The main character of Ubu Roi, Ubu, has its origin in a simple schoolboy satire to ridicule a pompous physics schoolmaster, Monsieur Felix Herbert, nicknamed Hebe who was an enormously fat, ridiculous and ineffectual figure. Jarry befriended brothers Henri and Charles Morin who had already written a play, Les Polonais (The Poles) which featured Pere Heb with the same basic plot as Ubu Roi. However in Jarry's hands the play became decidedly more bizarre as he expanded the work and more clearly defined the character. The boys performed the play in the Morin's attic in December 1888 using marionettes.
Ubu Roi, purposely simplistic in plot and character, is an outrageous parody of Oedipus Rex in which Pere Ubu is egged on by his wife to murder the royal family of Poland. Once he becomes the king he establishes a reign of terror, giving rein to his perversely evil yet comically absurd nature until he is defeated by the Tsar, however, the plays true meaning is not revealed in a plot synopsis. Man is mocked and debased as his morals and aesthetic values are attacked. The unredeemable character of Ubu evolved to embody everything Jarry was growing to hate from bourgeois values to traditional theatre.
Ubu is a greedy, cruel, barbaric character, a figure of stupidity, but not an innocent: he is frightening because he is so human. That early audiences took him for a comic character was opposed to Jarry's purpose, for Ubu is a symbol of the evil in ourselves, and Jarry wanted to hold a mirror up to the audience in which they could recognize their own vices. Jarry insisted on certain conventions of speech, action and setting, as a result the language is coarse and often infantile with misplaced accents, the action unpredictable and extreme, the characters symbolic caricatures who move jerkily through the story like monstrous puppets. Jarry's settings included the use of masks, placards and a hodge-podge style of scenic painting most of which was created by Jarry himself as he was consumed by his creation.There is some discrepancy involved with the events of the premier of Ubu Roi on 10 December 1896 at the Theatre de l'Ouevre in Paris. Two events in particular occurred which have been much discussed --Jarry's curtain speech and the riot. However research has shown that they did not both take place on the same night. Friends, intellectuals and fellow supporters, who had gathered to see what sort of monstrosity Jarry had created, attended the dress rehearsal on 9 December and were unnerved by Jarry's curtain speech that was delivered in clipped tones, robotic movements and ridiculous costume. Attendees such as W. B. Yeats were shocked and disturbed by the content of the play. The riot occurred the following evening during the premier. In attendance were leading figures in politics, journalism and letters. As soon as Fermin Gemier, the actor portraying Ubu spoke his first word “Merdre!” there was a roar from the crowd that lasted fifteen minutes, which was repeated when Ubu uttered his second word another “Merdre!”. After that the play proceeded as planned with only small outbursts throughout. In the days that followed a battle both for and against Ubu Roi was carried out in the Parsian Press.
Ubu Roi was the first serious departure from traditional theatre and as a result Jarry has been claimed to be the father of such theatre styles as, surrealism, absurdism, and dadaism, heavily influencing such writers as Anton Breton, Tristan Tzara, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Antonin Artaud. Jarry wrote two sequels to Ubu Roi, Ubu Enchaine (1900) and Ubu Cocu published posthumously in 1944.