RADAR LOVE= FOOTRACE & ORGY? Ubu Roi Summary SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. This one-page guide includes a plot summary and brief analysis of Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry.
Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry is a five-act play that begins with a murder plot. Pere Ubu and his wife, Mere Ubu, along with Captain Bordure, plan to kill the King of Poland. Bordure’s men have come together for a feast, during which Pere Ubu poisons all of them—this is done with a toilet brush covered in excrement. Act one closes with Pere Ubu’s demand that Mere Ubu, Captain Bordure, and their fellow conspirators vow to kill the king.
Act two begins with Pere Ubu’s attack on King Venceslas of Poland. During the attack, Pere kills Venceslas while the Queen, Rosemonde, escapes with her son, Bougrelas. They make it to a cave in a mountain before she perishes. Bougrelas receives a visit from his dead ancestors, who give him a sword and demand he seek vengeance.
Meanwhile, Mere has been lecturing Pere about sharing the wealth he gained after killing the king. Pere succumbs and throws gold coins into a crowd, which causes a commotion that leads to several people being trampled. In response, Pere offers a prize of more gold to whoever wins a footrace. Following the race, Pere invites the mob back to the palace for an orgy.
At the start of act three, Pere and Mere discuss what they should do now that they rule Poland. Pere decides that now that the king is dead, he won’t elevate Captain Bordure because he no longer has a need for him, though he had originally planned to make him the Duke of Lithuania. Instead, Bordure is imprisoned, but he manages to escape. At this point, Bordure becomes an ally of Czar Alexis.
Pere is busy ordering execution after execution. He wants all the nobles in Poland gone so that he can claim their property. But when he tries to collect taxes, he learns that all of the government employees have been killed. He decides that he will collect taxes personally. Meanwhile, Bordure sends a letter to Pere indicating that he plans to invade Poland and reinstate Bougrelas as the king. Pere is frightened until Mere says they should go to war—Pere agrees but refuses to fund the war.
At the end of act three, Pere wears a cardboard cutout of a horse’s head like a necklace and leads his army into battle against Captain Bordure, Czar Alexis, and Bougrelas.
Act four begins with Mere going to the crypts of the Polish Kings, seeking treasure. She finds wealth there but cannot transport it all in one trip. When she announces that she’ll return for more, she hears a voice from outside the tombs. It’s Bougrelas, who advances on Warsaw and wins the first battle of the war. Mere manages to escape despite being shot at.
Pere and Czar Alexis continue to battle in the Ukraine. Alexis and Pere trade victories and defeats until Alexis’s army finally overwhelms Pere’s forces. Pere and his army flee, hiding in a cave in Lithuania. Unfortunately for Pere, a bear attacks him and two of his soldiers. Pere manages to climb to safety on a rock, but doesn’t help his soldiers follow. Instead he just prays as they kill the bear. Pere falls asleep and his soldiers decide to escape his company at the earliest opportunity.
In the fifth and final act of Ubu Roi, Mere is still trying to escape Bougrelas’s army. She manages to do so after a four-day trek across Poland. She finds Pere sleeping in the cave and pretends to be a spirit, in the hope of making Pere ask forgiveness for his pilfering. Pere responds by listing Mere’s faults and then chucks the dead bear atop her. He climbs onto the bear and prays again, and Mere laughs, which angers him. Pere tears his wife to pieces.
Before he can kill her, Bougrelas arrives with his army. The Ubus are beaten but they live, and manage to get onto a ship that’s setting sail on the Baltic Sea. As they sail away, Pere decides that they will go to Paris, where he will find a way to be elected Minister of Finance.
Absurdity is a major theme in Ubu Roi, and is represented time and again by Pere Ubu’s actions and character. Woefully unaware of his surroundings, his distorted sense of logic leads him to kill everyone around him. Another important theme is that of art and experience. For Jarry, the goal of theater was to create a new type of character while transcending common events. Jarry himself was known for behaving like Pere Ubu—though he did not go so far as committing murder. Though Dadaism wasn’t officially founded until ten years after Ubu Roi was written, they share many of the same philosophical ideals, such as the need for deliberate madness to replace logic to create chaos that would upset harmony, specifically in the arts.
