History of Western Theatre: 17th Century to Now/German Romantic



Critics complained of the state of the theatre: “after Lessing, the German theatre was brought to the highest pitch of perfection by the efforts of Goethe, Schiller, Schroeder, Junger, Iffland, Kotzebue, etc, but it has again sunk into a state of deep degradation. Every species of dramatic poetry has again degenerated after it had long flourished in the greatest verdure. Tragedy, which attained its culminating point in Schiller, has sunk down to the fate-tragedy. Comedy, which, if not perfected by Kotzebue, attained at least a very great popularity, has again wandered away to France, and now imitates nothing but trifling French intriguing plays and vaudevilles. The emotion-plays too, which were formerly rendered altogether national in Germany, by Iffland, have now gone to France, and are become mere imitations of the horrible melodramas and criminal pieces of the Parisians...Clever farces of a more refined description, which contain allusions to the thousands of ridiculous features which daily occur in our every-day life,- comedies in the style of Aristophanes,- were completely unheard of. Nothing but the petty follies of single classes are introduced on the stage, and men are honest or stupid enough to seek the country town's-people only in country towns. People fancy that they cannot be pleased if they have not some loving sentimental couple, or a moving family circle before them. The ludicrous characters are commonly mere secondary personages. The circle in which the intrigue is carried on, is only a family-circle. As long as the comic character is nothing but a secondary one, and as this circle is not widened so as to include public life, so king will comedy always remain confined and petty. The stage shows us two essentially different species of comedies; the high and refined, and the low and vulgar. The former are for and have their scenes laid in the fashionable world. They are commonly rather tiresome, and, never so elegant and refined as the French ones of the same kind. In them jesting, being always moderated by a regard for etiquette and courtesy, is commonly vented upon servants, soubrettes, or some old caricatures. Neither does German morality permit any great freedom, so that in place of amiable levity, we commonly see in the fashionable ladies and gentlemen nothing but a stiff and starched morality. We never dream of a freedom like that which we see in the Figaro of Beaumarchais. The lower plays for the lower classes are far better. They are coarse, often immoral, but they at least afford pleasure, and proceed in a sprightlier manner. They keep closer to nature, and have before them a far richer field for caricature than is possessed by those fashionable comedies. Kotzebue, by plays of this kind, made the Germans split their very sides with laughter. It is a remarkable circumstance, that in almost all these comedies, the ludicrous is almost always looked upon as synonymous with the old fashioned” (Menzel, 1840 vol 3, pp 196-199).

In his "Conversations with Eckermann", Goethe complained about the state of German theatre in his time. "What business have our young girls at the theater? They do not belong to it. They belong to the convent; and the theater is only for men and women who know something of human affairs. When Molière wrote, girls were in the convent, and he was not forced to think about them. But since we cannot get rid of these young girls nowadays, and pieces which are weak and therefore suited to girls continue to be produced, be wise and stay away, as I do" (1919 edition p 63). Yet “Goethe is praised as the best painter of women. O, yes! He knew them very well; but on that very account his pictures of them are false, for they merely serve him to lead women astray; they were not the mirror of truth, but the mirror of vanity, in which women saw, not their true nature, but only their foibles and vanities palliated and defended” (Menzel, 1840 vol 2, pp 45-46).

“Surveying the dramatic development in the nineteenth century, we find apparently the old truth that history repeats itself. The years 1830 and 1880 are both landmarks which indicate a new era. The fourth and the ninth decade of the last century are revolutionary periods in the history of German literature. In 1834 L Wienbarg published his new code of literary conviction, the ‘Esthetic campaigns’; in 1882 the brothers Hart did the same in their ‘Critical duels’, later by Karl Bleibtreu's ‘Revolution in literature’. In both cases, the young generation consciously broke away from the old ideals to hail the new. But there is a fundamental difference between these epochs- 1830 marks the end of a development, 1880 the beginning. 1832 is the year of Goethe's death, and with it synchronizes the reverberating death-knell of romantic literature. In 1831 the last great representative of German idealism, Hegel, died. This grandest treasure which German thought had ever acquired faded away after his death. Materialism took its place. Such men as Moleschott and Büchner dethroned Kant and Goethe. The ebb of the tide was about 1880. The strong will-power embedded in Bismarck's life-work began to tell. As 1830 saw the beginning of the end of German idealism, so 1880 J saw the beginning of its revival. In 1850, it was dead, in 1900 it was alive and is still flourishing. The period of German classical literature preceded 1830, the period of utter drought preceded 1880. Therefore the revolution of 1830 in its literary achievement failed, as it was doomed to fail from the outset. The circumstances accompanying these revolutions are different in each case. The more they differ the brighter are the auspices of the result, and Gerhart Hauptmann is a strong warrant” (Hol, 1913 pp 76-78).

=Johann Wolfgang von Goethe=



Among major figures in German Romantic theatre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) continued work from the previous century with "Faust" parts 1 (1808) and 2 (1832), whose main source is medieval German puppet plays and Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" (1593).

“The Faust of Goethe, like Doctor Faustus, has run through the circle of the sciences but, unlike Faustus, he is further a man of artistic sensibilities, profoundly sympathetic with human nature, and a toiler in the cause of the distressed” (Moulton, 1921 p 238). “The most important addition of Part I is the definition of the terms of Faust’s pact with Mephistopheles. Here, as in the scene “Outside the Gate”, we see that Faust gives his soul to the devil not in the hope that Mephisto can provide him with earthly satisfactions, but in utter despair, asking only that he will be permitted to pile experience on experience, disaster on disaster, until his end...Through this process of never-ending emotive experience Faust hopes ‘to widen himself to be one with mankind’; and ‘to grasp with his mind the highest and the lowest’...In Part II the subjective, emotive experiences of Part I are replaced by social experience and activity in wider social regions...[Gretchen] is alert, active, lively and delicate in her perceptions; but her youth, her upbringing and her environment make her inarticulate. Her insight is more surmise than knowledge and her profound intuition is interpreted half-consciously, through her songs...When she is with Faust, they talk on different levels. His sombre or rapturous tones blend strangely with her naive chatter or questionings, forming the unity of a fugue rather than of a harmony, held together only by their love, die precariousness of which emerges only too tragically from the difference of voice” (Pascal, 1949 pp 100-104).

From the prologue in heaven in Faust part 1, "the point of interest is therefore no longer: what will become of Faust? but how is this clearness to come to him; and the action is thus raised wholly out of the sphere of Marlowe's tragedy of sin and damnation to a serener ethical plane...What has given the First Part its pre-eminent place in German literature, at least in the popular consciouness, is in part the gnomic wisdom of Mephistopheles, which takes up and embodies a view of the world and of life which all recognize and too many share; but, more even than that, it is the unique portrayal of guilty innocence and betrayed simplicity in the drama of Gretchen's fall and purgation through suffering"(Wells, 1894 pp 391-400). The theological underpinning of the play is liable to irritate Christians, for it “invokes a plethora of religious sentiment- church bells, Marguerite with her prayer-book walking demurely to mass- and then muddles it with a ludicrous theology. The notion of God and Lucifer gossiping together over the project of tempting a human soul could be riddled by anyone who knew his catechism” (Speaight, 1960 p 120). “The prologue in heaven makes it clear that Mephistopheles’ attempt to claim Faust’s soul will fail...The devil in the play cannot be the traditional figure of absolute evil, nor can Faust sell his soul for the traditional motive of material gain [or book learning. Instead, he signs the pact to obtain experience]” (Prudhoe, 1973 pp 187-200). The prologue in heaven is derived from the Biblical Book of Job in which a man is tested by means of a demonic agency. Yet, in “Table talk” (1835), Coleridge judged the prologue in heaven to be blasphemous. On the contrary, Lewes (1882) considered it necessary to be in tune with the medieval context of the rest of the play (p 252). Coupland (1895) explained Faust's susceptibility to the earth-spirit. "This Spirit alone could give him what his starved nature needed. He was in that condition where pure science could avail nothing, if indeed it could ever serve him. The spectacle of the midnight heavens, the glory of the astronomer, could bring no healing to Faust now, nor could any celestial food prepared within the church's hallowed precincts still his hunger— what Faust needed was the natural human life. His intellect had been cultured to a high degree, and he had tasted in earlier days of religious joy- it was the clamorous heart which had never obtained its natural aliment that now was goading him to despair. But though the Earth-Spirit was the power who could aid him, it also was too vast for any individual mortal; some agency closer still must be found" (pp 68-69).

"Mephistopheles proceeds to introduce Faust to all phases of sensual pleasure, in the hope of corrupting him. Faust, however, though he sins, is in nowise corrupted. The love affair and the subsequent tragedy with Margaret are, from the author's point of view, merely episodes in Faust's development, cruel as it may seem. Faust, in his typical capacity, rises above the error which came near crippling him, to higher phases of being. His ideal changes; he goes in search of culture and intellectual achievement. Mephistopheles's attempts to lead him astray are turned directly to useful purposes. The devil, who in the sensual stage of his development had had a certain predominance over him, becomes now more and more subservient to him. Faust's intellectual powers are especially employed in statesmanship and political activity for the welfare of the state. Then comes the pursuit of the beautiful, regarded as an educational agency, symbolized in the quest for Helen of Troy and the pilgrimage to Greece. Particularly in the classical Walpurgis Night are the spiritual value and the ennobling influence of Greek art emphasized. The last and concluding phase of man's development, which is logically derived from the preceding ones, is altruism- a noble devotion to humanity, and self-forgetful labor for the common weal" (Boyesen, 1892 pp 41-42).

"Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage, and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black-art, even while employing them...He is the devil, not of superstition, but of knowledge..Thus does he go along, qualifying, confuting, despising...He can believe in nothing but in his own self-conceit, and in the indestructible baseness, folly, and hypocrisy of men...In strong contrast with this impersonation of modern worldly-mindedness stands Faust himself, by nature the antagonist of it, but destined also to be its victim. If Mephistopheles represent the spirit of denial, Faust may represent that of inquiry and endeavour: the two are, by necessity, in conflict; the light and the darkness of man's life and mind...To his dream of a glorious higher happiness, all earthly happiness has been sacrificed; friendship, love, the social rewards of ambition were cheerfully cast aside, for his eye and his heart were bent on a region of clear and supreme good; and now, in its stead, he finds isolation, silence, and despair. What solace remains?" (Carlyle, 1905 edition pp 113-117). Mephisto “has something of...the devil of the Middle Ages [but also] the mischievous goblin of folk literature...the incarnation of cynicism and carping hostility, of mean and destructive forces...courteous and gallant but heartless, materialistic, intriguing...lewd, mocking...[and] indulges in a kind of cynicism...at its most flippant...a wit, providing a running philosophic commentary...acute and epigrammatic...Gretchen is sublimely simple, strong, and true. She responds directly, without wiles or affectation...Her actual fate, to bear her child and drown it, is the direct opposite of her true vocation...Threatened by the petty bourgeois reality, [her] heart-touching naturalness will become mean...the consequences of love sordid and horrible” (Peacock, 1959a pp 177-190). “While Goethe allowed him to retain all the cunning which had fallen to his lot since the days of Luther, he deprived him of every trace of majesty. The quality that makes him entertaining without enlisting our sympathies for him, his dialectical skill, or sarcasm is used only to debase, detract, and besmirch” (Reinhard, 1897 p 84). "She is sympathetic, shy, devoted, humble, and trustful, but has only a brief occasion to show how much she is also spirited, self-reliant, perceptive...But she is too unconscious of all that is going on about her for her fate to be more than pathetic" (Gray 1965-66a, p 131). “Wagner is a pedant of limited gifts, full of short-sighted and pious respect for the learning and outlook against which Faust himself is desperately in revolt. He provides the foil, satirically lighted, to Faust’s heroic discontent” (Peacock, 1959a p 157).

The scene between Mephistopheles and the student is exaggeratedly interpreted as a “withering satire on every branch of knowledge" (Lewes, 1882, p 261). It may be rather seen as a satire of the students who practice it. In regard to the devil’s pact, Lewes (1882) further wrote that “the age demanded that it should be no simple legend, but a symbolical legend; not a story to be credited as fact but a story to be credited as representative of fact; for although the rudest intellect would reject the notion of any such actual compact with Satan, the rudest and the loftiest would see in that compact a symbol of their own desires and struggles” (pp 284-285). This critic treats the pact as a symbol but Gretchen’s plight as real, whereas others prefer a more integrated approach. In Lewes’ view, Goethe’s symbols and his seducing devil are superior visions than Marlowe’s naïve ones and his more terrifying devil. However, the so-called naïve approach draws more tragic power. Moreover, Hutton (1903) complained that "Faust has no glimmering of salvation" (p 42).

In Auerbach's cellar, "Faust enters the cellar only to wish himself away. If the devil is to get Faust’s soul, a finer bait than this must be offered, and this the clever fiend knows well enough, but as Faust has asked to traverse the whole world of human feeling, it is fitting he should for once see what kind of enjoyment suffices some of his fellow-beings...Once he encounters the village maiden, nothing can be plainer than that Gretchen is Faust's first love, and although his conversation with Mephistopheles after the brief encounter is frank even to coarseness, experience shows that the collapse of asceticism is only too apt to be followed by licentiousness of thought...To obtain access to one so jealously guarded both by her own innocence and her mother’s watchful care, Martha's intervention is necessary. The inexperienced Gretchen, no less than her mother, failed to pierce the outwork of her neighbor’s soul, but what was more, although she could not have explained it to herself, she was positively drawn towards the only one in her small circle who knew how to play upon the instincts of a young girl’s heart. What wonder then that, on the discovery of the second casket of jewels placed in her cupboard, she should immediately run over to her neighbour, and inform her of the marvel!...[In the garden, Gretchen] is both flattered and puzzled at being the object of attention of so distinguished a personage as Faust...[As the seduction progresses, Faust] perceives that he is gradually losing control over himself, feels that his eye is growing dim and his foothold less sure, while the path pursued is becoming narrower, winding ever closer to the edge of a precipice...The encounter with Valentine had taken place on the eve of the famous Walpurgis night, the great meeting time of the witches, the servants of the Prince of Evil, a festival which Mephistopheles was anxious for Faust to take part in. The more readily therefore was he able to persuade his companion to follow him with the consequences of that fatal encounter threatening the man who had struck the blow. Faust was now wholly in the power of Mephistopheles...[When Faust sees Helen of Troy, Mephistopheles, being apart from the Classic world of Greece,] cannot himself fetch the ancient beauties, [but] he can indicate to Faust the means by which they are to be evoked" (Coupland, 1895 pp 117-198). "Of all the experiences common to men, Faust has been drawn merely to love, and this has been so tormented by conscience and remorse, that the moment of perfect happiness has not yet come to him" (Moore, 1900 p 156).

"Faust part 2" "is crowded with characters and the events are represented on so large a scale that the element of allegory had to be introduced, and single persons made to typify whole classes of society. He passes from the experiences through which he touches all men and rises to those which touch merely people who think and aspire" (Moore, 1900 p 157). Critics prefer "Faust part 1" than "Faust part 2". “Some minds will be delighted with the allegorical Helen embracing Faust, and in the embrace leaving only her veil and vest behind, her body vanishing into thin air- typical of what must ever be the embrace of the defunct Classical with the living Romantic, the resuscitated Past with the actual Present- and in their delight at the recognition of the meaning, will write chapters of commentary. But the kiss of Gretchen is worth a thousand allegories” (Lewes, 1882, pp 374-375). Yet Faust 2 “contains verses even more wonderful and often more melodious [than part 1], it is instinct with great thoughts that flash light on the dark places of human life and destiny; it conjures up pictures of a vast and solemn beauty...Faust is saved by virtue of his restless striving, his insatiable greed of activity. More than this, Faust learns, in the course of the long Second Part- an allegory of human experience such as has never before or since been encompassed in a single poem- to be wisely active, to limit his practical activity to his ‘God-given hest’, to ends that lie within his power. In other words, that, unquenchable as is and must be man's striving, it can only become a great positive force in the world if it is guided by a higher wisdom that voluntarily recognises the limits of individual activity” (Robertson, 1912 pp 97-99).

The “tempting comparison of [Faust and Iphegenia], if continued would reveal the essential differences between the primitivistic Goethe of the Sturm und Drang, who approved Gothic art, carved his name on the platform of the Strassburger Münster, and acclaimed creator Erwin von Steinbach as if to champion the cause of an artistic ideal which was medieval, Gothic, Northern, German, and romantic, and the mature and cultivated Goethe, schooled in the principles of classical antiquity, who after his return from Italy praised as perfection Palladio, the architectural incarnation of a spirit not medieval but ancient, not Gothic but Greek and Renaissance, not a Northern and German but a Southern and Italian ideal of art, which is in its essence not romantic but classic. Goethe, like his hero Faust with two souls at war within his breast,...like his heroine Iphigenie with longing in her heart, torn between two cultural ideals, is a representative German dualist in this continual conflict between classicism and romanticism” (Burkhard, 1931 p 161).

Faust‘s adventures in part 2 “are an attempt to share the whole experience of the human race from the creation...through classical and medieval times to the utopian world of the end” (Prudhoe, 1973 p 202). Gray (1965-66) complained that "the difficulty remains that for long passages of the play, hundreds of lines together, the action is lost completely from view, and the masques or the series of persons declaiming occasional verse, who occupy the stage, have very little of dramatic interest to offer...The absence of development is...striking in the play as a whole...although in Act II Faust was urgently in quest of Helen...Faust's quest is dismissed as though it had never been [in Act 3]...The leaders of Faust's army assemble to hear his orders for the fight against Menelaus...However, he invites Helen to join him in...Arcadia...All talk of war and defence disappears...Almost nothing occurs in a coherent sequence...And when Faust is saved within the love which approves him, it should not be lost from sight that his attitude throughout the play has been one in which he has declined to consider the faults and crimes he has committed" (pp 360-376). “The scenes of acts 1 and 2 at the imperial court consist almost wholly of depicted stagings of plays and entertainments. In imperial residence, Mephisto immediately assumes the role of a riddling jester and he also prompts the speeches of the astrologer, while the venal, incompetent officials brood about the dangerous state of the realm. Mephisto soon tempts them with the supreme jest: promises of illusory wealth based on paper money” (Gillespie, 1994 p 387).

"Faust’s vision of Helen represents form without substance and so Faust needs to come into contact with the Mothers, keepers of such forms" (Nichols, 1977). "But when Faust touches Paris with the key, an explosion occurs as the result of incompatibility. Faust represents the romantic figure who rejects the old forms of the classic view, judged to be incompatible. It is Homunculus, unborn intellect, possessing access to incorporate forms, who finds the solution by transporting Faust back in time to ancient Greece, so that he may engender with her. But when he reaches Greece, he must forward her towards the Middle Ages when they eventually engender Euphorio, child of classic and post-classic culture, the 'romantic exuberance' destined to die. At the end, Faust is saved 'for two reasons- first, because it is not Mephistopheles who has brought his bliss; secondly, because that bliss was not a bliss of ease, but a bliss of the fullest activity" (Coupland, 1895 p 339).

"Homunculus is clearly the artificial conception of the ideal that comes not from the experience of life but from study. It, too, as well as Faust, has Greek aspirations and therefore it seeks to draw its parent to classic ground. Suddenly it escapes from Wagner's hand, hovers over the head of Faust and reveals the course of the sleeper's mind as his soul gradually accustoms itself to the Greek view of life...Euphorion is but a thin mask for Lord Byron...Here the essential allegory seems to be that a perfect and fruitful union between modern and classic life is impossible. It produces an idealism that destroys itself because it is not in touch with the actualities of our life...Helena must return to the shades. But she leaves behind her all that we can take up into our modern life of the classic ideals, 'the garment that is love of beauty', especially in artistic form...It is, then, through the Greek view of life that Faust is to gain the foundation for his future experience, and this foundation is to be a practical idealism...Faust chooses not wealth but work and in that work finds his salvation. To this choice he is brought, mediately by Gretchen, immediately by Helena, for beauty is positive, creative, and so here, as in life contrasted with the ugly, the evil, the negative, as it appears in Mephistopheles-Phorkyas. It is Helena that reveals to Faust the worth of life, of this life, and so frees him from the spirit that denies" (Wells, 1894 pp 404-411). “Homunculus is comparatively little concerned about mythology and art, while he is intensely interested in nature. He does not know where Helena is and leaves it to Faust alone to find her, while he himself is seeking to penetrate the secrets of corporeal development. On land, he does not find anything that is congenial to him, but as soon as he reaches the sea, he feels that he is in his element and that he is about to detect the dot upon the I for which he set out. The main purpose of Homunculus, therefore, is not to represent Humanism or the growth of Goethe's poetical genius, but to embody one of his long-cherished scientific ideas, the grand idea of evolution” (Gerber, 1897 p 39).

