1950 play by Eugene Ionesco
Rhinoceros is a parable, of course, about people succumbing to their base instincts to conform. When Ionesco wrote it, in the late 1950s, he was reacting to the then quite recent spectres of Nazism and Facism. The enemy that Ionesco exposes in Rhinoceros is always at hand, because it is us. The play is deceptively absurd and unreal in its early scenes, featuring a logician who "proves" that a dog is actually a cat. Theatre of the Absurd, Also see: Samuel Beckett
Other plays by Ionesco include:
Sources:
Ionesco, Eugene, "Four Plays", Grove Press, NY, 1958.
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Last Updated 01.26.03