Ubu Roi (; "Ubu the King" or "King Ubu") is a play by French writer Alfred Jarry, then 23 years old. It was first performed in Paris in 1896, by Aurélien Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Œuvre at the Nouveau-Théâtre (today, the Théâtre de Paris). The production's single public performance baffled and offended audiences with its unruliness and obscenity. A wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for its overturning of cultural rules, norms and conventions, it is regarded by 20th- and 21st-century scholars as having opened the door for what became known as modernism in the 20th century, and as a precursor to Dadaism, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd.
Overview Ubu Roi was first performed in Paris on December 10, 1896, by Aurélien Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Œuvre at Nouveau-Théâtre (today, the Théâtre de Paris), 15, rue Blanche, in the 9th arrondissement. The play – scheduled for an invited "industry" run-through followed by a single public performance the next night – caused a riotous response in the audience and denunciatory reviews in the days after.Hill, Phillip G. Our Dramatic Heritage. Vol. 6. Fairleigh Dickenson, 1995, p. 30. Ford, Mark (May 10, 2012), "The King of Charisma", The New York Review of Books. 59 (8): 63–64 It is considered a wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for the way it overturns cultural rules, norms, and conventions. To some of those who were in the audience on opening night, including W. B. Yeats and the poet and essayist Catulle Mendès, it seemed an event of revolutionary importance, but many were mystified and outraged by the work's seeming childishness, obscenity, and disrespect. It is now seen by some to have opened the door for what became known as modernism in the 20th century.Ball, David. "UBU-ing a Theatre-Translation: Defense and Illustration". Metamorphoses, a Journal of Literary Translation. Spring and Fall. 2006 It is a precursor to Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd. It is the first of three stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises power, greed, and their evil practice – in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeoisie to abuse the authority engendered by success.
The title is sometimes translated as King Turd; however, the word "Ubu" is actually merely a nonsense word that evolved from the French pronunciation of the name "Hebert",Fell, JIll. Alfred Jarry, an Imagination in Revolt. Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp. p. 142 which was the name of one of Jarry's teachers, the satirical target and inspiration of the first versions of the play.Jarry, Alfred. Ubu Roi. Dover (2003)
Jarry made some suggestions regarding how his play should be performed. He wanted King Ubu to wear a cardboard horse's head in certain scenes, "as in the old English theatre", for he intended to "write a guignol". He thought a "suitably costumed person would enter, as in puppet shows, to put up signs indicating the locations of the various scenes". He also wanted costumes with as little specific local colour reference or historical accuracy as possible.Benedikt, Michael and Wellwarth. Modern French Theatre. Dutton. 1966. pp. x–xi
Ubu Roi was followed by Ubu Cocu (Ubu Cuckolded) and Ubu Enchaîné (Ubu in Chains), neither of which was performed during Jarry's 34-year life. One of his later works, a novel/essay on "pataphysics", is offered as an explanation behind the ideas that underpin Ubu Roi. Pataphysics is, as Jarry explains, "the science of the realm beyond metaphysics". Pataphysics is a pseudo-science Jarry created to critique members of the academy. It studies the laws that "govern exceptions and will explain the universe supplementary to this one". It is the "science of imaginary solutions".Hill, Phillip G. Our Dramatic Heritage. Vol. 6. Fairleigh Dickenson, 1995, p. 31.
Cast
Personnages Père Ubu Mère Ubu Capitaine Bordure Le Roi Venceslas, La Reine Rosemonde Boleslas, Bougrelas, Ladislas – leurs fils Le général Lascy Stanislas Leczinski Jean Sobieski Nicolas Rensky L'Empereur Alexis Giron, Pile, Cotice – Palotins La Machine à décerveler Le Commandant Michel Fédérovitch Nobles Magistrats Financiers Conseillers Toute l'Armée russe Toute l'Armée polonaise Les Gardes de la Mère Ubu Un Capitaine L'Ours Le Cheval à Phynances L'Equipage Conjurés & Soldats Peuple Larbins de Phynances Paysans
Characters Papa Ubu Mama Ubu Captain Bordure King Wenceslas and Queen Rosemonde Their sons Boleslas, Boggerlas, and Ladislas General Laski Stanislas Leczinsky Johannes Sobiesky Nicholas Rensky Emperor Alexei Palotins: Giron, Pile, Cotice The Disembraining Machine The Ship's Captain Michael Fedorovitch Nobles Magistrates Phynanciers Councilors The Whole Russian Army The Whole Polish Army Mama Ubu's Guards A Captain A Bear The Phynancial Horse The Crew Conspirators and Soldiers Crowds Lackeys of Phynance Peasants
Synopsis
The story is a parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth and some parts of Hamlet and King Lear.
As the play begins, Ubu's wife convinces him to lead a revolution, and kills the King of Poland and most of the royal family. The King's son, Bougrelas, and the Queen escape, but the latter later dies. The ghost of the dead king appears to his son and calls for revenge. Back at the palace, Ubu, now King, begins heavily taxing the people and killing the nobles for their wealth. Ubu's henchman gets thrown into prison; he then escapes to Russia, where he has the Tsar declare war on Ubu. As Ubu heads out to confront the invading Russians, his wife tries to steal the money and treasures in the palace. She is driven away by Bougrelas, who is leading a revolt of the people against Ubu. She runs away to her husband, Ubu, who has, in the meantime, been defeated by the Russians, been abandoned by his followers, and been attacked by a bear. Ubu's wife pretends to be the angel Gabriel, in order to try to scare Ubu into forgiving her for her attempt to steal from him. They fight, and she is rescued by the entrance of Bougrelas, who is after Ubu. Ubu knocks down the attackers with the body of the dead bear, after which he and his wife flee to France, which ends the play.
