Another playwright testifying in court—before which he had been summoned by an aggrieved theatergoer who felt himself denigrated by the playwright on the stage of the Bochum theater, which the playwright, even in front of the court, kept referring to as the Bochum lunatic asylum, in which, he stated, there were really no actors but only fools sustained by the director of a lunatic asylum who was merely pretending to be a theater manager, performing throughout the year to an uncomprehending audience—stated that he enjoyed such great success only because, in contrast to his unsuccessful colleagues, he was honest enough to pretend that his comedies were always tragedies and his tragedies comedies. When he had, on one occasion, actually called a tragedy a tragedy, he had suffered a tremendous failure. From that time on he had stuck to his principle of pretending a comedy was a tragedy and a tragedy a comedy, and he was assured of success on each occasion. Because he had become so famous in the meantime that he could afford to do almost anything he wanted, the court, to which he had been summoned by the aggrieved theatergoer, acquitted him because he had called the theatergoer just as stupid as all the other theatergoers in the world, who are numbered in the millions. After the proceedings the playwright maintained that the presiding judge had acquitted him because he, the presiding judge, hated the theater and everything connected with it more than anything else in the world, which he, the playwright, could well understand because that was his own feeling.

A Self-Willed Author

A SELF-WILLED AUTHOR

An author who had written only one play, which he would allow to be performed on only one occasion in what in his opinion was the best theater in the world and, likewise, only directed by, in his opinion, the best director and acted by the best actors in the world, had installed himself, before the curtain rose on the first night, in a seat in the gallery that was best suited to his purpose but was invisible to the audience, had sighted his machine gun, specially constructed for the purpose by the Swiss firm of Vetterli, and, after the curtain had risen, had put a bullet through the head of every member of the audience who had, in his opinion, laughed in the wrong place. At the end of the performance only those members of the audience whom he had shot, and who were therefore dead, remained seated in the theater. The actors and the theater manager had not allowed themselves to be disturbed for a moment by the self-willed author and the events he had perpetrated.

Unfulfilled Wish

UNFULFILLED WISH