The Story Archive

Leonce and Lena

Georg Büchner · 1836 CE · Play · German · Romantic

A prince of the kingdom of Popo, bored past the point of wanting anything, runs from an arranged marriage with a valet who is bored on his behalf, and meets on the road a princess running from the same wedding. Neither knows who the other is, and every joke keeps turning into an argument about whether there is anything to do at all. Written in a few weeks for a competition it reached too late to enter, with Brentano's Ponce de Leon and Musset's Fantasio standing behind it.

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Attributes

Genre
ComedySatireRomance
Theme
Existential AbsurdityLoveIndividual vs SocietyAppearance vs Reality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Wise FoolTricksterLover
Plot structure
Mistaken IdentityComic ResolutionEpisodic
Symbol / motif
The MaskThe GardenThe Clock
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
SatiricalComicIronicAbsurdist
Culture / tradition
German

Closest analogues