Robert Peters replies to me:

>>The scene deals with Mozart trying to finish the Requiem before he dies.
>>Salieri appears as tormentor.
>
>This is an interpretation.

It's an interpretation borne out by the things Salieri says and does, but
I won't dispute your interpretation.

>This may not be very good writing but the point is the writing of a
>play must not be very good because it is the character who speaks, not a
>brillant writer.

This is why they call it "art." A character may not be eloquent, but
he ought to be, at some level, convincing, and the main way he can be
convincing in a play is by what he says.

>Take Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman.  Willy Loman does not
>utter brillant sentences because he is no brillant mind.

I disagree.  Miller, to an American, is a very poetic writer -- indeed,
sometimes far too poetic for his own good.  Brilliance is not the same
thing as poetic.  "You've got to have dreams, boy -- they go with the
territory." This is also uttered by a not very brilliant character, but
it's one of the most poetic lines in American theater.  Poetry isn't
necessarily Shakespearean grandiloquence.

>And Mozart is dying!  He is surely not in the mood to utter stuff in
>brillant style.

Excuse me, but this is an attempt to justify bad writing on the grounds of
realism.  We've, I think, agreed this standard doesn't apply to Amadeus.

>>"God can't want it unfinished?" Why not? Why does God even enter into this
>>at all?  ...  Indeed, Shaffer does this throughout the play, which may
>>indicate that this is an idea important to the play, but he never makes
>>anything of it or anything of his own from it.  We merely see the same
>>situation (in various guises) repeated.  We never get any deeper.  God --
>>should he exist -- may be indifferent, but why should I care? Certainly,
>>Shaffer gives me no reason to.
>
>This is not accurate criticism.  Please show where Shaffer throughout the
>play (and the movie!) does not make anything of the idea of God.

This is like trying to prove "snakes in Ireland." It can't be done.
I think it's up to you to show where he *does* make something interesting
and particularly his own of the idea -- something that grows out of
character and situation (not something merely uttered), something that
if you didn't already believe it, might start you thinking about it.

>And of course it is not realistic.

Then don't justify the badly-written speeches of Mozart on the grounds that
he's dying.

>The whole play is a kind of fantasy - why do you expect it to be realistic?

I don't expect it to be realistic.  I expect it to rise above the level
of "I can't pay the rent/You must pay the rent" or "God is an S.O.B./God is
indifferent/God is mysterious." How about, "God is a large dog chewing on
a biscuit"? Immediately this is more interesting than anything contended in
Amadeus.  Of course, it would be up to a playwright to convince a spectator
that such a proposition was worth talking about.  You want great fantasy?
Read St. Joan.

>God, Steve, the guy is DYING! What do you expect Mozart to recite in his
>last moments, sick and at the brink of collapse? Something in
>hexameters?

Poetry is not necessarily and verse is not necessarily poetry, as you
well know.  Poetry is something sharply and uniquely observed, rendered
in language that somehow makes you want to say it and hear it.

>>Where's the poetry? The closest Shaffer comes is "rooms of smiles,"
>>which he immediately ruins by explaining it to the meanest intelligence.
>
>A playwright does not have to be poetic.  Shakespeare is very poetic but
>he, too, knew when to stop poetry.  Arthur Miller is very seldom poetic
>and his plays are great literature.

Arthur Miller is at times *overly*-poetic.

>It is Shaffer's good right to introduce a new side of Mozart even in the
>LASt scene.  Again I say: the guy is dying!  It is not farfetched to
>give Mozart a mood of remorse and self-pity.  In the movie this worked
>extraordinarily well.

It worked because the actor playing him was a very good actor and was
directed by a very good director.  Shaffer had very little to do with its
effectiveness.  Even so, as far as the script is concerned, it's simply
tacked on, rather than integral, as I have shown.  "The guy is dying" is
again a "realistic" defense of something you and I both agree is a fantasy.

>I wonder when you will give us a critique of the libretto to Don Giovanni.
>It is not better poetry than the lines you quoted.  Throw it all into the
>garbage can?

