Eugène IONESCO.

The Bald Cantatrice. Scene I. Undated [ca. 1950-1952]. Autograph manuscript. 2 pages in-4 numbered 1 and 2. Rare manuscript of the first lines of Ionesco's masterpiece, created in 1950. These two sheets correspond to the first version published in the Cahier du Collège de 'Pataphysique, n° 7, 8 and 9, in 1952. English bourgeois interior, with English armchairs, English evening. Mr. Smith, English, in his English armchair and slippers, smokes his English pipe and reads an English newspaper, near an English fire. He has English glasses, a small gray mustache, English. Next to him, in another English armchair, Mrs. Smith, an Englishwoman, is mending English socks. A long moment of English silence. The English clock strikes seventeen English strokes... There are three variations from the final version, published the following year in Théâtre I, published by Arcanes, including the absence of two sentences by Mrs. Smith when she talks about the meal she and her husband have just had. La Cantatrice chauve, his first play, performed without interruption since its revival in 1956 at the Théâtre de La Huchette in Paris, was premiered on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules in a production by Nicolas Bataille. With this play, inspired by the Assimil method, which has become emblematic of the theater of the absurd, Ionesco wanted to "magnify the strings of theatrical illusion" (Notes and Counter Notes).