PRAGUE -- Dressed in full battle gear, the actor stomped clumsily across the stage and thrust his sword in the air at one of the luxury boxes overhead.

"Long live the king!" he shouted, to roars of laughter from the audience. The gag was a simple one -- the king, if outgoing Czech President Vaclav Havel can be called that, was in a box on the other side of the stage. Easy mistake: Mr. Havel was always more comfortable being one of the people than he was being their leader.

It was a fittingly playful tribute to a man who used to daringly tease the Communist authorities with their own words, and who famously rode around his office in Prague Castle on a child's scooter in the early days of his presidency.

Last night, hundreds of the country's political and cultural elite packed Prague's historic National Theatre to say farewell and thanks to the man who led Czechs out from behind the Iron Curtain and gave their country prominence on the international scene. Sunday, the playwright-turned-president will take his final bows and retire after 13 years in office.

It's a moment that Mr. Havel, now 66 and increasingly disillusioned with the daily grind of political life, says he's looking forward to. This week, during his last state visit to neighbouring Slovakia, he said he plans to use his newly found free time to "put my thoughts into order, gain perspective, think through a few matters, read, reflect, think of what I may write in the future."

The Czech people are less certain of what happens Monday morning. The country's parliament has failed in two attempts to choose a successor (the post is not directly elected), making it likely that the Czech Republic will go some time without a president. Not quite a crisis, but surely a statement as to how difficult it will be for the country to replace someone of Mr. Havel's stature.

His personal story is closely tied to his people's journey from the first stirrings of democracy in the Prague Spring of 1968 to the collapse of Communism in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1989.

First through his plays, which parodied the absurdity of the regime, then through the foundation of Charter 77, a group of intellectuals that became the main opposition to the regime, Mr. Havel emerged as the voice of the country's slowly growing dissident movement.

Twice jailed for opposing the Communists, he emerged the second time in 1989 to lead the mass demonstrations in Prague's Wenceslas Square that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in November. The crowds rallied around his person, chanting "Havel to the Castle" as he spoke from a balcony over the square.

It was clear to all who were there that the Soviet-supported state Mr. Havel had famously labelled "Absurdistan" was on the verge of collapse. Less than a month later, the career dissident was sworn in as president of a democratic Czechoslovakia.

While the post was not quite thrust upon him, friends say it was never quite a perfect fit for his personality. Mr. Havel, they say, always preferred big ideas to the nitty-gritty of governing.

"I really think that Havel was a totally unique politician in that he was catapulted into the presidency by history," said Jiri Pehe, a former adviser to the president who is now head of the New York University in Prague.

"He could not have become president under normal circumstances because he was too intellectual, too unorthodox, too unique. Under normal circumstances, he would never have made it all the way up through the party system."

In a recent interview, Mr. Havel described the day-to-day life of a politician as "one incessant quagmire without beginning or end."

His political life has also been marked with occasional failure, most notably the "velvet divorce" that saw the Czech Republic and Slovakia go their separate ways in 1993.

While he now acknowledges the split was likely for the best, Mr. Havel opposed it bitterly at the time, briefly resigning his presidency over the issue, although he returned as the first president of the separate Czech state.

He's still an icon internationally -- some have called him Europe's Nelson Mandela -- but his time in office has taken a predictable toll on his domestic popularity.

Although polls show that six in 10 Czechs still feel he's a good president, that is a long fall from his almost unanimous sweep to the presidency in 1989, and a sign that his sometimes preachy style and lengthy lectures about subjects such as minority rights sometimes wore on ordinary Czechs.

Still, the President -- often blessed by history -- is stepping out on a high note, having achieved two of his biggest aims in recent years, with the country gaining entry first to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and this year winning an invitation to join the European Union.

The country is also one of the richest in the former Communist bloc, as well as one of the most politically stable.

The fact that their philosopher-king is stepping down is giving many Czechs reason to pause and reflect on how much their world has changed since Mr. Havel, and many of them, were dissidents raging against the system.

Jiri Prochazka stood outside the National Theatre last night, hoping to catch a glimpse of the retiring president as a nearby screen played clips of Mr. Havel's 1989 address to a crowd of 200,000 in Wenceslas Square.

"Seeing it all again is very emotional. I felt it very deeply," Dr. Prochazka said, putting his hand over his heart.

"It would be best if he could stay for another 13 years, but I know that is impossible. He will be missed."