SOURCE: "Space, Scenery and Action in Dürrenmatt's Plays," in Assaph, Vol. C, No. 3, 1986, pp. 191-206.

[In the following essay Yaron discusses how Dürrenmatt's use of specific and detailed stage directions yields an allegorical background for his plays.]

When I undertake the writing of a play, the first step which I make clear to myself is where this play is to take place.

                                  —F. Dürrenmatt

The Swiss playwright, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, attaches great significance to the place of action (Handlungsort) in his plays. He deals with this subject in great detail in his essay "Theater Problems", where he also underlines his predilection toward variegated scenery. Indeed, in his stage directions regarding the scenery, Dürrenmatt's love for the colorful setting is distinctly expressed. One manifestation of variegation is the sense of "overflowing", which is shown, for instance, in his detailed demands concerning the scenery of Ein Engel Kommt Nach Babylon. In the opening stage directions to the second act we read:

The second act is to be played beneath one of the Euphrates bridges, in the very heart of Babylon. The sky is shut out by towering skyscrapers and palaces. The orchestra pit again represents the river, and the bridge makes a great vault forwards from the back of the stage, so that it appears in cross-section and from below. High overhead the traffic of the giant city makes itself heard. (…) Akki's dwelling is a wild hotch-potch of various objects of every period: sacrophagi, heathen idols, an ancient royal throne, Babylonian bicycles and car tyres and so forth, all covered with the dirt of ages, mouldy, heaped with dust. Above all this mess (…) there is a relief of the head of Gilgamish. Beside it, torn copies of the notices about begging with strips pasted across them (…) Outside on the right, clear of the bridge, a kitchen range and a kettle. The ground is red sand, littered with jam tins and poetic manuscripts. Everywhere hang parchments and clay tablets closely written with poetry; in short the characters seem to be moving about on an enormous rubbish dump. (…)

Dürrenmatt is not contented with merely economical and suggestive stage directions. On the contrary, his descriptions, in which a visible picture of location is portrayed, are particularly lengthy and detailed. The picture as a whole is dominated by a vast number of objects, each of which retains its distinctiveness, but which, at the same time, also contributes to the unmistakable effect of accumulated confusion. However, within all this excess, or overflowing, a characteristic Dürrenmattian trait can be distinguished: this vast mixture of period and places loses its definite historical-geographical nature. The great effort invested in the detailed stage directions, in order to represent a location according to the realistic tradition, actually achieves an inverted result. Precisely because of the huge accumulation, so concrete and realistic, the abstraction is actually indicated. That is precisely because what at first appears to be realistic, allows the emergence of the allegorical, or universal dimension. Dürrenmatt's Babel, for example, is a spacious modern metropolis, but, at the same time, anachronistic, as if a huge pile of urbanistic civilizations has been accumulated. Establishing the scene within a vague time and place allows Dürrenmatt a great deal of liberty in the use of anachronisms. This blurring of the distinctive by way of accumulating real materials is what lends Dürrenmatt's work an allegorical dimension. In spite of the broad use made of particular historical and geographical data, this is no historic or geographic Babel. This strict, realistic-like representation of place has turned extempore to the representation of nowhere, or, perhaps, of everywhere. But this is no single phenomenon in Dürrenmatt's colorful scenic representations.

In spite of the obvious attempt to depict a vivid picture overloaded with details, Dürrenmatt never loses control of his stage-space. Alongside the different details, some of the stage directions deal with the division of space. The different directions of the stage are sharply marked: the foreground (including, by extension, the orchestra) against the background, left and right. The bold drawing of the bridge that crosses the stage from the orchestra toward the rear also makes its decisive contribution to the defining of the space, and even adds to it the dimension of height: above the bridge (traffic noise) and under it (Akki's dwelling). The space is thus not only a scene of unique atmosphere, but the piled-up objects also shape a well-defined space. The sense of confusion that is marked by this overflow of objects, which do not "agree" with each other, works here as some grotesque parody upon the very tradition of the dramatic place (i.e., the realistic school), and this without losing its clear trait as space. The characteristic of creating atmosphere by use of colorful and overloaded objects marks most of Dürrenmatt's stage descriptions. A comparison, for example, between Romulus der Grosse, Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi and Die Physiker shows a growth in the number of stage directions. Indeed, the concept of scenery in Die Ehe occupies a conspicuous place in Durrenmalt's oeuvre.

