SOURCE: Hern, Nicholas. “Kaspar.” In Peter Handke: Theatre and Anti-Theatre, pp. 59-74. London: Oswald Wolff, 1971.

In the following essay, Hern discuses Kaspar, comparing it to The Living Theatre's production of Frankenstein, as well as to The Bald Prima Donna by Eugene Ionesco.

Even the title of Handke's first full-length play [Kaspar] signals a new development. Kaspar is after all a name, the name of the central figure, and no figure with a name has hitherto appeared in Handke's plays. More than this, Kaspar represents an actual historical personage, Kaspar Hauser, who mysteriously turned up from nowhere in Nuremberg in 1828, aged 16, but with the mind of a child. Ernst Jandl's short poem ‘16 years’, chosen by Handke to preface his play, can be seen as referring obliquely to Hauser and his limited powers of speech, as it asks lispingly: ‘what thall/he do/the lad/with hith/thickthteen yearth’. But...