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History in the Year Two: Trevor Griffiths's Danton
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
Abstract
For British dramatists nurtured in and by the hopes for socialism which characterized the 'sixties and the 'seventies, the Thatcherite period – with the eclipse of a fatally flawed communist system as its international dimension – demanded not only new thinking, but at least the consideration of a new dramaturgy. Stanton B. Garner, Jr., here explores the ways in which one of the most consistently committed of contemporary writers, Trevor Griffiths, confronts in Hope in the Year Two, his play about the death of the French Revolutionary Danton, the dilemma not only of the revolutionary hero, but of the dramatist confronted with attacks upon the concept of history itself, whether from the gurus of post-modernism or of the New Right. Stanton B. Garner, Jr., teaches modern drama in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of The Absent Voice: Narrative Comprehension in the Theater (1989) and Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (1994). His current research interests include post-Cold War British drama.
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References
Notes and References
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20. This fragmentation is underscored in the Moshinsky television production, where Danton's face is filmed (on two occasions) reflected within a cracked mirror.
21. Although Griffiths has somewhat provocatively suggested that the audience itself remains uncertain ‘whether it's the real Danton or not’ (Griffiths, quoted in Grant, op. cit.), his protagonist establishes his identity in the play's opening minutes – ‘I would not lie to the future. I am Danton’ (2) – and sustains this through the fierce honesty of his self-disclosure. At the same time, one would not fault the audience for allowing its certainty to waver in the face of the prisoner's histrionic performance. The historical Danton, after all, was imprisoned in the Conciergerie the night before his execution, and Griffiths's directions identify his protagonist only as ‘the Prisoner’.
22. This framing device was omitted from the television production.
23. Griffiths, ‘Introduction’, Hope in the Year Two and Thatcher's Children, op. cit.
24. Griffiths wrote seven screenplays – most unproduced – in the 1980s, and he has referred to his plays since Real Dreams (1984) as ‘films for the stage’ (Griffiths, quoted in Hemming, op. cit.). ‘I write screenplays for the stage and stage plays for the screen’ (Griffiths, Trevor, quoted in Armistead, Claire, ‘Bloody, Unbowed’, The Guardian, 11 05 1994, Sec. 2Google Scholar.
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31. Ibid.
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