Peter Shaffer
Peter Shaffer
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer, CBEwas an English playwright and screenwriter of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been turned into films...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth15 May 1926
audience drama great hunt lesson masked masks profundity royal seeing taught
They look so expectant, and then they look so depressed... that was the other great lesson that The Royal Hunt of the Sun taught me, it was the profundity that masked drama can achieve, that of course, the audience were not seeing masks moving at all.
music playing regarded
There used to be a certain condescension to Mozart. His music was regarded as pleasant. He was a porcelain figure playing a porcelain harpsichord.
fixated followers oblivious
The conquistadors and their followers were very rough people, and they were fixated on gold and silver. They were oblivious to the astonishing achievements of the Inca civilisation.
began greatest
I began to read everything I could about Mozart, who I've always felt, I suppose, to be the greatest of all composers. I still think so.
frustration accomplices my-own
I was an accomplice in my own frustration.
dark light play
Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.
children world born
A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave.
men lessons use
What use, after all, is man, if not to teach God His lessons?
daddy devil made
The Devil isn’t made by what Mommy says, or what Daddy says. The Devil is there.
art goodness furnaces
Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.
children eye normal
The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults.
strong tire bores
It's an extraordinary thing about Mozart is that you never tire of him... he never bores me, and he doesn't... not only bore me, that's too strong a word.
imagination leave-me-alone never-quit
You never quite know what's going to strike your imagination, or something that won't going to leave you alone, not going to leave alone, and this was one for me.
mines
You have your words, and I have mine.