An old tyrant lies dying. However, the staging and timing of his death are in the hands of various factions: there are the elders who surrounded him during his years of rule; the revolutionary, the religious, the monarchist factions; the bureaucratic and technological, and finally, medicine itself. Each faction has its own political reasons for either shortening or prolonging the tyrant's dying time. Dürrenmatt focuses more on the grotesque reality in this play than on any invented horrors. After all, there is still room for the fantastical. The eeriest moments are those in which the masked matriarchs make their appearance, dressed like the Spanish royal family in the historical portraits by Goya. Since the witches in 'Macbeth' once crouched over their cauldron, there have been no such horrors.