Baroque Techniques of Representation in Howard Barker's The Castle

The writers of this article seek to investigate the dramaturgy of Howard Barker in his The Castle، staged in 1985 by Royal Shakespeare Theatre، in order to discover and lay bare the baroque techniques of representation in this political paly. Relying on Deleuze’s idea of baroque architecture and Foucault’s theories of baroque representation، the writers try to introduce this play as the expression of the delicacy، intricacy and dread of the baroque architecture of the labyrinthine castle. The castle is the miniature image of the way the fictive world of the play takes shape. The article concludes that، Barker’s political theatre، unlike the popular notions of political drama which take representation of outer reality as the criterion of political art، views representation of representation as the only feasible kind of representation and by rejecting the possibility and even practicality of representing the real world، moves towards the creation of a play rich with the convolutedness of baroque architecture.