Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations and References PART I: A STYLE AND ITS CONTEXTS Gifts of Loss: An Introduction to Barker's Writing and Theatre 'The Ecstasy of Vanishing Meaning': Arguments for a Theatre; Death, The One and The Art of Theatre PART II: PLAYS AND PRODUCTIONS Intimacy with the Unforgivable: The Last Supper, The Early Hours of a Reviled Man, Golgo, Judith, Rome, Ten Dilemmas Cultural Re-Fashionings and Shakespearean Negotiations: Brutopia, Seven Lears, (Uncle) Vanya, Minna Separation, Sacrifice and Sainthood: A Hard Heart, Terrible Mouth, Hated Nightfall, Ego in Arcadia, The Brilliance of the Servant, The Gaoler's Ache, Twelve Encounters with a Prodigy, Ursula Facing the Wound: Wounds to the Face, Und, He Stumbled, House of Correction Infinite Reversibility: All He Fears, The Swing at Night, Albertina, Knowledge and a Girl, The Twelfth Battle of Isonzo, Animals in Paradise, The Ecstatic Bible, Found in the Ground Wrestling with God: Defilo, All This Joseph, Five Names, N/A (Sad Kissing), Gertrude - The Cry, The Seduction of Almighty God, The Moving and the Still, Two Skulls, Acts (Chapter One) Servitude and Servility: An Eloquence, The Blood of a Wife, A Rich Woman's Poetry, Stalingrad, Thirteen Objects, The Dying of Today, Dead Hands, Christ's Dog The Boundary and Beyond: The Fence, Heroica, Adorations Chapter 1, Dead, Dead and Very Dead, The Road, The House, The Road, Let Me, A Wounded Knife, Lot and his God, The Forty (Few Words), I Saw Myself Inconclusion: Consolations in Extremity: Howard Barker: A Style and its Origins Appendix One: Testimonies by Barker Actors: Julia Tarnoky, Justin Avoth, Edward Petherbridge, Melanie Jessop, Gerrard McArthur Appendix Two: Howard Barker: A Chronology Selected Further Reading Index