The Bald Soprano Time Quotes

The play continues to distort time with this first line. After the clock has already struck 17 times, Mrs. Smith declares that it's "nine o'clock." So, which is it? 17 o'clock or 9 o'clock? Is it just a really junky clock? Is Mrs. Smith just really confused? Or does she live in a world where time is so distorted that it doesn't even exist?

The Smiths seem very confused about whether the Watsons are alive or dead or married or unmarried. Of course, maybe they're not confused at all. Perhaps, all of these things are true, were true, or will be in the future. In world of The Bald Soprano, time is so jumbled that it's practically nonexistent. To the Smiths, it could make sense that lots of different periods of time all exist in exactly the same moment.

Here's that crazy clock again. It's been striking willy-nilly all throughout the play, but now it's just doing whatever it wants. It seems like time has gone totally haywire by this point in the play. This is yet another clue that the idea of a linear progression of time just doesn't apply to the world of The Bald Soprano.

This stage direction comes before the first conversation between the Smiths and Martins. It's interesting that Ionesco says that "the clock underlines the speeches." This seems to indicate that the clock is in some ways taking its cue from the people in the room. We wonder what this says about time in general. Is it really something that exits out side of humankind? Or is it all a figment of our imagination? Is it just another absurd thing that humanity has created in order to try and explain the unexplainable?

Well, well, well. No time, huh? This little interchange seems to support the idea our theory that time just doesn't exist in the world of The Bald Soprano. Of course, what the play makes us wonder is whether it exists in our world either.

Wow, we're surprised Mrs. Smith even realizes that this is true. This is the one and only time in the play that somebody recognizes that the Smiths' clock has a few screws loose. We shouldn't be too hard on the clock, though. It's probably kind of tough when your job is to tell the time in a world where time may or may not exist.

Yay, more fun with time. Why does the Fire Chief say "three quarters of an hour and sixteen minutes"? Isn't that the same thing as one hour and one minute? Wouldn't that be easier to say? Also, how does the Fire Chief know that there will be a fire in the first place? Can he tell the future or something?

We're beginning to think this clock is just as much of a character as anybody else in the play. Notice again how the clock responds to the other characters' emotions. It's almost like time itself bends around the characters in the world of The Bald Soprano.