Bond, Edward (1934-…), is a British playwright who often uses violence in his dramas as a tool to criticize the corruption and hypocrisy he sees in modern society. Although Bond typically makes strong political statements in his plays, his subject matter ranges from ancient times to modern days to legend. He has written that he believes modern culture has dehumanized people. He deliberately shocks people with stage violence because he says society has been desensitized to violence in everyday life.
Bond’s first play, The Pope’s Wedding, aroused controversy on its first reading in 1962. It was produced in 1971. The equally controversial play Saved (1965) featured a scene in which a street gang stones a baby to death in a buggy. The play and Bond’s Early Morning (1968) were banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the official British censor. The uproar caused by the bannings contributed to the abolition of censorship in the United Kingdom in 1968.
Bond was born on July 18, 1934, in London. He worked in a factory until he joined the Writer’s Group at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He won the George Devine Award in 1968 for Early Morning, which portrays a lesbian relationship between Queen Victoria and the nurse Florence Nightingale. Bingo (1971) attacks the famous English playwright William Shakespeare for not being more political in his plays. One of Bond’s most successful plays, The Sea, opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 1973. It deals with a village’s passive reaction to the death of a young man by drowning. Bond adapted Shakespeare’s King Lear in 1971 into an even more violent tragedy. His other plays include Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968), Black Mass (1970), The Woman (1978), Restoration (1981), September (1990), and In the Company of Men (1996). He has also written librettos (opera texts) and screenplays; translated German plays into English; and published books of poems, letters, and criticism.
