Ubu Roi

The playscript of Ubu Roi starts with a Preface spoken by Alfred Jarry before the play’s first performance at the Théâtrede l’Oeuvre in Paris in December 1896. The performance shocked audiences accustomed to naturalist theater and resulted in a riot. In his Preface, Jarry quotes a Swedish philosopher who notes that “embryonic beings are the most complete” (1), and tells the audience that they are free to see in the title character “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” (1).  

Jarry goes on to explain a few particularities of the performance: the actors will be performing behind masks, and the production hasn’t been too “literal” about reality; Jarry says the audience must “accept doors that open out on plains covered with snow falling from a clear sky” (2-3). The playwright also notes that the play was written “for actors pretending to be puppets,” and that the last two acts of the play are presented with “certain cuts,” including “several passages indispensable to the meaning and equilibrium of the play, while leaving in at [the actors’] request certain scenes I would have been glad to cut” (2).