"Helen is that priceless Greek beauty, which Goethe himself endeavoured in his ripest years to bring back from antiquity; to introduce into his own essentially northern literature, as Faust, in the third act, brings Helen to his mediaeval German castle. Helen is the embodiment of that aesthetic humanism which combines humanity and beauty. And when Faust fails, or rather when Helena fails to give Faust the satisfying happiness which would at once have placed him at the mercy of Mephistopheles, when the child that she has borne him-in whom Goethe allegorised Lord Byron- soars, Icarus-like, too high and falls dead at its parents’ feet, when Helen fades away, leaving only her mantle behind her, he is led back again into the world of reality. His new activity embraces all the arts of war and peace, and its ultimate end is the creation of a new society. In the last act Faust’s work is done; a happy people are busily active around him, active on land that they have won back from the sea, that is to say, created, in the sweat of their brow. Man can do no more" (Robertson, 1913 pp 181-182).

Other critics grumble at the ending: “though Goethe, in the first part of Faust, seemed to elevate him into this highest department of mental freedom, yet in the second part he has again brought him under the power of superstition. There is there no longer any talk of a bold dominion over spirits, of a despising of all earthly or super-earthly greatness, of an irresistible striving after the unknown; Faust must submit to choose between the narrowness and tedium of the hell and of the heaven of the Middle Ages...Is that still Faust? Can this spirit, which rent asunder all bonds, be fettered by such a heavenly comedy, by the tinsel of angelic choruses and dances?... He is not even converted before he is placed in this heaven of maidens…Goethe has been too ready to place everything upon the favour of the fair and tender sex, and has, when engaged with the 'eternal feminine' forgot the ‘eternal masculine’” (Menzel, 1840 vol 3, pp 305-311).

“Goethe: no mere German, but a European event: a magnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by means of a return to nature, by means of an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of the century in question. He bore the strongest instincts of this century in his breast: its sentimentality, and idolatry of nature, its anti-historic, idealistic, unreal, and revolutionary spirit (the latter is only a form of the unreal). He enlisted history, natural science, antiquity, as well as Spinoza, and above all practical activity,in his service. He drew a host of very definite horizons around him; far from liberating himself from life, he plunged right into it; he did not give in; he took as much as he could on his own shoulders, and into his heart. That to which he aspired was totality; he was opposed to the sundering of reason, sensuality, feeling and will (as preached with most repulsive scholasticism by Kant, the antipodes of Goethe); he disciplined himself into a harmonious whole, he created himself. Goethe in the midst of an age of unreal sentiment, was a convinced realist: he said yea to everything that was like him in this regard,- there was no greater event in his life than that 'ens realissimum' surnamed Napoleon. Goethe conceived a strong, highly-cultured man, skilful in all bodily accomplishments, able to keep himself in check, having a feeling of reverence for himself, and so constituted as to be able to risk the full enjoyment of naturalness in all its rich profusion and be strong enough for this freedom; a man of tolerance, not out of weakness but out of strength, because he knows how to turn to his own profit that which would ruin the mediocre nature; a man unto whom nothing is any longer forbidden, unless it be weakness either as a vice or as a virtue. Such a spirit, become free, appears in the middle of the universe with a feeling of cheerful and confident fatalism; he believes that only individual things are bad, and that as a whole the universe justifies and affirms itself. He no longer denies...But such a faith is the highest of all faiths: I christened it with the name of Dionysus” (Nietzsche, 1927 reprinted pp 109-110).

"Faust, part 1"


Time: 1800s. Place: Germany.

Text at http://www.bartleby.com/19/1/ https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.91829 https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.12094 http://oll.libertyfund.org/groups/51 http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIProl.htm http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_(von_Goethe) http://www.readbookonline.net/title/3243/ https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11123

Despite having mastered many facets of learning, including jurisprudence and medicine, Faust is dissatisfied with them all. He is visited by an Earth-spirit, but remains unable to achieve the superior knowledge he seeks. He thereby considers suicide. Raising a vial of poison to his lips, he is dissuaded by the sound of church bells at Easter-time, reminding him of childhood days. While walking in the streets with his assistant, Wagner, Faust notices a poodle following them. It is the disguised devil, Mephistopheles, who proposes to Faust a pact, by which hell wins his soul should he desire a thing so beautiful that he would desire to have that moment linger. That great moment is not found in the drinking pleasures inside Auerbach's cellar, where Faust is disgusted at the sight of drunken revellers. However, Faust accepts to be transformed as a young man and, spying a simple milkmaid, Gretchen, in the street, is determined to seduce her. Faust and Gretchen stroll about in a garden, while Mephistopheles does the same with her neighbor, Martha. Having previously learned from Mephistopheles her husband's death, Martha flirts with him, who encounters grave difficulties in politely rejecting her advances. Gretchen confesses her love to Faust and is willing, one one hand, to have him enter her room, but, on the other hand, unwilling to be discovered by her pious mother. Faust gives Gretchen a bottle containing what he thinks is a sleeping potion for her mother but is in reality poisonous. After her mother's death, Gretchen is soon discovered to be pregnant and her enraged brother, Valentine, challenges the culprit to a duel. Helped by Mephistopheles, Faust kills him. To distract Faust from Gretchen's abandoned state, Mephistopheles invites him to a witches' sabbath, where he is about to fall in the arms of a naked young witch when Gretchen's image suddenly appears. But before he can return to the real Gretchen, she drowns her baby and is condemned to death. Although Mephistopheles promises to rescue her from the prison cell, Gretchen refuses to follow Faust, because the man she once loved has changed for the worse. In danger of being caught, the devil pushes Faust away with the words: "She is judged." On the contrary, a voice from heaven decrees: "She is saved."

"Faust, part 2"


Time: 1800s. Place: Germany.

Text at http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIIActIScenesItoVII.htm http://oll.libertyfund.org/groups/51 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11123

Faust and Mephistopheles arrive at an emperor's court where money is scarce. Thanks to Mephistopheles, Faust obtains favor from the emperor by printing paper-money based on discovering piles of gold in the bowels of the earth, sufficient to forestall a mass revolt. Now that the emperor is saved, he wants to be entertained, which Faust seeks to satisfy by the use of pageantry. To satisfy Faust’s intellectual curiosity, Mephistopheles presents him with a key by which he learns about the Mothers, spiritual creatures mysteriously guiding the world's destinies and concepts. After having ensured the empire's prosperity, Faust and Mephistopheles entertain the court with pageants from Greek mythology, in particular Helen of Troy abducted from her husband, Menelaus, by Paris. Meanwhile, at Faust's house, long abandoned by the master, Wagner, his servant, seeks to recreate mankind anew inside his oven. To his joy, a homunculus appears inside a glass vial, but, to his chagrin, the homunculus ignores the lacklustre Wagner to follow the more interesting Mephistopheles. Because Faust seeks something beyond mere pageantry, Mephistopheles' powers permit him to reach the very land of classical myth itself where Helen of Troy's head is in danger of being chopped off with an ax by the cheated Menelaus because of her adulterous relations with Paris. Faust saves her in the shape of a medieval knight and secures her for himself in the land of Arcadia, replete with shepherds and lyric poetry, where the happy pair bear a son, Euphorio. However, Faust and Helen have difficulty in restraining the impetuous Euphorio, who seizes a young girl and is about to rape her when she is transformed into fire and disappears. They next see Euphorio prepare to engage in martial feats, but, to their grief, the boy soon plummets from a height to his death. After this misfortune, Faust cannot hold on to Helen any longer. When he embraces her bodily form, it disappears, only the robe remaining. When Faust and Mephistopheles return at court, there is an armed revolt afoot. In Mephistopheles' view, "war, commerce, and pirating are inseparable". But thanks to the devil's powers, the emperor's troops succeed in crushing the opposition. Now quite old, Faust becomes blind, though able to imagine his end in infernal regions. He nevertheless commands Mephistopheles to retrieve a huge number of workers to build massive structures and gardens, but before he can complete his pursuits, the old man falls on the ground where working lemurs seize him. Instead of hauling Faust to hell as expected, Mephistopheles sees roses and angels drop from above to cover his sight, lifting away his prize to Gretchen’s state of beatitude.

=Friedrich von Schiller=



Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) continued potent dramatic works from the previous century with "Wilhelm Tell" (William Tell, 1804), folk hero of the late 15th century.

"Wilhelm Tell" "is the national tragedy, or rather drama, of German Switzerland; it brings the entire spirit of the Swiss nation on to the stage, depicts it in the throes of a life and death struggle for autonomy. Tell himself is less the hero of the old saga, the master-archer, who by his skill with his crossbow avenges himself on the tyrant and rescues his people from bondage to the House of Austria, than an abstract personification of the heroic side of the Swiss national character, as Schiller conceived it. And the action in which this hero becomes involved in the course of the drama, is planned with a view to these wider national issues, rather than to the purely personal conflict. This gives the drama a panoramic, epic quality which, no doubt, weakens its immediate personal appeal; but the German dramatist at all times has regarded it as his chief glory to fight against the laming restrictions of theory" (Robertson, 1913 pp 121-122). “Here we have not the blind self-assertion of the Storm and Stress play, but there is revealed the calm self-mastery of a forceful mass, a lofty and serene folk-destiny working its end in and through its enlightened representatives” (Swiggett, 1905 p 441).

"Although somewhat loosely put together, and without any well-defined focus of interest, 'Wilhelm Tell' has always been the popular favorite among Schiller's dramas, and possesses a charm which seems never to fail or grow old. It may be a weakness of construction that Tell's role, as the deliverer of his country, is, in a manner, accidental; since, according to his own testimony, he kills Gessler in self-defence, and in order to protect his wife and children from the tyrant's vengeance. It may also be contrary to dramatic canons to have two parallel intrigues without any vital interdependence, but in spite of all such objections the fact remains that the drama has always been greeted with a warm and spontaneous enthusiasm wherever it has been worthily represented. The fragrance of the Alpine meadows, and the breath of the glaciers blow into our faces from the very opening scene, and a long, clear vista is revealed into the very heart of the beautiful Switzerland. In the presence of such vivid impressions the critic's dissenting voice is left unheeded" (Boyesen, 1892 pp 208-209).

