Equus
Introduction
After premiering in 1973 in London, Peter Shaffer's Equus ran for more
than a thousand performances on Broadway and won the 1974 Tony Award,
as well as three other major drama awards. The play focuses on the causes
underlying a seemingly senseless act of violence by an adolescent boy, an act
that forces the characters to confront questions of responsibility and
ultimate meaning. Through his characters, Shaffer explores the dilemmas of
late-twentieth-century existence in England and, by extension, in the entire
industrialized world. In an increasingly commercial and mechanized culture,
there is little place for ecstasy and worship, yet they remain human
endowments. Is our trust in science as foolish—even more foolish—than the
pagans' belief in their gods? Does being "normal" in such a culture also entail
losing one's individuality and learning to live without passion?
Equus centers on the explosive encounters between Alan Strang, who has
blinded six horses with a spike, and Martin Dysart, the middle-aged
psychiatrist who agrees to treat him. Shaffer based the plot on an allegedly
true story told by a friend about a young man who blinded a stable of horses.
Shaffer wrote Equus to "create a mental world in which the deed could be
made comprehensible" (p. 9), and the play is structured like a mystery, as
Dysart struggles to determine what drove Alan to commit the crime. But
Equus is far from a conventional mystery, in which solving the crime relieves
tension and restores a stable society. Instead, Dysart's search for the
meaning of Alan's act leads him to doubt his own vocation and integrity. The
closer he comes to understanding his patient's motives, the more confused
Dysart is about how he should respond to Alan and the mental world he has
created. The ultimate, insoluble mystery is embodied in the horse-god Equus
himself. At the beginning of act 2, Equus asks Dysart, "Do you really imagine
you can account for Me?" (p. 75). The play issues readers and audiences the
same challenge.
In Equus, the characters, as well as readers and audiences, face a
bewildering range of explanations for Alan's mental state. Hesther Salomon,
the magistrate who refers Alan to Dysart, sees Alan as a victim in pain and
relies on psychiatry to relieve that pain. Alan's parents, Frank and Dora,
blame each other to some extent but also acknowledge their inability to
comprehend their son and his crime. Dora finally attributes her son's act to
"the Devil" (p. 78), and Shaffer does not allow us to dismiss her view lightly.
In an eloquent speech to Dysart, Dora attacks the tendency of conventional
psychiatry to blame parents for their children's neuroses. She insists that
Dysart recognize that "Alan is himself. Every soul is itself. If you added up
everything we ever did to him, from his first day on earth to this, you
wouldn't find why he did this terrible thing—because that's him; not just all
of our things added up" (p. 78). It is this last possibility—that Alan's
"illness" is an intrinsic part of his selfhood—that throws Dysart's view of
the world into confusion.
After his first meeting with Alan, Dysart dreams he is a gold-masked pagan
priest cutting the hearts from hundreds of living children in an elaborate
ritual. For the rest of the play, Dysart agonizes over questions he has never
before considered: By helping the children he sees become "normal," is he
actually harming them? Is his allegiance to psychiatry a defense against the
passion and spiritual mystery that inform Alan's worship of Equus?
Outwardly, Alan is ordinary, even pathetic, in his lack of vocational or social
success. He has a boring job in an appliance store and picks up part-time
work grooming horses at a local stable. He is painfully uncomfortable with
Jill, the girl at the stable who is the only other person his age we see him
interact with. Yet Alan creates a fantastic internal world of ecstatic
devotion. He builds this world from whatever comes to hand—biblical
quotations, bits of Greek mythology, a photograph of a horse his printer
father brings home from work, and an emotionally charged seaside horse
ride he takes as a child with a stranger. The play insistently raises the
question of what horses, and the horse-god Equus in particular, represent to
Alan. Alan hears Equus say, "'I see you.' I will save you'" (p. 66), but also
hears him laughing after the failed sexual encounter with Jill in the stables.
A horse is both "the most naked thing you ever saw" (p. 49) and a ruthless
judge of Alan's own vulnerability. After Jill leaves the stable, the terrified
Alan pleads for forgiveness from Equus and finally commits his desperate
act of cruelty. Equus is Alan's "God-slave" and, after he tells Dysart about
blinding the horses, Alan cries "KILL ME! . . . KILL ME!" (p. 105–6).
