I suspect, even
as I draw it, they will hate this…!” (25). When her daughter Supporta warns her about the
possibility that the Doge will attack her for her lack of morality and promiscuity if she insists
on conflicting with him, Galactia still refuses to comply with him by celebrating the battle in
her painting on pain of defamation. In this respect, Galactia is a perfect tragic heroine when
Barker’s description is taken into account. In his Death, the One and the Art of Theatre,
Barker argues that “the tragic actress persuades you of her moral nakedness […] Never
beyond the human, she describes the possibility within the human, repudiating the sordid
practices of reproduction of the known, the familiar, the stereotypical. In this she privileges
herself as desirable, consequently a challenge to the likeable . . .” (2005:86). With these
words, Barker draws the picture of an ideal artist as one that deliberately remains beyond the
borders, defies the constraints of commonness and enjoys challenging the imposed norms
and values dominating common life.
As discussed before, Barker draws a line between his “Theatre of Catastrophe” and
the political drama dominating the stages in the last decades of the 20th century. Barker
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explains his aloofness from political involvement with his determination to keep his art free
of servitude to any ideology. In Scenes from an Execution, Galactia displays a similar
character when she defends her art against the officials’ attempt at making it a means for
political propaganda. In her discussion with Admiral Suffici, the Doge’s brother and subject
of Galactia’s painting, Galactia defines an artist’s job as an unshrinking pursuit of truth
uncontaminated and unsplit by political entities:
GALACTIA: I don’t know whether Venice is a good republic or a bad one, I

