David Hare: Moral and Historical Perspectives

In the last 30 years, David Hare has written 12 stage plays, seven screenplays and one opera, and has gained international attention as one of Britain’s major contemporary playwrights. Hare’s prominence springs not only from the sheer volume of his work, but from his long career of chronicling the social and political fragmentation in postwar Britain. This is the first work to demystify the implications of Hare’s presentation of the moral and political health of the British nation. Arguing that one needs to have a deeply informed sense of English and British identity and postwar British society in order to understand Hare’s work, Donesky thoroughly contextualizes and historicizes Hare’s work. This study demonstrates how Hare’s seemingly enigmatic moral vision is actually characteristic of the attitudes of Britain’s governing classes.