ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how Friedrich Durrenmatt set about recasting the plot of the pre-text, Schlegel's Konig Johann, for it is perhaps in the assurance with which he went to work pruning and shaping Shakespeare's tangled tale, and his skill in grafting his own - often tongue-in-cheek - blank verse on to the Schlegel rootstock, that his ability and authority as a dramatist are most immediately evident. If the kings look down with disdain upon their subjects' way of life, Durrenmatt makes it clear that their own conduct is also far from commendable. In Durrenmatt's play, the ruling classes are all alike, grasping, calculating and self-seeking. They are also all supremely unlike their subjects, and aloof from them. Durrenmatt's alterations to the plot and his adjustments of the given characters are interdependent, as one might expect. Durrenmatt leaves Lady Faulconbridge's small part intact, but his Queen's role is subsequently developed well beyond that of the original.