"Except in the love episode between Rudenz and Bertha, Schiller has followed closely the legend as it was handed down by the chronicles. But under the light of modern history this report proves to be largely mythical; especially that part referring to Tell, which probably came from a very ancient myth well known in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Notwithstanding this, Schiller's Tell is a person clear and distinct, destined to stand through all time. (Moore, 1900 p 147).

"William Tell first appears as dissociated from political aims, for he saves Baumgarten’s life while refusing to engage in any political discussion. “Although the historical sources Schiller used (Tschudi’s 16th century [chronicle] and Johannes Müller’s ‘History of the Swiss Federation’) indicated that Tell was present on the Rütli when the Swiss uprising was planned, the play makes his absence conspicuous...So remote is Tell from political affairs that, when the Austrian hat is erected in Altdorf and the Swiss are required to do obeisance to it, he quietly ignores the symbol of oppressors...Only when he is taken prisoner [does he realize] that if Gessler is allowed to live, then his own family will be further persecuted...Nowhere does Tell avoid the fact that he must commit murder. This is the point...when Johannes, duke of Swabia, seeks shelter in Tell’s house after murdering his father, the emperor. Johannes has killed for political ambition, Tell in obedience to the commands of justice. However, in the end, Tell pities him, suggesting that he himself harbors a certain degree of guilt for his own murder" (Prudhoe, 1973 pp 153-157). “In the apple-shooting scene, he is confronted with the fact that even the private man who seeks no quarrel can find himself the victim of malice and the most inhuman tyranny. The fact that he ignores the hat and thus brings attention to himself is presented not as an act of provocation but as Tell’s typical lack of concern for things outside his immediate sphere of activity…If he, Tell, could find himself reduced to utter helplessness before Gessler, what protection is there for the weak and helpless?” (Sharpe, 1991 pp 301-302).

“In Tell are combined all the attributes of a great man, without the help of education or of great occasions to develop them. His knowledge has been gathered chiefly from his own experience, and this is bounded by his native mountains: he has had no lessons or examples of splendid virtue, no wish or opportunity to earn renown: he has grown up to manhood, a simple yeoman of the Alps, among simple yeomen and has never aimed at being more. Yet we trace in him a deep, reflective, earnest spirit, thirsting for activity, yet bound in by the wholesome dictates of prudence a heart benevolent, generous, unconscious alike of boasting or of fear. It is this salubrious air of rustic, unpretending honesty that forms the great beauty in Tell’s character: all is native, all is genuine he does not declaim: he dislikes to talk of noble conduct, he exhibits it. He speaks little of his freedom, because he has always enjoyed it, and feels that he can always defend it” (Carlyle, 1845 p 175). "Tell is the combative sportsman in contrast with the peaceful shepherd; he represents the self-reliant strong man in contrast with more ordinary men who believe themselves stronger when allied with others. Tell acts, where others only talk, deliberate or hesitate. He knows no fear, and does not reflect long where it is a question of action; at the same time, he is humane and benevolent, and trusts to God's help in the time of need. He is strong and active in body and expert in all manly exercise, a sure shot, a bold sailor, a skillful carpenter and always ready to help on occasion" (Bates, 1913 vol 10 German drama p 142).

“The noble lord of Attinghausen, 80 years of age, feeble of hand but indomitable of spirit, the last repository of the ancient sound traditions of a decadent nobility, recalls in character, speech, and significance the John of Gault of Richard II...Rudenz...turns from the oppressor to side again with his countrymen. But his patriotism is determined only by his love of Bertha von Bruneck and the scorn with which she treats his pro-Austrian conduct...Gessler’s manner is simple, at moments misleadingly friendly, at others bitterly ironical, and this simplicity fits exactly the cold unimpassioned cruelty of then man...Tell is a direct and simple character of sterling sincerity” (Garland, 1949 pp 246-249).

“Schiller has concentrated all his poetical energies in the representation of man, not of vulgar man, but of the ideal of human magnanimity and beauty, the grandest and most mysterious of all wonders. The external world was used by him merely as a foil to adorn, a contrast or example to illustrate man…His heroes and heroines never belie that pride and dignity which are the mark of a higher nature and all their expressions bear the stamp of magnanimity and innate nobleness…His genius belongs to mankind. The rights of man were never advocated on higher and nobler principles than by his Marquis Posa. The Maid of Orleans steps into the lists to protect the rights of the people; Wilhelm Tell maintains the rights of the individual. And in all his other heroes we see right and freedom waging an interminable war with arbitrary power and violence, so that Schiller is as much the poet of liberty as of love…The earnest, solemn disposition which Schiller imparts, the exalted state to which he raises our souls, the holy awe which surrounds him, are not, it is true, fitted to please our criticasters, or silly, self-sufficient longing virtuosi, who, in their souls are terrified for him, and therefore criticise him for petty revenge. Men are quick and ready enough to call him unnatural, stiff, pedantic, and coarse, and to decry him as the poet of a licentious youth and people. Truly everything great and noble has, in your eyes, become unnatural, because ye are thoroughly corrupted, and because common-placeness has become a second nature to you. In your eyes virtue appears pedantic, because ye must hear it inculcated from strange lips, because it does not exist in your own hearts. In your eyes all liberty is coarse, because it breaks through your conventional rules, and crushes to the ground your petty idols” (Menzel, 1840 vol 4, pp 98-109).

"William Tell"


Time: 14th century. Place: Switzerland

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6788 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11692 http://www.bartleby.com/26/6/ https://archive.org/stream/greatplaysfrench00corn#page/n23/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/wilhelmtelladra00buchgoog https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.37066

A ferryman, a hunter, and a shepherd are surprised to see Baumgarten running towards them. He has just killed a bailiff with an axe for entering his house and proposing disgraceful matters to his wife. He asks the ferryman to help him cross the lake to escape from the authorities pursuing him for murder. The ferryman refuses because a storm is rising. Despite the tempest, William Tell saves Baumgarten in the ferryman's canoe. Frustrated to see the murderer escape, the officers of Governor Gessler avenge themselves on innocent bystanders by destroying their property. By order of the governor, a prison-fortress is built in Uri and a hat placed atop the highest point in the village, below which everyone must kneel and lift his own hat. The villagers laugh and consider this is a gross sign of Austrian tyranny. To punish a minor fault, a governor's officer removes Melchthal's two best oxen from his team. The peasant retaliates by breaking the officer's finger before escaping. In retribution, the governor seizes Melchthal's father and blinds him. Hearing such news, the baron of Attinghausen accuses his nephew, Ulrich, for being on the side of oppression. Ulrich is of the opinion that they should submit to the emperor's authority. His armor rusts and he is tired of staying inactive at home, with only the sound of cowbells in his ears. The baron appeals to the ancient ways, the Swiss being traditionally free of any oppressor. Furthermore, he accuses him of hoping to claim Bertha, the governor's ward. "To conquer this woman, you would enslave your country," he affirms. At night, a group of thirty men, including Melchthal and Baumgarten, plot rebellion, hoping to oust offending governors from the three Swiss cantons. Here even men opposed to each other at the tribunal shake hands. Bertha accuses Ulrich of being "Swiss' unnatural son". Ulrich responds he only wishes to win her, but how can he, she being dependent on her parents' will? "If Switzerland is free, so am I," she declares. In town, the guardians of the hat arrest Tell in the name of the emperor for violating the ordinance. To make an example of him, Gessler declares: "Prepare to strike an apple on the top of your child's head." If he misses Walter from 80 steps away, Tell dies. Walter has confidence in his father to the extent of refusing to be tied to the tree and blindfolded. Tell requests the soldiers to kill him instead, but if he refuses to shoot, both he and his son die together. Tell hides a second arrow, seen by Gessler. Though in the governor's train, Ulrich tries to interfere. While Ulrich and Gessler bandy angry words, Tell succeeds in striking the apple. What would he have done with the second arrow? wonders Gessler. Tell admits he would have aimed it at him, so that the honest archer is arrested and led in chains to Küssnacht fortress. But on the way, he frees himself during a tempest. After the death of the baron of Attinghausen, Ulrich becomes the new baron and joins the revolted peasants, with all the more reason since Bertha has been kidnapped. On the way to the castle, a woman begs the governor for clemency, she and her children being without means since her husband's imprisonment while awaiting trial. Thanks to this delay, from behind a bush Tell strikes Gessler dead with an arrow. The happy mother shows her children how a villain dies. Fire signals in the mountains and tolling bells indicate that the peasants are invading and burning the fortresses, with Bertha saved by Ulrich and Melchthal before the fire reaches her. The hat will henceforth be maintained as a sign of liberty. There is even more momentous news: the emperor has been assassinated by his nephew, the duke of Austria. There is now hope that the new emperor will protect the Swiss against Austria. One day, the duke of Austria, disguised as a monk, enters Tell's house. Tell,the assassin for the people's good, is horrified at seeing the assassin of his own good: "Do not sully the peaceful house where innocence inhabits," Tell warns him. He recommends him to the pope, to pardon his crime or not. Ulrich and Bertha marry and declare freedom for all the serfs.

=Otto Ludwig=



Also of note is the German dramatist Otto Ludwig (1813-1865), who wrote "Der Erbförster" (The hereditary forester, 1850).

"Ludwig’s 'The hereditary forester' deals with strong passions, with unholy revenge; it is a drama in which the truth of milieu is the reality, is the chief thing, in which there is no kind of higher problematic or psychological interest at all" (Robertson, 1913 pp 225-226).

