Peter Shaffer and his twin brother, Anthony, were born in Liverpool, England, on May 15, 1926, to Jack (a real estate agent) and Reka (Fredman) Shaffer. When Shaffer was ten, the family moved to London, where Shaffer attended St. Paul's School. There he developed an interest in music, which would be a catalyst for his later treatment of the story of Mozart and Salieri in Amadeus.

After earning a degree from Cambridge in 1950, Shaffer moved to New York City and found employment at a bookshop in the New York Public Library. When he relocated to London in 1954, he began writing scripts for radio and television. His first stage play, Five Finger Exercise, produced in 1958, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best foreign play in 1960. Royal Hunt of the Sun, which opened in 1964, solidified his literary reputation. Tins play, which dramatizes the Spanish conquest of the...