am not political –
SUFFICI: Me neither, what about my –
GALACTIA: The moment you go in for politics, you cavil, you split up the
truth – […] I go from my belly. Yes or no. And when I show meat sliced, it is
meat sliced, it is not a pretext for elegance. Meat sliced. […]
SUFFICI: I think you are, for an artist, rather coarse.
GALACTIA: Coarse for an artist? It’s an artist’s job to be coarse. Preserving
coarseness, that’s the problem (30).
What Suffici implies with coarseness in this dialogue is bullheadedness on behalf of Galactia
by which she turns a blind eye to the political reputation of the Republic of Venice; and by
elegance, Galactia means the decorum the artists of the time are expected to follow by the
political and religious officials. In addition to this, Barker gives voice to his concerns about
the criticism of art in his time based on the question of originality and the source of inspiration
through Rivera’s mouth when she says: “You cannot try to be original. Either you are or you
are not, surely? […] The critic is afraid of the artist and envies her power. She is ashamed of
what she secretly believes to be an inferior gift, that of exposition. So instead of serving the
artist, she humiliates her” (31-32). It seems more than a coincidence for Barker to create a
critic character and to express his ideas about criticism of art through her mouth, as he himself
as an artist has been severely confronted by the critics of his time. Brown contends that “it is
unarguably the case that there has been, for some years, a virtual consensus among the
leading theatre critics in London where hostility to Barker’s theatre is concerned” (2013:96).
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For this reason, Barker uses Rivera as a self-critical art critic to express his feelings about
criticism of art in general.
Very much like the other authoritative characters like Stalin, Lenin and Churchill in
the previously-discussed plays, Doge Urgentino in Scenes from an Execution represents the
governmental attitude towards art in a time when the authority is in need of a means to
propagandize the party’s political agenda. As he is unable to change Galactia’s mind about
her representation of the carnage rather than the victory in the Battle of Lepanto, Urgentino
decides to commission Carpeta with the job of painting the victory, as the painter’s ‘egg’ is
easier to tap to give it the most favourable shape. The Doge is aware of the powers of art to
change the perspectives of the common man and he attributes a duty to art to sustain the
authority of the dominant party. In his dialogue with Carpeta he confesses that “art is opinion,
and opinion is the source of all authority” (44). Barker obviously forms an analogy here
between the Doge’s attitude and the attitude of the government of his time towards the power
of art which culminates in excessive use of official censorship in order to secure the
reputation of the ‘party’. Barker admits that governmental intervention in art has always been
a reality, but it falls on the shoulders of the individual artists that they have to keep their art
clean. In this respect, Galactia in the play stands for the real life playwright whereas Carpeta
turns out to be a symbol for the political dramatists of Barker’s time who make an instrument
of their art for the sake of political, moral and financial convenience. This is evident in the
play in the scene where Urgentino openly admires and, perhaps, envies Galactia’s artistic
talents and superior will power in comparison to Carpeta’s easy-going morality. Urgentino
says: “She is under no influence but her own will, she has by her perseverance – and possibly,
perversity – achieved a following, she has a school of sorts, and she is brilliant” (45). As
discussed before, Barker attributes no duty to the artist except the one to himself, and Galactia
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is the ultimate example of this kind of artist with “her fierce determination to stay true to
herself” (Oberon Editors, 2013) as indicated on the back cover of the play. In opposition to
her, Carpeta is ready to open up his artistic skills for political servitude and do “what – the
circumstances – require” (46) for him to be a ‘well-accepted’ artist, even if not a great one.
Barker, in this respect, comments on the qualities that make art great in opposition to those
that make art important once more.
After a long struggle with Galactia’s ideals as an artist, Urgentino comes to the
conclusion that it must be a mental disorder that prevents Galactia “satisfying the aspirations
of her customer” (51), because he believes that political sidedness has always been a natural
quality of all artistic endeavours. After the completion of her painting, Galactia reminds the
governmental and religious officers that she is not concerned with the meaning behind the
painting, as the meaning of art is subjective and changeable from one viewer to another. “No.
I am not going to give you the satisfaction of proving me wrong. If the surface of the painting
is my territory, the back of it is yours. You are specialists in arguments. I hate arguments”
(57). These words are quite reminiscent of what Barker argues in an interview given to the
Guardian in which he says: “I have contempt for messages in the theatre. I’m not trying to
influence anyone” (in Lawson, 2017: n.pg). Very much like Galactia, Barker attributes no
arguments to his art and refuses to play with the conscience of his audience for the sake of
not betraying his art. He gives full authority to the audience in the meaning-making process
despite a set of external anticipations to draw his plays within the borders of the expected
morality. Galactia faces a similar compulsion from the Cardinal Ostensibile who warns her
about “the little matter of public morals” (57) drawing attention to her way of dressing and
unsupported breasts. Galactia responds to the Cardinal’s accusations of loose morality
protesting that her art will never serve anybody’s moral code: “You can’t let someone say –
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on the back of the canvas – all your principle is actually dirt, and stench, and matted buttocks
floating in the sea. I shall have to be broken in some way” (58). The play draws to a
conclusion with Carpeta realizing that offering his artistic skills for political or moral
expediency is a very dishonourable act and rejecting the Doge’s and the Cardinal’s
commission in the place of Galactia. Rivera comments on this event saying: “It is an offence
against art to flatter minor artists with projects they are not equipped to handle –” (64).
Consequently, Barker’s Scenes from an Execution offers a great number of elements
which ensure its classification as historiographic metadrama thanks to its concern with a very
famous historical event, the Battle of Lepanto, even though all the characters in the play are
imaginary with obscure allusions to real historical personages. The play approaches the
historical event from a different angle, offering an artist’s point of view to the long-debated
political event and describing it as a mere butchery rather than a victory on behalf of the
Venetians or a loss on behalf of the Ottomans. In this respect, the play turns into a
historiographic representation, rather than a historical one, with the playwright’s attempts to
subvert historical data with his omissions, additions and interpretations. Barker’s version of
the Battle of Lepanto is obviously reinforced with his readings about the event along with his
research on the Venetian society of the time, and his authentic historical account stands as an
equally valid claim to historical reality as much as any other historical document written on
the same event. Besides such historiographic elements, Barker’s Scenes from an Execution
displays a deep metadramatic structure with its references and allusions to real historical
events as well as to itself as a historically-concerned fictional account. The characters in the
play voice Barker’s own ideas about such issues as responsibilities of the artist, functions of
art, governmental censorship of art and the artist’s struggle against the totalitarian authority.
Through such self-references, Barker comments on the nature of his own play, or dramatic
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art in general, and makes a criticism of the contemporary dramatists’ political and moral
involvements, which contradicts Barker’ view of art as a functionless endeavour. Galactia’s
painting represents Barker’s drama, as both stand firm against all political and moral
impositions to remain true to art itself. In all these respects, Barker’s Scenes from an
Execution appropriately qualifies as an example of the subgenre historiographic metadrama.
3.5. Brutopia and Art in the Face of Censorship
Written in 1989, Barker’s Brutopia: Secret Life in Old Chelsea is a television play
first published as a part of the playwright’s collected plays in 1993. Very much like Barker’s
other historically-concerned plays, the play explores the struggle of an artist against the
authority, this time both familial and governmental, before a very familiar historical
background. The play revolves around the story of Sir Thomas More, the English statesman
and author known basically for his famous Utopia, and King Henry VIII known for his
establishment of the Anglican Church and scandalous love affairs leading to the former’s
execution. However, Barker’s account centres on More’s historically-unremarkable daughter
Cecilia in her attempts to write a counter-text to her father’s famous book and protect her
self-dependence as a free-spirited female writer against the king’s efforts to dominate her
both intellectually and sexually. Wilcher describes this play, along with many others, as a
reflection of Barker’s “preoccup[ation] with the conflict between individual impulse and
society’s internal and external mechanisms of control” (1993:177). This preoccupation turns
into a rewriting of a historical incidence from an artist’s point of view and a commentary on
political, religious and aesthetic issues.
Barker divides Brutopia into two acts titled “The Sickness” and “The Recovery”,
respectively. The first act opens with King Henry VIII observing the moon with his telescope
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along with trying to draw Sir Thomas More, his councillor, into silly discussions with a dirty
language while Cecilia, More’s daughter, makes ironical outlines of her imaginary society
called Brutopia as it appears in her dystopian work of the same title. The discussion is
interrupted by a yell from a heretic named Bonchope who is kept in a garden gaol with his
mouth gagged, and King Henry hysterically makes fun of the prisoner before turning on to
More to ridicule his sexual abstinence due to his religious views. After the king’s departure,
More opens up his intentions in writing Utopia to his wife who, in return, foreshadows that
his daughter Cecilia has been on to something that will unsettle More’s composure. The third
scene brings together More and Cecilia for the first time in the play in which the latter does
not miss any chance to express her disaffection with her father while he is seen trying to find
a common ground with his daughter. In the following scene, Cecilia meets a servant woman
who discusses with her the nature of the civil war in Brutopia and how the guilty poor kill
the rich as well as each other.
In the meantime, More approaches his other daughter Meg with whom he is obviously
in better terms; but he makes a mess of their little game and idiotically bites the blood out of
his daughter’s hand, refusing to apologize afterwards due to his ego-centric personal
principles. More, then, appears in an intriguing discussion with a doctor who claims to be
‘the’ doctor from the former’s Utopia while Cecilia engages in a hot debate with Roper,
More’s biographer and Meg’s husband, concerning the essence of love and marriage which
she approaches with a great deal of cynicism. Cecilia’s critical stance continues when she
meets her mother and Bertrand, a young and rich merchant whom the mother introduces to
Cecilia as a suitor, in the garden during one of her contemplations on her imaginary state,
Brutopia.
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On the other hand, Sir Thomas More becomes obsessed with the doctor and what he
has to tell about Utopia from which he claims to have come. The image of Utopia drawn by
the doctor is no different than Cecilia’s imaginary dystopian society; as contrary to what
More has imagined in the first place, bodies overflow the jails in Utopia while the rest of the
people are the jailors. More, then, meets King Henry, who appears to him in disguise in the
middle of the night and recites to him one of his latest love poems; as More does not respond
enthusiastically to his emotions and suffering, King Henry foreshadows to his men that
“More’s death is on him like a growth” (152). Scene twelve presents More in a debate, first
with his daughter Meg and then with a workman, on private property as the ultimate source
of all crimes. But eventually, More manages to bring the issue back to his genius and
superiority of knowledge. A similar dialogue passes between More and Daker, a scholar who
is commissioned by More himself to write a preface to Utopia, in which More leaves the man
with no other option, but to write a preface that ‘praises the work to the skies’ with ‘the
highest compliments’. Soon enough, More is again approached by King Henry, again in
disguise, who appears to have lost his temper after reading the former’s Utopia. The king
uncordially scolds More for not including the politics and ‘the parties’ into his imaginary
ideal society and comes straightly to the main point that he wishes to get divorced from his
wife and that More has to find the proper political and religious means to legitimize it. He,
then, forces his councillor to sign a bill that justifies his wishes; and when responded with
hesitation, the king threatens More with fall from favour and eventual death. After the king’s
departure, the irreparable More seeks consolation in his two daughters and finds Meg at his
elbow while Cecilia denies him that.
The second act, titled “The Recovery”, begins with the offstage cry of the frantic
More foreshadowing his death soon while Bertrand impregnates an unemotional Cecilia in
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the garden. In her imaginary kingdom and among her fellow Brutopians that hide in the maze
in the garden, Cecilia gives the reader a summary of the contemporary, dystopian Britain, or
British utopia (Brutopia) in this case, in which anger is an “expression of deepest desire”
(164) and funerals are loved while murders are frequently indulged, including killing of
children. On the other hand, Alice and Meg despairingly follow More into a rustic prison cell
where he wishes to stay for the rest of his numbered days. In her visit to her father’s cell,
Cecilia pours out her heart and lovelessness to her father who responds to her with a similar
indifference. In the following scene, the servant dresses Cecilia all in black for the funeral
and Holbein, the painter, arrives to draw her portrait with an image of the utopian Doctor’s
head on her lap. At that moment, Cecilia notices a handwritten book down in the Doctor’s
pocket which turns out to be the Doctor’s own description of a just society, his version of
Utopia; and Cecilia concludes that “in every prison the victims of one system scratch plans
for the torture of the next – on walls, in blood” (170).
In the meantime, Alice and Bertrand discuss Cecilia’s indifference and instability
towards the latter before Alice notices the Common Man passing by in More’s massive otter
coat which she herself bought for her husband as a gift. Learning that More has given it away
willingly, Alice easily gives into Bertrand’s wooing. Having torn her portrait without a
second thought, Cecilia rushes out to the garden where she comes across King Henry and
asks him to use his authority to licence her book, Brutopia, without a prior enquiry by the
censor. She tries to seduce the king into signing the book for publication and giving her father
a quicker death; but the king retires after a long struggle with his libidinal urges. In the
following scenes, Bertrand is seen on his knees expressing his love for Cecilia while she,
soon after that, again presents her body to King Henry who has her beaten by the Louts. In
the meantime, More passes through an assembly of family members and servants lined up on
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the terrace to bid him farewell with the exception of Cecilia, and he walks away, leaving a
whole household in grief and gloom. Cecilia, on the other hand, sits in a quiet place in the
garden with Bertrand who tends to her bruises and scars. At that moment, Alice appears in a
delirious mood and expresses her hatred for and envy of her daughter as well as resentment
for her indifference to her father. Then, the scenes are interrupted by a bookish statement
announcing the execution of Sir Thomas More on 6th July, 1535.
The sixteenth scene of the second act presents Cecilia and King Henry kissing and
embracing intimately in the garden, which is now in a neglected state. She constantly asks
the king about the promised publication of her book and gets delayed of a satisfactory answer,
as he openly views art as a means of fouling the common people. Cecilia protests that her
father’s Utopia now swamps every corner of the city, to which the king gives an answer that
summarizes the authority’s view of art: “Literature must make us love ourselves. That is its
function. And yours don’t” (182). He also compares More’s book with hers in that the former
draws a ‘luminous’ democracy that praises Man while Cecilia implies that it was Henry
himself who censored her father’s writing. When Henry finally withholds his consent from
publishing the book otherwise, Cecilia accepts to be his mistress. Next time, Cecilia appears
in the maze, ‘as if prepared for birth’, and Ann Boleyn pays her a visit to threaten her not to
aspire for stealing her place on the throne and in Henry’s bed. However, it is revealed from
their discussion that Boleyn has mistaken Cecilia for Meg who apparently was another
mistress of Henry’s. Before the queen leaves, Cecilia asks her for help regarding the
publication of her book if she wants the body of her husband just for herself. After giving
birth to a baby girl, Cecilia tells the Servant that she does not intend to keep the baby and
wants to give her to a ‘better parent’, The Common Man, in order to keep her away from the
‘convictions’ of the Utopian ideas hovering around.

