FREE ESSAY ON "AMADEUS" BY PETER SHAFFER

"AMADEUS" BY PETER SHAFFER

The play "Amadeus" by Peter Shaffer was not written in order to be a biography of the
great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, much more than this, Peter Shaffer wrote it as a
story, rather than a history. In his story he was free to insert fiction to make the play
more interesting to a wide audience, as well as to fulfill his purposes. However,
musicologists and historians have written several articles claiming that Peter Shaffer
"trashed this immortal". What none of them can see is that in "Amadeus" there are
situations that are plausible while others are "fictional ornament". In this paper I will
make an attempt to point what is fiction or untruth. 
The center of the play lies on the character of Antonio Salieri and his obsessive
jealously of Mozart. To convey this plot, it was necessary that Salieri had motives
enough dislike Mozart. So it was necessary to build a character that was extremely
competent but with no talent at all to contrast with a genius who behaved badly. With
this, Salieri would have reasons to be jealous. 
As his first attempt to convey his plot, Salieri is shown as a musical hack as we can see
in this extract: 
"Bewildered, MOZART does so (halts and listens), becoming aware of SALIERI playing his
March of Welcome. It is an extremely banal piece, vaguely - but only vaguely -
reminiscent of another march to become very famous later one." 
The truth is that Salieri was recognized as a great composer and that is the reason he
was appointed as the court composer and imperial Kappelmeister. He had several students,
including Beethoven, Liszt and Schubert. His operas were performed and acclaimed in Italy
and France during 1778 to 1790. Unfortunately, his style lost worth and his works were no
longer popular at the end of the XVIII century. However, showing Salieri as only a
competent musician was intentional in order to convey the plot, which is the rivalry
against Mozart's artistic creativity and Salieri's intellectual capacity. 
Salieri held his posts in the court from 1774 until 1824. He died one year later in 1825
and in his last years he suffered from senility. During 1824 there was indeed the rumor
in Vienna that someone had heard Salieri saying that he had poisoned Mozart. However,
many biographies of Mozart don't even mention the probability of poisoning and in 1825
the attendants of Salieri said that they had never heard Salieri saying that he had
killed Mozart. 
Furthermore, if Salieri had indeed said those things, it wouldn't have meant that he
indeed poisoned him, it could be related to his weak mind. On the other hand, Constanze
supported the idea that Salieri killed Mozart and she believed that Salieri planned
against Mozart during his life. But the medical observations of Mozart can nowadays be
diagnosed as several causes, from typhus to rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection to
cyclothymic disorder, but none related to poisoning. 
Shaffer probably decided to write this play because of this rumor of a murder between two
great composers. This idea, which at that time was indeed plausible, fed Shaffer with
inspirations to write "Amadeus". Even not being true, Salieri poisoning Mozart was a
demand for Shaffer's play. Again, a play here is a piece of art, not a biography.
What seems to be the most important topic of the play is the relation between Salieri and
Mozart. As it is seen throughout the play, Salieri's envy is not demonstrated to others,
he treated Mozart with respect and had friendly manners. However, he boycotted Mozart
inside the court. Mozart could have had the post to teach Princess Elizabeth:
JOSEPH: Herr Sommer. A dull man, surely? What of Mozart?
SALIERI: Majesty, I cannot with a clear conscience recommend Mozart to teach royalty. One
hears too many stories.
JOSEPH: They may be just gossip.
SALIERI: One of them, I regret, relates to a protegee of my own. A very young singer.
JOSEPH: Charmant!
SALIERI: Not pleasant, Majesty, but true.
JOSEPH: I see… Let it be Herr Sommer, then.
And later, the emperor was willing to offer Mozart a post and a salary, to which Salieri
objected.
JOSEPH: We must find him a post. (…) There's Chamber Composer, now that Gluck is
dead.
SALIERI: Mozart to follow Gluck?
JOSEPH: I won't have him say I drove him away. You know what a tongue he has.
SALIERI: Then grant him Gluck's post, Majesty, but not his salary. That would be wrong.
JOSEPH: Gluck got two thousand florins a year. What should Mozart get?
SALIERI: Two hundred. Light payment, yes, but for light duties.
JOSEPH: Perfect fair. I'm obliged to you, Court Composer.
Here we see that Salieri betrayed Mozart when he was not around, while held courtly
manners in front of him. In real life, nothing can prove us that Salieri was or was not a
jealous character. However, we can say that Salieri's jealously might have been true, as
he had high posts and Mozart could seem to him as a threat. 
On the other hand, as Salieri had such honorable career inside the court, he could have
done something to prevent operas like "The Abduction from the seraglio", "The Marriage of
Figaro", and "Cosi fan Tutte" from being presented in the court theaters. 
He had influence enough to prohibit these operas and he did not. Besides, if his jealousy
were obsessive as it is shown, others would have noticed. And all that is reported about
Salieri is that he was a "small-town, earnest young man, filled with a 
Single desperate desire to serve God." Again, in the play Salieri must be exactly how he
is portrayed because his personality is the plot itself. His jealousy is the main plot of
"Amadeus". In any other way Shaffer could convey his intentions.
Another element that was controversial in the release of the play is how Mozart's
character is portrayed. In "Amadeus" there are examples of Mozart using inappropriate
language, lacking respect for the emperor and behaving like a child. However, it is said
that at that time, if he behaved the way he does in the play towards the emperor, it
would result in banishment from the court. At that time, it was impossible to imagine
someone addressing an emperor the way he did. Mozart is portrayed as a "spiteful,
sniggering, conceited, infantine" man. However, Shaffer himself tells that this portrait
of Mozart was indeed excessive: "The theatrical portrait of Mozart in "Amadeus" is
clearly excessive and one-sided, at least in the expositional first act. It has been made
so deliberately by crowding together into an hour's time instances of Wolfgang's most
unattractive behavior, so as to provide ever-increasing fuel for Salieri's equally
mounting sense of outrage. This is dramatically essential, because at the end of the act,
Salieri has to explode in a furious, pain-racked, violently aggrieved address to his God,
upbraiding him for choosing a patently unworthy man to be his divine instrument."
But what is documented is that Mozart was "extremely irritable. A sort of child. All his
sentiments had more violence than depths." - 1804. So Mozart personality was exaggerated
in order to convey the plot. Being like this, we would give a minimal reason for Salieri
being jealous. It was intentional to make Mozart as a silly person so that 
Salieri's rage would have a motif. 
With these discussed elements of the play, it seems noticeable that a playwright or any
writer is free to use any ornament needed to convey what he wants to transmit to the
readers. Shaffer, although being a Mozart scholar, used some fictional elements to write
his story about the relation between the two composers.
Bibliography
Shaffer, Peter. Amadeus
Shaffer, Peter. Mozart, Truth and the Demands of Drama - published in the New York Times
Stendhal. A vida de Mozart