The theatricality of Edward Bond's plays

This thesis examines the theatricality of Edward Bond's plays, the devices, methods and aspects of characterisations, and the dramatic strategies and structure that emphasise the political consciousness behind them. It investigates the relationship between Bond's drama and social reality through the mentioned aspects, concentrating on the technicality of the playwriting. Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis is divided into three parts. Part One investigates Bond's main anti-illusory devices. Chapter One discusses the topic of the histrionic words and actions. Chapter Two discusses the trial scenes in the plays and concludes that with the exception of Human Cannon, all Bond's courtrooms are diegetic, occurring within the narration. Chapter Three investigates three dramatic devices which are connected in the plays: 1) the atmosphere of playfulness or the sequences of horseplay, 2) the divided focus of aggro-effect which developed into 3) simultaneous action. Chapter Four focuses on the play-within-the-play especially when it is used as a detaching/detached device. Chapter Five investigates Bond's dramatic lyrics and songs. Part Two concentrates on Bond's methods of characterisation. As part of his schematic structure, Bond uses some figures to represent an abstract notion. Chapter One investigates the phenomenon of father figures (or "Wise Fools") which develop into the ultimate father figure/artist. These father figures are always portrayed in relation to young figures who are split into two halves. One of these halves represents the submission to socialised morality and the other represents the search for an alternative political system to the dehumanising one of the father figure. This oppositional configuration of the Siamese twins is the topic of Chapter Two. Chapter Three looks at Bond's employment of ghost figures, some of which die a second lime in the play. The chapter links these life-in-death representatives to other sorts of figures who represent death-in-life. These latter figures are called corpora, metaphorically dead characters. The possessed figures are the subject of Chapter Four which concludes that Bond's uses of mad figures is theatrical and gives little attention to illusion. Part Three is divided superficially into three chapters to deal with Bond's plays and their structure: Chapter One deals with the plays from The Pope's Wedding to The Sea, Chapter Two from Bingo to The Bundle, and Chapter Three from The Worlds to The War Plays. This part uses the findings of the earlier parts to facilitate an overview of the plays in order to specify the principal features of Bond's increasing theatricality, a theatricality which he uses as a vehicle to cany his own political analysis of the situation presented on the stage.