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In the following scene, Cecilia is informed by a printer that her Brutopia has been
published in 700 copies after the receipt of an anonymous payment. When her mother asks
for one copy of her book, Cecilia refuses to give her one, as she plans to deliver the books to
the readers arbitrarily by leaving them on a highway. She also refuses to sell the books in
bookshops, as she thinks those places are prisons for books. Suddenly, Bertrand shows up in
a fury to reprimand Cecilia about the fate of their baby and the latter learns about his affair
with her mother. As Cecilia tosses her books over the garden wall into the street, some nuns
approach her to take her to a convent/asylum before King Henry comes in to save the gagged
Cecilia from the nuns only to enjoy her helplessness himself. As Cecilia attempts to speak
up, Henry turns away and leaves her to the mercy of his two executioners.
As to the origins of the title of the play, “Brutopia” obviously refers to Thomas
More’s Utopia both in terms of form and content, Cecilia’s treatise being a political treatise
in the form of an anti-utopia. However, Brutopia is not a term coined by Barker for his play,
as it appears in a number of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck tales as a fictional land named out
of the combination of the words ‘brute’ and ‘utopia’ (Erickson, 1989:1). Moreover, Don
Rosa, the creator of the Donald Duck character along with many others, confesses in an
interview that he based Brutopia and the Brutopians on the USSR and the Russian citizens
of the time (DeRider, 2012:n.pg.). Whether Barker himself was aware of the earlier use of
the word or not, this association makes sense when Barker’s interest in the history of the
Soviet Russia, as exemplified in his previously-discussed plays No End of Blame and The
Power of the Dog, is taken into consideration. In addition to making a critique of the Soviet
Russia with the corruption going on in its final years, Barker also forms analogies between
this imaginary land and contemporary Britain, as the word also sounds like a derivation from
‘British Utopia’. In Lamb’s opinion, “Barker clearly views the utopian project as an attempt
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to postulate the ideal society, a literature of the final solution to the problem of communal
life, which extends from Plato’s Republic and Augustine’s City of God to Marx and the
totalitarian tendencies of contemporary liberal-humanism against which his own aesthetic is
directed” (2005:160). The England depicted in the play under Henry’s rule is reminiscent of
the country in the present time under Thatcher’s rule in terms of the governmental oppression
and self-ordainedness prevailing, England as a land ruled by a ‘brute’, hence ‘brute-opia’.
Barker’s Brutopia displays a very strong historical consciousness with the
implementation of historical data in captions along with historiographic additions of the
playwright’s imagination. Barker builds the entire play on a much-debated set of historical
events concerning the English royalty right at the beginning of a new era. The play is set in
the London of the early 16th century right after the publication of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia
as indicated by the caption inserted by Barker: “Thomas More published Utopia in 1516. It
describes the perfect society. His daughter CECILIA composed Brutopia in secret. Only now
has the text been discovered” (1993:131). With the insertion of such bookish historical
information throughout the play, Barker reinforces the realistic historical background of the
play only to distort the inside story below each caption. Even though the story behind More’s
execution is to everybody’s knowledge, the details of this incident are still a mystery
unravelled only in fictional works that make up much of the known history. Barker
emphasizes this fictitious side of written history by making up dialogues between such
historical characters as King Henry VII, Thomas More and Cecilia More among many others,
giving voice to such originally minor historical characters like Cecilia over other bigger
figures.
In almost all historical representations, Sir Thomas More is depicted as a devout man
with a strong sense of humanism; however, the image Barker draws for him is one of pride
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and ambition, as he is an ego-driven man devoted to his personal interests in the play. Barker
includes a character to the original historical story, the Doctor who claims to be coming from
Utopia described by More in his political satire. In More’s dialogue with the Doctor, the
former says: “I like the way you keep your hat on it lends you an authority you otherwise
might lack, and never meeting my eyes is calculated also, don’t forget you are dealing with
a genius” (140). Similarly, the image of Henry VIII as a “lustful, egotistical, harsh, and
insecure king” (Ives, 2006:28-36) in the history books is juxtaposed with Barker’s image of
the king as an instable, hot-tempered and unheroic man. In the play, the king is also depicted
as an intellectually inferior man when he is confronted with Cecilia who bargains her body
for the publication of her book. She calls the king “goodness-stricken” (176) in a world too
harsh to be realistic. Cecilia, on the other hand, appears in the play as an unconventionally
free-spirited woman with an artist’s superior imaginative capacities, which is uncommon of
a time and place like 16th century England.
The play follows a very neat chronological timeline very much in the manner of
chronicles popular in the time in which the play is set. However, what differentiates the play
from those historical accounts is that Barker narrativizes the events in such a manner that the
historical account adopts a more fictional outlook, serving the playwright’s purposes to
display the narrative, subjective nature of historical representation. The play covers a period
of time from the publication of Utopia through Henry VIII’s announcement of his wish to
divorce his wife to More’s execution and even more within the framework of a very neat
cause and effect relationship, drawing heavily on historical accounts (Marius, 1984:153,466).
In doing so, Barker forms a parallelism between that period in English history and his own
time to draw attention to the fact that history repeats itself even though the means change in
time. Weissengruber indicates that “Barker instead presents a dramatic arena for the
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dissection of an important figure in British and European History, for the purposes of
indicating Utopia’s entanglement in the political network of its day, and utopianism’s status
in contemporary political reality” (1998:264). Even though More draws the picture of an
ideal nation in his political satire, Cecilia’s image of the anti-utopia has a stronger claim to
represent contemporary England with an authoritative government that manifests itself in
terms of the violation of freedom of speech and thought, censorship of art and intimidation
by the use of political power.
The historical background is a façade for Barker to voice his critique of the political
situation in England towards the end of the century. Through Cecilia’s asides in which she
comments on the present situation and gives information about Brutopia, Barker draws a very
realistic image of contemporary Britain like: “Brutopia is a republic, but with a monarch. The
population is literate, but there are no books. […] Complain away, complaint is the music of
Brutopia! […] Do you want everybody getting knowledge? What would you do with it?
Upset Brutopia!” (145). Barker, here, criticizes the false idea of civilization and culturedness
of the British people of his time who choose to remain silent against a ‘monarch’ who is a
law unto herself. In her dialogue with her suitor Bertrand, Cecilia seems to be enjoying the
freedom of expression in the fictional world she creates for herself in which the unsayable
becomes sayable. Her Brutopia turns into an instrument for her, and for Barker, to voice
her/his criticism of the corruption in the social and political institutions. As a prototype based
on England, Brutopia is described by Cecilia as a place ruled by “the worst swine”, in which
the citizens suffer appallingly, beauty is used as an instrument of torture, perfection is
eradicated by a committee of eradicators and only one person has a vote while the others
must applaud (146-147). She also comments on the common Brutopians, giving voice to
Barker’s thoughts about his own people, saying: “The Brutopians were never silent except
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when sentimental. And how sentimental they could be! They held childbearing in such high
esteem, whilst frequently killing children! And funerals they loved, whilst indulging
murder!” (166).
All the references to documented historical events and famous historical personages
also contribute to the metadramatic character of the play with an eye to Hornby’s designation
of real-life reference as a metadramatic variety. In this respect, the use of characters like Sir
Thomas More, Cecilia More, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is a strongly metadramatic
element, especially when the familiarity of the audience to such historical figures is taken
into consideration. Seeing these historical figures represented on the stage clearly breaks the
dramatic illusion on behalf of the audience and functions as a means of alienation in the
Brechtian sense. Similarly, the use of historical events like the publication of More’s Utopia
being a political and literary breakthrough, King Henry VIII’s divorce from his wife being a
religious and political scandal and the execution of More being a long-debated symbol for
abuse of political power strengthens the metadramatic effect of the play, as the target
audience is expected to know the actual chronology of these events and, consequently, the
ending of the play, which breaks the dramatic illusion more and takes the dramatic experience
on behalf of the audience to an upper intellectual level.
The fact that Brutopia is built primarily on another literary work, Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia, adds more to the metadramatic essence of the play, considering Hornby’s designation
of literary reference as another metadramatic variety. The play opens with a direct reference
to the publication of More’s Utopia and the story takes its shape in the protagonist’s attempts
to write a counter-text to it and get it published. Barker takes this allusion one step further
with direct quotations from More’s political satire, in which the work is discussed and
defended by the author himself in opposition to the accusations by his own daughter and the
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king. In his discussion with the Doctor who is actually from Utopia, More defends his ideal
society as follows:
THE DOCTOR: I’m from Utopia.

