SOURCE: “A Drama of Disease and Derision: The Plays of Thomas Bernhard,” in Modern Drama, Vol. 23, No. 4, January, 1981, pp. 367–84.

In the following essay, Esslin summarizes the plots of Bernhard’s major plays, noting his use of repetitious dialogue and “almost total absence of surprise, suspense or development.”

The diseased and the crippled rule the world everything is ruled by the diseased and by the crippled It is a comedy an evil humiliation 

Thomas Bernhard, Die Macht der Gewohnheit, Scene I¹

We stand towards each other in a relationship of disease the whole world consists of such sickness all of it undiagnosed 

Thomas Bernhard, Ein Fest fuer Boris, First Prologue²

On the theatre, dear Sir, even the impossible becomes entertainment and the monstrous becomes an object of study as being improbable, and all by allusion. 

Thomas Bernhard, Watten³

“Everybody merely talks to himself” said the Prince, “we are in...