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5 - The Romantic drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2010

Nicholas Saul
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Much of German Romantic drama is experimental, eclectic and derivative. Often it seeks to embrace what in real, empirical terms is not accessible to the finite mind, and it fails aesthetically. Much of it is written or influenced by avid readers of the widest literary traditions who hope to see these fulfilled within the expanding and commodious bounds of a new dramatic form. It is nothing if not ambitious: it seeks to take over from where Schiller left off and has no doubts about its ability to compete with Goethe. In real terms, only its sole great dramatist, Heinrich von Kleist, and its other really interesting figure, Zacharias Werner, had any sense of the formal restraints needed to achieve a dramatic form that could submit to the restrictions of stage performance. The stage history of German Romanticism - an apt mixture of tragedy and farce - is briefly told, and even Kleist's reputation as a dramatist was not secure until the twentieth century. Yet German Romanticism can claim for itself arguably the most influential work of drama criticism of the nineteenth century: August Wilhelm Schlegel's Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur(1809-11; Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature), which brought the 'Classical' and the 'Romantic' into sharp formal and ideological opposition and enthroned Shakespeare and Calderón as the exemplars of the 'modern' and 'romantic'. This approach stressed formal diversity and experiment, not classical restraint; it called for the primacy of national and religious values. Ludwig Tieck's corpus of Shakespearean criticism sought to integrate Shakespeare into these patterns and it saw the drama and the theatre as the source of national revival.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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  • The Romantic drama
  • Edited by Nicholas Saul, University of Durham
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism
  • Online publication: 28 September 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521848916.005
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  • The Romantic drama
  • Edited by Nicholas Saul, University of Durham
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism
  • Online publication: 28 September 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521848916.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Romantic drama
  • Edited by Nicholas Saul, University of Durham
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism
  • Online publication: 28 September 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521848916.005
Available formats
×