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Birth
Peter Levin Shaffer was born in Liverpool, England into a middle-class Jewish family, he was the youngest of twins born to Jack, an estate agent, and Reka Shaffer. He had a younger brother named Brain and his fraternal twin Anthony. https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-sir-peter-shaffer-cbe-playwright-1-4150821 -
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Schooling and Home Life
Following the family’s move to London, the twins attended St Paul’s School after which they were conscripted as miners – known as “Bevin Boys” – in the Kent coal mines during the Second World War. Peter recalled passing the long hours underground mentally rehearsing the tragic Shakespearian roles.Bevin Boys were young men who were conscripted to work in the coal mines of the United Kingdom to assist the war effort between December 1943 and 1948. Shaffer worked as a Bevin Boy for three years. -
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College
Post-war, he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge to study History and Anthony studied Law. In 1951, Peter then moved to New York, working in a bookshop, a department store and the acquisitions department of the New York Public Library. -
Life After College
After graduating from Cambridge University, he lived in New York City where he worked in the New York Library as an assistant and the Doubleday bookshop. During this time he co-wrote a detective story, The Woman in the Wardrobe (1951) with his brother Anthony under the name of Peter Anthony. The brothers wrote two more stories in the series: How Doth the Little Crocodile? (1952) and Withered Murder (1955). https://www.sunsigns.org/famousbirthdays/d/profile/peter-shaffer/ -
First Play
While in New York, he penned his play The Salt Land, about illegal Jewish immigrants to 1947 Palestine; it was produced on ITV in 1955. On his return to the UK, Shaffer joined the sheet music publishers Boosey & Hawkes but left to concentrate on writing. https://peterwyngarde.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/review-the-salt-land/ -
Five Finger Exercise Play
His play "Five Finger Exercise" was performed at the Comedy Theatre in London. It was about the impact of a handsome young German tutor on a middle-class English household, was controversial because of its homosexual undertones, but it went on to win the Evening Standard Drama Award. When it transferred to New York in 1959, it was equally well received and landed Shaffer the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. -
The Royal Hunt of the Sun
His play "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" was about the Inca's who believed in a sun god, ruler of the riches and people of Peru and thought to be immortal. But the Spaniards have come in conquest rather than in reverence. There is misunderstanding, confusion, and slaughter: the Spaniards kill 3000 unarmed Incas and take the sun god captive. The ransom is 9000 pounds of gold. The avaricious Spaniards mutiny, try the sun god in kangaroo court and garrote him. The Sun god is dead. -
Black Comedy
This play, takes a hilarious look at the antics of a group of characters feeling their way around a pitch black room--although the stage is, of course, actually flooded with light. -
The Battle of Shrivings
Shaffer's most American play, opened in London. The designation was his and he explained that he associated it most strongly with sojourns in New York City in 1968-1969" when he became obsessed by the fever of that time." But the story of a community of pacifists, protesters, and vegetarians led by Sir Gideon Petrie, a combination of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Daniel Berrigan, and Abbie Hoffman, had no success with either the critics or the public, and plans to take it to New York were dropped. -
Equus
Equus is one the best known Shaffer plays and was performed on Broadway, running for approximately 1,200 performances. However, this was not the only remake of the original play. There has been many recent remakes of Equus which starred the famous British actor, Daniel Radcliffe. This play depicts a psychiatrist’s fascination with a disturbed teenager’s mythopoeic obsession with horses. https://equusdaily.blogspot.com/2013/06/production-history-critical-history.html -
Award earned By Equus
Equus won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play and the New York Drama Critics' Circle that year as well. His screenplay adaptation of the play was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1978. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shaffer#Awards -
Amadeus
A play based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized. Significant use is made of the music of Mozart, Salieri and other composers of the period. The premieres of Mozart’s operas The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute are each the setting for key scenes of the play. This play opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York in 1980-1983. https://www.theatregold.com/amadeus/ -
Award earned by Amadeus
Amadeus won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics' Award for its initial London production. Upon moving to Broadway, Amadeus won the 1981 Tony Award for Best Play. His screenplay adaptation of the play won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar as well as the Golden Globe Best Screenplay in 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shaffer#Awards -
Honored with Commander
Shaffer was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1987 and was knighted in 2001. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Shaffer -
Shaffer's Personal Relationships
Not much was known about his personal life but it was known that Shaffer was gay but did not write explicitly about it. His partner Robert Leonard died in 1990. -
The Gift of the Gorgon
In The Gift of the Gorgon, Shaffer considers the quest for identity, creativity, and the boundary between justice and revenge in a flashy vehicle drawn from Greek mythology. As usual, critics were divided and audience response was far more uniformly enthusiastic. Aleks Sierz wrote of the production that "as theater it is flamboyant, exciting, brilliant: on cooler reflection, the ideas seem facile, the conflicts simplified, the gore too gruesome." -
Decision to stop writing
After a few more successes, the odd failure and some revivals, in 1996, Shaffer decided to call time on his writing. He claimed to have several “half-written plays in manila folders”, but said: “I feel slightly like that donkey in Aesop’s Fables that can’t decide which pile of hay to eat, so eats neither and starves to death.” -
Anthony Shaffer
His brother Anthony passed away in 2001. The brothers were reportedly close and on largely good terms, but it is notable that Mr. Shaffer’s plays so often focused on pairs of male rivals — Pizarro and Atahualpa, Dysart and Strang, Salieri and Mozart — whose competition delivers both nourishment and suffering. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/arts/peter-shaffer-dies-at-90-playwright-won-tonys-for-equus-and-amadeus.html -
Death
Shaffer died in Cork, Republic of Ireland, he was 90 years old. -
Work Cited
-https://www.samuelfrench.com/p/2765/the-royal-hunt-of-the-sun
-https://www.google.com/search?q=the+royal+hunt+of+the+sun+play&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS866US866&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv9uD6oZLlAhUMIDQIHcJZD6YQ_AUIEygC&biw=1366&bih=657#imgrc=CcI-sF7ADKRkFM:
-https://www.britannica.com/topic/Equus-play-by-Shaffer
-https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/english-literature-20th-cent-present-biographies/peter-shaffer -
Work Cited #2
-https://www.sunsigns.org/famousbirthdays/d/profile/peter--shaffer/
-https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-sir-peter-shaffer-cbe-playwright-1-4150821
-https://peterwyngarde.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/review-the-salt-land/
-https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-22046-5_2
-https://equusdaily.blogspot.com/2013/06/production-history-critical-history.html
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shaffer#Awards
-https://www.theatregold.com/amadeus/
