Remaking of a Myth: A Study of Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love as a Portrayal of British Royal Family

Sarah Kane as a notable figure in the in-yer-face theatre movement shares a lot of similarities with the new wave of British drama of the 1990s depicting extreme themes and issues, obscene language, nudity, violence, and taboo subject-matter in her plays. What follows is an attempt to study Kane’s play, Phaedra’s Love, by understanding the context of this work and to ground the play in the culture and social concerns of the 1990s when the British royal family was in a state of turmoil and crisis. Set in today’s Britain, the play is a radical updating of Seneca’s Phaedra play. So, we will contextualize the play in relation to a key topic to argue how the play reflects many of the issues revolving around the British royal family such as Princess Diana’s life and character, marriage to Prince Charles and her death, monarchical power and status and capitalist economy and consumer culture in the 1990s. This study demonstrates how the play is a vivid reflection of the British royal family’s state of turmoil and crisis in the 1990s with an emphasis on the image of Princess Diana and Prince Charles as well as a representation of a consumer driven economy in the 1990s.