Dürrenmatt's Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi has been published in two versions, and the main differences between them do indeed concern stage design. The play uses one set, a room, which not only forms the scenic background to the actions, but occupies a substantial role in it. During the action it goes through considerable changes; eventually it is destroyed, except for one piece of furniture, the round Biedermeier coffee table, which Dürrenmatt refers to as the play's protagonist. The process of the destruction of the room parallels the action: indeed, the conflict between the ideational powers, which constitutes the main part of the action, destroys the room.

After the publication of the first version, Dürrenmatt came out in favor of a certain degree of licence for the director and admitted to the possibility of more than one theatrical interpretation of the play. In the second version however, the author seems to have made a special effort to prevent such freedom and to reduce its likelihood as far as possible. The whole matter is completely manifested in the opening stage directions. In the first version the room is described in terms that specifically allow the stage designer complete artistic freedom:

Let us imagine in the background (of this room) perhaps two huge windows which are wider at the top than at the bottom like everything in this room, in which the spatial relationships increase with height. The impression is one of profuse insanity as if one were at the bottom of a hellish funnel (Höllentrichter), as if the room had been built for giants at the top and for dwarfs at the bottom—the same principle should be applied to the furniture: However, in spite of the fantasy, the middle-class quality of the room must not be lost. (…) In the same manner the landscape (seen through the windows at the rear of the room) is confusing. (…)

This version even contains some surrealistic and fantastic suggestions that explicitly aim at the evocation of an atmosphere that does not belong to this world ("profuse insanity"; a "hellish funnel"; a room that has been built for giants at the top and for dwarfs at the bottom; distorted perspective). This atmosphere has completely disappeared from the second version (except for the varied landscapes as seen through the windows). Now the room is expected to be as realistic as possible, for only in this way, says Dürrenmatt, can its visual breaking down be materialized:

A room whose late-bourgeois magnificance and splendour will not be altogether easy to describe. (…) The room stinks to high heaven. In the background are two windows. The view from them is bewildering. To the right the branches of an apple tree, and behind it some northern city with a Gothic cathedral; to the left a cypress, the remains of a classical temple, a bay, a harbour. (…) Between the two windows, but no higher than they are, a grandfather clock. Also Gothic in style. Let us turn to the right-hand wall. Here there are two doors. The door at the back of the stage leads through the veranda into a second room (…); the door front stage right leads to an entrance hall and the front door; the kitchen is also situated there, perhaps round the corner to the right of the entrance hall. Let us not bother about the possible lay-out of the house, we will assume that it is a rambling mansion to which many alterations and additions have been made. Between the doors on the right stands a small sideboard; this time I should like to suggest Louis Quinze. On it is a Venus. Of plaster. Naturally. In the left-hand wall there is only one door. It opens between fin-de-siècle mirrors. The door leads into a boudoir (…) Front stage left the Louis Seize frame of a second mirror dangles in mid-air, of course without a glass, so anyone looking in it will see the audience. Front stage right there might hang a small, oval, blank picture. In the centre stands a round Biedermeier coffee table; this is really the main character in the play, upon which all the action centers (…) it is flanked by two Louis Quatorze chairs. A bit of Empire furniture can undoubtedly be introduced somewhere say, left front stage a small sofa and left back stage a folding screen. (…) On the little table stands a Japanese vase containing red roses (…) The table is laid for three people. One suggests it is Dresden China. (…)

The world of fantasy has disappeared. The special place that the table occupies is also established only in the second version. Dürrenmatt's claim that the fantastic and the unreal would remain in the text only and not intrude into the realm of scenery is thus a decisive warning against any attempt at abstraction.

