Drama 6 Spring Lecture 5

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Romanticism

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Inreaction to thereason-oriented norms of the Enlightenment the Romantics favored:

Emotion and feeling over reason

Thenatural overthe artificial

Theorganic over the mechanical

Theuncanny over the ordinary

Theindividual over the collective

Subjectivity over objectivity

Freedom of expression over restraint anddiscipline

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Romanticisms

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GermanRomantics

Sturmund Drang (ca. 1770-1785)

WeimarClassicism (ca. 1788-1805)

JenaRomantics (ca. 1797-1820)

EnglishRomantics (ca. 1790-1840)

FrenchRomantics (ca. 1828-1848)

RomanticPeriod in Classical Music (ca. 1780-1910)

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Vocabulary of Romanticism

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Genius

Subjectivity

Self-Expression

Nature

Imagination

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Idealism

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Thepurpose of art is to lift the minds of men and women to higher things.

Idealistart seeks to unleash an internal essence or Spirit that resides in the world, often through reference to anidealized or poeticized sense of history or mythology.

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The Jena Romantics

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•Emergedin the university town of Jena (adjacent to Weimar) in 1797

•Activeinterchange of ideas between Weimar and Jena

•JenaRomantics: Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Novalis,Ludwig Tieck

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Artistic Views of Friedrich Schlegel

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Wrote " Athenaeum"

Schlegelbelieved that Art is sufficient in itself — not as a means to some other goalbut as a means of approaching the Absolute Ideal (Geist)and liberating Spirit from matter.

Artistsmust be passionate,spontaneous, and inspired; but also skeptical, purposeful, and reflective. Thework of art must encompass both parts of the dialectic of creativity.

Thisduality ofself-expression and self-reflection is central to Schlegel’s call for a Poesie that is “poetry and poetry of the poetry.”

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LudwigTieck (1773-1853)

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Drew on ancient popular traditions from Aristophanes to theCommedia dell’Arte

Overtly theatrical, consciously self-reflexive, andphilosophically satirical

Free the imagination of artists and audiences

Question the nature of illusion and the relationship of representation to reality.

Tieckwrote some 50 comedies, puppet plays, fantasy plays and farces, as well astales, stories, poems and novellas. He also served as literary adviser to thecourt theater at Dresden from 1825-1842.

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Plays By Ludwig Tieck

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Puss-in-Boots(1797)

TheWorld Upside Down (1798)

Prinz Zerbino (1799)

TheLife and Death of St. Genevievre (1799)

Kaiser Octavianus (1804)

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"Puss and Boots", "The World Upside Down"

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Tieck's play's that explore theatricality, plays within plays.

It’seasy to laugh ironically at Tieck’s Chinese boxes of plays-within-plays andchuckle at his attacks on a philistine society who dismiss his intellectualgames. But Tieck’s goal was to unleash in the minds of his audience thepossibilities of their own imaginations.

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Tieck's Aesthetics

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Tieck pushedthinking about the hero-artist and artistic subjectivity to the extreme,drawing attention to his own presence as the creative force behind the fictionsdisplayed on stage and his own ultimatelyunsuccessful attempts to create a coherent world.

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Romantic Irony

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Basedon a belief that the universe is unknowable, human understanding is imperfect,and all previous attempts to explain the world (whether religious orscientific) are flawed

Onecan only access truth in bits and pieces by constantly criticizing and revisingall beliefs and perceptions

Thisproduces an interest in the fragment, the aphorism, and the metatheatrical or metafictional toboth foreground and distance the impossibility and necessity of the task

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Schlegel and Romantic Irony

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“artistic reflection and the beauteousself-mirroring”

Schlegelcelebrated Tieck’s plays as a pure expression in drama of the Romantic sense ofirony in which the thinking and feeling subject (here the Romantic author)becomes the provisional object of his own ironic gaze.

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20th Century practitioners of Romantic irony

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Luigi Pirandello

Jean Cocteau

Eugene Ionesco

Robert Wilson

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Artistry of Self-Obsession

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Narcissism as am artistic expression comes directly fromSchlegel’s ruminations about the artistic task. Classicists believed the artistheld a mirror up to life; Romantics discarded the metaphor of the mirror,thinking instead of the artist as the one who lights the way for those whofollow after.