MORE (with a laugh): There are no doctors in Utopia!
THE DOCTOR: Why, is there no sickness?
MORE: How could there be, there is no disharmony.
THE DOCTOR: I promise you, my hands are full.
MORE: With what? Childbirth? And please look in my eyes it is discourteous
to stare at the ground, clear evidence to me you never set foot there, it is a
society of honest men, without rank, shame or hierarchy (140).
In the actual Utopia, More similarly describes his ideal society as one of harmony and
prosperity in which those people who are in themselves good and honest sustain a perfect
communal life (1997:48). In a similar instance, More discusses the nature and functions of
his book with the king, in which the latter questions the former regarding the political
orientation of the book. The dialogue between the two goes as follows:
MORE: You are frank today. Fortunately I am not without endorsement.

Today I had a letter from Erasmus of Rotterdam fulsomely applauding its
ambition and congratulating me on the maturity of my Latin style. He
welcomes me into the –
KING HENRY: Shh –
MORE: Hallowed circle of the discourses on faith and government, I –
KING HENRY: Shh! (MORE contains himself. Pause.) Where’s the politics?
MORE: I replaced it with goodwill. (HENRY looks at him.)
KING HENRY: Where’s the parties?
MORE: Parties? (He is patient.) There are no parties because there are no
contradictions. And no contradictions because there are no separate interests
– (160).
These words allude to the second chapter of More’s Utopia in which he makes a description
of the division of labour among Utopians and says: “There are no taverns, no alehouses, nor
stews among them, nor any other occasions of corrupting each other, of getting into corners,
or forming themselves into parties; all men live in full view” (42). Besides More’s Utopia,
Barker’s Brutopia also draws heavily on another literary text, Robert Bolt’s A Man for All
Seasons (1960), a play which draws the picture of a very honourable and devoted Thomas
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More in the final days of his life. Rabey observes that, in Brutopia, Barker constantly evokes
Robert Bolt’s play, subverting the latter’s treatment of Thomas More’s noble struggle against
the king and turning his image of the ‘Christian Saint’ upside down (2009:53-54). Barker’s
evoking of Bolt’s play goes even so far as to including the same additional characters like
Roper and The Common Man along with the central characters like Sir Thomas More and
Henry VIII. Moreover, Barker alludes to Bolt’s play in the thirteenth scene of his play in
which More says to himself “It’s Spring, my season!” (155). Rabey adds that “Brutopia
demonstrates a philosophical brilliance and a memorable sense of surprisingly disclosing
dramatic space, and is a purposeful subversion of both Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons and the
aesthetically related conventions of the television historical costume drama against which it
was originally conceived to play (2009:57). To the audience who is already knowledgeable
about these other literary texts, the play breaks the dramatic illusion and alienates the
audience into a more critical reception and understanding.
Barker’s Brutopia is also strongly metadramatic in the way it treats its subject matter
as a means of self-commentary, self-criticism and self-awareness. Very much like in the
previously-discussed plays, Barker uses a work of art as the central motif in his play to voice
his thoughts regarding issues like functions of art, responsibilities of the artist and ethics of
artistic representation in the face of official censorship mechanisms. Barker’s protagonist is
again an artist, Cecilia, depicted in her very struggle against political and religious authority
along with the social and familial prejudices against her being a female writer. Rabey argues
that “Barker renders the first, strongly nihilistic, energy in the dramatic form of More’s less
favoured daughter, Cecilia, who expresses her alienation through her secret composition of
a counter-text to her father’s central work. She develops the vision of her imaginary
alternative” (2009:55). In her journey into her own imaginative potentials, Cecilia is
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confronted first by her father Thomas More, who resents her attempts to disconfirm her
father’s ideals of a perfect society with the image of her own anti-utopia, and then by the
king who abuses his institutional powers of censorship in return for sexual pleasure. Cecilia’s
experiences as an artist echo Barker’s own struggle against the mechanisms of official
censorship and a generation of political playwrights who betray the essence of art for the sake
of causing a sensation.
In the thirteenth scene of the play, Barker displays how politics and personal interests
intervene in the way works of art appear, get published and advertised by rather arbitrary
means in a dialogue between More and Daker, a scholar who is writing a preface to the
former’s Utopia. More openly commands Daker to write positive remarks for the book:
“Only the fullest praise, only the highest compliment, for Utopia’s a book commanding
reverence and obsequy. Admit its greatness and stop shuddering for fear someone will call
you creep, be honourable and praise it to the skies, how else can great work make its mark
but by the unreserved devotion of its addicts?” (156). While the preface of Utopia is being
written according to the demands of the author, the king himself demands More to change
the content of the book with respect to the potential gainings of the crown. On the other hand,
when Cecilia completes her anti-utopia, the first thing she does is to take her book to the king
to get it published without prior reference to the censor:
CECILIA: License my book!

KING HENRY: Refer it to the censor.
CECILIA: But you’re the monarch.
KING HENRY: I don’t appoint officials so I may do their work for them.
CECILIA (smiling): No, stuff all that, just –
KING HENRY: Authority is a pyramid, whose apex rests on functions no
matter how obscure –
CECILIA: You just put H there, on the cover. (He declines to take it.)
KING HENRY: You are weak on constitution and what a mouth you have. It
burns. It quarrels with the air. What book is it? I love brilliant women.
CECILIA: Mine.
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KING HENRY: Speak some. I love learning from a woman’s mouth. Men
detest intelligence in skirt but I swell on it (173).
Here, Barker shows how governmental censorship has always troubled artists in the history
very much like in Barker’s own time when debates regarding the abolishment of official
censorship are still hot. Both in history and the present time, artists have always been
dependent on the governmental opinion to determine if a work of art is morally and politically
appropriate to be published. Barker emphasizes the necessity of a complete freedom of art
from all political and moral concerns and attributions of a function to art on the basis of
usefulness and propaganda. In the play, King Henry refuses to publish Cecilia’s book on the
excuse that it ‘fouls’ mankind with its excessively gloomy ideas. He argues that “literature
must make us love ourselves. That is its function. And yours [Cecilia’s] don’t” (182). Cecilia
protests that her book is superior to her father’s in every possible aspect and it controverts
every argument her father proposes by putting reality up against idealism. The dialogue
between the two turns into a means for Barker to express his belief that art has no duty
whatsoever towards anything else including society, humanity or political parties, but only
to itself.
Towards the end of the play, Cecilia is forced into being the king’s mistress to get her
book published; however, the king refuses to license the book anyway and Cecilia decides to
resort to Anne Boleyn for the publication of her book in exchange for giving the king up to
his wife. In order to persuade Boleyn for the licensing of the book, Cecilia makes a speech
in which she compares her artistic creation to desire and gives the upper hand to the former.
However, she is aware that an artist is inevitably bound to the prior permission of the
powerholders for publication no matter how high-quality the essence of the work is. Cecilia
says: “I have this work, you see, which your husband calls inhuman. Get it licensed. You
know the bishops. Get them to pass it for the printer. Do it for me” (186). Barker here uses
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Cecilia as a mouthpiece to express his critical view about the standards and criteria by which
the value of a work of art has been determined in the history of mankind and the unfair
enslavement of art to political and religious authority. Just as Cecilia’s work has to please the
king and the bishops to get a licence in the 16th century England, literary works have to please
one political party or the other to stay free of the censor in Barker’s time. It has been one of
the biggest motivations in Barker’s career to liberate his drama from ‘functions’ of any kind
and fight against the domination of political drama among his contemporaries. He shares
Cecilia’s concern that bookshops and printing houses are prisons for books, as these places
have been functioning like places for castration of the greatest ideas.
Consequently, Barker’s Brutopia proves a rather appropriate play to be classified as
historiographic metadrama with an eye to its subject matter taken directly from a well-known
and widely-discussed historical event, involving real historical characters with their faces
that don’t appear in historical accounts. The play offers the point of view of a female artist,
Sir Thomas More’s daughter Cecilia, who is named but remains silent in all historical
accounts. Barker portrays such famous historical figures like the king Henry VIII, Sir Thomas
More and Anne Boleyn through the spectacles of Cecilia and presents an image of 16th
century England which is not only scandalous, but also corrupt up one side and down the
other. In this respect, Barker’s play turns out more to be a historiographic representation than
a historical one with the playwright’s intentions to twist historical ‘reality’ with additions of
imaginary characters and fabricated speeches which appear side by side with bookish
historical quotations. Barker’s version of the story of Thomas More and Henry VIII acquires
an equally valid historical referentiality compared to any other historical document written
on the same subject. Along with such a historiographic nature, Barker’s Brutopia also
possesses a very well-structured metadramatic essence with real-life references to historical

