style befitting his social class, he would have used ponies. Because of the higher cost of the ponies, he would have had to save on the rest of the equipment, which would have caused his downfall. Samuel Beckett would have concentrated only on the end. Changed into a block of ice, Scott would be sitting opposite other blocks of ice, talking without getting an answer from his comrades, not even sure whether he could be heard. Another possibility, which Dürrenmatt would prefer, would be to show Scott buying provisions for the expedition. While putting the provisions into the cold storage chamber, he would be locked in accidentally, where he would freeze to death. Scott dying far from all help among the glaciers of the Antarctic is a tragic figure; Scott locked into a cold storage chamber through mishap and dying in the middle of a city only a few yards from a busy street is transformed into a comic figure. Dürrenmatt concluded that the worst possible turn that a story can take is the turn to comedy.

Although Dürrenmatt’s comedies depict a world ruled by chance in which the individual is powerless, they are not utterly despairing. There are still courageous individuals such as Romulus and Graf Bodo von Übelohe-Zabernsee who try to change the world, even though they ultimately fail. As Dürrenmatt writes in Problems of the Theater, one has to accept the world for what it is and keep on living, refusing to give up. His vital comic imagination, evident in all his plays, alleviated his otherwise gloomy view of the world. In an interview with Horst Bienek in 1961, Dürrenmatt stressed the importance of humor in his plays; he said that he can be understood only from the point of view of humor taken seriously.

Common to most of Dürrenmatt’s essays on dramatic theory is an emphasis on the practical problems of the theater. He was rarely satisfied with his plays, as the various versions of the plays demonstrate. Each time one of his plays was produced, he said, he saw new possibilities. Many of the problems he encountered in writing his plays could be solved only when he saw his play on the stage. Dürrenmatt protested against dramatic rules formulated by critics; such rules, he said, are of no use to the artist. He wanted his plays to be judged by their theatrical quality, not by how well they fit into some theory of drama.

Romulus the Great

Dürrenmatt’s belief that the individual is powerless to change events is shown clearly in Romulus the Great, his first Swiss success, which had its premiere on April 25, 1949, in the Stadttheater in Basel. There are five versions of the play. The major change occurs in the second version and is kept in the remaining versions. In the first version, Romulus is portrayed as a cunning, successful politician who realizes his goals. In the subsequent versions, he is no longer victor but victim, a failed and tragic figure who sees that his life has been senseless.

The play depicts the destruction of the Roman Empire by the Germans. The time is the Ides of March, 476 c.e. (another change from the first version), by which Dürrenmatt parodies Shakespeare ’s Julius Caesar (pr. c. 1599-1600) and mocks heroic ideals. The action takes place on Romulus’s chicken farm, a grotesque incongruity, because the spectator has entirely different expectations of what the Roman court should be like. Dürrenmatt employs the classical dramatic unities as an ironic contrast to the chaotic world of hens on the stage. The play is called an “unhistorical-historical comedy.” The real Romulus was sixteen when he became emperor and was seventeen when he was forced to abdicate. Dürrenmatt’s Romulus is an older man. The many anachronisms in the play—the capitalist Cäsar Rupf, for example, who manufactures trousers—show that Dürrenmatt is using the fall of the Roman Empire to analyze modern problems.

Initially, Romulus appears to be lazy and disagreeable. Instead of trying to defend his empire, he sits comfortably eating and drinking. His only concern appears to be the fate of his beloved chickens, whom he has named after different Roman emperors. Yet there are indications that he is not as foolish and despicable as he appears. When Cäsar Rupf demands his daughter Rea’s hand as the price for saving Rome, Romulus is the only one who refuses to sell off his daughter in this way. Romulus is also fully aware of the hopelessness of the situation. He deduces that the Germans will conquer Rome because the chicken named after the German leader Odoaker lays a lot of eggs. Only in the third act does Romulus appear as a wise man who is passionately concerned with justice and humaneness. He has become Emperor of Rome only to liquidate his empire. His role, as he sees it, is to judge Rome: Rome has been tyrannical and brutal, and Romulus intends to punish it for its crimes by destroying it. His plan to punish Rome and thereby make the world more humane rests on a delusion: He assumes that the Germans are more humane than the Romans, yet the future ruler Theoderich is just as brutal as the Romans, if not more so. Odoaker, Theoderich’s uncle (a man who, like Romulus, is a passionate chicken-raiser), did not come to conquer Rome but to surrender to Romulus in order to save the world from his nephew. Despite their well-intentioned plans, Romulus and Odoaker are helpless; they cannot prevent the rise of another brutal empire under Theoderich.

