Sade: [goes to the bathtub. Musical accompaniment.]
That's how it is, Marat That's how they see your revolution They have a toothache and need their teeth pulled Their soup's burnt They shout for better soup A woman finds her husband too short she wants a taller one A man finds his wife too skinny he wants a plumper one. . . .
A poet runs out of poetry and desperately gropes for new concepts For hours an angler casts his line why aren't the fish biting? And so they join the revolution . . .
So they storm all the citadels and there they are and everything is just the same . . .
and all that heroism which drove us down to the sewers well we can talk about it to our grandchildren if we have any grandchildren
[Music changes to a quartet with a tragic flavour.]
from Peter Weiss's The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (scene 25, "Corday's Second Visit")
(readable in various adaptations and translations, for example, here, here and here)
