SOURCE: A review of Ritter, Dene, Voss, in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 1, Winter, 1986, p. 105.

In the following essay, Haberl offers a negative review of Ritter, Dene, Voss.

The book jacket informs the reader that the three characters mentioned in the title of Bernhard’s play Ritter, Dene, Voss are derived from the names of the actresses Ilse Ritter and Kirsten Dene and of the actor Gert Voss. This is confirmed in a brief note by the author at the end of the play in which he also mentions that, while writing the work, he concentrated his thoughts on Ludwig Wittgenstein. Thus the protagonists of the play emerge as Ludwig Worringer and his two sisters. Ludwig is meant to be a portrait of the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein (1889–1951).

The action, such as it is, takes place in a dining room in a villa in the fashionable Viennese district of...