Until recently, everything was nice and tidy: heroes go to war, women wait for their return, servants serve and the gods are enthroned above everything in Olympus. But when Jupiter, the father of the gods, descends and spends an intoxicating night of love with his wife Alcmene in the guise of the Theban ruler Amphitryon, who has just won a victory on a distant battlefield, all certainty is lost: who is the real Amphitryon, which experience can be trusted? What else can you rely on when even your own self is no longer reliable? The contradictions and uncertainties resulting from the encounter between divine intoxication and profane reality flow into what is probably the most famous sigh in world literature, the "Ach!" of the confused Alkmene: a linguistic capitulation to an existential dilemma. Heinrich von Kleist has created a confusing and unsettling play about identity from the ancient comedy story of the double Amphitryon, which, for all its comedy, illuminates a deep rift in each of us: What can I know of myself and what consciousness speaks from me? read less