"Merdre."note
— Père Ubu, the (in)famous first line of the play.
Ubu Roi (King Ubu) is a play by French playwright Alfred Jarry. It involves Père Ubu, a fat, greedy slob, who is convinced by his wife, Mère Ubu, to kill King Venceslas and become the king of Poland. He succeeds with the help of Captain Bordure, under the condition that he gets Lithuania. Upon being crowned, however, Ubu immediately begins abusing his new authority; he denies Bordure Lithuania and imprisons him, kills the nobles and bankers for their money and titles, and then raises the taxes to absurd levels and violently collects them in person. Bordure escapes to Russia, and gets Tsar Alexis to declare war on Poland to get rid of Ubu. But as Ubu prepares to fight the Russians, Bougrelas, the last surviving son of Venceslas, is preparing a revolt of his own, to free Poland from Ubu and avenge his family...
Ubu Roi evolved out of a schoolboy joke between Jarry and his friends, making fun of his physics teacher, Hébert; "Ubu" is likewise a distortion of "Hébert" (pronounced eh-BEH in French). His friends moved on, but Jarry continued and refined it, and it became Ubu Roi, a bizarre, comical play full of Vulgar Humor and idiosyncratic language, parodying Macbeth. When it was first staged at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre in 1896, it offended the audience enough to cause a riot.
It's a highly influential play, and a precursor to Dada, Surrealism, and Absurdism.
It also got two sequels; Ubu Cocu ("Cuckold Ubu"), an unfinished play where Ubu violently takes over someone's home in search of a man whom Mère Ubu is cheating on him with, and Ubu Enchaîné (Slave Ubu), where Ubu seeks freedom from tyranny by becoming a slave.
Ubu Roi contains examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: Ubu Król, a 2003 Polish movie based on the play, changed the names of Poland and Lithuania to Foland and Fithuania.
- And the Adventure Continues: The play ends with both Ubus and their henchmen fleeing Poland on a ship sailing to France.
- Bad Boss: Ubu, full stop. Once he is in power, he mistreats his underlings and backpedals on all of his promises, executes anyone who criticises him and/or stands between him and his short-term profit, squeezes the people for the last bits of money; even when fleeing after losing hiw war with Russia, he keeps treating his two surviving underlings so badly that they eventually have enough and leave him.
- Bears Are Bad News: A hostile bear enters the cave where Ubu and his henchmen are hiding after losing to the Russians; see the entry for Dirty Coward below.
- Big Eater: Near the start of the play, Mère Ubu cooks up a banquet for Père Ubu, Captain Bordure and the other conspirators. Père Ubu chases off the others to have it all for himself.
- Bloody Hilarious: Although they are described in rather vague terms, some scenes are very graphic and are meant to be played for black comedy.
- Cassandra Truth: The queen never trusted Ubu and warns her husband that she dreamed of Ubu assassinating him. The King dismisses it as nonsense, as Ubu is one of his most trusted advisers, but she is very right. Mère Ubu also warns her husband that he shouldn't backpedal on his promise to Bordure, lest the latter turn against him, and neither should he underestimate Bougrelas; Ubu doesn't listen.
- Character Catchphrase: Ubu's trademark swears "Merdre" and "De par ma chandelle verte" ("By my green candle").
- The Conspiracy: Right from the start. The first few scenes cover how Ubu, his wife and Bordure conspire to slaughter the royal family.
- Cool Sword: Bougrelas is given one by the ghosts of the royal family, symbolic of his mission to get revenge on Ubu.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Mère Ubu prepares a feast for Bordure and his men that apparently oscillates between very good and terrible. The menu includes "Cauliflower with shite", among others…
- The Coup: The first act of the play. Doubles as a Military Coup, since Ubu recruited one of the King's top-ranking officers and his men.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Ubu tends to murder people in not-always-clear but undoubtedly spectacular ways, like "torsion of the nose and teeth", "penetration of the ears with a little piece of wood" and "extraction of the tongue"… According to the vague didaskalia, he apparently "rips" or "tears" Bordure during the war, and his favourite method of execution is to throw people down a trapdoor, at the bottom of which lies the Brain Removal Machine.
- Dirty Coward: After Ubu loses against the Russians, he and his paladins hide in a cave, when a bear enters. His two paladins risk their lives to kill the bear, while Ubu runs off to a safe distance and loudly recites prayers, afterwards claiming they wouldn't have survived the encounter without his prayers. He also frequently ponders whether or not he should sell all his accomplices out for money.
