One of the most extraordinary events of the late nineteenth century in Paris was the opening on December 11, 1896, at the Th??tre de l'Oeuvre, of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi. The audience was scandalized by this revolutionary satire, developed from a schoolboy farce, which began with a four-letter word, defied all the traditions of the stage, and ridiculed the established values of bourgeois society. Barbara Wright's witty translation of...