Driving Out a Devil

Driving Out a Devil (German: Er treibt den Teufel aus) is an early one-act farce by the 20th-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht.^[1] It was written in prose, probably in 1919, and was first published in volume 13 of Brecht's Stücke.^[2] The play charts the attempts of a self-confident and manipulative Bavarian peasant boy to outwit the vigilant parents of a girl of his village.^[3] Ronald Hayman suggests that this play dramatises most clearly Brecht's own ability to influence people.^[4]