Unlike you, I don't know Italian well enough.  I *do* know that Don
Giovanni has great music, and that its music contributes to most of
its effect (at least for me, because I don't know Italian very well).
Furthermore, there's a great deal of difference in what words alone
have to do and what words set to music have to do.  The poem "Die
Taubenpost" is ridiculous kitsch.  Schubert's setting of it raises it
to a level clearly beyond the poet alone.  I would also contend that
Little Richard's opening to "Tutti Frutti" is nothing much lyrically
("WOP-BOP-A-LOO-BAM-BA-LA-BAM-BOOM!") but my goodness it makes a terrific
effect with the music.

>>At various points in the scene, Shaffer specifies the playing of portions
>>of Mozart's Requiem.  This is a powerful piece of music, and it lends its
>>power to the scene.  However, this is only minimally Shaffer's doing.
>
>It IS his doing because it is his collage work.

It is MINIMALLY his doing.  Did he *write* Mozart's Requiem? Hell, I'll
include a MIDI file of Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia to be played with
my next CD review.  Perhaps then I'll be considered a great writer myself.
Peter Shaffer here is an artist the way Willie Sutton was a banker.

>>...  Ultimately, a play comes down to words, and Shaffer
>>never uses them very well.  In a play of ideas, the dramatist had better
>>make you care about those ideas.  Otherwise, you waste your time.  How
>>does a dramatist do this effectively? He chooses meaningful words which
>>illustrate these ideas in characters and actions.
>
>This does not mean that these words must be very poetic.

See above.

>You may think that the passages you quoted are bad literature.  I don't
>think so.

Really? Make a case.  And don't try to use the realism excuse ...

>It is not elegant prose but then these are the words of a dying man.

... as you do here.  It doesn't have to be elegant prose.  It has to be
language that moves you.  This doesn't mean necessarily flowery or highly
elevated.  I believe we're taking two different definitions of poetry.

The best actor in the world can make drivel interesting.  The best
scenic designer and provider of music and cinematographer can distract
your attention.  However, a script *is* the playwright's contribution.
If the script lies there like a lox, that's the playwright's fault.
Turning it around, a bad actor can sink a great script.  A bad set designer
and an incompetent director can do the same.  However, if you want to know
what the playwright's contribution was, the script is what you look at.

>>Shaffer does little more than hang a placard and nudge his elbows in your
>>ribs to make sure that you understand that you have met with a Big Moment.
>>I'd call his dramatic method faux-Brechtian in that his method distances
>>an audience.  Unlike Brecht, however, he has neither the language nor the
>>intellect to make you think about the philosophical problem he seems to
>>want to present.
>
>Come down, have you really read Brecht?

No, of course not.  What ever gave you that idea? Have you really read
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer?

>I do Brecht regularly in school

How nice for you.

>and there are a lot of better prose authors than Brecht.

I'm sure there are.  But he's still better than that arschloch Shaffer.
Mutter Courage, Mahagonny, and Galileo are all better than the hackwork
of Amadeus.

>Now, how do you explain that Amadeus became a world success? Because
>everyone is stupid?  Because the play is only a spectacle?

Don't underestimate the power of spectacle.  A lot of people like
demolition derbies as well.  Furthermore, because so many people like
something it must be good is an elementary logical fallacy, which I'm
sure one of your teachers will eventually get around to telling you about.

>How do you explain that this bad playwright wrote a lot of successful
>plays, take Equus.

Well, that's *one* successful play he wrote.  But one hardly qualifies as
"a lot." Don't you think it's possible that the same writer could write
both a good work and a bad one?

>I think you just don't like Shaffer because he dared use Mozart in
>a play and in a witty and successful play, too.

I could give a damn whether he used Mozart or not.  My remarks on
"historical accuracy" were directed against the proposition that Shaffer
is a "scholar" of the 18th century.  Shaffer certainly gives me no reason
to care one way or the other that he used Mozart.  I don't like Shaffer's
Amadeus because it's a bad play.

>If it had been Goethe you would possibly say: So what?

This remark puzzles me.  Why is the use of Goethe any better or worse than
the use of Mozart? Why is the use of, as someone suggested, Joe Blow any
better or worse?

Steve Schwartz