Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline

On the simplest level, Zastrozzi is an outrageous melodrama. But there's something more deadly urgent here. And it's that something which makes the play linger in the mind's eye, long after the final incidents have passed. Zastrozzi stakes out its own exact place in the history of Western Europe. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the modern era is struggling to be born. Zastrozzi is already a figure out of his time. He comes on like some medieval nightmare, wielding his sword and dagger as though they were still the most lethal weapons on earth. His attitude is mercilessly aristocratic. His foe is the new middle class with its shiny new liberal education and its fancy for art. He is out to annihilate the whole of culture and morality: "It is my responsibility to spread out like a disease and purge. And by destroying everything make everything safe... Alive. Untouched by expectation. Free of history. Free of everything." This man lives totally outside the moral system. He is an appalling creature, and his domination is all the more disturbing because it runs entirely counter to all the accepted notions of Western culture. The main thing about Zastrozzi is that he always wins. His pride is never punished, by god or man. Mediocrity must be punished - and Zastrozzi is there, to do it with style. And to add insult to injury, he resurrects that unfashionable virtue called "discipline" to explain his power to make us answerable. So, in fact, the moral issues are shoved right out of the play. What's in question is our own perception of the action. In the end it's a fascination with the inmost workings of evil which fires the play.