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MARAT /SADE (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean-Paul
Marats, dargestellt durch die Scbauspielgruppe des Hospizes
zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade)
by Peter Weiss
First Publication: Frankfurt, 1964.
First Production: Schiller Theater, Berlin, 29 April 1964.
Translations
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as .
Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under
the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, translated by Geoffrey
Skelton, adapted by Adrian Mitchell, London, 1965.
Criticism
(For general works on the author, see Playwrights volume)
Books:
Karlheinz Braun (ed.), Materialien zu Peter Weiss'
"Marat I Sade", Frankfurt, 1967.
Gerd Weinreich, Peter Weiss: "Marat I Sade'', Frankfurt,
1974.
Thomas Hocke, Artaud und Weiss: Untersuchung zur theoretischen Konzeption des "Theaters der Grausamkeit" und
ihrer praktischen Wirksamkeit
in
Peter Weiss'
"Marat I Sade'', Frankfurt, 1978.
Sven H. Persson, Fran grymhetens till motstiindets estetik: Peter
Weiss tidiga forfattarskap och dramat "Marat/ Sade",
Gothenburg, 1979.
Articles:
Lionel Abel, "So Who's Not Mad? On Marat! Sade and
Nihilism", in Dissent, 13, 1966.
E.M. Fleissner, "Revolution as Theatre: Danton's Death and
Marat I Sade", in Massachusetts Review, 7, 1966.
Richard Schechner (ed.), "Marat/ Sade Forum", in Tulane
Drama Review, vol.10 no.4, 1966.
Samuel A. Weiss, "Peter Weiss's Marat I Sade", in Drama
Survey, 5, 1966.
Ruby Cohn, "Marat I Sade: An Education in Theatre", in
Educational Theatre Journal, 19, 1967.
William I. Oliver, "Marat I Sade in Santiago", in Educational
.·
Theatre Journal, 19, 1967.
Luc Lamberechts, "Peter Weiss' Marat-Drama: eine strukturelle Betrachtung", in Studia Germanica Gandensia, 10,
1968.
Rainer Taeni, "Peter Weiss' Marat I Sade: A Call for Liberation of Man Towards Humanism", in Meanjin, 27, 1968.
John J. White, "History and Cruelty in Peter Weiss's
Marat/ Sade", in Modern Language Review, 63, 1968.
Sybil Wuletich, "The Depraved Angel of Marat I Sade", in
Contemporary Literature, 9, 1968.
·
Wolfram Buddecke, "Die Moritat des Herrn de Sade: zur
Deutung des Marat/ Sade von Peter Weiss", in
Geistesgeschichtliche Perspektiven, edited by Gotz
Grossklaus, Bonn, 1969.
Norman James, "The Fusion of Pirandello and Brecht in
Marat I Sade and The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising", in
Educational Theatre Journal, 21, 1969.
Summer Kirshner, "Marat or Sade? Peter Weiss and his Play
in London and Rostock", in To Find Something New:
Studies in Contemporary Literature, edited by Henry
Grosshans, Pullman, Washington, 1969.
David Roberts, "Peter Weiss, Marat I Sade and the Revolution", in Komos, 2, 1969.
Rainer Taeni, "Chaos Versus Order: The Grotesque in
Kaspar and Marat I Sade", in Dimension, 2, 1969.
Charles N. Genno, "Peter Weiss's Marat I Sade", in Modern
Drama, 13, 1970.
Wesley V. Blomster and Leon J. Gilbert, "Textual Revisions
in Peter Weiss's Marat I Sade", in Symposium, 25, 1971.
Karl Maurer, "Peter Weiss, Marat/ Sade:· Dichtung und
Wirklichkeit", in Poetica, 4, 1971.
Leslie L. Miller, "Peter Weiss, Marat, and Sade: Comments
on an Author's Commentary", in Symposium, 25, 1971.
Carl b. Enderstein, "Gestaltungsformen in Peter Weiss'
Marat I Sade", in Modern Language Notes, 88, 1973.
Sidney F. Parham, "Marat I Sade: The Politics of Experience,
or the Experience of Politics?", in Modern Drama, 20, 1977.
Suzanne Dieckman, "Levels of Commitment: An Approach
to the Role of Weiss's Marat", in Educational Theatre
·
Journal, 30, 1978.
Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen and Alfredo Guzzoni, "Peter
Weiss' Marat I Sade und das Theaterspiel in Charenton", in
.Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie, 102, 1983.