For Christian Ulrich "reality and its conditions vanish behind the thick green trees of the forest with which his life is bound up. While he believes he is upholding his rights, he commits not only a series of grievous irregularities, but his clear eye also loses the power of sharp discernment and thereby he becomes the victim of unfortunate accidents which make him a criminal, the murderer of his daughter" (Witkowski, 1909 p 96). "Ulrich finds himself involved in a set of circumstances which transcend the confines of his idyllic forest dwelling, as his existence and that of his family is threatened by the forces of the modern world...The revolutionary intentions of certain disreputable inhabitants of the forest- an ugly, though avowedly false reflexion of the hero's own rebellious tendencies- threaten to undermine the carefully guarded basis of his respectable way of life. Under the influence of the February revolution in Paris, his peaceful provincial environment is shaken by menacing forces which, being outside his experience, are also beyond his comprehension...Whilst the first two acts show us the hero deeply rooted in his native milieu and assailed by circumstances peculiar to his social and economic position, the latter part constitutes a deliberate attempt to divest the Erbforster's actions of all connexion with the supra-individual forces operative in his environment. This was intended to heighten the general human interest of the tragedy, but it in fact weakens it by ignoring the fundamental premises so convincingly presented at the beginning...When the the hereditary forester and his wife speak of the forest so that one can almost hear and see it through the window, Ludwig gets nearer than anyone before Ibsen to an artistic fusion of interior and exterior, of room and landscape" (Schatzky, 1955 pp 299-301).

"Our first impression of Christian Ulrich is of a brusque man who seems to feel the need of asserting his authority (I,3). From his conversation with his future son-in-law, Robert Stein, in the following scene we learn that this need springs from a basic fear of losing authority, and having understood this we are prepared for his refusal later (I,6) to obey the order of Herr Stein...He is capable, conscientious, and extremely loyal...[But] our sympathy wanes when we see how his obstinacy and self-righteousness obsess him to the extent that he is willing to sacrifice even his family's security and his daughter's happiness to his principles...One main way in which Ludwig achieved the consistency which he believed so important was to have the tragic circumstances which ultimately destroy Ulrich and his daughter arise directly out of a basic flaw in his nature...Each successive step is but a more intensified expression of his innate, fatal proclivity always to act as his feelings prompt him and to refuse to heed the advice of those who would would counsel him to act otherwise" (Taylor and McClain, 1969 pp 460-466).

"The hereditary forester"


Time: 1850s. Place: Prussia.

Text at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13030 https://archive.org/details/germanclassicsof09franuoft

During the engagement party of Robert Stein and Mary Ulrich, his father, Adolf, quarrels with hers, Christian Ulrich, surnamed the "hereditary forester" for having occupied that position for several generations. Like his master, Adolf orders Christian to clear trees from one part of the forest. Christian rightly considers this a mistake, since the winds from the mountain will then destroy the rest. The master warns him that if he disobeys, he will be replaced by Godfrey, a disreputable hunter in those parts. Yet since Christian continues to defy him, he is ordered away by Adolf's bookkeeper, Möller. "Ulrich, yield; you must yield," declares an angry Robert. "What do you want from the man whom your father intends to dismiss?" the forester asks Mary. "I am going, but come what may, I shall not resign my claim on Mary," Robert retorts. When Adolf learns that the forester still refuses to obey, he blames Möller for having expressed himself badly, since he only meant to scare him. "His post, I dare say, he must resign for the time being; but his present salary he may— yes, he shall draw twice the amount," Adolf declares. "He may regard it as a pension until further notice. I should think—after all, his is the chief fault in this business— in this way he is let off easily enough for his share." While ostensibly protecting the forest from poachers, Godfrey seizes the opportunity of enraging the old forester for whom he harbors a grudge. With the help of five other men, he takes hold of his son, Andrew, removes his clothes, ties him to a tree, and whips him. On hearing this, Christian sends his other son, William, to draw a complaint against the master and Godfrey in court. While William rests in a country inn on his way there, his rifle is stolen from him by a poacher named Lindenschmied, who, bearing a grudge against Godfrey, shoots him with it. Before dying, Godfrey reveals to Robert and Möller that a man holding a rifle with a yellow strap is responsible. Robert confronts Andrew in the forest and accuses him of murder. He denies it. When Robert turns away, Lindenschmied, still on the prowl for more mayhem, shoots at him. Seeing a man fall at a distance, Andrew advances to help him. Meanwhile, Adolf continues to have second thoughts about his rash behavior. He now intends to transfer the forest property to Robert, so that he could reinstate the dismissed forester. Considering the situation hopeless and his family about to be destitute, Wilkens, a cousin of the forester's wife, Sophy, proposes that they come over to live with him. She accepts, but not the forester. He is however stunned on learning from William that the court refuses to consider his complaint on the basis that the master is in his rights to take down his own trees. Mary receives a letter from Robert, asking her to leave with him, which Sophy approves of. "If you would go," Sophy says to Mary, "we might then remain with father. Robert would try once more to persuade his father, Uncle Wilkens also would yield, and when you wear the bridal wreath a second time it would be even more becoming to you." Mary accepts to sneak out of the house in the evening but only to tell Robert that she intends to stay with her father. Even worse news come to the forester when his keeper, Weiler, reports that he saw Robert shoot at a man who fell, probably Andrew, because the victim bore the rifle with the yellow strap and he recovered his son's muffler covered with blood. Drunk with rage and wine, the forester goes out to avenge his son. When he discovers Robert at a distance, he shoots at him. However, Mary at the point of joining her lover steps in front of the bullet and is killed. Christian returns home in a confused state. On seeing Andrew also back home, he is unable to believe his eyes. "You have my muffler which Lindenschmied stole from me before he killed Godfrey?" Andrew asks and then relates that Robert shot Lindenschmied to death. When Robert shows up with Mary's corpse, the forester goes out and shoots himself to death.

=Franz Grillparzer=



Also of note in 19th century German-speaking theatre is the Austrian dramatist, Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), author of a Gothic drama, "Die Ahnfrau" (The ancestress, 1817), "a kind of delirium, but the delirium of a poet and a dramatist" (Thomas, 1909 p 345).

“The ancestress” is “an intriguing mix of the Oedipus myth (parricide, incest, tragic analysis)...and the Gothic tradition...Fate reveals itself...not as an objective demonic power but as a poetic image for an inescapable mixture of guilt, coincidence, and expiation...Fate has been replaced by moral and hereditary justifications and thereby loses its overpowering function” (Hoffmeister, 1994 p 173). The play "belongs to that group of ultra-Romantic dramas known as the fate tragedy, that is to say, a form of play in which romantic fatalism and crudely sensational stagecraft were blended to form a somewhat gruesome modernisation of the Greek tragedy. But Die Ahnfrau was, at least, the best of its class; so good, indeed, that Grillparzer’s admirers have resented its association with the class at all" (Robertson, 1913 p 176-177).

The play "is fantastic, but its effects arc essentially and in the best sense theatrical. It is melodramatic, but that is a failure in quality not in kind. Its tragic plot is far-fetched and mechanical, like the ‘fatalistic horror-dramas’ of the time; but its poetic promise is quite brilliant and evokes something like genuine tragic feeling in spite of extravagances, and does so with the intensity that is achieved in the theatre alone" (Peacock, 1946 pp 42-43). The play stood "high above the seemingly similar plays of Müllner by whom it was most influenced; not with cool calculation but with glowing passion did the poet transform the contents of a penny-dreadful into a genuine and great work of art. With him the hereditary impulse to evil, which may lie in the blood, does not do away with moral responsibility. In this way 'The ancestress' is distinguished from the rest of the fate-tragedies as well as from the heredity-plays of the present. Moreover, it is not a question with him, as with his predecessors, of revealing former events; on the contrary, an action developing with astonishing rapidity in the presence of the spectators compels the attention of all. And thus 'The ancestress', which quickly made Grillparzer's name famous all over Germany, has also justly outlived the vogue of the fate-tragedies" (Witkowski, 1909 pp 26-27). "Die Ahnfrau, in spite of its ghostly, romantic subject- an ancestress, who for a crime committed in life is doomed to haunt the family until her last descendant is extinct, and a robber-lover, who turns out to be the brother of his betrothed,- is a powerful tragedy, and has more in common with Schiller’s The Bride of Messina and Shakespeare's Macbeth than with the tawdry fate tragedies of Müllner" (Robertson, 1911 p 215).

In "the various works on the author and the special studies on the play itself that were written round the turn of the century, the main stumbling block to a wholehearted approval of Die Ahnfrau was still the ghost and the idea of fate she embodied. One way of circumventing this difficulty was to regard the play as a character-tragedy and explain everything in psychological terms: the ghost is an hallucination and nothing more, a figment of the imagination due either to the excited condition of the characters or to the tricks played by the gloomy setting. The fate-element is also subjective; everything is possible without the ghost and the tragedy is a purely human one of guilt and its inevitable consequences. The play could, therefore, be praised as upholding Schillerian views on character and guilt; it could even be called progressive for anticipating the heredity-motif of naturalist drama. These attempts to vindicate the play as a character-drama could not be wholly successful, however. For one thing the ghost was not so obliging as to appear only to the characters; there are at least two scenes, where, as one critic has to admit, she is...not a hallucination. The guilty character theory was not convincing either: with the exception of 'der wilde Jaromir' the family was too good and the dire fate that overtook them too unjust; it was even monstrous to suppose that this fate was the result of the guilty doings of an ancient ancestress. To meet these objections what might be called the 'aesthetic' method was employed, whereby the ghost and any suggestion of an external fate implied by her presence and the attitude of the characters could be interpreted as a poetic device. They were merely aesthetic trimmings and did not exclude a rational and moral explanation of the play" (Morris, 1967 p 288). "In composing The Ancestress, Grillparzer was as far from any intention of enforcing a particular ethical theory as was Goethe when he wrote his Werther, and The Ancestress was even more fiercely attacked for its un-Christian doctrines than had been the pagan sentiments of his illustrious predecessor. Even learned theologians joined in the hue and cry, which vainly attempted to drown the plaudits of the public" (Pollak, 1907 p 58).