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Ludwig Tieck and the Jena Circle

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TheJena Romantics were less interested in men and women as social beings than theywere in the subjective perspective of the individual artist constrained by hisor her own subjectivity. This perhaps explains why their plays went unperformedon the 19th-century German stage.

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Closet Drama

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Closet drama is a literary form that resembles drama but is intended forprivate reading by a solitary reader or outloud in a small group rather than performed onstagebefore an audience.

Unlike other “closet dramas,” Tieck’s plays constantlyrefer to the stage and to performance, and they rely on an audience that isfamiliar with stage conventions, but in their playful dismissal of audienceexpectations and their toying with the possibilities of stage performance theyseem to defy production on stage.

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Ludwig Tieck: Pirate among the Philistines

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Philistines for the Romantics epitomized theuncritical, conventionalized and unimaginative self-satisfaction of the middleclass.

Tieck’splays are addressed to a new “aristocracy of the imagination.” They value intellectualscenarios that focus on freedomof the imagination over socialjustice and favor imaginative engagement over political engagement.

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Opéra-Comique

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Findingitself in financial trouble in 1714 due to the popularity of fairgroundentertainments, the Opéra sold the right toperform comedies with music to two fairground directors authorizing the Opéra-Comique, which performedburlesques of grand opera as well as light comedies set to music.

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Pantomimes and Harlequinades

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Offered silent characters (relying on gestures, facialexpressions, dance and acrobatics) performing in fanciful and often magicalstories (usually taking place in exotic or fictional lands). They also oftenincluded elaborate scenic transformations.

In England, these fanciful plays werecalled harlequinades and were often performed as after-pieces.

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Pantomimes

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Characters and scenarios were drawn from the Commedia dell’Arte, from provincialGallic farces, and from market-place critiques of the Grand Tradition andupper-class culture.

A lively and varied repertory developed of skit andshort plays full of fanciful adventures, marveloustransformations, and crude situations.

These plays ignored reason, verisimilitude, and decorumas well as what was probable or even possible, and they were peppered withcontemporary references and political innuendo.

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Vaudevilles

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(from voix deville or “voice of thecity”) were originally satirical poems or songs that later developedinto a new genre of light comedieswith songs.

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Boulevard du Temple

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In 1759, Jean-Baptiste Nicolet secureda license to open a theater on the Boulevard du Temple. Though legally limitedto presenting acrobats and rope-dancers, he began producing vaudevilles, pantomimes, dramaticsketches and vaudevilles.

By1761, Nicolet’s Théâtre des Grands Danseurs employed 30 actors,60 dancers, and 20 musicians, and had a repertory of some 250 short dramaticpieces.

TheBoulevard du Temple becameanew center for popular entertainment in Paris. Denizens of “leMonde”(polite society) bemoaned the low-brow taste of “le petit peuple” (the lesserpeople, plebeians).

In 1762 fire destroyed the fair atSt. Germain, adding to the success of the theaters on the Boulevarddu Temple

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French Revolution and Theater

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In 1791, the National Assembly declared that anyonecould open a theater and produce any play anywhere, any time. The ComédieFrançaise lost exclusive rights to its repertory. As many as 200 new theaters opened in Paris.

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Napoleon’s Decree of 1807

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Reinstated the old theater monopolylaws, authorizing the Comédie Française, the Opéra,the Opéra-Comique, and theOdéon as representatives of the “Great Tradition.”

Napoleon also authorized four“lesser theaters” on the Boulevard du Temple. Eachwas restricted to specific minor genres.

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Four Theaters Authorized on Boulevard du Temple

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Théâtredu Vaudeville (short plays and vaudevilles with songs set to familiarmelodies)

Théâtredes Variétés (skitsand short farces that employed vulgar or provincial dialects)

Théâtrede la Gaîté (pantomimesand harlequinades in the style of Nicolet)

Théâtrede l'Ambigu-Comique (spectaclesand melodramas)

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Change on the Boulevard du Temple

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By the mid-19th century,the commercial “boulevard theaters” of Paris were home to middle-classaudiences out for an evening’s entertainment. They offered unambitiouscommercial farces and inoffensive bourgeois comedies.

