Baal

Bertolt Brecht

Play.

Translations: Peter Tegal, Christopher Logue, William E. Smith and Ralph Manheim

M 18 F12. Extras. Interior and exterior settings.

Twenty-one-scene prose drama parodying and refuting the romantic concept of the poet's martyrdom in the philistine world.

Baal, a poet and singer, drunk, lazy, selfish and ruthless, seduces (among others) a disciple's seventeen year-old mistress, who drowns herself. He mixes with tramps and drivers and sings in a cheap nightclub. With his friend the composer Ekart he wanders through the country, drinking and fighting. Sophie, pregnant by him, follows them and likewise drowns herself. Baal seduces Ekart's mistress, then kills him. Hunted by the police and deserted by the woodcutters, he dies alone in a forest hut.