“In Jaromir, Grillparzer has created a most fantastic figure. A malicious chance throws the child among people whose only aim in life is violence and destruction. The young nobleman becomes one of the robbers. His strength, his courage, and his passionate nature secure for him the rank of a leader. But there is another side to his nature. He always feels that his innermost self has nothing in common with his associates. In moments of reflection he is appalled by his existence. He longs for peace of the soul, for quiet happiness. He suffers as an outcast of society and welcomes an opportunity to escape his present life. Yet he is so much a part of his world that he is unable to renounce it when the test comes. His passionate nature makes him resort to violence whenever he finds the road to his desires blocked. This leads ultimately to his destruction. It is the passionate, irrational will to live that forces him to use his weapon against his pursuers. And it is the irrational, almost insane demand to possess Bertha that prevents flight and drives him ultimately into the arms of the ghost, ie into the arms of death. In view of the many literary influences briefly referred to above and the changes suggested by Schreyvogel it is not surprising that the portraiture of Jaromir is not perfect. He combines the chief characteristics of the young hero, ie bravery in fighting, even though in an anti-social cause, with the chivalry and dash of the lover. Somehow the nefariousness of his cause is minimized in the reader's eyes by the moral courage Jaromir shows in defending the robbers before the very soldiers who are hunting them down. Jaromir is in imminent danger of his own life when he shows that to some extent the robbers are victims of society. When later on he gives up his safe refuge in the castle to fight with and for his companions, one sees the qualities that led to his selection as the captain of the band. All of a piece with these winning traits is his manner of facing his own unspeakably cruel fate, brought upon him suddenly with a cunning malice that seems like a wanton boy's torturing of an insect: Jaromir does not cringe, he does not repent in tearful contrition as do the victims of other fate tragedies; but he places the blame on fate where every modern reader no doubt feels that it belongs. Unfortunately the portrait of this virile, sympathetic youth is made a great deal less life-like and unconvincing by the literary traditions superimposed on it, namely that of the noble robber of Romanticism and of the lover of a vampirish corpse derived from Goethe's The Bride of Corinth. Graf Zdenko von Borotin is a man whom grief has aged before his time. He shows most of the characteristics which make a nobleman. He is proud of his family whose fame is based on courageous deeds on the battlefield. This pride augments his grief at not having a son who will follow his bier, and at having to take the much-used family sword into his grave with him...The count did not become a pessimist. He had lost his brothers, his wife, his son; and the grief over his misfortune had darkened his life and turned him into a melancholy old man who had aged much too soon. Nevertheless, a deep love for life, engendered when in youthful energy he fought loyally for his king and gained the honors in which he takes deep satisfac- tion, still survives in him and rounds out his portrait” (Coenen, 1951 pp 1-4).

"The ancestress"


Time: 1810s. Place: Austria.

Text at ?

With no son as heir to his fortune, but only a single daughter, Bertha, Count Zdenko von Borotin bitterly regrets he represents the last of his ancestral lineage. Put asleep by his daughter's harp, he thinks he sees an ancestress of his, also named Berta, murdered many years ago by her husband after engaging in an adulterous relation, whose bastard son is the only source of the ancestral line. His daughter and the guardian of the castle, Gunther, assure him that they were on the terrace together when the apparent vision appeared. Their talk is interrupted by the sudden arrival of a perturbed Jaromir, Berta's lover, barely escaped from robbers in the forest who killed two of his servants. Approving of the intended marriage between this man and his daughter, Zdenko agrees to harbor him for the night. However, Jaromir's sleep is broken by phantom lights. He thinks he sees Bertha before him walking from one room to another until the real Bertha appears, who does not see her ancestress. The count also awakes. He asks Jaromir whether he truly agrees to mix his fate with theirs. "Only a fool builds a home where thunder has struck," the count comments. Yet Jaromir is willing. Berta is glad. She playfully binds his arm with a scarf so that he does not fly away. Their talk is interrupted by a captain, sent with his men to pursue the murderous brigands. Unexpectedly, Jaromir defends them, supposing some to be driven to a thief's life because of poverty. He refuses to join Zdenko and the captain in pursuit of the thieves. Left alone, Berta trembles while heading towards Jaromir's room left to rest on his bed, all the more so after hearing two gunshots. She finds the bed empty. Later that night, Jaromir returns. She discovers he has been shot in the arm and binds his arm with the remains of the torn-off scarf. A knock is heard and a soldier enters as Jaromir heads out. He explains he had spotted the captain of the robbers and shot him in the arm. He further reveals that he had seized him, but the robber had pulled away and escaped, with only part of a scarf left behind. To her despair, Berta recognizes the rest of Jaromir's scarf. Jaromir explains he has been a thief since childhood, his father being one. Now he depends on her to retire from that kind of life by escaping with him. Thinking of her father, she hesitates, but then agrees. To her consternation, he pulls down from the wall the dagger that killed the ancestress. They agree to meet at midnight. As Berta and Gunther worry over the count's fate, soldiers enter carrying his struck body, stabbed by Jaromir when about to be captured. A captured thief, Boleslas, is led in with a strange story to tell. On the present castle grounds, he confesses to kidnapping many years ago a three-year old boy, keeping him as his son and fellow thief, the count's son, whom he thought had drowned, now a man they know as Jaromir. In despair, the count dies and Berta swoons at the point of reaching a vial full of poison left behind by Jaromir. Distracted by the count's death, the soldiers neglect to keep a close watch on Boleslas, who escapes and finds Jaromir. Boleslas discloses to him his true origin. Jaromir pushes him away and calls for Berta. "Who calls?" the ancestress asks instead. Believing the ancestress to be his Berta, though his sister, he pleads that they leave together. When the ancestress shows him her grave, he succumbs next to it as she disappears.

=Georg Büchner=



With the important though incomplete "Woyzeck" (1837), the art of Georg Büchner (1813-1837) resembles more closely the realist drama of the 19th and even 20th century, though with themes in common with France's Alfred de Musset, namely the despairing poetic musings of the main character. This work was influenced by Lenz' "The soldiers" (1776) in its short-scene format and betrayal themes between soldiers and their women.

Woyzek as a character figures as a “Hamlet without a mission...the incarnation of what is done to man...Nothing he does precipitates or speeds his fate...Woyzek is abused...The medical doctor employs him as a guinea pig...[yet] berates Woyzek for having been unable to defer answering a call of nature...His captain uses Woyzek's lowly status...to erect his own aggrandizement" (Gilman, 1999 pp 34-37). Resemblances have also been drawn between the jealous Woyzeck and Othello (Otten, 1978; Stodder, 1974). Both suffer from alineation. "Both struggle to exist amid strangers; both seek in vain for refuge in society, the cosmos and the self...Woyzeck...completely lacks Othello’s strength and high position...However, Othello remains on the defensive [throughout] the play...Like Woyzeck, Othello tries to reconcile the demands of selfhood with the requirements of the role he must play...[But Büchner] inverted the character of Desdemona in the guise of the morally loose, poverty-stricken Marie" (Otten, 1978 pp 125-129). "Like Othello, Woyzeck moves from the initial stab of recognition, through incredulity at the thought of her infidelity, to the first tentative encounter with serious doubt...The imagery which Woyzeck uses to describe Marie's infidelity is directly reminiscent of that used by Othello in accusing Desdemona...As Woyzeck's obsession grows, his language becomes more excited and distracted until he falls in a stupour- exactly as Othello’s...Finally, the murder scenes themselves are remarkably alike not only in verbal patterns, but also in their dramatic mixture of poignant regret and momentary indecision" (Stodder, 1974 pp 116-118).

"Although on a conscious level Woyzeck is struggling to convey his terrifying sense of chaos, an examination of the circumstances suggests that Woyzeck also wants to be punished for being out of joint with nature and his world. For note whom he has chosen to confide in: the most contemptuous and sadistic of his persecutors; and notice the timing- when the doctor is in a rage- and also the situation: a confiding of intimate thoughts when the doctor is tearing at Woyzeck's very humanity, demeaning him as a 'dog' and an aberrant, jeering at his philosophizing" (Rugen, 1980 p 82). The doctor shows him off to his students much as the barker displays the horse, lumping the human with the animal” (Hilton, 1982 pp 121-127). Woyzeck’s hallucinations frighten Marie, are noticed by the doctor who nevertheless does nothing to help, and are ignored by Andres. “Woyzeck believes that the freemasons caused the strange death he describes...as a prophetic anticipation of his peculiar death...Woyzeck believes himself to be an instrument of divine justice...[Figures of authority such as the captain and the doctor appear] grotesque and ludicrous...[The grandmother’s fairy tale] presumes a chaotic and absurd world in which there is no positive values and no hope” (Richards, 1977 pp 175-194).

“Marie and Woyzeck...are the only three-dimensionally human figures, the only figures with a personal past and more than one level of operation, the others being mere sketches or caricatures. Marie and Woyzeck are thus evidently the site of the human in the play, except that Woyzeck, in consequence of a deliberate interference with his alimentary processes...is distinctly less human, has had his humanity impaired, and is struggling to retrieve it. Whereas Marie's thoughts and fears, her memories and inner conflicts, appear naturally, in monologues directed at her baby and in confrontations with others, Woyzeck must cling to his human identity (as opposed to the broodings of his induced mental disturbance) by recording its particulars on paper. But Woyzeck does in the end reachieve his humanity, does arrive at the uniquely human state of despair, and does perform a uniquely human act, in his murder of Marie; and it is here that the structure of the philosophical fable emerges. We cannot- this fable suggests- lay hold of the human, the human cannot be represented adequately, except in the form of its destruction, the destruction of Marie, who is the single most completely and integrally human figure on the stage” (Bennett, 2005 p 108). “When Woyzeck notices the earrings and briefly expresses his doubts as to the veracity of Marie’s account of their provenance,...his words ‘it’s all right, Marie’ and his tactful changing of the subject to the sleeping child clearly demonstrates that at this stage, and when he is in his sound mind, Woyzeck is perfectly capable of trusting and/or forgiving Marie...Woyzeck and Marie are the ineluctable victims of, and hence constitute an indictment against, socio-economic circumstances, scientific exploitation and the fatal metaphors of religious discourse” (Gillett, 2017 p 101).

“The stunning elemental force of ‘Woyzeck’ derives from its structure. Twenty-nine brief scenes depict the disintegration of Woyzeck, culminating in hid murder of Marie. A poor, uneducated, pious, and superstitious man who is victimized by the cruel world around him, Woyzeck struggles with both his own nature and the hostile environment (human, animal, and even inanimate) that seems designed to destroy him. The staccato pace of the play combined with the sparseness and directness of the dialogue creates a feeling of demonic inevitability...For the doctor and the medical students, Woyzeck is merely a specimen to be studied...The captain assaults his will-power, self-respect, and humanity, continually emphasizing Woyzeck’s inadequacies...[The play’s] themes of spiritual alienation and social injustice as well as its stark and brutal style have made ‘Woyzeck’ one of the most deeply felt plays in today’s theater” (Grace, 1973 pp 88-89).

