SOURCE: "The Dance of Death in Modern Drama," in Modern Drama, Vol. XX, No. 2, June, 1977, pp. 107-16.

In the following essay, Sharp evaluates modern stage adaptations of the medieval Dance of Death, especially in the grotesque comedies of Dürrenmatt and Ionesco.

The Dance of Death and the Triumph of Death are themes that appeared across late medieval and Renaissance Europe in the visual arts, poetry and drama.¹ Death snatching people away became a favourite subject of didacticism. In Germany, France and Switzerland, particularly, the lasting impressions made by extant murals, verses and plays have continued into our time. Quantity of scholarship alone shows the growing interest in the subject. In modern drama, there are two distinct manifestations of the influence of the Dance of Death: first, the imitative Dance of Death plays, like Emil Wächter's, produced at the Berne Festival, 1962-64; and second, the more original...