We are thus faced with a "miniature of the common European cultural heritage," a small-scale museum of European taste. Southern (classical temple) and northern (Gothic cathedral) landscapes are viewed from the windows, and even within the room there is a complexity of styles: Louis Quatorze chairs beside a Gothic grandfather clock, a Louis Quinze sideboard by a Biedermeier coffee table, and so on. Once more we meet the Dürrenmattian overflowing, with the amazing profusion of realistic details that contradict each other stylistically and lend a measure of allegory to the whole scene. Once more there occurs a realistic-like representation, whose main effort is aimed at suspending any appearance of realism: a Dürrenmattian parody on the tradition of drama that usually unfolds within a respectable bourgeois room.

It is possible to accept without difficulty Dürrenmatt's remark that the Biedermeier coffee table is indeed the play's main character. This table is of enormous significance to the characters, but at the same time it also functions as a kind of altar that all seek to grasp by way of the ritualistic ceremonies of coffee drinking. At this table the couple would even drink their poison, while all the characters try to find in it some kind of support for their deeds. But what is most important, while everything breaks into pieces—ideas, people, houses, furniture—only this coffee table survives in its proud wholeness. This, perhaps, has some relation to the play's form, as it is, after all, called a comedy. The table is accorded a very detailed position in the stage directions and some of its attributes become conspicuous: (1) that it stands in the center of the room; (2) that it is the only piece of furniture that remains on stage intact: some kind of visual evidence that it is indeed possible to destroy very much, but never everything; and (3) its definite style—Biedermeier—is a possible suggestion of an outward respectable bourgeois appearance, which entails social conventions that seem calm and peaceful (i.e., the coffee ritual) and thus contributes to the creation of a place that contrasts visually with what actually happens around it.

In Der Besuch der Alten Dame the author demands many changes from the stage representations. In this instance the overflowing that characterizes most of his plays is somewhat difficult to discern. The epic technique that Dürrenmatt employs here relates not only to Der Besuch der Alten Dame, but also to Herkules und der Stall des Augias and in a certain way to Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi. Some critics have expressed themselves regarding the relationship Dürrenmatt's drama bears to the epic tradition in the theater and particularly to Brecht. Indeed, the use Dürrenmatt makes of scenery in Der Besuch der Alten Dame points to his links with the theater of Brecht and Thornton Wilder.

The first scene takes place in the railway station in the town of Güllen; the second scene occurs in front of the hotel of the Golden Apostle. The transition between the scenes is outlined with great precision and is probably of substantial significance:

Open scene-change: facade of station and adjacent little building soar into flies. Interior of the Golden Apostle: an hotel-sign might well be let down from above, an imposing gilded Apostle, as emblem, and left to hang in mid-air.

The disappearance of parts of the scenery, which constitute the first scene, as well as the apparance of others that are intended as the visual background to the second scene, are thus made in front of the audience. Theater takes over the sheer realism and the scenery acts upon the audience as scenery. Every touch of illusionism is abolished. Moreover, "reality" is only hinted at and a sign or an image suffice to represent it. Another example perhaps illustrates this point more strongly, as the changes in the scenery lake place with the help of the actors:

Scene-change (…) Man Three enters, carries off shop-till and shifts counter into position as desk. Mayor enters. Puts revolver on table (…) A construction-plan is affixed to wall.

This technique is employed many times with or without the assistance of the actors. But all the changes take place in front of the audience and the scene is always formed by way of hint alone, mostly by means of an inscription, or minimal props. Contrary to Brecht, who harnesses the action to the didactic aspect, Dürrenmatt strives first and foremost toward "indirect theatrical impact." The abolition of naturalistic illusionism and the inclusion of the "realism" of the theater in its stead is thus made evident (1) in the open changes of the scenery; (2) in the transformation that takes place in the scene by means of a sign or inscription; (3) in the simultaneous scene in which Ill's shop is represented against the background of the balcony from which the Old Lady observes everything; and (4) in the charming "forest" scene, in which the actors represent trees and even the voices of animals. In the humorous stage directions the hotel scene vanishes the same way as it appears, and at the end of the "forest" scene "the trees have metamorphosed back into citizens and moved away upstage."

