SOURCE: “Contemporary Austrian Playwrights,” in Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 3, Nos. i–ii, Spring-Summer, 1978, pp. 93–8.

In the following essay, Esslin places Bernhard within the context of contemporary Austrian dramatists and compares his plays to those of Irish writer Samuel Beckett.

Austrian writers use the German language and there is thus not little confusion about whether a world-renowned playwright and novelist like Peter Handke is German or Austrian. Yet the distinction is not without importance, and is becoming increasingly so. Present-day Austria is the remnant of the nucleus of what was, until 1918, one of Europe’s great Empires, rivaling Germany and Russia in extent and population. Between 1918 and 1938 Austria was, it is true, independent, but unwillingly so: the German-speaking part of the rump of the Austro-Hungarian Empire wanted to join Germany, and it was only through the compulsion of the victorious powers after World War I that the little country...