Most of the other characters are comic figures. They swear that they will fight to the last drop of blood, but they actually flee in haste once the Germans approach. The empress Julia speaks of heroism and sacrifice, but when she flees she is concerned only with saving the imperial dinner service. Her marriage to Romulus has been loveless, since they only married each other for political reasons, to become emperor and empress. Their daughter Rea draws her notions of heroism from the tragic roles she rehearses under the guidance of the actor Phylax, notions that are far removed from the real world. The cynical art dealer Apollyon has no respect for art; for him it only means money. Cäsar Rupf parodies the political and economic power of the capitalist in the modern world (ironically, the capitalist, not the emperor, is called Caesar, an indication that the capitalist is the real power in the state). Zeno, the Byzantine emperor, is a would-be Machiavelli who has even intrigued against his own family. He is the only one who does not drown during the flight from the Germans: types such as Zeno, Dürrenmatt believed, are indestructible. Only Ämilian, Rea’s fiancé, is not a comic figure. Ämilian is captured by the Germans and suffers from their brutality; Romulus sympathizes with him but thinks that his patriotism, heroism, and readiness to sacrifice himself for Rome are senseless. Romulus is suspicious of all such concepts, since they can be so easily misused by the state to encourage people to commit crimes.

The play is a mixture of tragic and comic elements. The comic aspects include the setting, plot, and characterizations. Dürrenmatt also uses sight gags, such as the chickens that are always underfoot and the comical hiding places of the plotters who want to murder Romulus. Dürrenmatt’s mixture of different levels of language—jargon, mercantile language, empty clichés, slang, and extremely formal diction—also has a comic effect. The tragic part of the play is the conclusion. With the best intentions in the world, Romulus has dedicated his life to trying to make the world more just and humane. He believes that he can change the course of history and is willing to sacrifice his own life for this illusion, yet the world under Theoderich will be just as repressive as the Roman Empire, if not more so. At the end, Romulus is not even allowed to die but is pensioned off, thus forced to live with the bitter realization that his whole life has been senseless.

The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi

In The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi, Dürrenmatt shows his distrust of all ideologies. The play, which had its premiere in the Münchner Kammer-spiele on March 26, 1952, contributed significantly to establishing Dürrenmatt’s reputation in Germany. Like Romulus the Great, the play has gone through five versions, and it has also been filmed. The main difference between the first version and subsequent versions is that the earliest version is more surrealistic and contains more religious symbolism while the later versions are more political.

The play takes place in one room. Through one window, a southern landscape with a temple and a cypress tree can be seen; through the other, a northern landscape with a Gothic cathedral and an apple tree. This indicates that Western culture has not managed to synthesize its classical and Christian heritage. The room contains a hodgepodge of furniture from different periods and thereby parodies Western culture. The play (which is structured epically) is not divided into acts and scenes but is broken up by the monologues spoken by the protagonists, who step out of their roles and address the audience. Dürrenmatt uses many exaggerated alienation effects (the characters even step out of their roles to comment on their own behavior). These alienation effects contribute to the play’s comic effect and also suggest a parody of Bertolt Brecht. The circular structure of the play (which actually begins with the last scene) indicates that nobody has learned anything—future ideologists will be just as fanatical as the present-day ones.

Three of the main characters represent particular ideologies. The state prosecutor Mississippi believes in absolute justice, which he thinks he has found in the law of Moses (he tries to reintroduce this law in the twentieth century). He is a fanatical reformer who in his search for justice has had 350 executions carried out. Because Mississippi’s first wife committed adultery, he poisoned her—a just punishment, he believes, according to Mosaic law. He then sentences himself (as he says) to marry Anastasia, who has poisoned her husband, who was having an affair with Mississippi’s wife. Through this loveless marriage, Mississippi hopes to change Anastasia for the better. To accomplish this, he forces her to attend executions. At the end of the play, he wants to know whether she has become a better person; his marriage to her would otherwise be senseless. Through her lie that she has been faithful to him, he is able to preserve his conviction that punishment improves people. Like Mississippi, Saint-Claude is idealistic and fanatical. He wants to change the world through Marxism, but he is liquidated because his communism differs so radically from the party dogma. Like Mississippi, Saint-Claude believes that the end justifies the means—he does not even know how many people he has killed in his search for a better world. The third ideologist is Graf Bodo von Übelohe-Zabernsee, who is a Christian. To help people, he has sacrificed his fortune and become a beggar. Although his goals of changing the world are praise-worthy, he is a laughable figure: Everything he tries to do fails. At the end of the play, he appears as Don Quixote, who fights senselessly, if courageously, against the windmills; he refuses, despite his failures, to give up his search for a better world.