The epic technique attains by Dürrenmatt a more pungent expression in those plays in which the actor appears in the place of the epic story teller. The actor who appears in the prologue of Herkulos und der Stall des Augias addresses himself directly to the audience. He relates to the stage machinery and to other technical resources, to the props and to various instruments by means of which the stage is going to be invested with its poetic reality. Dürrenmatt applies a similar technique in other plays, as in Es Steht Geschrieben and in Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi. In all these a distinguished dramaturgical effect determines the function of space, which is made evident to the spectator in a double aspect: the shape of reality and the reality of the stage-world. This double function of the character, first as one who takes an active part in the action and then as an epic story teller probably parallels the double existence of the reality of the stage. Here, certain lines uttered by the epic story teller are, in a way, an extension of the conventional stage directions:

Well, then, it is May, the windows are slightly open (the windows open slightly), on the table stand red roses, above the grandfather clock hangs the portrait of the first man who had the good fortune to be married to Anastasia, the picture of a beet-sugar manufacturer (…) (The picture floats down), and the Moid brings in my old friend Mississippi (the Maid and Mississippi enter right).

These words, spoken by Saint-claude at the opneing of Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi, represent the stage reality the audience watches. Sometimes he relates to matters that are already known from the opening stage directions (e.g., the red roses). On another occasion it is as if he creates this reality by the power of his words (the windows that open as if by themselves; the picture that suddenly appears; Mississippi's entrance.) This duality of the spoken word and the description of the stage directions creates, expectedly, an outstanding humorous effect, so characteristic of Dürrenmatt.

Through his ingenious employment of all available resources of the stage, Dürrenmatt shows a deep awareness of the possibilities the stage offers him. As evidence of Dürrenmatt's consciousness of the stage, his many stage directions delineate its appearance. Very rarely does he use the spoken word to depict a scene, to which he attaches great significance, as can be understood from his lengthy and detailed depictions. In many cases the logic of the play cannot be separated from its scene: thus, the town of Güllen, with all the changes that transform its outward appearance (Der Besuch der Alten Dame); so in the drama of insanity that cannot be enacted out of the walls of the sanatorium (Die Physiker); so when the room and all the furniture in it become a decisive factor in the action (Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi); so when the theme of the play is the polarity between heaven and earth (Ein Engel Kommt nach Babylon); and so in the visual collapsing of an empire (Romulus der Grosse). In none of these plays is there a reference to the visual background, which is so integral a part of the events, without the stage directions that delineate it so clearly and so explicitly.

Space and Action

This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

                                           —A. Camus

In a short note at the end of Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi, Dürrenmatt complains that many productions have distorted the play's meaning by employing scenery that tended toward too much abstraction. By doing this, Dürrenmatt claims, they were probably misled by the text itself. Dürrenmatt concludes:

(…) the room in which everything takes place must at the beginning be as real as possible. Only so will it be able to disintegrate. The unreal and fantastic may safely be left to the text, to the author.

Apart from the logical argument that demands that scenery be realistic at the beginning in order to disintegrate later on, these words also point to the existence of some tension between the space (real) and what happens in it (unreal, fantastic). Moreover, precisely this measure of fantasy that characterizes the action is, so Dürrenmatt claims, what has misled directors and stage designers. Dürrenmatt thus wants this tension to be sustained.

It is also possible, as Murray B. Peppard does, to combine this tension with the well-known grotesque character of Dürrenmatt's drama. But even without drawing upon a conspicuous characteristic in his drama, we can clearly argue that this tension between the space and events, between realistic scenery and fantastic text, cannot exist at all without the extensive significance that the playwright attaches to his stage directions. That this is no trifle with Dürrenmatt we can learn from the fact that he returns to it even in the "Postcript" he published for Der Besuch der Alten Dame.

