Books Like The Ruling Class by Peter Barnes | Suggested Reading

This Study Guide consists of approximately 60 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Ruling Class.

Books Like The Ruling Class by Peter Barnes | Suggested Reading

This Study Guide consists of approximately 60 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Ruling Class.
This section contains 141 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Ruling Class Study Guide

Barnes's play Bewitched (1974) sets his themes of greed, religious superficiality, and the corruption of the ruling elite in the context of seventeenth-century Spain, as King Carlos II tries to beget an heir. Once again, the self-indulgences of those in authority leads to chaos and futility.

The Ruling Class may have been influenced by some of the ideas in Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, a 1939 film that exposes the moral bankruptcy of the French upper class.

Volpone, Ben Jonson's satire about the lengths to which people will go to acquire an inheritance, is arguably the finest comedy of the Jacobean era. The play also illustrates Jonson's influence on Barnes.

Two plays by George Bernard Shaw, whose influence on Barnes is considerable, explore class inequalities and upper class hypocrisy: Major Barbara,Pygmalion,

a story of a street girl "passing...

(read more)

This section contains 141 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Ruling Class Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
The Ruling Class from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.