Caligula

Caligula is a play by Albert Camus, a 20th-century French author and philosopher. Camus is known for his novels The Stranger and The Plague, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957. He is considered part of the existentialist school of philosophy, although he resisted the label during his lifetime. His literary work was a major contribution to philosophical reflections on the absurd, which Caligula fits into. Caligula is sometimes classified as an early representation of the “Theater of the Absurd,” a movement of European playwrights in the mid-20th century. These playwrights explored the idea that life is essentially meaningless, which renders all human valuations—such as good and evil—inherently ridiculous.

Camus wrote an early version of Caligula as a three-act play in the late 1930s. This early version was designed for Camus and his friends to put on at their theater in Algeria, but circumstances prevented its release. As World War II encompassed Europe, Camus returned to his manuscript, editing and expanding it. The standard version of the play was published in 1944 and performed in Paris the following year. Caligula has been republished many times and performed both on stage and in film, along with an operatic adaptation.

The play deals with the story of Caligula, the infamous Roman emperor from the first century CE, whose cruelty and depravity define his rule.