How influential has the notorious play actually been?
ALEX
So, this is 'The King in Yellow'? I've never heard of it.
DIRECTOR
No surprise, sir. It is a lost classic. To my knowledge, it has not been successfully performed in this form since 1914.
ALEX
Really? Where was that?
DIRECTOR
Sarajevo. It did not receive much publicity outside a small group of elites in Europe. Imitations exist, of course, and seem to spring up everywhere for those who know how to look. I know of respectable performances in Petrograd, in 1917, Munich in '23 and Nanching in '27.
The Yellow Sign, Act I, Scene 2
The Early 20th century
The King in Yellow (if it actually exists) could explain a lot of human history. Intermittent outbreaks of obvious insanity that punctuate the historical record suddenly fall into a pattern. The scholar Tim Wiseman, in his 2006 treatise Tatters of the King (Chaosium Press, 2006) noted that the presence of THE King in Yellow (He Who is not Named, as opposed to the play of the same name) on Earth is detectable by those who are sensitive to the signs (see the Director's comment above, "...for those who know how to look."); chaos is his calling card, and madness flows in his wake. Wiseman postulates (p.190) that many of the most catastrophic events of the early 20th Century (the Wall Street Crash, Armenian Genocide, suicide cults, revolutions in Russia, China, Argentina and Brazil) may have been due to the unseen arrival of the King. He notes that the King's influence is supposed to be greatest in the fall, when Aldebaran rises above the horizon. Without verifying the reality of the play (he conveniently asserts that it is impossible to prove that it does NOT exist), he notes that many of these events seem to cluster in the autumn months.
Other periods of history
With just a bit of imagination, it is possible to see how much that has occurred in the middle and later part of the last century falls into this pattern as well. What possible benefit did the German people see in allowing a madman to seize control of their country and lead them into a genocidal, ultimately catastrophic war? What kind of evil could conceive of the Holocaust? How many millions died in terror under the reign of Stalin and Mao? What could possibly have motivated Pol Pot and his followers to slaughter so many of their own countrymen? Surely the heart of man alone is not a sufficient furnace for such a flame; it must have come from beyond the stars.
Yet if we see the King's influence in the last century - and I could easily list similar acts of madness and chaos in the current century as well - what of earlier times? Robert W. Chambers, the author of The King in Yellow (Neely, 1895) claimed to have used a French translation of the original play as a resource for his collection of stories. While sold as fiction, many of the stories seem more like recollections of his time in Paris, with names altered to protect his friends there.
The existence of a French translation raises the question, translated from what manuscript, and what language? We find a clue in The Yellow Sign, as the Director discusses his version of the play with Alex:
DIRECTOR
Mine is the original, translated from the French.
ALEX
The original. From 1895?
DIRECTOR
Oh, it is much older than that.
ALEX
Really? How old?
DIRECTOR
My copy dates from 1789...but that is irrelevant. The ideas at the root of the play are as old as mankind, yet still revolutionary; I have seen manuscripts in Hebrew, Hieratic and Greek that I judge are part of the tradition.
The Yellow Sign, Act I, Scene 5.
Now, one could argue that the Director is an unreliable witness; his behavior throughout the play is somewhat bizarre, but here he seems to be casually asserting something that (to him) is obviously true; there is a sense that, for once, he has taken off the mask. Alert readers may also note that the date of his translation, 1789, correlates to the outbreak of the French Revolution, and 'The Reign of Terror' that soon accompanied it. How could something with such noble goals as 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité' come to be symbolized by the Guillotine? How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Ancient Origins
The Director mentions manuscripts in 'Hebrew, Hieratic (an ancient Egyptian form of writing) and Greek, again suggesting without fully defining the ancient origins of the play. While very few manuscripts of any type survive intact, much of the literary tradition - especially of the Hebrews and Greeks - has been preserved, including many plays in Greek, and a great deal of sacred writings in Hebrew. None of these contains any direct mention of either the King in Yellow play or the entity (He Who is not Named), but that does not mean that they are completely barren sources. Chaos is explicitly recognized as a malign force, and the Fates as often bring doom and madness as any benefit to those who encounter them. Nearly all of the the heroes in these old stories acknowledge and even call upon unseen beings of greater power for aid, but the consequences of direct contact with the entity are often dire, including paralysis, madness or death. Many of the stories feature unnamed beings of great power, angels or messengers of the gods, whose missions and motives are inscrutable. Again, though this is not proof of the existence of the play (or the entity), it does show that, as the Director asserts, "The ideas at the root of the play are as old as mankind..."
- An excerpt from "The Basis of Myths: the Mythos and
Associated Tales" by A.L. Allodapos, University Press 2022.
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