The action contains motifs found in the plays of Shakespeare: a king's murder and a scheming wife from Macbeth, the ghost from Hamlet, Fortinbras' revolt from Hamlet, the reneging of Buckingham's reward from Richard III, and the pursuing bear from The Winter's Tale. It also includes other cultural references, for example, to Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (Œdipe Roi in French) in the play's title. Ubu Roi is considered a descendant of the comic grotesque French Renaissance author François Rabelais and his Gargantua and Pantagruel novels.Faustroll, Dr. Pataphysica 2: Pataphysica E Alchimia, Volume 2. iUniverse (2004). Offord, M. H. Francophone Literatures: A Literary and Linguistic Companion. Psychology Press (2001). page 123
The language of the play is a unique mix of slang code-words, puns and near-gutter vocabulary, set to strange speech patterns.Jarry, Alfred. The Ubu Plays. Nick Hearn Books, Ltd. 1997. Introduction.
Development "The beginnings of the original Ubu", writes Jane Taylor, "have attained the status of legend within French theatre culture".Taylor, Jane. "Ubu and the Truth Commission". University of Cape Town Press. 2007. p. iii In 1888, when he became a student at the Lycée in Rennes at the age of fifteen, Jarry encountered a brief farcical sketch, Les Polonais, written by his friend Henri Morin, and Henri's brother Charles. This farce was part of a campaign by the students to ridicule their physics teacher, Félix-Frederic Hébert (1832–1917).Pindar, Ian. "Merrrrdrrrre! Alfred Jarry and Pere Ubu". The Times Literary Supplement. 17 April 2013. Les Polonais depicted their teacher as the King of an imaginary Poland, and was one of many plays created around Père Hébé, the character that, in Jarry's hands, eventually evolved into King Ubu. Les Polonais was performed as a marionette play by the students at their homes in what they called the "Theatre des Phynances", named in honor of Père Hébert's lust for "phynance" (finance), or money. This prototype for Ubu Roi is long-lost, so the true and complete details of the authorship of Ubu Roi may never be known. It is clear, however, that Jarry considerably revised and expanded the play.
While his schoolmates lost interest in the Ubu legends when they left school, Jarry continued adding to and reworking the material for the rest of his short life. His plays are controversial for their scant respect to royalty, religion and society, their vulgarity and scatology,Jarry, Alfred. Ubu Roi. Dover. 2003Ubu carries as his weapons a pshittasword and a pshittashook, while his sceptre takes the traditional form of a commode scrubber; at one point, he thrusts his conscience down said commode. His peers, meanwhile, bear such names as MacNure, Pissweet and Pissale. In addition, the first word of Ubu Roi is "merdre", deliberately close to merde, meaning "excrement". their brutality and low comedy, and their perceived utter lack of literary finish.Ubu Roi has a loose narrative thread, a large number of characters who appear for only a short scene and a mashup of high literature and slang, much of it invented.
Ubu
According to Jane Taylor, "the central character is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification". Jarry's metaphor for the modern man, he is an antihero – fat, ugly, vulgar, gluttonous, grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jejune, voracious, greedy, cruel, cowardly and evil – who grew out of schoolboy legends about the imaginary life of a hated teacher who had been at one point a slave on a Turkish galley, at another frozen in ice in Norway and at one more the King of Poland. Ubu Roi follows and explores his political, martial and felonious exploits.
"There is", writes Taylor, "a particular kind of pleasure for an audience watching these infantile attacks. Part of the satisfaction arises from the fact that in the burlesque mode which Jarry invents, there is no place for consequence. While Ubu may be relentless in his political aspirations, and brutal in his personal relations, he apparently has no measurable effect upon those who inhabit the farcical world which he creates around himself. He thus acts out our most childish rages and desires, in which we seek to gratify ourselves at all cost". The derived adjective "ubuesque" is recurrent in French and francophone political debate.
Première Both Ubu Cocu and Ubu Roi have a convoluted history, going through decades of rewriting and, in the case of the former, never arriving, despite Jarry's exertions, at a definitive version.The third play was the only one wholly written by the adult Jarry. By the time Jarry wanted Ubu Roi published and staged, the Morins had lost their interest in schoolboy japes, and Henri gave Jarry permission to do whatever he wanted with them. Charles, however, later tried to claim credit, but it had never been a secret that he had had some involvement with the earliest version. The music was composed and performed at the premiere by Claude Terrasse.Alfred Jarry/Claude Terrasse, Ubu Roi : round revue
The first word of the play ("merdre", the French word for "shit", with an extra "r") may have been part of the reason for the response to the play in Paris. At the end of the performance a riot broke out, an incident which has since become "a stock element of Jarry biographia". After this, Ubu Roi was outlawed from the stage, and Jarry moved it to a puppet theatre.
Jarry said to the audience in a curtain speech just before that first performance in Paris: "You are free to see in M. Ubu however many allusions you care to, or else a simple puppet—a school boy's caricature of one of his teachers who personified for him all the ugliness in the world".