The Story Archive

Serious Money

Caryl Churchill · 1987 CE · Play · English · Contemporary

A scene from a Restoration comedy about stock-jobbers opens straight onto the floor of LIFFE in the year of the Big Bang, where Scilla Todd is rather less interested in who killed her brother Jake than in what he was making. Dealers, an arbitrageur, a Peruvian businesswoman and a corporate raider talk over one another in rhyming couplets while a takeover is fixed and a Department of Trade inquiry is quietly dropped. Churchill spent months among traders to write it; the opening scene is Thomas Shadwell's, from 1692.

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Attributes

Genre
SatireComedy
Theme
Wealth & GreedAmbition & HubrisPower & CorruptionClass & Inequality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
TricksterAnti-HeroVillain / Tyrant
Plot structure
MysteryPolyphonicIronic Reversal
Symbol / motif
Gold / TreasureThe Game / CardsThe Machine
Conflict
vs Societyvs Person
Mode / tone
SatiricalComic
Culture / tradition
English

Closest analogues