This paper connects the category of the grotesque to the political and aesthetic complications of representations of post-monarchical power. In order to achieve the interplay of this figurative development, two grotesque plays on the French Revolution will be examined: Arthur Schnitzler's Der grüne Kakadu (1899) and Rudolf von Delius' Robespierre ( 1906 ). The analysis will show how Schnitzler and Delius deconstruct the theatrical procedures that underpin socio-political structures challenged by the French Revolution. What this amounts to is the grotesque staging of revolutionary beginning (Schnitzler) or end (Delius) and revealing the repressed origins and foundations witnessed at the advent of political modernity. Both authors hint at the impossibility of suppressing the instinctive, Dionysian dimension (mostly associated with the masses) in favour of rational, Apollonian individuality. Doing so, Schnitzler as Delius engage with dominant contemporary views on political representation, authoritarianism and mass psychology.