At the end of the play we are left, like Dysart, to contemplate two
unattractive alternatives. One is leaving Alan with his worship, but clearly in
intense psychic pain; the other is "curing" Alan at the cost of destroying his
passion. Shaffer heightens the audience's role as observers by placing the
actors on stage throughout the play. They sit on benches in rows when they
are not in a scene. The continuous presence of this audience on stage—an
audience that looks much like a jury—makes explicit our own voyeurism and
responsibility. The last scene leaves us to ask what Dysart has done and
what he should have done. We can accept his assessment that "the Normal is
the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest" (p. 65) or
Hesther's insistence that "the boy's in pain. . . . That's all I see" (p. 83). We
may embrace Dora's view of the Devil as "an old-fashioned word, but a true
thing" (p. 78). Whatever view we adopt, we are left with Dysart's anguished
"What dark is this?" and the question of how to understand his last line:
"There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out" (p.
109).
Discussion Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Why does Alan blind the horses? Why does he say "KILL ME! . . . KILL
ME!" after he relives the act with Dysart? (p. 106)
Why does Alan initially respond to Dysart's questioning with
advertising jingles? (p. 22–23) Why does he dislike his job in an appliance
store and list appliance makers as his "foes"? (pp. 53, 73)
What does Dysart mean when he says that Alan is a "last straw" or a
"last symbol"? (p. 18)
Why does Shaffer have Frank, who praises books and reading, speak
in repetitive catch phrases such as "receive my meaning," "swiz," etc.? (p.
27)
Near the end of the play Dysart says, "If you [Alan] knew anything,
you'd get up this minute and run from me fast as you could" (p. 107). Does
Dysart really believe that Alan would be better off without therapy? Does
Shaffer intend us to believe this?
Is Dysart more concerned about Alan's welfare or his own?
On the beach, why is Frank so angry with the young man who takes
Alan riding? Why is this event so important to Alan? (p. 42)
Does Alan want Dysart to "cure" him? Why does he reveal his inner
world to Dysart?
What does Dysart mean when in the play's last scene he says, "There
is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out"? (p. 109)
10.
Jill tells Alan that love of horses can be a "substitute" for sex (p. 90).
Is this true in the world of the play? To what extent does sexual repression
shape the characters and their actions?
For Further Reflection
1.
In "Note on the Play," Shaffer writes, "I had to create a mental world
in which the deed could be made comprehensible" (p. 9). To what extent does
Equus succeed in doing this?
2.
Is it better for someone with a mental illness like Alan's to be
treated and become "normal" and without passion, or to be left alone?
3.
How are worship and passion related? Do they depend on each other?
Is one a substitute for the other?
About Peter Shaffer
Peter Shaffer is known for the quality of his plays and the variety of their
subject matter. In addition to Equus (1973), Shaffer's best-known plays are
Amadeus (1979), about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his rival Antonio
Salieri, and Lettice & Lovage (1987), about two British tour guides mixed up
in an attempted murder. From the beginning of his career, Shaffer has
enjoyed both critical and popular acclaim. His first play, The Salt Land
(1954), was produced for television by the BBC. Four years later, Five Finger
Exercise opened in London under the direction of Sir John Gielgud and won
the Evening Standard Drama Award. To date, Shaffer has won two Tony
Awards, for Equus and Amadeus, and an Academy Award for his screenplay
of Amadeus, as well as a host of other awards.
Shaffer was born in Liverpool, England in 1926. His twin brother, Anthony
Shaffer, is also a playwright (Sleuth, Frenzy, The Wicker Man). The family
moved to London when the boys were nine. Shaffer was educated at
Cambridge, and his early career included stints as a coal miner, an assistant
at the New York Public Library, and an editor for a firm of music publishers.
Before writing his plays, he wrote novels jointly with his brother. In 1987,
Shaffer was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Related Titles
Bertolt Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan (1940)
This play concerns the meaning and place of God in the modern world.
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Euripides, Hippolytus (428 B.C.)
A tragedy about a horse-obsessed young man, gods, and a disastrous
attempt at love.
Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)
Freud's case study provides an introduction to the basic theory of
psychoanalysis along with a gripping plot involving incest, adultery, and
abandonment.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge(1944)
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personal odyssey to discover God's place in a changing world.
Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959)
In this popular and influential book of stories, Sillitoe depicts young
working-class Englishmen who rebel against the society that limits
their opportunities.