Monstrous martyrdoms : 3 plays

Eric Bentley

Lord Alfred's Lover is a moving account of the sensational 1890's trial and "martyrdom" of Oscar Wilde. H for Hamlet portrays the delusions of a man who thought he was Hamlet, recalling Pirandello's Enrico IV, about a man who thought he was "Emperor Henry IV". German Requiem is a story, a reminiscent of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, set in the Middle Ages, of two warring families, a poignant account of doomed love in a doomed world. It is a parable of the paranoia of modern politics in the confrontation of East and West.