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Peter Levin Shaffer |
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Peter Shaffer is one of the most consistently popular playwrights of the British mainstream theater, with a stage career dating from 1959. Because his work suggests none of the political commitment of writers such as David Hare, Steven Berkoff, or Howard Brenton, his commercial success is regarded by many critics as suspect. For example, Tim Brown, in a 2 June 1986 review in The Guardian (London) of a revival of Shaffer's Amadeus (performed 1979; published 1980), talked of it as a "piece of merchandise . . . the pinnacle of that English export trade you might call Tony Award drama, and the high point of the Peter Shaffer sales graph." For such critics Shaffer's notions of theater and drama appear to be a part of an elitist holdover that panders to the easy prejudices and middlebrow demands of the mainstream international audience. In short, a situation has arisen in which, while audiences flock to Shaffer's plays, academics and critics maintain a careful critical distance, repeatedly charging Shaffer's drama with sensationalism, glibness, and intellectual hollowness.
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