3. What prompted the author to present the issue on what is normal and abnormal?
Who is Peter Levin Shaffer?
• Early Life: Peter Shaffer was born to Orthodox Jewish parents, Jack and Reka Shaffer, in Liverpool, England, on May 15, 1926, has a twin brother, Anthony. Another brother, Brian, was born in 1929. He was studying history and a scholarship at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Before the careen in playwriting, Shaffer was a coal miner during World War II, held various odd jobs, such as clerk bookstore and assistant at the New York Public Library. Early years of his career he was also a literary critic.
Together with his fraternal twin, Anthony they were able to publish the first of three mystery novels, Woman in the Wardrobe, and used a joint pseudonym of Peter Anthony. They were known as the author of the …show more content…
Shaffer had a resounding hit with Equus in 1974, which ran for over 1,000 performances in London. But if the British liked it, the Americans were ecstatic over the story of a young man who is put into the hands of a psychiatrist after blinding six horses. In his splendid introduction to his collected plays (1982), the playwright tells of the true story that prompted the work and shows how he adapted it to achieve greater universality. In Manhattan in 1975 it won the Antoinette Perry Award (the Tony), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award, but the critical reception was enormously varied. Brendan Gill in theNew Yorker called it "a melodrama continuously thrilling on its own terms" and John Russell Taylor labeled it "at once a spectacular drama and a thinkpiece"; John Simon in New Yorkmagazine, on the other hand, opined that "it falls into that category of wornout whimsy wherein we are told that insanity is more desirable, admirable, or just saner than sanity." It was made into a film for which Shaffer wrote the script in
Who is Peter Levin Shaffer?
• Early Life: Peter Shaffer was born to Orthodox Jewish parents, Jack and Reka Shaffer, in Liverpool, England, on May 15, 1926, has a twin brother, Anthony. Another brother, Brian, was born in 1929. He was studying history and a scholarship at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Before the careen in playwriting, Shaffer was a coal miner during World War II, held various odd jobs, such as clerk bookstore and assistant at the New York Public Library. Early years of his career he was also a literary critic.
Together with his fraternal twin, Anthony they were able to publish the first of three mystery novels, Woman in the Wardrobe, and used a joint pseudonym of Peter Anthony. They were known as the author of the …show more content…
Shaffer had a resounding hit with Equus in 1974, which ran for over 1,000 performances in London. But if the British liked it, the Americans were ecstatic over the story of a young man who is put into the hands of a psychiatrist after blinding six horses. In his splendid introduction to his collected plays (1982), the playwright tells of the true story that prompted the work and shows how he adapted it to achieve greater universality. In Manhattan in 1975 it won the Antoinette Perry Award (the Tony), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award, but the critical reception was enormously varied. Brendan Gill in theNew Yorker called it "a melodrama continuously thrilling on its own terms" and John Russell Taylor labeled it "at once a spectacular drama and a thinkpiece"; John Simon in New Yorkmagazine, on the other hand, opined that "it falls into that category of wornout whimsy wherein we are told that insanity is more desirable, admirable, or just saner than sanity." It was made into a film for which Shaffer wrote the script in