Judge Dennis Davis and Professor David Peimer
Descent into Authoritarianism: Cabaret, The Crucible, and Hamlet, Part 2
Summary
The significance of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in relation to McCarthyism; an exploration of the political themes in Hamlet’s soliloquy; and an examination of the various themes and connections between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the musical Cabaret.
Judge Dennis Davis
Dennis Davis is a judge of the High Court of South Africa and judge president of the Competition Appeals Court of South Africa. He has held professorial appointments at the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand, as well as numerous visiting appointments at Cambridge, Harvard, New York University, and others. He has authored eleven books, including Lawfare: Judging Politics in South Africa.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Yes, the divine right of kings was absolute. Whether in fact autocracy is our default position is an interesting debate. I would like to hope it isn’t, that we can still shift to a constitutional democratic phase.