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The Lamentations of Don Juan and Macbeth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Edmund J. Goehring
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Abstract

In 1772, Gottlieb Stephanie introduced an adaptation of Macbeth to replace a banned Viennese Don Juan scenario. This essay uses Stephanie's “new stone guest” to uncover broader historical and thematic connections between Macbeth and Don Juan literature. Both tales have roots in anti-Machiavellian theater, which describes the psychic wreckage brought about when one suppresses the conscience in attempting to subdue fortune. Stephanie expresses this shared vision most vividly by folding a lamento into his tragedy. A closing lamentation delivered from hell was a fixture in Don Juan lore, and modern scholarship tends to interpret it as a carnivalesque defiance of temporal and divine stricture. Stephanie, however, draws on a different treatment of the episode: the protagonist's plaint represents a quest for immortality that has turned into a desire for annihilation. Instead of offering defiance, Stephanie's Macbeth follows the course of many Don Juans in despairing over the possibility of grace.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 5 , October 2005 , pp. 1524 - 1542
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

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