Consensus about Severian's play is that Wolfe intentionally wrote it as the doggerel that a motley troupe of untrained traveling actors would perform. It is a b

Consensus about Severian's play is that Wolfe intentionally wrote it as the doggerel that a motley troupe of untrained traveling actors would perform. It is a bad play just like so many morality plays dating from the early modern era were clunky. Here, the point (besides the play giving clues to the plot) is that Wolfe could not only write well, he could intentionally write badly when it could lend color to the tetralogy. So, a screenplay adaptation of Eschatology and Genesis would be missing the point.