Overview

Peter Hall delivered these remarkable explorations of form and language in drama as the Clark Lectures for Trinity College, Cambridge in January 2000. In four main parts they reveal a lifetime’s discoveries about classical theatre, Shakespeare, opera and modern drama. The Greek Stage/Shakespeare’s Verse/ Mozart’s Ensembles/ The Metaphors of Beckett and Pinter The central argument is that form and structured language paradoxically give freedom to power of thought and feeling, much like the masks which enabled actors in early Greek drama to express extreme emotion. The mask may take many forms - the precise language of Beckett and Pinter, the classical form of Mozart’s operas, or Shakespeare’s verse.