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Real Life or Spectacle? A Conflict in Eighteenth-Century German Drama
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The closing episode of Der neue Menoza involves a lively argument between the representatives of two generations of Germans about the essential purpose of the theatrical experience. A bluff-mannered father, honest and hard-working—a prototype of the “people” in their relatively unspoiled state—likes to go to the puppet theater and laugh at Hanswurst. His educated, super-refined son scoffs at such crude entertainment: “Was die schöne Natur nicht nachahmt, Papa! Das kann unmöglich gefallen … was für Vergnügen können Sie an einer Vorstellung finden, in der nicht die geringste Illusion ist. … Es gibt gewisse Regeln für die Täuschung, das ist, für den sinnlichen Betrug, da ich glaube das wirklich zu sehen, was mir doch nur vorgestellt wird.” Disturbed in his healthy naïveté, the father agrees to test his beloved “Püppelspiel” by the new standards; but he returns home in a fury, roaring, “Du Hund! willst du ehrlichen Leuten ihr Pläsier verderben? Meinen ganzen Abend mir zu Gift gemacht … [sagst] mir von dreimaleins and schöne Natur, daß ich den ganzen Abend da gessessen bin wie ein Narr … gezählt und gerechnet und nach der Uhr gesehen; ich will dich lehren mir Regeln vorschreiben, wie ich mich amüsieren soll.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967
References
1 J. M. R. Lenz, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Franz Blei (München, Leipzig, 1909), ii, 322–325.
2 A similarity between Gottsched, Lessing, and the Sturm und Drang was pointed out by Elizabeth M. Wilkinson in Johann Elias Schlegel: A German Pioneer in Aesthetics (Oxford, 1945), pp. 109–110.
3 From the article “Über Miltons Paradies wegen einer Übersetzung von E. G. v. B., Zerbst 1682” in Critische Beyträge, i (1732), 85–104, quoted in the introduction to Johann Elias Schlegels aesthetische und dramaturgische Schriften, ed. Johann von Antoniewicz, Deutsche Litteraturdenkmale des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, No. 26 (Heilbronn, 1887), p. xxiii. See also Gottsched's letter to Manteuffel, 31 May 1738, in Th. W. Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit: Auszüge aus seinem Briefwechsel, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1855), p. 29.
4 Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1751), p. 652.
5 Die deutsche Schaubühne nach den Regeln der alten Griechen und Römer eingerichtet, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1746–50), v, 6–7.
6 Deutsche Schaubühne, vi, “Vorrede” (unpaginated).
7 Gesammelte Schriften von Johann Christoph Gottsched, ed. Eugen Reichel (Berlin, n.d.), vi, 277–278, 281, 283.
8 See introduction to Schlegels Schriften, ed. Antoniewicz, pp. xlviii, xlix, and Charles E. Borden, “J. E. Schlegel als Vorläufer G. E. Lessings” (unpub. diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1937).
9 Cf. E. M. Wilkinson, p. 110.
10 “Auszug eines Briefes” in Schriften, ed. Antoniewicz, pp. 4–5. See also introduction to Schriften, pp. xii, xiii ff.
11 In the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stück 80.
12 Über die Comödie in Versen, in Schriften, p. 14.
13 Vergleichung Shakespeares und Andreas Gryphs in Schriften, p. 93.
14 From the preface to his translation of Destouches's Glorieux, in Schriften, p. 164.
15 Gedanken zur Aufnahme des dänischen Theaters (written 1747), in Schriften, pp. 223–224.
16 Schriften, p. 224. Cf. E. M. Wilkinson, p. 89.
17 Lessings Werke, ed. Julius Petersen and Waldemar von Olshausen (Berlin, Leipzig, Wien, Stuttgart, n.d.), v, 295–296.
18 See the article by Theodore Ziolkowski, “Language and Mimetic Action in Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson,” GR, xl (November 1965), 261–270, in which it is demonstrated that gestures and expressions are often written into the play's dialogue as aids to more natural acting. In Lessing's later works these instructions were relegated to the stage directions.
19 Dichtung und Wahrheit, 1. Teil, 3. Buch, in Goethes Werke (Weimar, 1887–1920), 1. Abt., xxvi, 148.
20 Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel in Denis Diderot, Œuvres, ed. André Billy (n.p., 1951), pp. 1248–49.
21 Entretiens, pp. 1232, 1258–61. The play, Le Fils naturel, is presented as “true” and is performed in the very house in which it “happened.”
22 For an opposite view of this question see Emil Staiger, Stilwandel. Studien zur Vorgeschichte der Goethezeit (Zürich, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963), p. 64.
23 Vorrede zu den Räubern, in Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen et al. (Weimar, 1943 ff.), iii, 6.
24 Über den Gebrauch des Chors im Trauerspiel, in Werke, Säkular Ausgabe (Stuttgart, Berlin, n.d.), xvi, 118. (Cited in text as SA.)
25 Of interest in this connection is a statement by Eric Bentley, The Modern Theater (London, 1948), p. 210: “popularized Wagnerism is probably the most widespread dramatic theory—or the most widely held preconception—of our day. The assumption is that theatre is primarily a musicovisual art, an art of spectacle, movement, and melody. It is ballet, it is opera. But it is not drama. The actor is never at more than one remove from the dancer. Unity and character are imposed upon this composite art work by an artist-director.”