Ubu Roi Quotes

“That's a beautiful speech, but nobody's listening. Let's go.”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

“I intended that when the curtain went up the scene should confront the public like the exaggerating mirror in the stories of Madame Leprince de Beaumont, in which the depraved saw themselves with dragons' bodies, or bulls' horns, or whatever corresponded to their particular vice. It is not surprising that the public should have been aghast at the sight of its other self, which it had never before been shown completely. This ignoble other-self, as Monsieur Catulle Mendes has excellently said, is composed "of eternal human imbecility, eternal lust, eternal gluttony, the vileness of instinct magnified into tyranny; of the sense of decency, the virtues, the patriotism & the ideals peculiar to those who have just eaten their fill." Really, these are hardly the constituents for an amusing play, & the masks demonstrate that the comedy must at the most be the macabre comedy of an English clown, or of a Dance of Death.”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

“If I ever meet him in a dark alley he'll have one hell of a fifteen minutes.”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

“[Alfred] Jarry’s teaching could be summarized thus: every man is capable of showing his contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the universe by making his own life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.”
― Barbara Wright, Ubu Roi

“As to the action which is about to begin, it takes place in Poland – that is to say, nowhere”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

“Merdre !”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

“Ah, crap! Isn't Wrong worth the same as Right?”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

“Just as the poppy and the dandelion are scythed down in the flower of their youth by the pitiless scythe of the pitiless scyther who pitilessly scythes their pitiful pans, so poor Renski has played the pretty poppy’s pitiful part.”
― Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi