Reading Order
Equus Reading Order
Equus (1973) by Peter Shaffer is one of the most theatrical plays of the postwar British stage — a child psychiatrist (Martin Dysart) investigates the case of a seventeen-year-old stable boy (Alan Strang) who has blinded six horses with a metal spike, and the investigation gradually reveals that Alan has created a private religion organized around horses, in which the act of riding becomes an act of worship and the horses themselves become gods. Shaffer wrote the play after his friend James Mossman told him about an actual criminal case involving a boy who had blinded horses; Shaffer's invention was everything else: Dysart's counter-narrative (his own sense that Alan's passionate worship is more alive than Dysart's comfortable professional life), the theatrical staging (the actors playing horses wear stylized horse-masks and move with choreographed formality), and the play's central question — whether it is right to remove a person's passion even when that passion has caused harm. The play asks, in effect, whether sanity is worth having if it comes at the cost of the capacity for religious experience.
Where to start
Equus (1973) — the complete text. Best Peter Shaffer reading order: Five Finger Exercise → The Royal Hunt of the Sun → Equus → Amadeus → Yonadab
Complete Equus Book List
- 1Buy
Equus
Peter Shaffer·1973·The complete play — Dysart and Alan Strang and the six horses. One of the most frequently produced plays of the 1970s; the first production starred Alec McCowen and Peter Firth at the National Theatre; the 1977 film starred Richard Burton and Peter Firth - 2Buy
Amadeus
Peter Shaffer·1979·The companion Shaffer play about Salieri and Mozart — and the same question that organizes Equus: what do we do when we encounter passionate genius that we cannot possess? Salieri's rage is the mirror of Dysart's envy: both men are competent professionals who encounter in their subject a capacity for worship (musical genius; horse worship) that they cannot share and cannot destroy without destroying the very thing they are drawn to - 3Buy
The Royal Hunt of the Sun
Peter Shaffer·1964·The earlier companion Shaffer play about the Spanish conquistador Pizarro and the Inca god-king Atahualpa — and the encounter between European rationalism and a living religious culture. The companion investigation of the same question that organizes Equus: what happens when the rational mind encounters a genuinely religious one? - 4Buy
The Bacchae
Euripides·-405·The ancient companion organized around the god Dionysus and his destruction of Pentheus — the king who refuses to acknowledge religious ecstasy. The ancient companion to Equus as an investigation of the relationship between reason and religious passion: Pentheus is destroyed by what he refuses to acknowledge; Alan is 'cured' (in Dysart's ambivalent terms) of what he passionately believes - 5Buy
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud·1899·Freud's companion investigation of the relationship between unconscious passion and the rational mind that investigates it. The companion theoretical text to Equus as an investigation of what the analyst does when they encounter an unconscious organization that is more powerful and more coherent than the analyst's own understanding - 6Buy
Totem and Taboo
Sigmund Freud·1913·Freud's companion investigation of the relationship between religious experience and the unconscious. The companion theoretical text to Equus as an investigation of the origins of religious worship in the dynamics of the primal horde: both Freud and Shaffer are investigating the same question — where does religious passion come from, and what happens when civilization tries to suppress it? - 7Buy
Five Finger Exercise
Peter Shaffer·1958·Shaffer's first major play — a family (the Harringtons) and the German tutor Walter who comes to live with them. The companion as Shaffer's early investigation of the clash between different kinds of consciousness within a domestic setting; the play establishes Shaffer's characteristic subject: the encounter between the passionate and the conventional - 8Buy
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov·1967·Bulgakov's companion novel about the Devil's visit to Soviet Moscow — a sustained investigation of what happens when secular rationalism encounters genuine supernatural power. The companion to Equus as an investigation of the relationship between religious experience and the secular world that denies it: both are organized around figures (Woland; Alan) whose passionate religious engagement the rational world cannot accommodate
Equus — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Equus about?
Equus is about the relationship between passion and sanity — whether the capacity for worship, even when it is destructive, is worth preserving in a world that has systematically extinguished it. Martin Dysart is a child psychiatrist who is asked to investigate Alan Strang, a seventeen-year-old who has blinded six horses with a metal spike. As Dysart investigates Alan's case, he discovers that Alan has created a private religion organized around horses, in which riding is worship and the horses are gods. Dysart's dilemma is that his 'cure' — removing Alan's worship — will leave Alan normal and empty, which Dysart regards as a worse fate than the passionate madness Alan is in. The play is organized around Dysart's crisis: the psychiatrist who can cure his patient but isn't sure he should.
Is Equus based on a true story?
Equus was inspired by an actual criminal case in which a boy blinded horses, but almost everything Shaffer invented. The friend who told Shaffer about the case was James Mossman, a BBC journalist, and Shaffer never learned the details of the real case or met the boy involved. Shaffer invented Dysart, the counter-narrative of the psychiatrist's crisis, the private religion organized around the horse-god Equus, the theatrical staging with stylized horse-masks, and the play's central question about the value of sanity. The real case gave Shaffer the starting image — a boy and blinded horses — and he built everything else from that.
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