Our play’s chief aim has been to take to bits
Great propositions and their opposites,
See how they work, and let them fight it out,
To point some light on our eternal doubt.
Marat and I both advocated force
But in debate each took a different course.
Both wanted changes, but his views and mine
On using power never could combine.
On the one side, he who thinks our lives
Can be improved by axes and knives,
Or he who, submerged in the imagination,
Seeking a personal annihilation.
Peter Weiss Marat/Sade
Set in a mental asylum during the French revolution, Peter Weiss’s play shows inmates re-enacting the last days of political agitator Jean Paul Marat’s life under the direction of the Marquis de Sade