Part 4 Chapter 12 Summary

With three visitors from Pakistan, Rushdie attends a London performance of Danton's Death, a play about the French Revolution. The hero Danton sarcastically declares that Robespierre and the people are virtuous. Danton is guillotined because he loves pleasure and the people, like Robespierre, distrust fun. Epicure vs. Puritan is the true dialectic of history. Most of the theatergoers dislike the play because it features too much of the ranting Danton and not enough sinister Robespierre. The Pakistanis love the play and are envious Rushdie lives in a land where such plays can be performed. They tell him about a staging of Julius Caesar that authorities forbade until a prominent British diplomat was recruited to play Caesar, dressed in British regalia, in order that it may appear Caesar's assassination is a patriotic overthrow of imperialism. The friends point out that "we are...