SOURCE: Jannarone, Kimberly. “Puppetry and Pataphysics: Populism and the Ubu Cycle.” New Theater Quarterly 17, no. 3 (August 2001): 239-53.

In the following essay, Jannarone argues that the 1896 production of Ubu Roi represents a complicated mixture of folk culture and highbrow art, and suggests that Jarry envisioned his audience in a more complex way than did other Symbolist artists.

I expressed my astonishment at the attention he was paying this species of an art form intended for the masses.

—Kleist, ‘On the Marionette Theatre’

The biography of Alfred Jarry (his eccentric behaviour, his adoption of Père Ubu's name and persona, his alcoholism and early death) is as well known as the biography of Père Ubu (his evolution from the incompetent professor of physics in Rennes to the brilliant and worldly professor of pataphysics).¹ This essay uncovers the biography of a third character equally essential to understanding the phenomenon of...