baroque techniques of representation in howard barker’s the castle

the writers of this article seek to investigate thedramaturgy of howard barker in his the castle, staged in 1985 by royalshakespeare theatre, in order to discover and lay bare the baroque techniquesof representation in this political paly. relying on deleuze’s idea of baroquearchitecture and foucault’s theories of baroque representation, the writers tryto introduce this play as the expression of the delicacy, intricacy and dreadof the baroque architecture of the labyrinthine castle. the castle is theminiature image of the way the fictive world of the play takes shape. thearticle concludes that, barker’s political theatre, unlike the popular notionsof political drama which take representation of outer reality as the criterionof political art, views representation of representation as the only feasiblekind of representation and by rejecting the possibility and even practicalityof representing the real world, moves towards the creation of a play rich withthe convolutedness of baroque architecture.