A stunning, controversial work that immediately outraged audiences with its scatological references during the 1896 premiere, Ubu Roi satirizes the tendency of the successful bourgeois to abuse his authority and become irresponsibly complacent.
Championed by Dadaists and Surrealists as the first absurdist drama, the play features a main character that is cruel, gluttonous, and grotesque—the author's metaphor for modern man. This drama in five acts by Alfred Jarry is translated from the French by Barbara Wright, with two portraits of the author by L. Lantier and F. A. Cazals, and several drawings by Jarry and Pierre Bonnard, and 24 drawings by Franciszka Themerson, doodled on lithographic plates—all followed by "The Song of the Dismembering," and concluding with two essays on the theatre by the same author and the same translator. More than 200 black-and-white line drawings
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Play by Alfred Jarry, published and produced in 1896. The play was translated into English and published under a variety of titles. This grotesque farce about the monstrous Ubu, originally written as a parody of one of Jarry's teachers, swiftly turned into a satire of the French middle class. The title character, Pere Ubu, is a gluttonous, greedy, and cruel individual who slaughters the royal family of Poland in order to ascend to the throne. Ubu ultimately proves himself a coward when he is forced to do battle with the king of Poland's surviving son. The play's scatological references, pompous style, and bastardized French caused the audience to riot when it was first produced. It was later championed by the Surrealists and Dadaists in the 1920s, who recognized in Ubu roi the first absurdist drama. Jarry wrote several sequels, including Ubu enchaine (1900; "Ubu Bound") and Ubu cocu (1944; "Ubu Cuckolded"), which were translated and published with Ubu roi as The Ubu Plays (1968). -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Original Language: French --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Roll over Dover,
By
This review is from: Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)
Silvermom's review of Ubu Roi on this site is misleading. It refers to the New Directions edition of the play, now unfortunately out of print. The Dover edition does not have the delightful line drawings, nor the added essays on theatre by Jarry. Also, I don't much care for Dover's gratuitous (and inaccurate) translation of "Ubu Roi" as "King Turd." On the other hand, as far as English translations go, Dover's is pretty much the only game in town. And Jarry's game is wonderfully worth playing, full of rambunctious anarchic high spirits. Just so you have a better idea of what you'll actually be getting.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
supremely funny and farcical,
This review is from: Ubu Roi (Paperback)
Hugely, magnificently funny. I saw a live production of this play on an education channel some years ago. It is totally anarchic and joyful.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A turd of a translation.,
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This review is from: Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)
Not the greatest translation of Jarry's masterpiece.
As a Dover thrift edition, it is thrifty and cheap. . . you get what you pay for. I would recommend the Cyril Connelly/Simon Watson Taylor version in it's place.
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- L'Onirisme et l'insolite dans le theatre francais contemporain;: Actes du Colloque organise par le Centre de philologie et de litteratures ... (Actes et colloques, 14) (French Edition) by Anonyme on 15 pages
- Dada and Surrealist Performance (PAJ Books) by Annabelle Henkin Melzer on 13 pages
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, reporter de son epoque (1864-1901) (PocheCouleur No. 31) (French Edition) by Jean-Jacques Leveque on 5 pages
- Staging the Savage God: The Grotesque in Performance by Associate Professor Ralf E Remshardt PhD on 5 pages
- Performance and Cultural Politics by Emily Apter on 4 pages
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