Critics have already noted that in the middle of the play there is a discrepancy between subjective thought and reality. The drama, in this case is conceived as a transformation of values in the world of the people of Güllen—a transformation that should be "transmitted" to the audience without the characters being aware of it. The play's problem is thus in the presentation of a certain rationale by means of the discrepancy between what is said and done by the actors and what is actually conceived by the audience. But what critics seem to have failed to notice is that the presentation of a discrepancy of this kind necessitates a certain amount of autonomy of the theatrical means (i.e., to extend the stage directions) and invest them with a new significance.

In the foreground the people of Güllen are struggling, or at least they pretend they are, to maintain a degree of moral integrity. But reality negates their verbal declarations. This reality, however, is nothing but the reality of the theater. The space—the background that Dürrenmatt refers to—contradicts what happens in the "foreground." The fact that the scenery is part of the play's significance has two essential visual aspects. The first is linked with the scene in which the old Lady acts. This scene has already been explictly fixed in the opening stage directions of the second act:

The little town. (Only in outline.) In background, the Golden Apostle Hotel, exterior view. (…) Balcony. Right, a sign, "Alfred Ill: General Store", above a grimy shop-counter backed by shelves displaying old stock.

From now on the action unfolds as if on two levels. On the first level there is the wretchedness of the people of Güllen who buy at Ill's shop on credit. On the second level there is the "balcony scene," in which the Old Lady makes her ironic comments and shows off her wealth. What the Gülleners say and do cannot be understood if separated from this background. It lends to the events the note of a play-within-play, or rather some theater of marionettes with the Old Lady pulling the strings from above. Only by means of explicit stage directions is it possible for Dürrenmatt to create this visual aspect of the play.

But the collapsing of the world of values of the Gülleners attains a more poignant expression in the second visual aspect. Here is not meant only the direct materialistic manifestations that had control over them: the yellow shoes that the Gülleners have suddenly begun to wear, the new typewriter the mayor buys, the new clock for the church, the new clothes, as well as other signs of prosperity—all these are certainly clear attributes of the materialism that gradually gains control over the Gülleners. But it is the change that the scenery itself undergoes that conveys the transformation that takes place in the values of the Gülleners. At times this change finds its expression in a direct and unequivocal manner: as against the wretched railway station that was presented at the beginning, the appearance of this very station later on is remarkable. The multilated timetable has been changed into a new one and in contrast to the previous wretched appearance there are now touristic posters, while in the background even a few cranes can be observed, as a sign of building activity that is in progress all over the town. Even Ill's shop, so poverty-stricken in the past (a grim shop counter, old stock), reappears according to the prosperity of the times: a new sign, a new shop counter, a new till, and more expensive merchandise. The same applies to the ragged Gülleners themselves (see their depiction at the opening scene), whose last gathering turns into a scene of dazzling evening gowns and dress-suits. This process reaches its climax in the lengthy stage directions that Dürrenmatt delineates toward the end, and in which he actually sums up this transformation of boasting wealth, which has gradually dominated the play as a whole:

As the clothing, that outward visible form of a mounting standard of living, improves by degrees discreet and unobtrusive yet less and less to be ignored, and as the stage grows more inviting, while rung by rung it scales the social ladder and metamorphoses into wealth, like a gradual change of house from a slum to a well-to-do neighbourhood, so the epitome of that ascent occurs in the concluding tableau. The erstwhile grey and dreary world has been transformed; it has grown rich and dazzling new, a flashy incarnation of up-to-the-minute technics, as if the world and all were ending happily. Flags and streamers, posters, neonlights now surround the renovated railway station, and the men and women of Güllen clad in evening gowns and dress-suits (…)

Perhaps this representation exceeds the bounds of ordinary stage directions. However, one cannot doubt Dürrenmatt's attempt to present this visual process of transformation from shabby wretchedness into dazzling splendour, as an essential factor in his drama. The scenery has not only turned into an active part, but the change that has taken place in it is, in a sense, the play's true theme. Dürrenmatt is thus bound to a new concept of stage directions in order to depict the discrepancy between background and action, between scenery and behavior—a process during which the theatrical reality contradicts the remarks the Gülleners (the actors) incessantly make.

