Equus

Peter Shaffer

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780743287302
• eBook ISBN: 9781451639575
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

*Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play* *A Broadway production starring Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe*

An explosive play that took critics and audiences by storm, Equus is Peter Shaffer's exploration of the way modern society has destroyed our ability to feel passion.​

Alan Strang is a disturbed youth whose dangerous obsession with horses leads him to commit an unspeakable act of violence. As psychiatrist Martin Dysart struggles to understand the motivation for Alan's brutality, he is increasingly drawn into Alan's web and eventually forced to question his own sanity.

“Remarkable...a psychiatric detective story of infinite skill” (The New York Times) Equus is a timeless classic and a cornerstone of contemporary drama that delves into the darkest recesses of human existence.

ACT ONE

– 1 –

Darkness.

Silence.

Dim light up on the square. In a spotlight stands ALAN STRANG, a lean boy of seventeen, in sweater and jeans. In front of him, the horse NUGGET. ALAN’s pose represents a contour of great tenderness: his head is pressed against the shoulder of the horse, his hands stretching up to fondle its head.

The horse in turn nuzzles his neck.

The flame of a cigarette lighter jumps in the dark. Lights come up slowly on the circle. On the left bench, downstage, MARTIN DYSART, smoking. A man in his mid-forties.

DYSART: With one particular horse, called Nugget, he embraces. The animal digs its sweaty brow into his cheek, and they stand in the dark for an hour—like a necking couple. And of all nonsensical things—I keep thinking about the horse! Not the boy: the horse, and what it may be trying to do. I keep seeing that huge head kissing him with its chained mouth. Nudging through the metal some desire absolutely irrelevant to filling its belly or propagating its own kind. What desire could that be? Not to stay a horse any longer? Not to remain reined up for ever in those particular genetic strings? Is it possible, at certain moments we cannot imagine, a horse can add its sufferings together—the non-stop jerks and jabs that are its daily life—and turn them into grief? What use is grief to a horse?

[ALAN leads NUGGET out of the square and they disappear together up the tunnel, the horse’s hooves scraping delicately on the wood.

DYSART rises, and addresses both the large audience in the theatre and the smaller one on stage.]

You see, I’m lost. What use, I should be asking, are questions like these to an overworked psychiatrist in a provincial hospital? They’re worse than useless; they are, in fact, subversive.

[He enters the square. The light grows brighter.]

The thing is, I’m desperate. You see, I’m wearing that horse’s head myself That’s the feeling. All reined up in old language and old assumptions, straining to jump clean-hoofed on to a whole new track of being I only suspect is there. I can’t see it, because my educated, average head is being held at the wrong angle. I can’t jump because the bit forbids it, and my own basic force—my horsepower, if you like—is too little. The only thing I know for sure is this: a horse’s head is finally unknowable to me. Yet I handle children’s heads—which I must presume to be more complicated, at least in the area of my chief concern ... In a way, it has nothing to do with this boy. The doubts have been there for years, piling up steadily in this dreary place. It’s only the extremity of this case that’s made them active. I know that. The extremity is the point! All the same, whatever the reason, they are now, these doubts, not just vaguely worrying—but intolerable . . . I’m sorry. I’m not making much sense. Let me start properly; in order. It began one Monday last month, with Hesther’s visit.

– 2 –

[The light gets warmer.

He sits. NURSE enters the square.]

NURSE: Mrs Salomon to see you, Doctor.

DYSART: Show her in, please.

[NURSE leaves and crosses to where HESTHER sits.]

Some days I blame Hesther. She brought him to me. But of course that’s nonsense. What is he but a last straw? a last symbol? If it hadn’t been him, it would have been the next patient, or the next. At least, I suppose so.

[HESTHER enters the square: a woman in her mid-forties.]

HESTHER: Hallo, Martin.

[DYSART rises and kisses her on the cheek.]

DYSART: Madam Chairman! Welcome to the torture chamber!

HESTHER: It’s good of you to see me right away.

DYSART: You’re a welcome relief Take a couch.

HESTHER: It’s been a day?

DYSART: No—-just a fifteen-year-old schizophrenic, and a girl of eight thrashed into catatonia by her father. Normal, really . . . You’re in a state.

HESTHER: Martin, this is the most shocking case I ever tried.

DYSART: So you said on the phone.

HESTHER: I mean it. My bench wanted to send the boy to prison. For life, if they could manage it. It took me two hours solid arguing to get him sent to you instead.

DYSART: Me?

HESTHER: I mean, to hospital.

DYSART: Now look, Hesther. Before you say anything else, I can take no more patients at the moment. I can’t even cope with the ones I have.

HESTHER: You must.

DYSART: Why?

HESTHER: Because most people are going to be disgusted by the whole thing. Including doctors.

DYSART: May I remind you I share this room with two highly competent psychiatrists?

HESTHER: Bennett and Thoroughgood. They’ll be as shocked as the public.

DYSART: That’s an absolutely unwarrantable statement.

HESTHER: Oh, they’ll be cool and exact. And underneath they’ll be revolted, and immovably English. Just like my bench.

DYSART: Well, what am I? Polynesian?

HESTHER: You know exactly what I mean!... [Please.] Please, Martin. It’s vital. You’re this boy’s only chance.

DYSART: Why? What’s he done? Dosed some little girl’s Pepsi with Spanish Fly? What could possibly throw your bench into two-hour convulsions?

HESTHER: He blinded six horses with a metal spike.

[A long pause.]

DYSART: Blinded?

HESTHER: Yes.

DYSART: All at once, or over a period?

HESTHER: All on the same night.

DYSART: Where?

HESTHER: In a riding stable near Winchester. He worked there at week-ends.

DYSART: How old?

HESTHER: Seventeen.

DYSART: What did he say in Court?...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• A Note on the Text
• A Note on the Play
• Equus
• The Setting
• The Horses
• The Chorus
• Act One
• Act Two
• About The Author