Bernhard, Thomas - Martin Esslin (essay date January 1981)

Martin Esslin (essay date January 1981)

SOURCE: “A Drama of Disease and Derision: The Plays of Thomas Bernhard,” in Modern Drama, Vol. 23, No. 4, January, 1981, pp. 367–84.

[In the following essay, Esslin summarizes the plots of Bernhard’s major plays, noting his use of repetitious dialogue and “almost total absence of surprise, suspense or development.”]

The diseased and the crippled
rule the world
everything is ruled by the diseased
and by the crippled
It is a comedy
an evil humiliation

Thomas Bernhard, Die Macht der Gewohnheit, Scene I1

We stand towards each other in a relationship of disease
the whole world consists of such sickness
all of it undiagnosed

Thomas Bernhard, Ein Fest fuer Boris, First Prologue2

On the theatre, dear Sir, even the impossible
becomes entertainment and the monstrous
becomes an object of study as being
improbable, and all...

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