Jacques and his Master is a play written in 1971 by Milan Kundera, which he subtitles "A Homage to Diderot in Three Acts".[1] It was translated by Simon Callow in 1986 and directed by him in 1987.[2]
The play follows two men, Jacques and his master, as they go on a journey that remains unexplained for the whole play. They tell stories to each other to pass the time and along the way the scenes from their respective pasts are performed for the audience. The play is set in the eighteenth century, like Diderot's novel Jacques the Fatalist, however Kundera deliberately leaves the historical aspects of time and place as ambiguous:
Just as the play's language is not a reconstruction of the language of another time, nor should the historical character of the set and costumes be insisted on.
The play examines the issues of authorship and the nature of artistic creation through the dialogue between the two principal characters and their rendering of their own histories.
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