David Hare’s Proposal of an Alternative Religion to Object to the Commercial Religion of Thatcherism

Abstract

British political drama of the 1980s was heavily under the influence of Margaret Thatcher’s government and its policies which were introduced to the economy and which diffused into every domain of public life. Political dramatists could not respond immediately to the abrupt changes that occured in social and political life at the beginning of the decade. They got prolific only in the second half of the decade and dared to display the influence of Thatcher’s government not only on the state institutions but also on the private lives of the people. One of the foregoing political dramatists, David Hare, in the 1980s, looked back on his dramaturgy and revised it in tune with the requirements of this new decade. As a result, in The Secret Rapture, staged in 1988, Hare dwells upon the state politics as insinuated into people’s private lives rather than directly criticise it. Moreover, Hare contrasts, in the play, the dominant values of the present decade, in social and private terms, with those embraced in the previous decade. Then, he creates a new moralreligious alternative by the help of the protagonist Isobel in clash with the economical-religious attitude endorsed by Thatcher’s Britain.

Keywords

• british political drama
• margaret thatcher
• david hare
• the secret rapture
• moral-religious alternative