'The Theatre', claims Howard Brenton, 'is a dirty place.' And Brenton, as much as any dramatist of recent years, has been associated with an obsessive interest in public and private violence—seeming assaults on all versions of law and order…. Brenton has a particular view of the power which lies behind the drama, both past and present, which he most admires. It is obvious, for instance, that dramatists have often been more concerned with portraying individuals who break rather than obey the law. The history of theatre can be read in these terms as a history of some pretty spectacular criminals; from Clytemnestra murdering Agamemnon in his bath; to Oedipus slaying his father; to Hamlet's sudden slaughter of Polonius; to the crimes of a Macbeth unleashing a seemingly endless tide of blood upon his Scottish kingdom. It is only with the rise of the naturalist theatre, in...