Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Alfred Jarry
List Price:
Our Price: $0.53
You Save: $2.97 (85%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.37 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Alfred JarryEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-01-13
ISBN: 0486426874
Number of pages: 80
Publisher: Dover Publications
Book Reviews of Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions)
Book Review: A CLASSIC, BUT NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH OR PRUDISH
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been rereading some of the classics of absurdist theater -Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and The Lesson, and this play, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, Ubu the King. Reading Ubu again is like reading it new, so fresh and vivid its language and imagery is, so original a play it is, even now, 115 years after its first performance in Paris. A performance run that lasted two days, by the way -one night of dress rehearsal in front of an audience and one of full performance. The audiences at both performances were by all accounts unruly, and it's easy to see why when you read the play. Even by modern standards, it is unbelievably rude and deliberately offensive. But it is also extremely funny and, looking ahead to Dada and Artaud's Theatre of the Violent, definitely influential.
If there is a parallel to Jarry's scabrous play, it might be some of the musical works of Erik Satie, a contemporary of Jarry, who turned away from romantic ideals of composition to create musical fragments with whimsical titles -"Four Movements in the Shape of a Pear," "Sketches and Flirtations of an Overweight Bonhomme," "Flabby Preludes for a Dog." Both Jarry and Satie were early surrealists, but Jarry took the cake on offensiveness.
Oddly enough, that's one of the great pleasures of this play -its offensiveness, its deliberate and sustained air of vulgarity. Ubu is no play for the faint of heart. The playgoer who tolerate profanity because it is appropriate to the situation will find no excuse for profanity her, because Jarry uses it simply to epater le bourgeois (shock/cock a snook at the middle class). Thus, the repeated use of hardcore profanities that spot the pages of Ubu.
The center of the play is Ubu and the play tells of his run for the kingship of Poland. Why Poland? Because Poland didn't exist in Jarry's time. It hadn't for over a hundred years, ever since the respectable rulers of Europe had sliced and diced it into nonexistence in three successive partitions in the eighteenth century. Poland was Nowhere Land and thus fertile ground for Jarry's phantasmagoric imagination. And Ubu himself? He's vulgar -that's taken for granted--but also greedy, vain, cowardly, profane, no scabrous!, and treacherous. Let's see, have I left anything out? Oh, yes! He's also very very funny.
It took more than a generation before Ubu Roi gained champions. In the 1920s, the Dadaists and the Surrealists adopted it. In the 50s, it was resurrected again for presentation by Julian Beck's and Judith Malina's influential avant garde Living Theater. We saw Beck/Malina's theater in performance in the late sixties. The climax of the performance was an invitation to come on stage, where we were encouraged to take off our clothes and, if not that, pile onto a huge lump of other spectators so the cowards who had stayed in their seats in the theater could look at us. It was interesting how your perspective changed when you went on stage to play, not a character, but yourself, and yourself on display.
Ultimately, that's what theater like this was about: playing with language, meaning and values, and, behind that, exposing us to ourselves, in all our vulnerabilities and behind all our camouflages.
Entertainment Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Entertainment Books
Cash: The Autobiographyby Johnny Cash
HarperOne; Published: 2003-10-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
The Long Hard Road Out of Hellby Marilyn Manson, Neil Strauss
HarperEntertainment; Published: 1998-02-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.99
Price in other shops:
Miss Americaby Howard Stern
Harpercollins; Published: 1995-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.44
Price in other shops:
It's Raining Pigs & Noodlesby Jack Prelutsky
Greenwillow Books; Published: 2000-08-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.87
Price in other shops:
Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant: And Other Poemsby Jack Prelutsky
Greenwillow Books; Published: 2006-09-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.64
Price in other shops:
Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmithby Aerosmith, Stephen Davis
It Books; Published: 2003-02-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops:
Anthology for Musical Analysisby Charles Burkhart
Harcourt Brace & Company; Published: 1994; Spiral-bound; Book
Best price: $150.00
Complete Idiot's Guide to Throwing a Great Partyby Patty Sachs, Phyllis Cambria
Alpha; Published: 2000-10-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.10
Price in other shops:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cigarsby Tad Gage
Alpha; Published: 1997-09-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
The New Comics Anthologyby Daniel Clowes, Eddie Campbell, Jaimie Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Harvey Pekar, Gary Panter, Peter Bagge, Peter Kuper, Chris Ware
Collier; Published: 1991-09-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $53.56
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Waiting for Lefty and Other Playsby Clifford Odets
Grove Press; Published: 1994-01-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.56
Price in other shops:
Woyzeckby Georg Buchner
Samuel French; Published: 2010-10-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.05
Price in other shops:
Four Plays: The Bald Soprano; The Lesson; Jack, or the Submission; The Chairsby Eugene Ionesco
Grove Press; Published: 1982; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.93
Price in other shops:
Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Languageby Kristin Linklater
Drama Publishers; Published: 2006-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Machinal (Royal National Theatre)by Sophie Treadwell
Nick Hern Books; Published: 1995-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.59
Price in other shops:
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade (or Marat Sade)by Peter Weiss
Waveland Pr Inc; Published: 2001-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.10
Price in other shops:
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sadeby Peter Weiss
The Dramatic Publishing Company; Published: 1964-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Infernal Machineby Jean Cocteau
New Directions Publishing Corporation; Published: 1950-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.16
Price in other shops:
Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Playsby David Ball
Southern Illinois University Press; Published: 1983-07-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.95
Price in other shops:
The Theater and Its Doubleby Antonin Artaud
Grove Press; Published: 1994-01-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.40
Price in other shops: