The two plays collected in this volume represent Genet's first attempts to analyze the mores of a bourgeois society he had previously been content simply to vilify. In The Maids, two domestic workers, deeply resentful of their inferior social position, try to revenge themselves against society by destroying their employer. When their attempt to betray their mistress's lover to the police fails and they are in danger of being found out, they dream...

Krapp's last tape is a monologue of a man who, after 30 years, plays back the autobiographical tape he had recorded on his 39th birthday. All that fall is about the pilgrimage of an old Irish woman to meet her blind, grumbling husband at the train. In Embers, an old man and his wife ramble on and on. In Act without words I, a man responds to inviting off-stage whistles only to be thrown back from the wings. Act without words II has two men emerging...