In Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain political parallels are overt: they play is set in 54 AD, 515 AD and 1980 AD. The linking image is of stoning the enemy, and the numerous meanings of that act stop it from being a facile equation—slave woman against male runaway, Celt against Roman, against Saxon, against British army. Each episode is sketched fully enough for us to grasp the mixture of human qualities Brenton is concerned with: brutality, caring, cunning, stupidity, fear, greed. I found the immense scope of the play to be its strength, often having been put off Brenton's work by the dogmatic attitude he takes to a specific event. Here, although there is a problem in accepting the premise that the Romans and Saxons in Britain can dramatically reflect the situation in Ulster today, there is a historical perspective and room for vision and aspiration. We see that...