To illustrate this we have to return to the railway station. A big poster reads: "Travel South." Another poster invites the traveller: "Visit the Passion Plays in Oberammergau." Trains are rushing through, the Station Master salutes. Then

Ill emerges from background, one hand clutching little, old suitcase, and looks around. As if by chance, citizens of Güllen come gradually closing in on him from all sides.

The visual scene depicts how the belt tightens around Ill. The real power of the scene is in its visual vigor, in the movements of the people who gradually close in on Ill, as if on a cornered animal. The Gülleners their "hands in pockets"—against the solitary Ill, who is clutching a little suitcase. But the scene is incomplete without the posters Dürrenmatt has with such great care introduced: the poster of the Oberammergou Passion Plays turns Ill, into a Jesus who is trapped in one of the highest points of his Road to Calvary, while the poster that invites one to visit the South is a clear hint at Ill's end: the Old Lady is indeed going to take his body to Capri! The yellow sun, big and bright, which is seen on one of the posters, becomes a bitter and blood-freezing comment.

Indeed, the stage directions apparently do not contribute any new or essential information. However, the visual and stunning spectacle that concludes the second act is a kind of tableua vivant. It lends complexity to the whole scene, invests it with emotional heterogeneity. We imagine the Gülleners surrounding the frightened Ill, the train rushing thunderously through, the Station Master fulfilling his duty and saluting, the posters charged with irony. And in the middle of all this, Ill, motionless, peering fearfully around. Not only does the optic aspect add some information to the dialogue, but, it might be argued, that the dialogue becomes here an illustration of the stunning visual process. In the dialogue there are no posters, no trains rushing through, no Station Master saluting—only the Gülleners with their sweet hypocrisy plead with Ill to remain. The visual spectacle creates a world in itself, some kind of independent action, that speaks a language of its own—the language of the stage.

The tension between the stage and the action reaches its pungent form in Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi. We have already mentioned Dürrenematt's remark about the tension between the realistic scenery and the unreal, or rather fantastic action. We have also noticed that the precise and detailed description turns what seems like an ordinary realistic bourgeois living room into an impossible place, into a "nowhere." Now, the more the details are realistically precise, the more their mere excess neutralizes their specific nature and renders it, both geographically and historically, ineffectual. However, this is still a room. At the beginning the stage directions raise an essential matter worth considering. The play's subject, we recall, is the story of a room. Moreover, as the events that are going to occur in it would indeed, as the stage directions specify, happen in this room alone, it seems as if Dürrenmatt has in mind the traditional unity of place. However, as with other Dürrenmattian expectations, this one should also be considered somewhat sceptically. The play's physical action, it is true, never goes beyond the limits of a room, but one of the play's explicit characteristics is the existence of a persistent tension between the unity of place and its constant violation.

The opening stage directions make it clear how the outside world intrudes, and how the contradictory views from the windows refute the sense of unity of place. The stylistic contradiction of the pieces of furniture, each realistic in itself, again undermines the traditional concept of unity. Even some details that distinguish the characters' behavior contribute to this feeling. One character, we recall, enters through the window, while another bursts out of the grandfather-clock. Some objects, strange as it may sound, descend into the room, or disappear mysteriously. Windows open as if by themselves, while strange, or rather fantastic events take place in a manner that cannot be explained in terms of strict realism. The contrast between the room and the action also amounts to parodistic dimensions, as if we have in mind another type of discrepancy: between the living room, where coffee is being drunk and a maid is summoned by a delicate silver bell, and the violent events that occur there according to the logic of fantasy. What has begun as a respectable bourgeois living room is gradually destroyed visually. The story of the room turns into the story of its physical destruction. The demolishing of most of the furniture becomes a visual statement of the disaster caused by narrow minded idealists who seek to reform, but who, in fact, bring about utter destruction.