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events and personages like Thomas More and Henry VIII, literary references to More’s
Utopia and Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons and self-references by means of Cecilia’s struggle
against official censorship and impositions of functions on her book. Cecilia’s voice as a free-
spirited artist in the play echoes Barker’s own ideas regarding issues like functions of art,
responsibilities of the artist and governmental censorship of art. Through such self-
references, Barker offers his commentary on the nature of his own drama, or dramatic art in
general, and criticizes his contemporaries in their political involvement in art. Cecilia’s book
Brutopia stands for Barker’s play of the same name in that both works defy political and
moral involvement with an aim not to betray the nature of art. In all these respects, Barker’s
Brutopia appropriately qualifies as an example of the subgenre historiographic metadrama.

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CONCLUSION
Howard Barker’s work has drawn critical attention from various points of view for
the last few decades, ranging from examinations of themes like violence, promiscuity and
death to his use of technical and stylistic elements like asides, poetic language and the
question of anti-catharsis in his plays. These studies have generally dwelt on or drawn from
Barker’s own formulation of his drama as “Theatre of Catastrophe” and have wholeheartedly
accepted his plays as representatives of this self-crafted genre of the playwright. Among such
studies on Barker’s drama, the most well-known are Charles Lamb’s Howard Barker’s
Theatre of Seduction in which he deals with the challenge the playwright’s plays pose to the
contemporary theories of performance and calls for a necessity to come up with new
techniques in the performance of Barker’s ‘irrational’ plays. Even though Lamb admits that
Barker’s early career, during the seventies, “developed initially along lines similar to a
number of other ‘political’ dramatists such as Brenton, Hare and Churchill” (1997:1), he
acknowledges the fact that, from the eighties on, Barker’s interest shifted “away from the
political to the personal, from the stereotype to the individual” (1997:2), which brought about
the need to abandon the cliché ways of acting and performance. David Ian Rabey’s Howard
Barker: Ecstasy and Death, on the other hand, concentrates on the air of death pervading
Barker’s plays with special emphasis on the themes like violence, pain and revenge especially
in his rewritings of earlier drama. He describes Barker not only as one of the greatest living
dramatists of England, but also as “a major philosophical theorist on the possibilities of
theatre, and on the theatricality of the human mind, body and soul in situations of extremity”
(2009:3). However, in his analysis of Barker’s major plays published and performed in the
course of three decades at the turn of the century, Rabey does not go beyond the assumption
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that Barker’s work is adequately categorized by the playwright himself as ‘theatre of
catastrophe’ and must be evaluated within this framework only.
However, the present study differs extensively from the mentioned research on
Barker’s plays in that it has approached a selection of his plays, all written during the 80s,
with an aim to subvert the central principles of the playwright’s assumptions in his
formulation of “Theatre of Catastrophe” and read the plays in question in opposition to his
claims that his drama purposefully excludes any kind of functions and that it never seeks to
give messages of any kind. It also responds positively to the fashion of reading the plays of
contemporary playwrights within the framework of the recently-designated dramatic genre,
historiographic metadrama, with special emphasis on the playwrights’ interest in history as
a subject matter and metadramatic elements defining their works’ technical and stylistic
character. Among such studies, one of the most prominent ones is Richard Knowles’
“Replaying History: Canadian Historiographic Metadrama” in which he examines the
development of this genre in Canadian drama through selected works by Rick Salutin, James
Reaney and Sharon Pollock. Similarly, Philip Zapkin’s “Compromised Epistemologies: The
Ethics of Historiographic Metatheatre in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties and Arcadia” examines
the selected plays by Stoppard with the same motivation.
With this objection in mind and the same method in hand, this study has given a
detailed history of the philosophy and theory of historiography from its earliest practices in
the ancient times considered as a means of recording the truth to the contemporary
understanding of it as mere subjective narration of past events. The background for
historiography presented here simply follows its transformation from a scientific activity into
a fictional one, from Hegel to Hayden White, from a belief in its promises into a decisive
disbelief in its stories. The loss of faith in historical representations has found reflection in
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the literature of the modern times too, and Barker’s drama is no exception to that. Barker
responds to the developments in the philosophy of history by means of an attempt to write
alternative historical accounts with an aim to subvert a long tradition of well-accepted
historical knowledge.
After setting the background for historiography, the discussion moves on to the birth
of the theory of metadrama and refers basically to the two seminal, defining books written
on the subject, namely Lionel Abel’s Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form and
Richard Hornby’s Drama, Metadrama, and Perception. Both critics draw attention to similar
elements, or varieties in Hornby’s terminology, that make a dramatic work metadramatic or
metatheatrical, which eventually refers the play to itself, its own dramaticality and
theatricality. Hornby’s list of metadramatic varieties- including play-within-the-play,
ceremony-within-the-play, roleplaying-within-the-role, literary and real life reference and
self-reference- sets the rules for metadramaticality in plays and Barker’s selected plays have
proven considerably fruitful in the employment of such elements. Once such technical and
contextual elements appear against the background of a historical subject in a play,
historiographic metadrama takes shape in practice whose theory has been built upon Linda
Hutcheon’s formulation of historiographic metafiction. In the naming and discussion of this
new genre, Alexander Feldman’s book titled Dramas of the Past on the Twentieth Century
Stage: In History’s Wings comes to the fore along with Knowles’ previously-mentioned
article.
Barker’s self-crafted dramatic genre “Theatre of Catastrophe”, in his own
understanding, marks a breakage with the long tradition of cathartic tragedies, in Aristotle’s
terminology, and political drama, drawing mainly on the Brechtian vein. Even though
Barker’s earliest plays have a strong awareness of contemporary political agenda, his later
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plays seem to divert strongly from this preoccupation into a deliberate aloofness from
political and moral issues, especially after the publication of his own dramatic theory in two
separate books and numerous articles and the establishment of his own theatre company
named ‘The Wrestling School’ at the end of the 80s. Barker draws a red line between his
drama and mainstream political drama, or the art of theatre and simply the theatre, or the
catastrophic theatre and the humanist theatre in that the former never indulges in playing
around with the audience’s ideological and moral values unlike the latter. Barker refers to
the political theatre dominant in 70s and 80 in England as theatre of marketing, which tailors
ready-made meanings for the audience’s consumption, whereas his catastrophic tragedies
force the audience into a ruthless struggle with the play and the actors for meaning which
they acquire individually rather than collectively. He views political and moral involvement
in arts as a betrayal to the essence of art and an insult to the audience’s capacity of generating
their own beliefs. Barker proudly claims that his theatre shows rather than tells, and pursues
no didactic purposes whatsoever.
Among other elements that define Barker’s ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’ are a
preoccupation with death and the feeling of catastrophe accompanying it which find the most
appropriate environment in the tragic form. In all of Barker’s catastrophic tragedies, the air
of death pervades the play by means of war, catastrophe or death threats in a chaotic
atmosphere. What Barker deems tragic here is not the Senecan understanding of tragedy with
bloodshed and mutilation dominating the stage, but a nobler form of it in which the characters
never compromise on their dignity even on the verge of death. He believes that the tragic
form restores beauty to death and returns poetic lyricism to the otherwise banal human
speech. He attributes no functions to the tragic form, as death functions only as a means of
finalizing all other contexts, and contends that the pain generated by tragedy is, and has to
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be, felt individually by the individual members of the audience, as a confrontation with death
addresses subjective memories in each individual.
Barker also sets the rules for the use of language in his catastrophic tragedies and
aims to go back to the elaborate, rhetorical and poetic language of the classical Greek and
Roman tragedies to save it from everyday banality and aggrandize drama to the level of
poetry. He seems well aware that such a speech pattern will bring about certain obscurity of
meaning on behalf of the general theatre-going public and welcomes it wholeheartedly with
the belief that tragic experience matters more than understandability. Barker believes that
easy digestibility of meaning in arts leads to a uniformity of interpretation, which he describes
as ‘chanting banal tunes in unison’, and this reduces arts to the level of preaching. As opposed
to this, Barker professes that each member of the audience comes to experience the theatre
with their own personal backgrounds and must react individually to the play and, thus, come
up with their own moral or ideological interpretations. The audience must never identify
themselves with the actors on the stage very much in the way that the actors must not identify
themselves with the characters they are portraying in order to keep up with the critical
distance throughout the performance. Barker’s catastrophic tragedies never intend to arouse
feelings like pity and fear in the audience, or any other feelings for that matter, as these plays
are not written to correct or to change individuals in a better way, but to shake them out of
their habitual consumerism of meaning.
Even though Barker categorizes his plays as “Theatre of Catastrophe” which
manifests itself as a politically, morally and aesthetically functionless kind, approaching his
plays from a different, opposite angle also proves rather fruitful with an assumption that
ideology lurks behind every artistic endeavour, especially in Barker’s time when political
drama has been dominating the stages for decades. In his plays written during the 80s, Barker
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touches upon similar issues from a similar point of view and his choice of political historical
subjects seems more than coincidental when his own political views regarding the Thatcher
rule in England are taken into consideration. In other words, Barker’s plays written in the 80s
turn into a masterful and veiled critique of the so-called Thacherite liberalism and
conservativism at the time and the ongoing official censorship activities despite the
abolishment of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office with the passing of the Theatres Act in 1968.
Thatcher’s premiership for a little more than a decade in England between 1979 and 1990