Büchner "as a naturalist, proclaimed the absolute necessity of all that happens being considered as under the dominion of the laws of nature...Everywhere he aimed at transferring the world of reality without change into his artistic production. Like most naturalists he was attracted only by the dark sides of life which he reproduced with the keenest powers of observation in all their particulars, even the most repulsive" (Witkowski, 1909 pp 40-41). "Büchner was a forerunner of both naturalism and expressionism in the drama, although his life was cut short before he could develop the possibilities of either style. He had the naturalist’s 'despair over life’s uncleanliness' and the expressionist’s technique of substituting psychologically suggestive brief scenes for elaborately developed situations. He was, in effect, an anti-romanticist in his romantic milieu. His philosophy of character, which stemmed from the outlook of nineteenth-century mechanistic science, is a distinct departure from 'storm and stress' heroics. 'Danton's death' (1835), with its portraits of Danton and Robespierre, who are both caught in the swirl of an unleashed revolution, exemplifies his deterministic outlook. 'Individuals,' he wrote, explaining himself, 'are so much surf on a wave, greatness the sheerest accident, the strength of genius a puppet play- a child’s struggle against an iron law'" (Gassner, 1954a, p 337).

"Woyzeck"


Time: 1830s. Place: Germany.

Text at http://www.tomwaitsfan.com/tom%20waits%20library/www.tomwaitslibrary.com/theatre/woyzeck/woyzeck-texts.html https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.507619 https://pdfcoffee.com/woyzeck-buechner-english-pdf-free.html

Woyzeck, a soldier, is subject to anguish for no specific reason. He experiences sights and sounds intensely. While tapping his feet on the ground, he is fearful on discovering that the sound is one of struck wood. For none of his worries does he obtain any encouragement from his supposed friend, Andres. Woyzeck executes menial tasks for his captain and acts as an experimental subject to a doctor in a nonsensical study on the effects of a diet consisting entirely of peas. The captain seems well-intentioned towards Woyzeck, but his recommendations are vague and unhelpful. He particularly recommends that he should stop pissing in the open. Woyzeck visits his girlfriend, Marie, living near the army camp as a whore, with a small boy to care for. Marie is tempted to stray from Woyzeck when she observes a drum major in the street. When Woyzeck and Marie go to a local fair, the pleasures associated with this and other activities are minimal and brief. Suspicious of the drum major, Woyzeck walks up to him, but is beaten for his pains. All the more suspicious and anguished in the extreme, Woyzeck stabs Marie to death beside a pond and throws the knife away. Arriving at an inn, he has neglected to wipe the incriminating blood from his clothes. When asked about it, he says he cut himself shaving, but a man comments that he is certainly talented, because it looks as if he smeared his right elbow with his right hand. Worried about the incriminating knife, Woyzeck returns to the pond to look for it but cannot at first find it. He finds the corpse first and asks in a delusion: "Why so pale, Marie?" Finally, he finds the knife and runs off to escape before being discovered. A policeman is called in the case and is impressed by the deed. "A good murder, a proper murder, a lovely murder, as lovely a murder as anyone could wish. We've not had a murder like this for years," he says admiringly.

=Heinrich von Kleist=



Among comedies of the period, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811)'s "Der zerbrochne Krug" (The broken jug, 1808) stands out as a satire on jurisprudence.

"The broken jug" "is a phenomenally ingenious play, which shows to perfection Kleist’s genius for retardation and complication, hut without losing his grip on the compactly developing plot: the vital piece of information which must bring the play to a dose as soon as it is divulged is most ingeniously, though with apparent inevitability, held back by the circumstance that of the five main characters, two conceal the truth for opposite reasons, and the three others, who try to discover it, also do so for opposite reasons : the result 4s that the same clues in this detective-comedy set in seventeenth-century Holland are interpreted differently by everyone concerned" (Tymms, 1955 p 319).

"Kleist gave to German literature one of its best comedies, 'The broken jug'. The same pleasure in acute argumentation, noticeable in 'The Schroffenstein family', is found in this play. The effective forms of legal proceedings, which writers were very fond of using at the beginnings of German comedy and especially in the carnival-plays, are here taken up again for a higher purpose. For no longer is it a question of the reproduction of an amusing scene; here a human figure of the significance of a type appears in the village magistrate, Adam, who with low, foxy shrewdness tries to turn the suspicion for the deed he himself has done upon another, and thereby becomes involved deeper and deeper in ruin. This court-scene is a really brilliant performance but fitted out with a wealth of striking features almost too great for the stage. It serves, however, the purpose of giving an impression of the most complete material reality. In this regard the play forms a striking contrast to the unpractical idealism of his predecessors and contemporaries" (Witkowski, 1909 pp 17-18).

"The first critics of the play were bored by the final act in which Walter surreptitiously defends the judicial system, failing to see or be interested in Kleist’s social criticism. Like the Eve from Genesis, Kleist’s Eve brings about Adam’s fall, caused by his mistaken belief that the frightened maiden will cling to her mother’s wish of saving her reputation, not her future husband’s life if he is sent on a dangerous mission in an illegal war, though Ruprecht is unaware of her purpose. In court, she first keeps silent over Adam’s attempt to seduce her to obtain Ruprecht’s medical certificate. But instead of playing Eve’s game, Adam orders Ruprecht to be sent to jail, so that she is now forced to name the thunderstruck judge as her attempted seducer. The judge could have prevented his humiliation by speaking to Walter apart out of the court’s hearing. Instead, he compounds his mistake by attempting to appear innocent to his superior, and so the judicial system appears compromised and only the district magistrate can save it. When Ruprecht asks Eve whether Adam was the culprit, Walter rebukes him, since in his mind only Adam’s superior can accuse a judge, not a mere citizen. Walter first tries to cover up Adam’s fault by condemning Ruprecht, though specifying that he can appeal the verdict, but he has underestimated Eve’s resolve of obtaining a better deal. To conceal the now established fact of the state’s corruption, he will have to meet Eve’s demands and provide a personal guarantee that Ruprecht will not be drafted in the East Indies. Once this bargain is struck, however, and Eve agrees to trust him, Walter can put part of his planned cover-up in action, including the rehabilitation of Adam” (Allan, 1996 pp 81-102).

"Kleist’s conclusions give readers and audiences the sense that they have reached a point of termination and that the most significant structural conflicts in the text have been resolved...Yet upon closer examination and even the briefest reflection, these endings engender not a sense of closure and resolution, but a sense of unease, that the conclusion presented is only superficial and temporary, somehow never fully resolved [for example] Walter’s reconciliation with Eve fails to punish Adam for his crime...the jug remains broken and...Frau Marthe has yet to receive restitution” (Lyon, 2013 pp 114-119).

“At the surface plot level, the natural pair is Eve and Ruprecht, but the names suggest the pairing Adam and Eve. And that fact immediately suggests several other details of the setting, imagery, and even plot events that link with it. For example, Ruprecht is not an exemplary young man or the ideal match for Eve. Throughout the play, he repeatedly calls Eve a whore, and though of course he thinks he has reason to feel suspicious of and disappointed in her, he is clearly far more verbally violent than is either necessary or accounted for merely by his disappointment...Nor, we feel, should any reasonably acceptable mate for Eve ever try to kick her, as Ruprecht does when blinded by the sand that Adam has thrown in his face. Kleist is obviously doing much more than showing a disappointed lover; he is portraying Ruprecht as an ill-tempered, inconsiderate, and unimaginative clod who can behave abominably toward the woman whom he supposedly loves. His boorishness and simple-mindedness are conveyed too in both the sound of his second name and the names with which Adam confuses it...Ruprecht and Eve would of course make a rustic and relatively unsophisticated pair, but that cannot be the point of Kleist's characterization of Ruprecht, for Eve herself is shown to be quite different to him; she is loyal even when abused, gentle, and considerate. The marriage of the two, then, is scarcely an unambiguously good conclusion of the play; they do not look as if they belong together, Ruprecht does not seem worthy of Eve, and we are left with the feeling that she deserves much better than this unattractive individual. Still, the Adam and Eve of the play, however their names are matched, do not seem a good match either; but that is not the point. The names are there to send the reader's thoughts in a different direction when he considers Adam. Like his counterpart in the garden of Eden, Adam meets Eve in the garden and is tempted by her; and as a result- though in more physical and even grotesque fashion- he too falls, out of the window. This puts much more emphasis on Eve as temptress than would seem to be there on the plot's surface and much more emphasis on Adam's sin as a universal human weakness of the male for the female. Now this kind of emphasis might not seem to be easily reconcilable with the plot, in which Adam seems to demand of Eve that she give herself to him sexually as the price of his intervening to prevent Ruprecht's being conscripted for service with the army in Batavia, an event which Adam has in any case invented in order to frighten her. Human susceptibility is one thing; forgery and extortion are another” (Ellis, 1979 pp 123-124).

Kleist generates tension throughout the comedy by limiting violence to its verbal rather than physical manifestation. Examples include “Frau Marthe’s repeated expressions of desire to exact physical revenge on the party responsible- in her mind, Ruprecht- for the broken jug. Her first appearance before the court is punctuated by a speech in which she equates the judge with a henchman and imagines the culprit receiving a sound whipping. Her protracted description of the broken jug includes the demand that Ruprecht be broken on the wheel; she interrupts Ruprecht’s account of the past evening’s events with threats of inflicting harm on him once the court proceedings are over; and she even threatens to break Eve’s bones for refusing to say who broke the jug. Perhaps the most striking explosion of potential violence comes from Eve, when her silence about Adam’s responsibility for the broken jug eventually breaks down and she instructs her betrothed, Ruprecht, to grab hold of and bash the judge without restraint. Despite these repeated verbal calls for brutality, the thrashing of Adam’s cloak, upon his escape from the stage, is its sole physical manifestation” (Lande, 2018 pp 316-317).

"The broken jug"


Time: 1600s. Place: Huisum, Holland.