But in the first decades of the 19th century, innovativeforms prospered on the Boulevard du Temple includingpantomimes, vaudevilles, and melodramas.

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Hugo on Romanticism

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“Romanticism … all things considered, isnothing other than … liberalism in literature”

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Plays of Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

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Cromwell (1827)

Hernani (1830)

Le roi s'amuse (1832)

LucreziaBorgia (1833)

Marie Tudor (1833)

Angelo, Tyrant of Padua (1835)

RuyBlas (1838)

Les Burgraves (1843)

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Victor Hugo’s Hernani (1830)

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Associated Romanticism with liberty, liberalism andrepublicanism

Linked social liberty with the freedom of the artistfrom aesthetic rules

Praised the genius of “remarkable men” of the people

Moral ambiguity

Complex hero (noble outlaw) with self-deprecating humor

Resiliency of poetic language (freed from theneoclassical strictures of the Alexandrine line)

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Hernani Riots

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Performance of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830 gave rise to sustained disorder in the theatre… turbulence in the audience … conditions of serious unrest, close to riot.”

Play was a rebuke of Classicism in favor of Romantic (bohemian) ideas

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Shakespeare at The Odeon

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1827 A company ofEnglish actors led by Charles Kemble perform Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, KingLear and Othello at the Odéon in Paris

Dumas said that seeing the English actors performShakespeare in Paris: “was the first time I saw real passion inthe theater, giving life to men and women of flesh and bone.”

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Plays by Alexandre Dumas

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La Chasse et l'amour (1825)

HenriIII et sa cour (1829)

Christine (1830)

Antony (1831)

CharlesVII chez ses grands vassaux (1831)

LaTour de Nesle (1832)

Kean (1836)

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Alfred de Vigny

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French Romantic.

Translated Shakespeare into the Alexandrine line.

Wrote "Chatterton" (1835)

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ENJAMBEMENT

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Thecontinuationof a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza so that themeaning runs over fromone poetic line to the nextwithoutterminal punctuation.

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Epic words about Hernani

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“This barbarian horde … had come todesecrate the classical temple … to profane a shrine dedicated to lifeless andunnatural creations, or rather imitations of the old masters, with beings offlesh and blood, speaking the language or passion and of man.”

“… dressed inevery conceivable style and age of costume, except that of the prevailing mode; gaudy, shabby, eccentric andragged … with long disheveled hair floating wildly about their necks, and downupon their shoulders, and shaggy untrimmed beards.”

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HEMISTICH

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A half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single verse unit.

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BaronIsidore Taylor(1789-1879)

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Playwright,philanthropist, man of the theater, and friend of theFrench Romantics, Baron Isadore Taylor wasappointed royal commissioner of the Comédie Française in1825. The theater was in danger of going bankrupt so Taylor decided to shakethings up by expanding the theater’s repertory to include new plays by FrenchRomantics including Alexandre Dumas andVictor Hugo.

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Origins of Melodrama

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The pyrrhic victory of the Romantics at the “Battle over Hernani” led not to a flowering of Romantic drama on the Frenchclassical stage, but to the flowering of the “lesser theaters,” and especially ofmelodrama.

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Innovation of Hernani

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With Hernani, Hugobrought a new freedom of expression to the Comédie Française:a new poetic language, mixing ironic comic retorts and tragic sentiments with aswashbuckling sense of adventure borrowed from the Spanish Golden Age and fromthe melodramatic stage.

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The Paradoxes of Romanticism

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Self-transcendencethrough self-expression

Confrontingthe ineffable nature of existence in the wonders of the natural world

Artas a second creation that brings the Ideal into existence for a brief andfleeting moment

Exploringthe truth of illusionsand the vitality of Spirit

Embracingthe limitations ofrepresentation to push beyond them