Imagine, if you will, a mixture of the plays of Brecht and Strindberg, Brecht's social and political purposiveness allied to Strindberg's tormented vision of man's self-destructiveness, and you will get some idea of the double vision that informs Edward Bond's dramatic world. It is a world in which a sombre sense of man's inhumanity to man co-exists with hopefulness and a strong socio-political awareness. Bond has a great playwright's ability to express this double vision in dramatic images, in dialogue and action that have extraordinary force and power. (p. 65)

Bond has pondered deeply the question of the artist's relationship to society. To be an artist, a dedicated "being apart," is not enough; for Bond the artist is a man among men, and he must be a functioning part of the moral structure of society. (p. 67)

When Bond conceived the idea of doing his own version of King Lear...