Ubu Roi

“You are free to see in M. Ubu however many allusions you care to, or else a simple puppet—a schoolboy’s caricature of one of his professors who personified for him all the ugliness in the world.”

Jarry says this to the audience as part of his speech before the play’s first performance (included in the playscript, as a preface). The quote introduces the source material behind Ubu Roi—based on a dreaded professor of Jarry’s—while encapsulating the nature of the play’s title character and the play itself: The piece and Pere Ubu (Papa Turd) are comic and over the top (a “caricature”), but also symbolize something broader about society, both through the “allusions” that can be found, as well as Papa Turd’s being a personification of the world’s “ugliness.”     

“Pshit!”

Papa Turd speaks this curse (originally “Merdre,” an edited version of the French “Merde,” meaning “shit”) as the first line of the play. It immediately establishes the play’s shocking and crude nature, and reports of the original production note the commotion this term alone caused among the audience.  

“By my green candle, I’d rather be poor as a thin honest rat than rich like a wicked fat cat.”

Papa Turd tells this to Mama Turd after she initially proposes that he try to become king. It stands in sharp contrast to Papa Turd’s greedy and amoral nature later in the play, and shows the shift that Papa Turd undergoes when he instead decides to vie for the crown and is corrupted by power and wealth.