A confusing exposition of Power and its appearance, real power and imaginary power, focused on the 15th century in Hungary, in one of the many times when the Hungarians were dominated by a foreign king. A castle is the place where Gaspar, the son of a Hungarian nobleman, returns after having passed from his childhood to his adolescence in Bologna; Gaspar returns accompanied by some actors. His father - they tell him - has died in the claws of a bear; His mother has become mute and seems deaf, but perhaps to recover from the shock and to remain forever young, he sacrifices a maid every night, and his uncles, an archbishop and another lover and lover of his sister-in-law, are determined that the young Gaspar reaches out to be King of Hungary.