Although Dürrenmatt himself has repeatedly repudiated any suggestion of an early Brecht influence, one would acknowledge, of course, that Dürrenmatt—least of all modern writers—should not be taken at his word. Paradoxical, diametrically opposed statements abound in the vast literature which has grown up around him in the last twenty years or so, but we believe that Dürrenmatt only "used" Brecht, as he has "used" Aristophanes, Sophocles, Strindberg and Wedekind, as irregular sounding-boards from which his own ideas give back new resonances. (p. 65)

The crucial difference between Dürrenmatt and Brecht is this: Where Dürrenmatt wages theatrical war against "the rulers of the world" ("Die Mächtigen") wherever they may be found, in east or west, the objects of Brecht's satirical attacks tend to be found on one side only, among the capitalists, that group whom he had observed so closely in Weimarian...