Steve Schwartz replies to me:

>>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.

Yes.  And Mozart is dying.  He does not have to utter brillant sentences.

>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.

I wouldn't call this sentence poetic, it is written in very down-to-earth
style.  It is impressive because the situation where it is spoken is
impressive.  The sentence itself is very unpoetic.

>>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.

I don't think that the lines you quoted are "bad writing".  It is plain
writing and it serves the purpose.  The character who speaks is dying and
speaks plain language.  It is as simple as that.

>>...  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.

This is not the task of a playwright: a playwright does not necessarily
have to present things totally new.  I remember the film and I found
Salieri's behaviour out of a strange religiosity very convincing.  He
rebels against God's wisdom to give talent to someone who does not behave
as someone like Salieri would expect.  The idea is: Salieri has a very
strange and unlively idea of serving God whereas Mozart just serves God
with his talents and big heart.  In the end Salieri has to see that he
destroyed someone who was a better human being than he with all his plans
and expectations.  I think that this is an interesting concept.

>>And of course it is not realistic.
>
>Then don't justify the badly-written speeches of Mozart on the grounds that
>he's dying.

To write a fantasy does not mean that everything you write has to be
fantastic.  And again: I don't think that the Mozart speeches are
badly-written.

>>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.

Amadeus gives me and millions of other not necessarily plain or
unintelligent people moving insight in human conditions like envy, love,
pain, humiliation, hope etc.  Some of the scenes of the movie, especially
the deathbed scene, are almost painful in their intensity.  The final scene
where Salieri rolls in his wheelchair through the floors of the mental
asylum blessing the mediocre is a tremendous invention.  It is not St.
Joan.  It is Amadeus and that's okay with me.

>>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.

This is your private definiton of poetry. According to this definition
some newspaper editiorials would be poetry - which they are not. You
cannot use terms and define them in a most private way. Poetry is a
literary term with a certain defintion and a certain essence.

>>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.

Seldom.  I do "Salesman" regularly in my classes and know the play quite
well.  I like it.  There are some poetic lines in it, using metaphors,
stylistic devices and so on.  The rest is in plain language.  Impressive
and effective plain langauge.  And so is Amadeus: plain and effective.

>>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.

See above.  No actor in the whole wide world can make gold out of shit.
The scene is effective because Shaffer composed it to be effective.

>>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.

Agreed.  But Amadeus is not words alone.  As every play it is words plus
setting, stage, actors, light, effects, costumes, music and so on.  A lot
of plays look as plain and trivial as opera librettos when not watched on
a stage.

>>>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.

Ridiculous.  Shaffer uses the technique of collage.  He does not have to
compose the Mozart Requiem to use it to good effect.  The collage is his
work and it is a good work.

>>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 an excuse.  And I grow tired of this discussion.  You haven't
shown that the lines are bad or did I miss a line-to-line stylistic analyis
by you? I have not seen any stylistic mistakes, badly uses images or
stylistic blunders in Shaffer's lines.  The sentences are plain.  They
are deliberately written in a plain style.  But plain style is not bad
literature.

>>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.

Absolutely.  You take your private definiton and I take a literary
definition.  Next time you will begin to use your private definition
of minor and major or symphony.  Poetry is not defined as "language that
moves you".  I would correct every pupil who used this definition.

>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.

I disagree.  The best actor in the world cannot make real drivel
interesting.  - The script is only a kind of beginning for a production.
It is imcomplete without the production as plays are written to be produced
on stage.  The script is the playwright's suggestion.  On the paper are
only words and some stage directions.  The production will be much more
Than only the script and every playwright knows this.  You cannot judge
a play only using the script.

>>>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 have and I have watched the film.  I asked about Brecht because you say
that Shaffer has not Brecht's language.  Well, of course he has not.  He
has a different language for a different purpose.

>>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.

Steve, a lot of very learned people like Amadeus.  Obviously they are
all not as learned and cultivated as you (example: comparing a play
with demolition derbies).  But I doubt that so many clever and intelligent
people like Amadeus, both play and movie, because they are sheer
spectacles.  (Which both are not.) And that popular stuff must not be good
is something my teachers already told me, thank you.  I find your words
very snobbish: obviously something a lot of people like cannot be of
quality.  Do you really want ordinary people to know and like Mozart?

>>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?

Absolutely (even a Shakespeare wrote "Titus Andronicus").  But Shaffer
wrote more than two successful plays as every literary encyclopaedia will
tell you.

>>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.

Shaffer never said that he was a scholar.

>>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?

I suggested that you don't like Mozart being touch by "arsehole" Shaffer.
But you say you don't care.  Which I do not believe, I am afraid.

Robert