Biography Essay

Between 1963 and his death in 1967 Joe Orton wrote three important and four lesser plays. In the tolerant theatrical climate of the 1960s, he persuaded audiences that homosexuality, incest, and violence could be shown on the stage and even be found uproariously funny. He communicated so successfully his vision of the world that we recognize the word Ortonesque as implying a peculiar mixture of the violent, the formal, and the amusing. The development of Orton's talent was brutally cut short by his murder. It was a death that helped create a minor legend and made more difficult the claim that his drama has nothing to do with the world outside the theater's walls.

John Kingsley Orton was born and lived the first eighteen years of his life in Leicester in conditions of dreary material adequacy but emotional and intellectual impoverishment. His father, William Orton, was a gardener...