Howard Barker is today, not only one of England's leading dramatists, but a widely performed international wirter whose 'Theatre of Catastrophe' echoes the problems and anxieties of modern life. He is the prototypal literary figure of the millenium, and a myth maker of the highest order, who probes the past tot speculate on the future.\nVolume 4 contains two previously published plays and three new texts. The Bite of the Night is a new interpretation of the legend of Helen of Troy, a shocking but passionate tribute to the power of desire. Seven Lears examines the early life of Shakespeare's hero, in which Lear's queen, absent from the original text, becomes a focus of the drama.\nThe more recent work shows Barker moving yet further into his world of alternative history and myth. The Gaoler's Ache explores the accusations of incest levelled against the Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette, and the techniques of revolutionary defamation. He Stumbled depicts its protagonist, a legendary anatomist, performing his last autopsy on the body of a monarch who has - from beyond the grave - initiated a series of tragic deceptions which bring havoc in their train. Finally, A House of Correction tells of a courier, ignorant of his mission, who comes to an isolated castle inhabited by three women and a poet, on his progress to the frontier. It is a time of crisis and the shifting reality of the action enables Barker to show the limitations of analytical logic that the characters appeal to in their desperation.