The play cannot be separated from its visualization of the sustained destruction of the scenery. Without this visualization, there is mere verbal polemics. The words and acts attain their full significance when they are shown in direct relationship to that grotesque and violent transformation that the room undergoes. The scenery is no mere "background" anymore. It has become an active factor in the play's logic. A concept such as this is impossible without the extension of the stage directions, which delineate the "behavior" of the scenery, at times even behind the back of the characters. Many actions thus take place autonomously; they are not prompted by the dialogue and the characters have no control over them. Indeed, this lack of control over events is a major theme in the play.

The tension that rises from Ein Engel Kommt nach Babylon, however, is of a different kind. Dürrenematt, constantly aware of the process of creativity, mentions the unique question of the concept of space in his essay on the problems of the theater: (…) there are two locations in this comedy—the heavens and the city of Babylon. The heavens as the secret starting-point of the action and Babylon as the place where the action happens.

Dürrenmatt's problem is therefore of how to communicate (non-verbally) the feeling of the direct presence of the two poles, heaven and earth. The stage representation has therefore to deliver the feeling of an unattainable and impenetrable Kingdom of Heaven and an earthly level. This contrast between the two worlds lies at the heart of Dürrenmatt's grotesque outlook, in which man is shown in all his limitations in front of infinite space, which the scenery attempts to depict. The unavoidable sense that the play conveys is of the existence of that unbridgeable gap between vast spaces, openness and infinity, on one hand, and enclosed worlds, contracted and imprisoned, on the other. As usual with Dürrenmatt this sense is carried over the heads of the characters, who are unaware of their circumscriptions. As usual with Dürrenmatt this task is ascribed not to the dialogue, but to the detailed stage directions. Without the stage directions this gap, so central to the play, has no existence. Toward the end of the play the infinite space takes up its priority:

Darkness. The scenery vanishes overhead.

Vaguely, a measureless desert can be glimpsed, a vast wilderness through which Akki and Kurrubi are fleeing.

Scenery has made way for the empty space. The only limits are the boundaries of the stage. At the end there is a sand storm. The scenic occurrence, that has by now become autonomous, has completely passed to the stage directions.

The gap between space and scenery in Romulus der Grosse does not take on the cosmic dimension of Ein Engel Kommt nach Babylon. However, again we are confronted with a contrast between the real situation and the lofty ideals to which the characters try to keep faith. This contrast attains a visual dress by the contradiction between the conventional image of the Emperor's glory and the rural negligence of the royal "court". The grotesqueness of the last Roman Emperor, captured in a filthy yard of cackling hens, strikes one as an original and brilliant image. Pompous declarations and wretched reality become once again an ironic comment (through stage directions) upon the discrepancy of the characters' words and deeds. This is a play at whose center lies the development of the theme of disintegration: the decline of the Roman Empire. At first sight there is again the familiar phenomenon of unity of place. However, Dürrenmatt raises once more his beloved tension of unity of place and its violation. As in the case of Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi, the house does not suffer any change; it is only the objects that underline the change that takes place. The atmosphere of disintegration and decay is accentuated by the collection of statues in the background. After Romulus has sold everything to the Antique Dealer, the porters continue to remove busts during the whole of the first act. This turns into an autonomous background action, which takes place independently of the dialogue. This action exists in the stage directions only. The same applies to the exciting image of the cackling hens, around which a considerable part of the action is woven. One critic has rightly noted the coordination that exists between the ideas pronounced in the play and its scenery, as it is a play at the heart of which lies a visual transformation.

Dürrenmatt's verbal-visual dichotomy therefore attains many faces. By means of placing the words and the actions against the visual image, Dürrenmatt expresses his central belief about man who distorts the evidence of reality. The chaotic world and man's proclaimed actions do not always agree with each other. The poignant sense of the grotesque that comes out of this concept demands that the starting point be well anchored within a familiar model of reality: a model that can be easily identified and that is far from any allegory. Within the most realistic background the most unexpected is due to take place. The source of horror is usually found in the most familiar environment. The contrast between the visual world of the stage and the action that takes place on it becomes, with Dürrenmatt, a poignant ironic comment upon man's words and deeds.