4.0
Caligula and Three Other Plays
ByPublisher Description
Four thought-provoking masterworks for the theater by the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Stranger and The Plague, in a restorative new translation by Ryan Bloom that brings together, for the first time in English, Camus's final versions of the plays, along with deleted scenes and alternate lines of dialogue.
Though known for his novels that plumb the depths of absurdism, it was the theater stage that Camus called “one of the only places in the world I'm happy." After forming two troupes in his early twenties in Algeria, the prolific author moved to Paris for work, where between 1944-1949 he would go on to stage the four original plays gathered in this collection.
Caligula, his first full-length work for the stage, begins with the infamous Roman emperor in the throes of grief at the death of his sister Drusilla and tugs at the same essential question that haunts so much of Camus’s work: Faced with the nullifying force of time, which snuffs out even our grandest emotions, how does one go on living? And is there a limit to the hardness of the human heart?
Here too are The Misunderstanding, a murderous tangle of the longing for home and the longing for elsewhere; The Just, depicting the 1905 assassination of a Grand Duke in Moscow and testing the ethical limits of one’s belief in a political cause; and State of Emergency, an allegorical romp where The Plague itself appears as a central character, shedding new light on our current battles with viral disease and authoritarian regimes.
These are engaging, often incendiary works, now in fresh English translations that beg to be performed.
Though known for his novels that plumb the depths of absurdism, it was the theater stage that Camus called “one of the only places in the world I'm happy." After forming two troupes in his early twenties in Algeria, the prolific author moved to Paris for work, where between 1944-1949 he would go on to stage the four original plays gathered in this collection.
Caligula, his first full-length work for the stage, begins with the infamous Roman emperor in the throes of grief at the death of his sister Drusilla and tugs at the same essential question that haunts so much of Camus’s work: Faced with the nullifying force of time, which snuffs out even our grandest emotions, how does one go on living? And is there a limit to the hardness of the human heart?
Here too are The Misunderstanding, a murderous tangle of the longing for home and the longing for elsewhere; The Just, depicting the 1905 assassination of a Grand Duke in Moscow and testing the ethical limits of one’s belief in a political cause; and State of Emergency, an allegorical romp where The Plague itself appears as a central character, shedding new light on our current battles with viral disease and authoritarian regimes.
These are engaging, often incendiary works, now in fresh English translations that beg to be performed.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities28 Reviews
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morphelusine
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krys_gbk
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physics223
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“Caligula is excellent because it paints a portrait of man who is thoroughly evil in Caligula. His brand of evil, however, is akin to the anarchism that Joker tried to perpetuate in Nolan's Dark Knight. If the concept of reality and goodness has no coherence or consistency, there can be neither. Because he has near absolute power as Emperor, Caligula, most logically, believes that he is free. The irony is, however, that he is still reeled in by the limitations of reality: one could never truly be free, as Helicon was never really able to return to Caligula with the moon.
The play is rife with potent quotes that are impressive: "given intelligence, one has a choice: either to pay its price or disown it." There's also "stupidity doesn't kill. It makes men slow to act ... It can be murderous. A fool stops at nothing when he things his dignity offended." That's certainly true here in Davao City.
Like Joker, Caligula is ultimately thwarted by more well-meaning people: Cherea wishes for order and peace, while Scipio wishes for love and goodness. Despite the bleak nature of the play, and despite the belated actions of Cherea and Scipio, evil will always be trumped by good by an infinitesimal bit.
The Misunderstanding also reflects Camus's philosophy of a world without inherent meaning, but has a rather limited perspective revolving around guilt borne of miseducation and misinformation. I think it's a weaker play in this collection, as is State of Siege. From a philosophical standpoint, it felt to me that State of Siege's ideas were too dispersed and they play a bit too long. While it provides a trenchant critique on bureaucratic authoritarianism, as occurred in Franco's Spain, the pay-off seemed too feeble for its length: Diego, as the rebel, dies for the sake of his lover, but chooses not to save both of themselves in exchange for the city's bondage.
Camus's Plague has similar themes but is much better-written, which is why I don't recommend State of Siege as much.
Finally, like Caligula, The Just Assassins is pithy yet poignant. Like Caligula, it doesn't merely dwell in the realm of ideas, which makes it more potent: The Just Assassins revolves around an assassination of a Grand Duke in Russia, its emotional costs on the assassins, and the central idea of Camus's work that there is no overarching meaning to this world, only people imputing so. The assassins' hesitation in killing children aborted the first attempt, and Kalyayev, after killing the Grand Duke, chooses instead to die as a revolutionary rather than be labeled as a murderer, even despite the offers of the Grand Duchess to pardon him. The same resonance can be seen in Melville's film masterpiece Army of Shadows: the ending is eerily reminiscent of how people within a resistance movement can be made to turn against one another, so Kalyayev, in an ironic act of love, chooses to have himself hanged instead.
Although a rather uneven collection, Caligula and The Just Assassins are excellent plays while State of Siege and Misunderstanding are good ones.”
YT L
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About Albert Camus
Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger—now one of the most widely read novels of this century—in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.
Other books by Albert Camus
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