In contrast to these ideologues, Anastasia and the politician Diego are pragmatic opportunists. Dürrenmatt said that Anastasia is supposed to symbolize the world. She has no morals or ideals, and she adapts easily to any situation. If it is to her advantage, she cold-bloodedly betrays her lovers. Through her, Dürrenmatt mocks the protagonists’ attempts to change the world; like Anastasia, the world is impervious to change. Diego, who adeptly gains power during the play, is a cunning opportunist, like most of the politicians in Dürrenmatt’s works.

Dürrenmatt’s characteristic humor is especially evident in this play, which is filled with satiric depictions of murders and revolutions. The characters are exaggerated caricatures; through them, Dürrenmatt ridicules ideologies. In addition to the action, setting, and characterizations, Dürrenmatt employs other devices for comic effect. The language of the play is bombastic, and the betrayed husband is a staple of comedy. As in his other plays, Dürrenmatt delights here in using gags: A character jumps suddenly out of a grandfather clock; there is the frequent ritual of coffee drinking, and one never knows whether the coffee is poisoned. Sudden surprises, such as Mississippi’s unexpected marriage proposal to Anastasia, also contribute to the comic effects.

Despite the comic elements, the atmosphere of the play is basically gloomy. At the end, Mississippi and Anastasia die (they have poisoned each other’s coffee) and Saint-Claude is killed by the party. Yet they all rise up from the dead, and the play could start over again. As in Romulus the Great human life is depicted as a senseless, repetitive cycle that can never be changed.

The Visit

The central theme of The Visit is the problem of justice. Considered to be Dürrenmatt’s masterpiece, The Visit had its premiere on January 29, 1956, at the Zürich Schauspielhaus. It is Dürrenmatt’s most frequently performed play, and it established his reputation in the United States. The Visit takes place in the small town of Güllen (in Swiss dialect, Güllen means liquid manure); the time is the present. The town has stagnated economically: The local industries are ruined, the town is bankrupt, and the citizens live on welfare, while the neighboring towns are flourishing. The townspeople blame their misfortunes on Jews, Freemasons, Communists—on anyone but themselves. Their town has a cultural heritage, they think, because Goethe stayed the night there, Johannes Brahms composed a quartet there, and Berthold Schwarz invented gunpowder there. For them, culture is merely a series of clichés.

As the play opens, the community is hoping that Claire Zachanassian, the richest woman on earth, who used to live in Güllen, will help them. The festivities to welcome her are, however, hypocritical. When she lived in the town forty-five years ago, they despised her; now their exaggerated praise of her is calculated to manipulate her into giving the town money. Her former lover Alfred Ill is designated to appeal discreetly for her charity; as a reward for this job, he will be made the next mayor. Because Claire comes early, the effects of the welcome are lost. The mayor’s speech at the railroad station is drowned by the noise of the trains, and the choir has to be assembled hurriedly. At the dinner, the mayor’s speech shows that he knows nothing whatsoever about Claire. Ill must keep on correcting him and, at the end of the speech, even Claire points out that he is wrong.

Claire is a grotesque figure whose right arm and left leg are prostheses to replace the limbs that she lost in accidents. Her retinue is equally grotesque: It consists of her butler; Toby and Roby, gumchewing gangsters whom she has saved from the electric chair; Koby and Loby, who are blind eunuchs; her seventh husband (she marries two more during the play); a black panther in a cage; a large amount of luggage; and a coffin. When she arrives, she asks strange and chilling questions: She asks the gymnast whether he has strangled anyone, the doctor whether he prepares death certificates, the policeman whether he can close his eyes, and the priest whether he consoles those who are condemned to death. At the meal in her honor, she drops her bombshell: She will give five hundred million to the town and five hundred million to be divided evenly among the town’s families, on one condition: Someone must kill Alfred Ill. She has come, she says, to buy justice. Forty-five years before, she was expecting Ill’s child. Ill refused to acknowledge that he was the father; instead, he bribed two witnesses with schnapps to say that they had slept with her. Claire was forced to leave Güllen; she then became a prostitute, and her child died. Becoming a prostitute, however, made Claire rich because it was in the brothel that she met Zachanassian, a rich oilman. Ill did not want to marry Claire because she was poor; instead, he married Mathilde because she owned a store. Claire’s retinue consists, in part, of those connected with the paternity suit; the butler is the former judge, and Koby and Loby are the witnesses who committed perjury, whom she has relentlessly tracked down and then blinded and castrated. Claire is an emotional cripple whose life has been dedicated to revenge (the local teacher likens her to Medea). It turns out that Claire is responsible for the town’s misfortunes: She has bought everything and let it stagnate. The mayor proudly refuses her money. He declares that the community is humane, that it is better to be poor than stained with blood. Claire knows better: She sits on her balcony and waits.

