Quartet, sometimes written as Quartett, is a 1980 play written by the (formerly East) German playwright Heiner Müller. Its subject matter rendered it unlikely for production under the GDR's repressive cultural policies, but Müller's status as the nation's most eminent playwright after the death of Bertolt Brecht allowed him great leeway for travel, and so when the progressive director of the prestigious Schauspielhaus Bochum offered him and his director the chance to premier the work there, the GDR's cultural czars offered no objection. The casting was stellar: despite the profusion of eminent actors in the Bochum company, one of the leading actresses of the even more eminent Berliner Schaubühne Libgart Schwarz was asked to play "Merteuil" to the "Valmont" of the peripatetic Fassbinder co