Play: Romulus the Great

Title and Context
"Romulus the Great" is a darkly comic play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, first produced in 1949. Written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the play uses historical material, the figure of Romulus Augustulus, traditionally considered the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, to stage a parable about political collapse, moral responsibility, and the absurdities of power. Dürrenmatt frames the fall of Rome as both inevitable and revealing, turning a monumental historical moment into a concentrated moral and theatrical problem.

Plot Overview
The play centers on an aging emperor who, confronted with the imminent invasion of "barbarian" armies, deliberately refuses to marshal resistance. Instead of rallying troops or clinging to imperial ritual, Romulus withdraws into the domestic life of his villa, tending his chickens and preserving a small sphere of order and contentment. Envoys, generals, and officials arrive pleading for action; each encounter exposes different forms of anxiety, opportunism, and self-deception among those who want to postpone or deny the collapse. Romulus calmly explains his conviction that the empire is so morally and administratively rotten that any attempt to save it would only prolong injustice and ruin. He treats inaction as a form of responsibility: by refusing to prop up a corrupt structure, he hopes to make room for renewal after the wreckage.

Characters and Tone
Romulus himself is presented as a paradoxical figure: both ridiculous and profoundly lucid, simultaneously a comic antihero and a tragic moralist. The supporting figures, officers, courtiers, petitioners, and the invading leaders, are sketched as embodiments of bureaucratic self-interest, sterile conservatism, or blunt opportunism. Dürrenmatt's tone mixes farce with bleak satire; laughter often sits beside discomfort as characters spout clichés about honor or duty while their actions reveal cowardice or self-preservation. The play's dramatic language shifts from witty, pointed dialogue to moments of solemn reflection, producing a sustained ironic distance that invites the audience to judge both Romulus and his world.

Themes and Questions
At its core, the play interrogates what it means to be responsible when institutions fail. It asks whether fidelity to abstract duty is useful when those duties serve a corrupt order, and whether withdrawal can be a principled stance rather than mere cowardice. The play also explores the theater of power: the rituals and offices that create the appearance of authority, even when the substance is gone. Dürrenmatt probes the tension between action and resignation, showing how both can be turned into moral postures. The historical setting becomes a mirror for contemporary anxieties about capitulation, collaboration, and the ethical costs of maintaining order at any price.

Ending and Legacy
The collapse of imperial rule in the play is staged with a mixture of bleakness and ambiguous justice: Rome falls not in a glorious last stand but with a quiet, bureaucratic inevitability, and Romulus's choice forces the audience to judge whether he was coward, criminal, or reluctant prophet. The play's ending leaves moral certainties unsettled, inviting reflection rather than offering easy answers. "Romulus the Great" has endured as a staple of postwar European drama because it transforms historical decline into a compact moral fable, using absurdist irony to probe urgent questions about power, responsibility, and the human capacity to invent justifications when systems crumble.