ABSTRACT
Beyond Barker's use of both obscene language and shockingly indecent situations, the play's striking originality lies in its challenging conjunction or fusion of bawdy and gruesome ingredients. Through a heightened picture of what the Restoration is commonly supposed to have been - obscene sex and venereal disease, Barker's aim is to provide a metaphorical exposure of "Reaction" as identifying with sexual violence and sexual animality, while an ambivalent portrait of Charles II as lewd but self-aware emerges out of both. And the various horrific elements, especially when they combine with obscene features, convey the similarly ambivalent comment the play makes on the self-appointed mission of the widow Bradshaw in gathering her regicide husband's remains, but, together with expressing an indictment of the Royalists, prove to be the instruments of the King's revenge against the new masters of the country. Obscenity and horror concur to bring out the structural and thematic importance of Charles, and, through the various tensions and complexities they create, show Victory to be one of the most achieved instances of Barker's "Theatre of Catastrophe".
