SOURCE: Schlueter, June. “Kaspar.” In The Plays and Novels of Peter Handke, pp. 41-50. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Schlueter discusses Handke's study of language in the play Kaspar.

Kaspar (1967), Handke's first full-length play, premiered simultaneously at the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt (under the direction of Claus Peymann) and the Oberhausen Städtische Bühne (under the direction of Günther Büch) and became the most frequently performed modern play in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland during the 1968-69 season.¹ The same audiences who had smiled wryly at the abuse they endured from Handke's first Sprechstücke, along with thousands of others, flocked to the theaters to see the producton which Theater heute was to declare “Play of the Year” in 1968, which Peter Brook was later to direct in Paris prisons, and which theaters in New York, London, Paris, and numerous other major...