Frisch has never employed time as an inexorably forward-moving totality, carrying characters to an inevitable fate and moving the action to its ultimate prescribed conclusion…. Instead he employs undeniably 'undramatic' techniques—the extension of time, the suspension of time, repeated portrayal of the same time period, the interaction of separate time spheres, movement back and forth in time, and the presentation of incidents of the past and future which are interjected into the dramatized present.

Not all these features are present in all the works nor do they appear in identical form or degree; some, however, are found in each work and are frequently even substantial in effect. An examination of Frisch's manipulation of time considerations in these works and of the time structure which results indicates that the time sense they manifest is essentially a narrative one. It demonstrates as well that the relationship of Frisch's … play...