Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Comedy, the Sentimental Marriage, and Modes of Resistance
- 1 Promoting the Sentimental Marriage in Theory and in Practice
- 2 The Virgin Huntress Tamed: J. C. Gottsched's Atalanta and the Erasure of Female Autonomy
- 3 Marriage Brokering at the Expense of Economics: C. F. Gellert's Die zärtlichen Schwestern
- 4 The Clothes Make the Man: J. E. Schlegel's Der Triumph der guten Frauen
- 5 Cross-Dressing and Gender Performance in G. E. Lessing's Der Misogyne
- 6 Sickness Masks Desire in Th. J. Quistorp's Der Hypochondrist
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - Cross-Dressing and Gender Performance in G. E. Lessing's Der Misogyne
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Comedy, the Sentimental Marriage, and Modes of Resistance
- 1 Promoting the Sentimental Marriage in Theory and in Practice
- 2 The Virgin Huntress Tamed: J. C. Gottsched's Atalanta and the Erasure of Female Autonomy
- 3 Marriage Brokering at the Expense of Economics: C. F. Gellert's Die zärtlichen Schwestern
- 4 The Clothes Make the Man: J. E. Schlegel's Der Triumph der guten Frauen
- 5 Cross-Dressing and Gender Performance in G. E. Lessing's Der Misogyne
- 6 Sickness Masks Desire in Th. J. Quistorp's Der Hypochondrist
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Although written in 1748, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's (1729–81) one-act comedy Der Misogyne (The misogynist) first appeared in print in 1755 in the sixth volume of G. E. Leßings Schrifften (G. E. Lessing's writings). This one-act version was expanded to three acts in 1767 and published (as Der Misogyn) in the first volume of Lustspiele von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Comedies by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1767, 2nd ed. 1770). The following analysis bases itself primarily on the one-act version composed in 1748 but also draws upon the revised, three-act version when it illuminates the text's construction of gender roles, desire, and the sentimental marriage.
Der Misogyne was not performed as often as Lessing's other early comedies and certainly not as often as his later plays Miß Sara Sampson (1755), Minna von Barnhelm (1767), or Emilia Galotti (1772), all of which were performed several hundred times in the last half of the eighteenth century and most of which can be seen in theaters even today. Nevertheless, this particular comedy was performed at least fourteen times between 1762 and 1778. The play reached audiences throughout the German-speaking world and even beyond and thus exerted some influence on the eighteenth- century public discourse on gender roles, desire, and marriage. The play was also received well by contemporary critics.
Der Misogyne is another contemporary literary depiction of a crossdressing woman, also named Hilaria. In this play, the misogynist Wumshäter (most likely an allusion to the title of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's 1607 play The Woman-Hater) has forbidden his son Valer to marry, since Wumshäter himself has had three bad marriages.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012