subsequent to his life (and death), and each reacts very defensively about the actions he took and the philosophies he represented. Columbus, for example, declares that his goal in heading west with his ships was not to establish a Spanish empire, nor to enable the exploitation of the land and peoples of what became known as the Americas, but to seek “the truth.”

As the play proceeds, the several levels continue to merge. Simultaneously with the action involving the costumed historical figures, the action in Hwang Ti’s China unfolds further. The back-and-forth movement between very different historical times and situations—even their intermingling—is at times very humorous, and is always ironic. At one point, the Contemporary Man tries to explain the hydrogen bomb to Philipp of Spain, but Philipp cannot even believe that the Inquisition is over or that Holland has gained its independence from Spain. He asserts his philosophy of dealing with heretics: Burn them at the stake. Once again the Contemporary Man says: “You must not return to life.” In fact, he tells all the costumed historical figures that they must not return to life, because “we can no longer afford the way in which you made history.”

As these costumed figures fade momentarily from view, Mee Lan appears. She is a rather melancholy, bored Chinese princess, who nevertheless shows signs of seeing through the insane policies of her despotic father. She especially mocks his rather frantic attempts to find and kill the “voice of the people” as if it were a person rather than an attitude shared by many. The Contemporary Man approaches her, telling her that he wants to speak with her father; she wonders whether he is the “voice of the people.” In a strange dialogue marked by both seriousness and foolishness, he tells her about the modern world while they drink tea together; it is obvious that they are attracted to each other.

The intermingling of the historical personalities from various centuries and the Chinese at the court of Hwang Ti continues. Interspersed with their attempts to justify themselves and their actions are numerous illustrations of the tyranny and blindness of the emperor and his followers. In one example, Hwang Ti explains how his wall will “stop the future” and how, when the one last opponent (“the voice of the people”) is captured, all will be perfect in the Empire.

Mee Lan tries to tell her father about all the things that will happen in the ensuing two thousand years, but he merely dismisses her and suggests that she reads too much literature. Finally, the Contemporary Man does get the opportunity to talk to Hwang Ti in person, but the emperor shows little inclination to listen. In what follows, Cleopatra flirts with Hwang Ti (because he represents power) and Napoleon and Philipp of Spain are perplexed by the suggestion that they should not return to life.

Hwang Ti calls his court together in order to pass judgment on a young Chinese man whom he accuses of being “the voice of the people.” Ironically, it is the mute son from the first act. Having been named “court jester” by the emperor, the Contemporary Man attempts to defend the mute youth. Mee Lan pleads with her father to stop the charade, and the Contemporary Man points out explicitly how corrupt such a court is. When the soldiers begin to torture the mute youth, however, even his defenders fall silent.

Ashamed that they have done nothing to hinder the torturing, Mee Lan and the Contemporary Man blame each other for their own inaction. The Contemporary Man momentarily overcomes his fear and announces to Hwang Ti that he is “the voice of the people.” Once again, he warns of the dangers of traditional ways for the modern world. “Let’s decide: Humanity should live on! That means, therefore, that your way of making history is no longer acceptable. A society that views war as unavoidable is a society we can no longer afford.”

As the play approaches its end, the trial is in its final stages. The Contemporary Man attempts to get the mother to explain that her son cannot possibly be the “voice of the people” because he is mute. When it is suggested to her that her son is not capable of being the “voice” (and therefore of being important), however, her pride is injured. She asks, “Why shouldn’t my son be an important man?” Then she asserts that he is indeed the “voice of the people.”

The play ends with the historical characters, still in their costumes and masks, repeating the same lines that they spoke at the beginning of the play. All the attempts of the Contemporary Man to warn and to enlighten have failed, and he sinks into resignation, exclaiming, now as an actor on the stage: “We are not going to play any longer!” When Brutus asks why not, he merely replies: “Because the whole farce is starting all over again. . . .”

Given the fact that Frisch brought virtually all of historical time onstage and given the fact that he portrayed his historical characters in anything but heroic light, it is clear that The Chinese Wall not only rejects traditional notions of history, but traditional concepts of drama as well. His greatest indebtedness for his anti-Aristotelian dramatic form undoubtedly belongs to Bertolt Brecht and the complex of ingredients that makes up Brecht’s epic theater. Whereas Aristotle and his followers through the centuries have generally kept genres separate, Frisch radically mixed them. The play has the trappings of tragedy, comedy, history, farce, satire, and morality play. Because of its bleak ending of repetition, though, it perhaps ends as absurdist theater—not because there is no moral, but because history itself, the atom bomb now makes clear, has been absurdist theater.

From epic theater, Frisch adopted and adapted a wide variety of techniques and methods for his purpose. The Contemporary Man (and on occasion other figures, when they directly address the audience as actors rather than as the characters they are portraying) often serves to narrate the action of the play. This is only one example of the Brechtian alienation effect. Another is the extensive use of masks, which allows the actors to remind the audience again and again that they are merely playing roles in Brechtian terms; this is an attempt to force reader and audience to think critically about what is taking place and being said rather than allowing them to identify with the characters. Ironic juxtaposition of events or characters, as when the waiter in a tuxedo interrupts Romeo and Juliet in her bedroom or when Cleopatra, with cocktail in hand, wanders off on the arm of Hwang Ti, also serve to alienate the audience from conventional identification with these characters and with the historical meaning they traditionally have been granted.

Like Brecht and others, Frisch ingeniously used quotation from other authors (for example, passages are taken directly from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar) to create reality only to undercut or alter its conventional meaning. Frisch’s extensive use of irony—all kinds of irony—destabilizes statements, impressions, and reality, and ultimately results in the destabilization even of “truth”—especially any notion of “historical truth.” One further device which Frisch used extensively in the play is the “leitmotif,” the repetition of certain phrases, often verbatim, to accompany characters (and thereby highlight certain characteristics they display) or to underline a certain theme, as is the case with the repetition of the Contemporary Man’s plea to almost all the historical figures that they “must not return to life.”