Though Michael Frayn's Copenhagen is regarded as one of the "plays of ideas", it seems more radical in its substance and theme than others. It is Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" in quantum mechanics applied to its own creator--it tracks down Heisenberg's biographical history, focusing on his mysterious meeting with Bohr during WWII. Also it is the dramatization of that famous scientific idea expanded to the individual action and reaction, and ultimately to the human history. Since he was an ardent German nationalist who would not cooperate with Hitler, what Heisenberg was exactly trying to do with the nuclear fission project in the Third Reich has been under the serious investigation, thus producing several different 'versions' of historians. In Copenhagen, this ambiguous matter is dealt in such a way of writing experiment work papers as Heisenberg, his mentor Bohr, and Bohr's wife Margrethe try a draft after another draft on Heisenberg's dubious motif in the visit to Copenhagen in 1941.
In this paper the several-layered meanings of the title are probed respectively, and 'Copenhagen' is finally situated as a topos of quantum-physical, historical, social, political, and human concerns. Copenhagen leads the audience to the old humanistic perspective in the end, since its ultimate concern focuses on the "dark origin of the human soul" which is in fact the classical and humanistic theme, reminding readers/audience of Hamlet's ambiguous spirit. Copenhagen implies Heisenberg as a lost child, insinuating him as a lost son to Bohr and Margrethe. He wants to go home but he is lost, and the Bohrs understands him and accepts him as such. In fact, the relationship and interdependence between the ideas and the humans has been the acknowledged theme of Frayn's, as he has been asserted concerning his previous plays.