Synopsis
Exit the King
Eugene Ionesco trans Donald Watson
Published by Samuel French Ltd
3 Male 3 Female
He who once had control of life and nature, who ordered men beheaded and ordered thunderbolts from on high, who had, in short, operated outside the law, now finds himself within the inevitable truths of that law. He recognizes himself as "a honeycomb of cavities" rotting to death
His death is that of civilizations: "Thousands and millions: I am the dying agony of all. Many worlds will flicker out in me." He is relieved of his impediments and weapons, and sits waiting at the end for either obliteration or a Platonic return to his source
"The imagination itself is original, bizarre, powerful" ~ N.Y. Times
"The most moving of all Ionesco's plays and, if only from the width of its sympathies. It is incomparably his greatest work" ~ N.Y. Times