has been constantly referred to as a modern dictatorship because of her debatable actions and
decisions leading to an increasing number of unemployed citizens, her aggressive attitude
against labour and trade unions, imposition of heavy taxes and limitations of freedom of
expression and thought. Thatcher’s government has also been mentioned a number of times
in engagement with practicing censorship on media and literature in the name of the good of
the nation. Atlas, for instance, mentions Thatcher’s government taking initiatives “to menace
the independence of broadcasting; to threaten academic freedom in the universities and
schools; to tolerate abuses committed in the name of national security” (in Goldstein
2001:348). It is also a very well-known fact that the Thatcher government appealed to
censorship on British news media during the military campaign on the Falkland Islands in
1982, forcing the media “not to speculate, and not to divulge operations or readiness states”
(Cultice, 1990:41). The passing of the Public Order Act from the parliament in 1986, banning
dissident riots and meetings in the name of ‘public order’, and the Official Secrets Act in
1989, banning certain publications in the name of protecting confidential information, led to
the announcement of Charter 88, a left-wing magazine’s proclamation in which many
intellectuals complained about ‘the intensification of authoritarian rule’ under Thatcher’s
regime. With this bad reputation in mind, Thatcher’s rule in England has been viewed as a
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continuation of the totalitarian regimes having dominated European nations in the first half
of the century.
In his five plays written during the 80s, No End of Blame, The Power of the Dog, Pity
in History, Scenes from an Execution and Brutopia, Barker deals with such issues as
censorship and violation of freedom of thought and expression as natural consequences of
totalitarian regimes and forms a parallelism between the cases of political oppression in
European history and the time in which he is writing the plays. In all five plays, Barker takes
his audience to a journey in the pages of history to the incidents of governmental oppression
of thought and speech in order to voice his own ideas regarding the political atmosphere in
contemporary England. Along with such political parallelisms, Barker also expresses his
views about ethics and functions of art and responsibilities of artists in the face of public
morality with his use of protagonists who are all artists depicted in the middle of their
struggles against authority figures. Using these characters as a mouthpiece, Barker finds a
chance to voice his aesthetic views and criticism regarding the literature produced in his time,
as well.
In his 1981 play No End of Blame, Barker chooses the two decades between the two
world wars for the time and such European countries as Russia and England for the setting
of his play. This choice does not seem to be a coincidence when the attempts at political
intervention in arts in the play are taking into account in parallel with the situation in Barker’s
time. The protagonist of the play, a cartoonist named Bela, is constantly troubled by the
authorities in terms of the ‘sides’ his art takes. First Lenin’s and then Churchill’s attempts to
politicize Bela’s cartoons are quite reminiscent of the politicization of British drama in the
course of four decades until Barker’s time. Similarly, such attempts to ban some of Bela’s
cartoons criticizing Lenin after the First World War and Churchill during the Second World
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War also allude to the political intervention in arts and freedom of speech and thought during
the 80s in England. In this respect, it is possible to say that Barker models Bela on himself in
the latter’s strong stance against such attempts at making his art a means of political
propaganda. However, the parallelism between the political outlook in the play and the
political atmosphere in Barker’s time proves that Barker’s No End of Blame is not genuinely
aloof from political functions and that he uses his art as a means of political criticism of some
sort. Similarly, Barker’s portrayal of Bela as an artist responsible only to truth and artistic
beauty reflects the playwright’s aesthetic stance along with his beliefs regarding ethics of art
and duties of an artist. In all these respects, reading the play as historiographic metadrama
brings about a new interpretation that contradicts Barker’s formulation of “Theatre of
Catastrophe” as a functionless kind of dramatic genre.
Similarly, in his other 1981 play The Power of the Dog, Barker touches upon such
issues as the enterprises of a totalitarian regime and censorship of art, centring his play on
the character of Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin as the setting right after the Second World War.
He simply parodies the political agenda of the time through the eyes of, first, a clownish
comedian named McGroot and, secondly, a photographer named Ilona. In the opening scene
of the play in which Stalin and Churchill come together to share out the unclaimed lands after
the war, Barker reveals the collusive agreements signed behind the scenes under the pretext
of public interest. With regard to the parallelism between the Stalinist totalitarian regime in
Russia and the Thatcherite ‘regime’ in England, Barker gives a very sound political message
concerning the enterprises of the Conservative Party which are manifested in reducing any
counter-views to silence. Stalin’s confession that he censored artists to stop them from
‘singing out of tune’ and the army officer Sorge’s attempts to censor the letters of other
soldiers along with Ilona and Victor’s photographs stand for the governmental intervention
227
in arts in England after the war, which Barker draws attention to in a critical manner. Besides,
Ilona’s views about the responsibilities of the artist to her art along with the art student
Matrimova’s project of WHOLEFILM as an impartial kind reflect Barker’s own aesthetic
views and functions like an artistic manifesto on behalf of the playwright. In all these
respects, Barker can be said to have used his play to convey his messages in political and
aesthetic matters along with answering questions about artistic ethics and morality. Such an
interpretation of the play as historiographic metadrama runs afoul of Barker’s formulation of
“Theatre of Catastrophe” as a potentially functionless dramatic genre.
Written in 1984, Barker’s Pity in History explores similar political and aesthetic
subject matters to the two previously-discussed plays, taking the audience to a journey to one
of the bloodiest times in English history, The English Civil War, through which Barker
comments on the social and political chaos in the contemporary England. The mid-17th
century is a notorious period of instability in English history due to political and religious
dualities and Barker’s protagonist, a sculptor named Gaukroger, struggles against political
and religious officials over the motivations and nature of his artistic endeavours in the way
the playwright himself struggles against governmental censorship and political as well as
moral impositions on his art. However, Barker’s artist protagonist in this play needs some
reassurance from an art patron named Venables before he realizes the true power of his art,
as he seems ready to sell his artistic skills for a handsome amount of money at the beginning
of the play. The attempts of the parliamentarian officer Sergeant Boys and Chaplain Croop
to use Gaukroger’s art as a means of political propaganda are quite reminiscent of the
Thatcher government’s attempts to smother up any contradictory voices by abusing their
institutional power. Very much like the 17th century London, the contemporary London is
the symbol of political dichotomy and instability in which the institutional power is abused
228
by the self-ordained, so-called democratic, Conservative Party. Barker’s choice of the
Cromwellian period to allude to the Thatcherite government does not sound like a
coincidence when the conservative character and violent nature of the two parties are taken
into consideration. Along with the political commentary he offers in the play, Barker also
expresses his aesthetic views through the relationships between the sculptor and his
apprentice as well as between the sculptor and his patron. Barker, in a way, defends his drama
along with all artistic activities against such accusations as art being useless ornamentation
and vulgarism and pleads his distrust in historical representations in reflecting historical
realities. Such a political and aesthetic consciousness contradicts Barker’s formulation of
“Theatre of Catastrophe” as a completely functionless kind even though the play possesses
other catastrophic elements like its concern with death, poetic language and obscurity of
meaning.
Barker’s Scenes from an Execution, written in 1984, has been the most well-known
and most frequently-staged catastrophic tragedy of the playwright with its masterful
reinterpretation of a famous historical event, the Battle of Lepanto, and its strong-willed,
free-spirited female protagonist, a painter named Galactia. In terms of Barker’s approach to
the historical subject matter, the play does not differ much from the others discussed in this
study, as Barker aims to draw attention to the universality of political and moral limitations
imposed on artists throughout the history of mankind. Through Galactia’s struggle against
the political and religious authorities of the 16th century Venice regarding freedom of artistic
representation, Barker voices his criticism of the contemporary government’s violation of
freedom of expression and censorship of art and press. By favour of Galactia’s resistance to
such political and moral impositions, Barker alludes to his own struggle to keep his drama
aloof from the mainstream tradition of political theatre. In this way, he expresses his views
229
regarding responsibilities of an artist towards society or art itself and discusses the issues of
artistic ethics and morality. In addition, Barker also subverts the historical understanding of
Battle of Lepanto being a glorious victory over the Ottoman Empire, depicts the battle as
mere butchery like any other battle fought in the history. In doing so, he claims that
representations of such milestone historical events in history books are nothing more than
subjective narratives masquerading as historical reality. In all these respects, Barker’s Scenes
from an Execution does not meet the requirements of a categorization as a politically, morally
and aesthetically functionless play as formulated by the playwright within the framework of
“Theatre of Catastrophe”.
Finally, Barker’s 1989 play Brutopia: Secret Life in Old Chelsea is of a similar
character in terms of its interest in the validity of historical representation and its critical
approach to political oppression of any kind, which is the ultimate enemy of artistic creativity
and freedom of thought. Taking its subject matter again from English history, particularly
from the famous incident that happened between King Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More over
the former’s desire to get a divorce leading to the latter’s execution, the play turns into a
critique of the abuse of political power for the derivation of personal benefits under the
pretence of public prosperity. Giving voice to a historically marginalized character, Thomas
More’s youngest daughter Cecilia who is depicted as the strong-willed author of an anti-
utopia against her father’s famous political satire, Barker draws attention to the possibility of
writing alternative histories just with a little touch of imagination and disavows the validity
of historical accounts written always by the powerful. Besides, Barker forms a parallelism
between the 16th century England and his own time in terms of the violation of freedom of
speech and thought along with governmental censorship of art. He uses his protagonist
Cecilia as a mouthpiece to express his ideas concerning an artist’s responsibilities towards

