When the American Psychoanalytic Association meets in New York City in May 1990, members will be able to enjoy a new comedy by Peter Shaffer—Lettice and Lovage—starring Maggie Smith. I saw the play in 1988 in London, where it originated, and am looking forward to seeing it again here.
I expected to enjoy the play enormously and anticipated an additional, psychoanalytic pleasure even more. I have for some years been interested in the fact that Peter Shaffer and his brother, Anthony, are fraternal twins and that the characters in their plays, though not twins, often possess the traits of twins. Twins—whether identical or fraternal, same sex or opposite sex—in real life are extremely close, identify with each other, love and hate each other, compete with each other. Each twin tries to maintain his own identity by being different from his sibling. Twins feel like a unit split in two and long to become a unit again. Much the same can be said for many of the characters in the Shaffers' plays.
Lettice and Lovage was to be a psychological mystery for me. Would I once again pick out the twinship themes, or had the author drawn on other aspects of his personality? Or would the disguise be so carefully and completely wrought that I could not with confidence say that twinship was a key to understanding Peter Shaffer's creativity?
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has said that “art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our esthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern” (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1953). One of the pleasures of analytic work is recognizing patterns, including the derivatives of unconscious conflicts, in our patients' associations. Applying analytic knowledge to art involves observing patterns also. Some assert that “psychoanalyzing” a creative work diminishes it. I say it enhances esthetic appreciation.
I was immensely pleased to unearth the twinship theme in Lettice and Lovage even though I failed to find one of the frequent features, statements about doubles and halves, such as can be found in the plays of both Anthony (Sleuth, Murder) and Peter (Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, Amadeus).
Peter Shaffer states in his preface to the play that he wrote it for Maggie Smith, its star. Unquestionably, actors complement playwrights, and the great actor, like the great writer, is a creator. In the play, Lettice is a guide who tells the tourists fabricated tales about the castles they visit. Thus she is is both writer and actor. As writer she invents her own stories and lines; as actress she plays the guide, delivering the lines she herself has invented. Too bored and too creative to repeat the dull speeches assigned to her, Lettice exaggerates and confabulates. She rouses her audiences with her imaginative tales, her embellishments of the facts, her invention of new truths. As authors often do, she claims her creativity was forced on her. “Fantasy floods in where facts leave a vacuum,” she says.
Like Lettice, Peter Shaffer is a master of historical invention. In previous works, he has taken historical facts and brought them to life by creative embellishment. I refer particularly to the historical/imaginative plays The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Amadeus. Equus, while not historical in the same sense, was based on a newspaper story he had read.
The fantasies come from his own experience. Often, his special sibling experiences organize the form, content, and emotion of the play. And so it is in Lettice and Lovage. At first there seems to be no twinship theme. Lettice is fired by Lotte Schoen for falsifying the facts she presents to the tour groups. Lotte does not appear to be an alter ego. She seems instead to be Lettice's opposite: unimaginative, a civil servant immersed in the world of rules, computers, files, and impersonal personnel. Love does not seem to be in her repertoire of emotions.
Lotte finds herself attracted by her opposite—an attraction characteristic of twins. Along with their similarities, twins often possess opposite characteristics, as if they have to divide the world and keep out of each other's territory. Soon we learn that Lotte's attraction depends, however, on certain similarities to Lettice. Lotte has a latent desire to be dramatic. In fact, in the past she enacted a plot she had invented—the bombing of an ugly building—although inhibitions prevented her completing her assigned task. Now Lettice instigates, seduces her to become an enacter once more.
More similarities appear. Lettice is accustomed to telling untruths to stir her audiences; Lotte lies in a letter recommending her former employee for another job as a tour guide. Lotte says the two are of the same age and background. Lettice asserts that for her, as one of the ranks of the unemployed, fairness is not a salient characteristic. Later Lotte makes this very statement.
Each has lost a parent and loves the remaining one. Lettice's father deserted her mother before Lettice was born; Lotte's mother ran off with someone in her office, leaving Lotte to care for her sick father when she was an adult. By the time Lettice and Lotte meet the parent each loves has died. Each lacks libidinal objects; they need each other. Like twins, they form a close bond. They identify with each other and become a team.
Like twins, they reverse roles. Early on, Lotte interviews Lettice regarding her job. Later, Lettice pretends to interview Lotte. More dramatically, the two enact trials and executions, with Lettice as the accused and executed, until an accident with Lotte, as Charles I, to be killed by Lettice.
These playlike dramatizations may well reflect childhood play between the Shaffer twins. In none of Peter Shaffer's previous plays have the protagonists consciously planned pretended murders. In two of Anthony Shaffer's plays, however, Sleuth and Murder, such enactments occur. I wonder whether Peter is identifying with his twin in producing this dramatic feature and perhaps trying to outdo him in stagecraft. Alternatively, a friend of mine has suggested that, enacting a joke so often enjoyed by twins, Anthony actually wrote Lettice and Lovage. Perhaps to fool the public, they pretended that Peter was the author.
Whatever the author's motive, I enjoyed the tomfoolery of the play.* I hope the members of the American will find that perceiving the added dimension of twinship will double their enjoyment of the play.
* Pun intended. The name Thomas means twins.