David Hare was born on June 5, 1947, in St. Leonard's-on-Sea in Sussex, on the southeastern coast of England. When Hare was a boy, his father was a ship's purser on a passenger liner that sailed among England, India, and Australia. The time his father spent away from home left Hare alone with his mother and sister. Surrounded by women as a child, Hare developed an appreciation for the noble qualities he found them to have. A noticeable trend in his writing from the very beginning is the presence of strong female characters, such as those found in The Secret Rapture. The playwright's first success, Slag (1970), as well as Plenty (1978), Wetherby (1985), The Bay at Nice (1986), Wrecked Eggs (1986), Strapless (1989), and Skylight (1995), all have strong, typically virtuous women characters. "I've written about women a lot because my subject has often been goodness," Hare told interviewer Michael Bloom in American Theatre...