SOURCE: "Equus as a Modern Tragedy," in West Virginia Philological Papers Vol. 25, 1979, pp. 128-34.

In the essay below, Timm compares Equus to the classical Greek dramas Oedipus and Antigone and to Racine's Phèdre in an attempt to define a modern version of tragedy.

Whether our age is capable of producing real tragedy is a question that has preoccupied critics and philosophers. I would like to pose that question as a basis for discussing Peter Shaffer's Equus. I will proceed by comparing the play to several tragedies, Antigone, Oedipus, and Phedre, in order to evolve a working definition of tragedy. This essay will raise two questions: Is it necessary to have a hero of elevated stature, and can post-Freudian writers find a uniquely "modern" way of approaching tragedy?

Antigone's pattern of oppositions provides a formal paradigm for many of Shaffer's plays: Shrivings and The Royal Hunt of the...