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Victims of Duty (French: Victimes du Devoir) is a one-act play written in 1953 by French-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. An early work, it has not received the notoriety of his other works. This play is in the Theatre of the Absurd style, of which Ionesco was a pioneer.
Eugène Ionesco (/ j oʊ ˈ n ɛ s k oʊ /; French: [øʒɛn jɔnɛsko]; born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian: [e.uˈdʒen joˈnesku] ⓘ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century.
The Hermit follows an unnamed middle-aged Frenchman—a solitary, ineffectual clerk—who inherits a great deal of money after the death of his American uncle. He responds to this sudden wealth by quitting the job he has been working at for 15 years, and moving to a very nice apartment in the suburbs, where he bathes and shaves, reads the newspaper, eats lunch, dinner, drinks too much, thinks ...
The play contains many of Ionesco's common themes, and the characters are typical of his plays. For example, the couple's interaction is similar in many ways to the interaction between the Old Man and the Old Woman in The Chairs; the conflicting background story of the corpse parallels the old couple's conflicting stories about their children.
Ionesco, criticized for his early brand of avant-garde work, wrote the play as a responsive satire. Portraying himself as a beleaguered playwright, Ionesco is besieged by three scholarly critics; “Bartholoméus I, II, III and their attempt to replace truth with dogma.
First English edition cover (publ. Grove Press) Exit the King (French: Le Roi se meurt) is an absurdist drama by Eugène Ionesco that premiered in 1962. It is the third in Ionesco's "Berenger Cycle", preceded by The Killer (1958) and Rhinocéros (1959), and followed by A Stroll in the Air (1963).
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The idea of a "radiant city" or a transcendent other world is a common theme in many of Ionesco’s plays. Ionesco had a transcendent experience in his childhood, similar to the story told by Berenger in the beginning of the play, in which Ionesco felt like he was lifted off the ground and everything around him became radiant.