Cuckold Ubu

A sequel to King Ubu, Alfred Jarry's surreal and hilarious satire of power, greed, and bourgeois pretension. Cuckold Ubu continues the adventures of Pa Ubu.

Cuckold Ubu (Ubu cocu) is the darkest and most surreal of the three plays about Pa Ubu. In it, Ubu takes up residence in the home of Peardrop, a breeder of polyhedra, and he and his Barmpots tyrannise the neighbourhood, despite the efforts of Pa Ubu's Conscience and Peardrop to stop them.

The Ubu Plays (King Ubu, Cuckold Ubu and Slave Ubu) caused scandal when they first appeared in Paris in the 1890s, with their surreal and frequently obscene energy, and their broad parodies of Shakespeare. They have since acquired cult status in European drama, and are seen by some as harbingers of modernism.

This English translation by Kenneth McLeish is published in The Ubu Plays, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.