The Devil & The Good Lord

The Devil and the Good Lord is Sartre's most ambitious work for the theater. Outstripping in scope and magnitude his previous plays, this dramatic epic, which calls for a cast of over ninety and takes some four hours to perform, is a synthesis of the basic tenets of Sartre's philosophy. It is based on the Peasants' Revolt in fourteenth-century Germany, a period that he considers closer to the modern epoch than any other; and through the actions of his protagonist, Goetz, the bastard son of a noble, Sartre demonstrates man's inability to achieve the absolute either through good or evil.