Text at https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/39782 https://kupdf.net/download/heinrich-von-kleist-the-broken-jug_59127e61dc0d604c6f959e98_pdf

Judge Adam learns that a justice counsellor has arrived to investigate the doings of his court. It is a bad time for him, having suffered two blows on the head from the previous night and being scratched all over. He is nervous, and, whenever so, subject to defecating. Counsellor Walter notes Adam's behavior in a case about a jug. Martha accuses Ruprecht, her daughter's intended, of breaking it, which he denies, accusing a stranger found in Eve's bedroom late at night, whom he could not identify, perhaps another suitor of hers named Liebrecht, to whom he gave two head-blows. Eve also denies that Ruprecht is responsible but names no one. Adam appears relieved to hear Liebrecht's name, but Walter is surprised at the judge's unwillingness to hear Eve's complete testimony. Ruprecht's aunt testifies she heard Eve in her garden one half-hour before he broke her door in. She reports that Eve seemed discontented and even disgusted at being in that man's company. When she asked Eve who is the man she spoke with, she answered "Ruprecht". Ruprecht again denies he was there. She followed the unknown man's footprints in the snow and saw a pile of excrement along the way. She also saw evidence of a deformed foot, perhaps the devil's, leading all the way to Judge Adam's house. At this point, Walter orders that the case be immediately stopped. Adam pronounces Ruprecht guilty, who, convinced Adam is the culprit, rushes towards him, but he escapes, leaving his robe behind. Eve worries about Ruprecht being sent to prison, but Walter reassures her on that point. He learns that Adam demanded sexual favors from her in exchange of preventing Ruprecht's conscription in the army on dangerous missions.

=Christian Dietrich Grabbe=



Another comic writer of note is Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836) with "Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung" (Jest, satire, irony, and deeper significance, 1827).

"Jest, satire, irony, and deeper significance" is meant to baffle, ironically presenting elements to suggest some deep meaning only to pull it away, ironically presenting elements of serious German literature written by his contemporaries only to mock at them. "When Mollfels interrupts his proposal to Liddy to tell the plot of an extraordinary drama he has written ‘a story too foolish for him not to resist tell it straightway’, the problem of the intrigue, whether Liddy is to chose the right husband, is put aside as too obvious to be bothered with. Or again when the devil comes to terms with the villain Mordax to help in his pursuit of Liddy and offers as conditions that his eldest son must study philosophy and that Mordax himself musts kill 13 tailor’s apprentices, the most innocent of all human beings, and that Mordax agrees to kill 7, or even finally 12, but not one more, this is a form of absurdity that has absolutely no link with the normal course of expected events...If we are to look for the deeper meaning Grabbe ironically promises in the title, it lies in this uncertainty of mood rather than in any specific episode or even specific philosophy in the play. Certainly there is no articular spokesman to expound the play’s meaning or present the author’s point of view nor is there a hero to set the tone” (Nicholls, 1969 pp 78-85).

As a dramatic poet, Grabbe showed the greatest Byronic boldness (Menzel, 1840 p 285). "Scepticism, dissatisfaction with life and contempt of it, hatred of the conventional, an attitude of defiance toward society, admiration for strong individuals, and a general low estimate of women are the most important traits that we find in both [Grabbe and Byron]. To these may be added frequent and sudden transitions from the noble and lofty to the ridiculous. Byron's scepticism regarding the existence of a benevolent supreme being, and the meaning and purpose of human life never passes beyond the stage of doubt, negation alternates with fervent hope. Grabbe decided these questions for himself once for all: he denied the benevolence of the supreme being, and saw no purpose in human life other than self-assertion and self-preservation...Coventionality Byron attacked and despised as mere hypocrisy and hidden vice; to Grabbe it appeared, like practically all human institutions, merely ludicrous...Byron's most attractive female characters, like Haidè, Zuleika, Myrrha, Neuha, etc..., are all very one-sided. Their love sways them with elemental and irresistible force, and there exists for them nothing outside of this love. Grabbe's women are all of secondary importance; their characters are shadowy and pale” (Wiehr, 1908 pp 134-136). "With his striving after a faithful reproduction of reality and his contempt of all ideals, he may be considered one of the precursors of that trend which later took a position hostile to classic and romantic poetry" (Witkowski, 1909 p 40). "Grabbe fell between two stools, and that even more pitiably than his predecessor Kleist. Forced by the circumstances of his time into a romantic mould, he had little or nothing of the romanticist about him; he was half a Storm and Stress poet of the eighteenth-century type, and half a very modern realist" (Robertson, 1913 p 174).

"Jest, satire, irony, and deeper significance"


Time: 1820s. Place: Germanic territory.

Text at ?

To please the boy's father, a village schoolmaster agrees to present young Gottlieb to Baron Haldungen's castle. But first Gottlieb must mark the master's face with ink to make him appear more diligent. On a hot August day, the devil, removed from hell because of some housecleaning being done there, shivers on a hillside and faints as a natural scientist notices his plight. With three of his science colleagues, he helps the devil recover at the castle, where the latter identifies himself to all as a bishop. The court poet, Ratsbane, remarks that as a bishop he arrives in time to perform the marriage ceremony between the baron's daughter, Liddy, and a man named Wattsdale. The so-called bishop is forced to admit that he does not know the text of the ceremony, but Liddy assures him, to her lover's sorrow, that the wedding is still months away. When the schoolmaster arrives at court, the marks on his face impress no one. While the schoolmaster criticizes modern German poetry, the bishop, still feeling chilly, breaks a chair and sets it afire to dip his finger in. Gottlieb impresses no one either, to Liddy appearing much like a numskull. "A numskull genius," the schoolmaster points out, "like so many to be found today." Although the baron generously invites the false bishop to remain at the castle, the latter only wants to cause trouble, principally prevent his daughter's marriage. After having asked the village blacksmith to fix his loosened cloven hoof, he accosts Baron Murdax and promises him his aid in marrying Liddy provided he murder thirteen apprentice tailors. Murdax agrees to murder twelve and break a few ribs of the thirteenth. The devil next accosts Wattsdale, who agrees to part with his bride in exchange for cash to pay off his debts. In his room, Ratsbane decides to write a poem about a man unable to write a poem. Looking out the window in his plight to find a simile for chewing quills, he sees a boy defecating but decides that is not it. "What the mane is to a horse, the quill is to a pen," he reasons and decides to work on that. His musings are interrupted by the devil, who informs him about who is in and out of hell. Yet another suitor for Liddy arrives, Mushcliff, who expects to be repulsed because of his ugly face. To thank the schoolmaster for encouraging him despite his handicap, he gives the schoolmaster twenty condoms no longer of any use to him. Mushcliff's fears are all too justified: Liddy indeed rejects him without hesitation. For his part, the schoolmaster agrees with the blacksmith to capture the devil, place him inside a cage, and make money of him at fairs and market places. They go on a drinking binge with the suicidal Mushcliff, Ratsbane, and even little Gottlieb while Murdax murders all thirteen apprentice tailors. Recovering from the bout, Ratsbane invites Liddy for a coach drive in the woods. The schoolmaster succeeds in attracting the devil in his cage by placing the condoms in it. However, Murdax fails in wooing Liddy and therefore asks the help of accomplices to abduct her. But he fails once more when Mushcliff fires pistol shots to scare them away. This transforms Liddy's view of Mushcliff altogether. She agrees to marry the fellow after all. Unexpectedly, the schoolmaster is unable to follow his design when the devil's grandmother shows up to save him. The schoolmaster is then irritated to find Christian Dietrich Grabbe in the woods with a lighted lantern, presumably, like Diogenes, to find an honest man.

=Amalie Heiter=



Amalie Heiter, princess of Saxony (1794-1870), was responsible for another fine comedy of the period: "Die Heimkehr des Sohnes" (The son's return, 1842) in which a married couple wishes to separate but is unexpectedly brought together again.

"The son's return"


Time: 1830s. Place: Hamburg, Germany.

Text at https://archive.org/details/sixdramasillustr00amaliala

Against Colonel Seewald’s advice, his son, George, married Johanna, a poor man’s daughter. Because of his father’s lack of financial support and his obligations towards his wife’s family, the couple were forced to accept positions as tutor and governess, which they lost when their patron discovered their love of each other. As a result, George sought his fortune in America as a tutor, but was reported to have died. Taking pity on her poor condition, Colonel Seewald and his wife, Clara, took up Johanna into their house, who paid them back by devoting time in household duties with an energetic will. During the course of a year, Johanna is courted by Braus, a forester, but is hesitant to marry him. Unexpectedly, George returns from Guadalupe, even more expectedly, rich. Overwhelmed with joy, Clara requests Braus to inform Johanna about George’s arrival, which he accepts to do. Johanna is stunned at these news and intimates a fault on her part concerning her long-lost husband. The colonel decides “to throw anger in the grave” and forget about his son’s disobedience to his will. When Clara announces that Johanna has lived under their roof, George is as stunned at this turn of events as she was at his return, because he thought she had died, having received an ill-informed letter on this subject in Guadalupe. On entering the room, Johanna glances at her husband and immediately rushes out, determined to leave the house before even speaking with him. George tells his father that before their separation he mostly lived at variance with his wife and is dejected at the thought of living with her again. There is a second unexpected arrival, for George, thinking his wife dead, married a second time, Adèle, daughter of a wealthy Creole while serving as her brother’s tutor, the father and brother having died from yellow fever and she the only remaining survivor in the family. When Adèle first meets the colonel, she takes him for the steward. After some painful moments, the colonel discovers she is his son’s wife. He disowns him, unaware that his son thought his first wife had died. Suspecting that Johanna wrote to George the false news of his wife’s death, Braus confronts her with his thoughts but is unable to make her talk. He next reveals to George the love he bears his wife, but yet encourages him out of a sense of duty to remain with her. On discovering that George’s wife is still alive, Adèle prepares to return to Guadalupe, not before offering half her fortune to him, but he declines the offer. When Johanna learns of Adèle’s arrival and departure, she asks a servant to pursue her. A final surprise occurs when George finally casts his eyes on Johanna, whom he calls “Lisette”. Indeed, Johanna is not the Johanna he knew as his wife but her grieving younger sister, who, destitute of any means of support after her sister's death, pretended to be Johanna while accepting the charitable offer of the Seewalds to live with them. This revelation sets George free to remain with Adèle as husband and wife.