Mohammad Kowsar, "Analytics of Schizophrenia: A
Deleuze-Guattarian Consideration of Biichner's Danton's
Death and Weiss' Marat/ Sade", in Modern Drama, 27,
1984.
Ward B. Lewis, "The American Reception of Peter Weiss'
Marat/ Sade", in Maske und Kothurn, 31, 1985.
John R.P. McKenzie, "Peter Weiss and the Politics of Marat!
Sade", in New Theatre Quarterly, 1, 1985.
David R. Jones, "Peter Brook and Marat/ Sade: Workshop
and Production", in His' Great Directors at Work:
Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook, Berkeley, California,
1986.
David Roberts, "Marat I Sade, or the Birth of Postmodernism
from the Spirit of the Avantgarde", in New German
Critique, 38, 1986.
Roger Gross," 'Marat I Sade's Missing Epilogue'", in Journal
of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, vol.2 no.2, 1988.
Darko Suvin, "Weiss's Marat/ Sade and Its Three Main
Performance Versions", in Modern Drama, 31, 1988.
*
*
*
Peter Weiss's extraordinary play, The Persecution and
.Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates
of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis
de Sade, is more familiarly known within our own culture by
the abbreviated title Marat/ Sade given to its first British
production, by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964,
under the direction of Peter Brook. That relationship between
dramatic and performance texts is itself an interesting one,
since Brook's production, strongly influenced by Artaud, was
in some ways a strategic appropriation of a play designed to
hew as close to the dramaturgy of Brecht as to the theatre of
cruelty.
The play consists of ·an imagined performance of a play
about the assassination of French revolutionary hero JeanPaul Marat, who was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte
Corday in 1793. The play is represented as the work, in terms
both of writing and production,. of the Marquis de Sade, who
did, in fact, write and present plays during his internment at
the Asylum of Charenton from 1801 to his death in 1808. This
inner play is thus performed by inmates, assisted and controlled by the asylum staff, and continually watched by de Sade as
an on-stage spectator. The play scarcely has a linear narrative
as such, though at the outset a "herald" offers a premonitory
plot-synopsis stating that Charlotte Corday will come twice to
Marat's door before making her third and fatal visit. The play
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476 MARAT /SADE
Marat/Sade: Schiller Theatre, Berlin, 1964
is divided into episodic scenes, which progress through a range
of theatrical devices: formal debate, political songs, direct
didactic addresses to the audience, mime, and pageant. The
philosophical dialogue between the Enlightenment convictions of the revolutionary Marat, and de Sade's settled belief in
the perversity and depravity of humanity, occupies a central
position; but other voices are also heard. There are the voices
of the fanatical priest, Roux, and the revolutionary zealot,
Charlotte Corday. There is a continual defence of the status
quo from Coulmier, the director of the asylum, who keeps
protesting against de Sade's retention of censored cuts, and
threatening to stop the play. There is the ironic commentary of
the Herald, constituting a Brechtian chorus. And there are the
voices of the inmates themselves, who play parts, perform the
songs, and enact scenes and illustrations of what is being
uttered by the main characters.
The theatrical techniques used clearly typify the strong
influence on Weiss's drama of Brecht. And in many ways the
play seems a classic Brechtian drama in presenting political
violence and human extremity through a philosophical language and a self-reflexive, theatrical medium, and in showing a
dialectical opposition of political ideas which remains unresolved in the play, but which, it is implied, should be reflected
upon in the real world the audience inhabits. At the play's
conclusion, Marat rises from death to deliver his final word of
revolutionary faith:
As a corpse I'm not much use to you
but all the things I taught were true
and others now will carry on
the fight that I Marat begun
until one day the hour will strike
when men will share and share alike.
to be followed by a definitive statement of de Sade's scepticism: "So for me the last word can never be spoken/I am left
with a question that is always open".
Peter Brook's famous production' of Marat I Sade set out to
destabilise the rationalist dialectic of epic theatre by emphasising the madness of the asylum's inmates as the basic theatrical
language of the play. Each actor rehearsed a detailed study of a
chosen form of insanity, and their collective display of madness
proved profoundly disturbing for the theatre audience. The
dramatic effect became a very un-Brechtian overwhelming of
the senses with an Artaudian theatrical discourse of panic and
violence; a type of "total theatre" calculated to obliterate
Peter Weiss's carefully balanced dialectic of reason and
emotion, sanity and madness, political conviction and cynical
perversity.
-Graham Holderness
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