Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus

Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus offers a dramatic representation of a debate that has been waged for some time over the reason for the death of Mozart and the possible involvement of Salieri in that event. Shaffer takes the position that Salieri had much to do with the death of Mozart and indeed poisoned him, while many scholars have suggested that this is simply a fanciful idea with no basis in fact. In the play, however, what is important is the way the issue is presented in dramatic so that the argument is given coherence, suggesting the motivation that might have caused Salieri to murder Mozart. In the scene under discussion, Shaffer uses dramatic ritual to connect the two composers by means of a pseudo-religious rite, showing how the two men are similar, how the death of Mozart means the death of Salieri, and how each is connected to a certain conception of music.

Music is the life force for Salieri, so important to him that he sees more of its reality than do his contemporaries. This is why he is so fearful of Mozart--he knows that the music of this brash and annoying young man will outlive everything he himself has written and will be the ultimate in musical power throughout the ages. Those with less musical acumen see Mozart's music as less important than that and allow their view of the man (Mozart) to color their view of the music. If they see Mozart as a powerless, young, and untried musical talent, then they see his music as well as not so important as that

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lieri to answer for Him. Yet Salieri is acting as God himself, or more properly as the minor deity capable of killing the real God and assuming some of his power in the act. The two men are linked in this act, linked in this Communion, and linked by being poisoned with one another, as Salieri puts it. It is here that Mozart unmasks Salieri and learns of the other man's hatred and how that hatred has now poisoned him and destroyed him. Yet it becomes more and more evident that the two men are more closely linked than even Salieri believes, and Salieri's downfall is found in the fact that he gets what he wants. He asks that Mozart die and leave him alone, and finally that is what happens. Salieri is indeed alone, and he learns how much he needed the other man and how much he needed in fact his own hatred in order to survive. Salieri brings down the god of music, and this false Communion is thus a perverted thing, an evocation of religion in service of a murder: Reduce the man: reduce the God. Behold my vow fulfilled. The profoundest voice in the world reduced to a nursery tune (141). Salieri's pain derives from the fact that he knows the truth that others do not--he knows that Mozart is the god of music. Salieri live

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