To take an example from the history of theatre: one historian has
argued that the court plays performed in front of the absolutist king,
Charles I, frequently found ways of asking questions like‘what is it that
makes a king?’or‘must one deserve to be a king?’^15 Even asking such
questions, let alone asking them in front of the king himself, has obvious
political importance, no matter whether the plays offer answers or what
those answers were. If questioning can be an important political and
philosophical activity, then how does the political play as a question fare
against some of the objections we’ve been considering? Regarding Plato’s
concern about knowledge, we’ve said that asking a question doesn’t
obviously rely on the questioner knowing more than the questioned. In
the case of Churchill’sSeven Jewish Children, one question we might derive
from the text could be: what would Israelis who support the Gaza War
think when confronted with footage of children who have died as a result
of this war? This is not an illegitimate question and there’s no reason why
someone would have to be qualified in any particular way to ask it. It
may be, of course, that this is not the best question, or that it is merely
one question among many, but clearly the playwright’s supposed ignor-
ance is no longer the problem. If Churchill is telling us what she thinks
an Israeli parent would say, then we should ask her how on earth she
knows that. But if she’s asking us to think about what such a parent
would say, or asking us what we think such a parent would say (if not
that), then shutting down this question looks more difficult.
As well as avoiding Plato’s concern– that playwrights don’t know
what they’re talking about–the model of the political playwright as
asking a particular question may also do something to answer the other
concern that we had about political statements: namely, how do we know
which statements are being made? Often, it’s much easier to agree on
what a playwright is asking us than it is to agree on what she is claiming
to be true. And there’s also more acceptable room for error. Churchill
might, one suppose, consider it a failure on her part if she was attempting
to convey a particular statement in her play and most spectators took her
to be claiming the contrary. But‘getting it wrong’, in the case of the
question, wouldn’t be such a disaster.
Another way of thinking about a political play would be as a kind of
imperative, or order. Like a question, a sign that says‘Beware!’or‘Keep
quiet!’is not exactly claiming any particular kind of knowledge. Like a
question, an imperative is neither true nor false. Aeschylus’Oresteiatrilogy
gives a founding myth for an Athenian jury-court that works together
with the goddess, Athena, and will serve the city of Athens for all time.
The terrifying, wild‘Furies’ (roughly, demons of vengeance) who have
been pursuing Orestes are tamed and put into just service of the city.
Aeschylus offers, according to one interpreter, an‘urgent plea for the
172 From the Stage to the World