The Spiritual Journey Of Modern Man--A Study On The Royal Hunt Of The Sun,Equus,and Amadeus

Peter Levin Shaffer is a well-known playwright in contemporary British theatre. His masterpieces The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, and Amadeus are proclaimed as his great dramatic trilogy concerning god and belief. The Royal Hunt of the Sun not only represents the journey of western civilized man’s limitless lust for gold and wealth, but also Pizarro’s, the protagonist of the play, spiritual quest for meaning of life. Equus serves as a further manifestation of modern man’s spiritual predicament and quest with the story about the psychiatrist Dysart. Amadeus, a highly fictionalized account of the lives of eighteenth-century composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, directly reveals Peter’s religion complex and his metaphysical search for meaning of life.Though Shaffer’s drama contains profound themes, scholars haven’t devote due attention to them. Especially in China, the number of relevant research papers is only a few to count. This paper takes Shaffer’s trilogy as objects of study, and tries to explore the characters’spiritual world, which is used as an opportunity to expound modern man’s struggling efforts to heal since their loss of spiritual home.Given that all the three plays are marked profound religious tenor, the exploration is conducted from the biblical source in Shaffer’s play, which includes biblical narrative structure and biblical prototypes embodied in by Shaffer. The three basic narrative elements of God, the world and human being, and the two inclinations of both theocentricism and humanocentrism are perfect manifested in Shaffer’s plays. The thesis is prepared to analyze the quest for meaning of life in Shaffer’s plays through the exploration of the motif concerning the relationship between man and God which is clearly existed in Shaffer’s dramatic narration. The disappointment of Pizarro, Dysart and Salieri over their quest for God leads them into the living predicament because of the absence of God. Their predicament is the metaphorical one of modern people. Traditional religion is inadequate to channel human need for belief and the society emphasizing conformity and order stifles the primitive impulses of humankind, and takes away passion and vitality from human life. In his plays, Shaffer incarnates the quest of the human lost in predicament for the meaning of life.