Ubu Plays, The

by Alfred Jarry

  PA UBU. Ah, my sweet child, don’t you worry your pretty head about our destination. It will certainly be a country extraordinary enough to be worthy of our presence, since we are being transported there in a trireme equipped with an extra bank of oars - not just three, but four!

  1

  Introduction to Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, edited by Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor, Methuen, London, and Grove Press, New York, 1965.

  2

  The reader is referred to Roger Shattuck’s long and illuminating essay on Alfred Jarry in his The Banquet Years, Doubleday, New York, 1958 and 1961, Faber & Faber, London, 1961. Martin Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd, Doubleday, New York, 1961, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1962 and (in a revised and enlarged edition) Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1968, situates Jarry historically in relation to the developing avant-garde theatre of the present century.

  3

  Here again, the reader is referred to Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, which contains all of Jarry’s writings on the theatre, as well as an annotated translation of The Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician.

  4

  Taken from the autographic facsimile edition of Ubu Roi, text by Alfred Jarry and music by Claude Terrasae (Mercure de France, 1897).

  5

  From Ubu sur la Butte, II, 1.

  6

  Jarry specifies, in Ubu sur la Butte, that the Palcontent Gyron is to be played by a Negro. (Editor’s note.)

  7

  Stage direction from Ubu sur la Butte.

  8

  chien a bas de laine: i.e. a tax collector (chien = subordinate employee, bas de laine = a stocking stuffed with coins - see Ubu Rex, III, 7, p. 45). [Editor’s note.]

  9

  Th. Ribot: Maladies de la Mémoire, p. 93. [Author’s note.]