As she expects, the Gülleners cannot withstand temptation. All of them, including the leaders of the community to whom Ill vainly appeals for help, begin to spend freely and incur debts. They all buy yellow shoes; the policeman has a new gold tooth, the mayor a new typewriter; and even the priest has bought a new church bell. The priest tells Ill to flee so that he does not lead them into temptation. Even Ill’s family joins in the spending spree: His wife buys a fur coat, his son a new car, and his daughter new clothes. His daughter also starts taking English and French lessons and plays tennis. The townspeople incur debts thoughtlessly, but as their debts mount, their attitude toward Ill changes. They no longer think of him as the most beloved member of the community, as they did when they thought he could persuade Claire to give the town money. Instead, they say that he is guilty of the crime and deserves punishment. When Claire’s black panther escapes (Claire used to call Ill her panther), the citizens hunt and kill it, a foreshadowing of Ill’s death.

Inevitably, they decide that Ill must die for the “well-being” of the community. A town meeting is called to decide Ill’s fate. Before the meeting, the mayor tries to convince Ill that he should commit suicide out of love for his community and thus spare the town the guilt of his death. Ill refuses. He says that he has been through hell, watching the debts of the community grow; if they had spared him this fear, he might have killed himself for them. On the surface, the town meeting seems a model of democracy (the press enthusiastically interprets it in that way). The teacher speaks of justice and honor; his noble words are used to mask the common agreement to kill Ill. At the end of the meeting, Ill is killed, presumably by the most muscular member of the gym club in the midst of the Gülleners. His death is termed a heart attack caused by the joy of learning about Claire’s gift. The Gülleners refuse to accept the fact that they killed Ill for money; instead, they see his death as just punishment for his earlier crime. The townspeople are not particularly evil—they had intended to protect Ill. As the teacher notes, however, the temptation was too great. The teacher himself tries hard to resist, yet he tells Ill that he feels himself turning into a murderer; his humanistic training cannot avert this. At the end, Claire has her revenge on the town whose citizens had looked on coldly when she was forced to leave in the midst of winter, forty-five years ago.

During the play, Alfred Ill grows in stature until he almost becomes a tragic figure. At the outset, he is not concerned in the least about his former treatment of Claire. When he is confronted with his past behavior, he begins to see that he was wrong. He gradually accepts his guilt and realizes that he has made Claire what she is. Dürrenmatt remarked that Ill becomes great through his death. He noted that Ill’s death is both meaningful and meaningless: Meaningful, because Ill accepts his guilt and grows as a human being; meaningless, because it achieves no moral redemption for the community. In a tragedy by Sophocles, Dürrenmatt said, such a death would have saved the community from the plague. In Güllen, however, Ill’s death marks the beginning of the plague—that is, of moral corruption.

Dürrenmatt called his play a tragic comedy. The comedy stems in part from the characters and their actions (the hypocritical welcome prepared for Claire, and the way in which the press misunderstands the town meeting, for example). Dürrenmatt mocked religious and cultural clichés. He satirized the manner in which language disguises meaning (the press thinks that the teacher’s speech shows “moral greatness” when in reality the teacher is justifying Ill’s murder). The “romantic” meeting of Claire and Ill in the forest parodies German romanticism (the townspeople play the part of trees, and the noise of the woodpecker is made by a citizen tapping on his pipe with a rusty key). Dürrenmatt’s parody of the Greek chorus at the end shows his conviction that tragedy is no longer possible.

There are, however, tragic elements in the play. Ill’s fate is tragic. He is made into a scapegoat and is sacrificed for money. Dürrenmatt depicts vividly the moral and spiritual corruption of a community in which everything, including “justice,” can be bought. The Gülleners do not accept responsibility for Ill’s death but enjoy their new wealth, undisturbed by a guilty conscience. In his notes to the play, Dürrenmatt stresses that the Gülleners are people like all of humankind, who would, he implies, act as they did.