230
his society, himself and art itself along with the ethical and aesthetic concerns behind every
artistic endeavour. Barker’s depictions of Henry VIII as a despotic ruler and Thomas More
as an obsessive politician and uncaring father are quite telling about what he bears in mind
about the politicians of his own time. In all these respects, Barker’s Brutopia turns out to be
a politically, morally and aesthetically concerned piece of writing, which makes it unfit for a
classification as functionless “Theatre of Catastrophe”.
Consequently, the criteria determined by Barker in his designation of his own
dramatic genre are observed to be fulfilled by his selected plays only to a certain extent. Even
though Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” possesses unique characteristics compared to the
drama of his contemporaries, his plays bear strong resemblances to the work of those political
playwrights of the Brechtian tradition in terms of the motivation behind the action being
political criticism and moral obligation. His selected plays all written in the 80s have several
characteristics in common not only in terms of their subject matters, but their stylistic aspects
as well. No End of Blame, The Power of the Dog, Pity in History, Scenes from an Execution
and Brutopia are all concerned with well-known documented historical events, each
depicting moments of political unrest and catastrophe under the rule of totalitarian regimes.
By means of these historical references, Barker not only invalidates the referentiality of
historical representations, but also offers his criticism of the political enterprises of his own
time like censorship of art, violation of freedom of expression and government’s aggression
in both internal and external affairs, although these plays differ from the mainstream
Brechtian political drama in their use of elaborate poetic language, obscurity of meaning and
concern with dividing the audience rather than uniting them under one political and moral
code. In all these respects, Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” must be incorporated into the
231
mainstream tradition of political drama even though his political and moral preoccupation is
more indirect, his criticism is more veiled and his main concern is an aesthetic one.
232
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247
RECONFIGURATION OF HOWARD BARKER’S THEATRE OF

CATASTROPHE AS HISTORIOGRAPHIC METADRAMA: NO END OF BLAME,
THE POWER OF THE DOG, PITY IN HISTORY, SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION
AND BRUTOPIA
ABSTRACT
Howard Barker’s theatre has always been dealt with as a characteristically distinctive
kind with respect to the playwright’s formulation of his self-crafted dramatic genre called
‘Theatre of Catastrophe’ whose main principles were listed in his two monumental books on
drama and performance, Arguments for a Theatre and Death, the One and the Art of Theatre.
In these treatises, Barker designates a new genre which differentiates itself from the
contemporary mainstream tradition of Brechtian political drama, dominating British stages
for decades, with its non-didactic, anti-cathartic outlook aiming to divert the audience into
individual responses rather than a collective moral improvement. Barker’s plays also stand
apart from the mainstream drama in their concern with the tragic experience rather than the
political and moral message with an elaborate, lyrical language and obscurity of meaning.
However, this study aims to bring a new perspective to the understanding of Barker’s drama,
with specific examples from his five major plays written in the 80s, No End of Blame, The
Power of the Dog, Pity in History, Scenes from an Execution and Brutopia, with an emphasis
on the use of historical subject matter and the choice of characters from among artists. The
plays in question are interpreted within the context of the contemporary dramatic genre,
‘historiographic metadrama’, with an aim to reveal Barker’s veiled political, moral and
aesthetic criticism and, thus, to refute his claims that his ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’ is a
politically, morally and aesthetically functionless and non-didactic kind of drama. Even
though the criteria determined by Barker in his designation of his own dramatic genre are
observed to be fulfilled by his selected plays and Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” possesses
unique characteristics compared to the drama of his contemporaries to a certain extent, his
248
plays bear strong resemblances to the work of those political playwrights of the Brechtian
tradition in terms of the motivation behind the action being political criticism and moral
obligation. It is argued in this study that, by means of historical references, Barker not only
invalidates the referentiality of historical representations, but also offers his criticism of the
political enterprises of his own time like censorship of art, violation of freedom of expression
and government’s aggression in both internal and external affairs, although these plays differ
from the mainstream Brechtian political drama in their use of elaborate poetic language,
obscurity of meaning and concern with dividing the audience rather than uniting them under
one political and moral code. In all these respects, this study concludes that Howard Barker’s
drama has to be incorporated into the mainstream political theatre of his time despite its other
distinctive thematic and technical qualities, with his political and moral preoccupation being
more indirect, his criticism being more veiled and his main concern being an aesthetic one.
Key Words: Howard Barker, Theatre of Catastrophe, Historiographic Metadrama

