The Ascent of F6: A Tragedy in Two Acts, by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, was the second and most successful play in the Auden–Isherwood collaboration, first published in 1936.

It has been seen as a parable about will, leadership and the nature of power: matters of increasing concern in Europe as that decade progressed.

[2] The play is widely regarded as an allegory of Auden's own temptation to be a public figure; this interpretation was first offered by R. G. Collingwood in The Principles of Art (1938).

Britten composed the music in February 1937, the month of the play's first production, including a choral setting of "Stop all the clocks" (titled "Funeral Blues").

[3] The play was first produced at the Mercury Theatre, London, on 26 February 1937, with incidental music by Benjamin Britten conducted from the piano by Brian Easdale.