- Dub Name Change: Happens in English translations, to varying degrees.
- Especially "merdre", which has been translated to "shite", "pshit", "shikt", and even "cunt", among others.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even Mère Ubu, who was the one who persuaded Père Ubu to murder the whole royal family in the first place because she wanted to be queen, is disgusted at his cruelty when he starts killing the Nobles, magistrates and financials advisers.
- Evil Is Petty: Both Ubus tend to resort to extreme measures for the slightest of offences. Mère Ubu persuaded her husband to commit mass regicide just because she felt like becoming queen, and what won him over was the prospect of getting richer, eating a lot of sausages and wearing the snazzy clothes and enormous hat that come with the function.
- Evil Plan: Played for Laughs. Ubu's plan is ridiculously basic and petty: step on the King's toes, wait for him to complain, then insult him – which is the signal to dogpile and stab him to death. Yet, it works.
- Fat Bastard: Both Père and Mère Ubu are fat and very much evil, though they are not the only evil characters in the play.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: The band Pere Ubu took its name from this play.
- General Failure: Ubu is just as inept a commander as he was a king.
- Ubu: I recommend, gentlemen, that you load your rifles with as many bullets as they can hold, for eight bullets can kill eight russians and that is just as many that I won't have to worry about. We'll put the infantry here, at the bottom of the hill to greet the Russians and kill them a little, the cavalry right behind to jump into the fray, and the artillery all around this here windmill to just fire in their general direction.
- Greed: This is undeniably the titular Ubu's Fatal Flaw. Pretty much everything he does is out of desire to earn money, or refusal to spend any – he agrees to plot against the King as long as it makes him rich, justifies his mass executions of Nobles, magistrates and financial advisers as "I've got to get richer".
- Hero Antagonist: Bougrelas wants to avenge his father and dethrone the usurper, who is the main character of the play.
- Hollywood Tactics: Justified because 1) it is a play, where accurate portrayal of military tactics is neither necessary or practical, and 2) Ubu is an outrageously bad tactician.
- The Kingslayer: Ubu and his clique murder the king of Poland, and most of his family, at the beginning of the play's second act (out of five).
- Lobotomy: Ubu executes people with an offscreen Brain Removal Machine.
- Miser Advisor: There are very few things Père Ubu wouldn't do, as long as there's money to be made, from regicide to mass executions, and selling his co-conspirators out to the very king they are planning to de-throne.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Pretty much everyone who allied with Ubu is eventually fed up with his actions and leave him. Bordure in particular was thrown in jail once he was no longer useful, but escapes and offers his services to the Tsar.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Mère Ubu seems to operate on that logic in the early scenes. You want to be King but there's someone else on the throne? Kill The King. You're not the King's heir? Just kill the whole family and take their place. Père Ubu soon proves that he can operate like that as well, and starts executing anyone who so much as questions his decisions, or has money that he wants for himself.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The sinister-sounding "Brain removal Machine" ("Machine à décerveler"), despite being listed among the Dramatis Personae as a full-fleged character, doesn't have a single line and is never seen.
- Poison Is Evil: When Ubu suggests poisoning the king's meal, all of his co-conspirators disapprove of such a lowly method, and somehow find Bordure's idea of cutting the (unarmed) king open with a sword much more noble and brave.
- R-Rated Opening: The play opens with the title character bellowing a cuss word.
- Stuff Blowing Up: While dogpiling King Venceslas, one of Ubu's paladins "explodes".
- Surreal Humor: The entire play barely makes sense, even in context, and is full of over-the-top scenes and characters.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Averted. We know the details of the (arguably rather basic) plan devised by Ubu to kill the King, and it goes just as planned. Not a subversion since the play likely predates the invention of the trope itself.
- Villain Protagonist: Père Ubu. He's greedy, self-serving, and cowardly. He also frequently threatens Mère Ubu with violence.
- Villain Song: The original version of the play ends on the "Brain Removal Song".
- Vulgar Humor: Let us just say that "Merdre" (shite) figures heavily in the story, both figuratively and literally. For instance, when Ubu throws a rag or broom full of the stuff over the table after becoming jealous of his guests complimenting his wife's cooking...
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: The otherwise very execution-happy Père Ubu inexplicably throws Bordure in jail instead of killing him. This lets Bordure escape and seek the Tsar's help. When Ubu and Bordure meet again on the battlefield, Ubu endeavours to cook him alive first, but eventually just rips him apart.