249
HOWARD BARKER’IN FELAKET TİYATROSU’NUN TARİHYAZIMSAL

ÜSTTİYATRO OLARAK YENİDEN YAPILANDIRILMASI: NO END OF BLAME,
THE POWER OF THE DOG, PITY IN HISTORY, SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION
VE BRUTOPIA
ÖZET
Howard Barker tiyatrosu daima yazarın Arguments for a Theatre (Bir Tiyatro İçin
Argümanlar) ve Death, the One and the Art of Theatre (Ölüm, Bir ve Tiyatro Sanatı) başlıklı
iki büyük eserinde temel ilkelerini belirttiği, kendi yarattığı ve “Theatre of Catastrophe”
(Felaket Tiyatrosu) adı verilen özgün tiyatro türü bağlamında incelenmiştir. Bu eserlerde
Barker, sanatta eğiticiliğe karşı olması ve seyirciyi topluca bir ahlaki gelişmeye
yöneltmektense her bir izleyiciyi kendi bireysel tepkisini geliştirmeye yönelten katarsis
karşıtı yapısıyla uzun yıllar boyunca İngiliz sahnelerine hakim olan Brechtçi politik tiyatro
geleneğinden önemli ölçüde ayrılan yeni bir tür yaratmıştır. Barker’ın oyunları ayrıca politik
ve ahlaki bir mesaj vermeyi reddedişi, bunun yerine trajik deneyimi vurgulayışı ve bunu
yaparken de süslü, şiirsel bir dil kullanıyor oluşu ve anlam belirsizliği ile anaakım tiyatrodan
ayrı bir yerde durmaktadır.
Ancak, bu çalışma, yazarın 80’lerde yazmış olduğu, No End of Blame (Suçlamanın Sonu
Yok), The Power of The Dog (Köpeğin Kudreti), Pity in History (Tarihte Merhamet), Scenes
From An Executıon (Bir İnfazın Portresi) ve Brutopia (Brütopya) isimli beş önemli oyununa
göndermeler yaparak ve yazarın tarihsel konular kullanması ve karakterlerini sanatçılardan
seçmesi üzerinde özellikle durarak, Barker’ın oyunlarına yeni bir bakış açısı getirmeyi
amaçlamaktadır. Söz konusu oyunlar çağdaş bir tiyatro türü olan ‘tarihyazımsal üsttiyatro’
bağlamında, Barker’ın yaptığı üstü kapalı politik, ahlaki ve estetik eleştirileri ortaya
çıkarmak, bu sayede yazarın ‘Felaket Tiyatrosu’nun’ politik, ahlaki ve estetik açıdan işlevsiz
ve eğiticiliğe karşı bir tür olduğu iddialarını çürütmek amacıyla incelenmektedir. Barker’ın
incelenen oyunları kendi yarattığı tiyatro türün kriterlerini bir noktaya kadar karşılıyor ve
250
onun “Felaketler Tiyatrosu” dönemin diğer akımlarına kıyasla eşsiz özellikler taşıyor olsa
da, bu oyunlar dönemin Brehtçi politik tiyatro yazarlarında görülen politik eleştiri yapma ve
ahlaki sorumluluk gibi konular bakımından o akımlarla benzerlik göstermektedir. Bu
çalışmada Barker’ın tarihsel göndermeler yoluyla sadece tarihsel temsilleri geçerliliğini
çürütmekle kalmadığı, ayrıca tarihsel olaylarla kendi dönemi arasında paralellikler kurarak
sanatın sansürlenmesi, ifade ve düşünce özgürlüğünün ihlal edilmesi ve hükümetin iç ve dış
meselelerdeki agresif tutumu gibi dönemin politik gelişmelerine dair bir eleştiri sunduğu
iddia edilmektedir. Yine de bunlara rağmen, Barker’ın oyunlarının Brehtçi politik tiyatrodan
ayrıldığı şiirsel dil, bilinçli anlam belirsizliği ve seyircileri aynı ahlaki ve politik mesaj altında
toplamama isteği gibi konular da vurgulanmaktadır. Bütün bunlar göz önünde
bulundurulduğunda, bu çalışma Howard Barker’ın tiyatrosunun tüm diğer kendine has
tematik ve teknik özelliklerine rağmen, anaakım politik tiyatro içerisine dahil edilmesinin
gerekliliğini vurgulamaktadır. Bu bağlamda tek fark, Barker’ın politik ve ahlaki kaygılarının
daha dolaylı olması, eleştirilerinin daha örtülü yapılması ve temel amacının estetik bir amaç
olmasıdır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Howard Barker, Felaket Tiyatrosu, Tarihyazımsal Üsttiyatro

Howard Barker&#39;s Historiographic Metadrama

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TÜRKİYE CUMHURİYETİ

RECONFIGURATION OF HOWARD BARKER’S THEATRE OF CATASTROPHE AS

HISTORIOGRAPHIC METADRAMA: NO END OF BLAME, THE POWER OF THE

DOG, PITY IN HISTORY, SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION AND BRUTOPIA

RECONFIGURATION OF HOWARD BARKER’S THEATRE OF CATASTROPHE AS

HISTORIOGRAPHIC METADRAMA: NO END OF BLAME, THE POWER OF THE

DOG, PITY IN HISTORY, SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION AND BRUTOPIA

RECONFIGURATION OF HOWARD BARKER’S THEATRE OF CATASTROPHE AS

HISTORIOGRAPHIC METADRAMA: NO END OF BLAME, THE POWER OF THE

DOG, PITY IN HISTORY, SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION AND BRUTOPIA

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nazan TUTAŞ

professors at the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University,

for young researchers from all around the world.

CHAPTER 1- The Evolution of a Genre: Historiographic Metadrama………………..14

1.2. A Brief History of Metadramatic Theatre in the Modern Times…………...47

1.3. From Historiographic Metafiction to Historiographic Metadrama……….77

CHAPTER 2- The Tenets of Howard Barker’s Theatre of Catastrophe……………….91

2.1. Tragedy, Death and the Catastrophic Effect………………………………..98

2.2. Language, Obscurity and the Question of Anti-Catharsis………...………109

2.3. Political, Moral and Aesthetic Functionlessness…………………………...116

CHAPTER 3- Rereading Howard Barker’s Plays as Historiographic Metadrama….130

3.1. No End of Blame and the ‘Terrible’ Power of Art………………………..133

3.3. Pity in History and Art as ‘Vulgar Ostentation’……………………………173

3.5. Brutopia and Art in the Face of Censorship………………………………..203

experimental drama of playwrights like Sarah Kane.

moral contexts. Many researchers have positioned Barker’s “Theatre of Catastrophe” up

discussions are inevitably contingent upon a blind acknowledgment of Barker’s drama as a

decisively and perfectly functionless kind, as proposed in the playwright’s theoretical

aloofness from politics and moralism.

However, this study focuses on the relationships between the contemporary

those historical and metadramatic references as a means to address contemporary political,

of Barker’s plays is potentially subversive of his theatrics of “Theatre of Catastrophe”

proposed in his theory books on theatre and performance.

contemporary dramatic genre, historiographic metadrama, with respect to the treatment of

it requires a re-reading of the plays concerned within the framework of historiographic

playwright proposes and what he produces.

As mentioned above, a new perspective is required to the analysis of Howard

the playwright’s contributions to the development of a new genre, historiographic

metadrama. Using Linda Hutcheon’s proverbial theory “historiographic metafiction”, a

discussion to Barker’s self-crafted genre ‘the Theatre of Catastrophe” as detailed in his

Catastrophe” about functionlessness of art and irresponsibility of the artist.

of this new genre with particular emphasis on self-reflexivity, self-referentiality, artificiality

and illusoriness of dramatic works. In addition, Richard Hornby’s definition of metadrama

works on history-writing like Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in

Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973) in which he defines a historical work as “a verbal

refers to Alexander Feldman’s definition of ‘historiographic metatheatre’ as “those works,

Howard Barker’s fundamental principles in his formulation of the “Theatre of Catastrophe”,

development of historiography which is born with the premises of an objective, scientific

beginning of studies in historiography is attributed to the German philosopher Hegel who

writing of history is inevitably necessary for the good of the majority.

With an eye to Hayden White’s discussion of the evolution of historiography in a

philosophers of the German tradition like Droysen, the Anglo-American philosophers of

referring to Droysen’s Historik (1868), it also discusses how he sees history as a

Droysen relates historical knowledge and representation ultimately to the interpretative

knowledge as a process of linguistic encoding and decoding in an attempt to interpret and

of Marxist historiography, Jameson emphasizes the necessity of a narrative structure in an

philosophers of history in terms of their approaches to the element of story-telling in

philosophers, discusses historiography as an act of narrativizing the past through which

reasons and consequences.

eliminate storytelling from historical representation if historiography is meant to be a science.

these Anglo-American philosophers, is an unnecessary measure, as the past itself was

comprised of individual stories to be transformed into historical accounts thanks to the

historian’s storytelling capabilities. However, in the postmodern way of thinking, there is no

Ricoeur turned his attention in the 70s.

Howard Barker's Historiographic Metadrama

Howard Barker's Historiographic Metadrama