Staging the Fringe Before Shakespeare: Hans Sachs and the Ancient Novel
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STAGING THE FRINGE BEFORE SHAKESPEARE: HANS SACHS AND THE ANCIENT NOVEL Niklas Holzberg It is well known that the plot of the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, or more precisely a later version of this, was adapted for the stage by Shakespeare in the form of a comedy: Pericles, Prince of Tyre, writ- ten between 1606 and 1608. A few years previously in another of his comedies, Troilus and Cressida, he had also availed himself of cer- tain motifs derived ultimately from two ancient texts which, like the Historia, are classed as fringe novels: the Troy stories of Ps.-Dares and Ps.-Dictys. But Shakespeare was not the first to dramatise an- cient novels. A good fifty years earlier the Nürnberg cobbler and Meistersinger Hans Sachs (1494-1576) had turned the plots of three ancient prose narratives into his own brand of drama: a tragedy on the fall of Troy dating from 28th April 1554,1 a tragedy on the life of Alexander the Great (27th September 1558),2 and a comedy on Aesop (23rd November 1560).3 Sachs read the three fringe novels used – Ps.-Dictys’ Troy Story, Ps.-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance, and the anonymous Aesop Romance – in the German translations by, re- spectively, Marcus Tatius Alpinus,4 Johannes Hartlieb,5 and Heinrich Steinhöwel.6 The incarnation of Hans Sachs created by Richard Wagner in his opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is famous the world over, but even amongst students and teachers of German literature the histori- cal Sachs is no more than a name to all except the specialists. The latter, of course, know him not only as Meistersinger, but also as 1 Tragedia mit 13 personen, die zerstörung der statt Troya von den Griechen, unnd hat 6 actus, in Keller and Goetze (1964) vol. 12, 279-316. 2 Tragedia mit 21 personen: Von Alexander Magno, dem könig Macedonie, sein geburt, leben und endt, unnd hat 7 actus, in Keller and Goetze (1964) vol. 13, 477- 529. 3 Eine comedi mit acht personen: Esopus, der fabeldichter, und hat fünff actus, in Keller and Goetze (1964) vol. 20, 113-39, and in Goetze (1880-7) vol. 7, 142-67. 4 Warhafftige Histori vnd beschreibung von dem Troianischen krieg… (Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 26. Juni 1536); see Fochler (1990) 16ff. 5 Histori Eusebij von dem grossen künig Alexander, first printed Augsburg (Jo- hann Bämler), 1472; see Pawis (1991). 6 Esopus (Ulm: Johann Zainer, ca. 1476/77); see Dicke (1994). 394 NIKLAS HOLZBERG dramatist.7 Meisterlieder and stage plays are two of the various gen- res cultivated by Germany’s sedentary minstrel-craftsmen. These po- etry-writing members of the urban lower-middle classes were par- ticularly active in the 16th and 17th centuries. They joined together to form guilds which can be seen as forerunners of later literary circles: the Meistersinger societies, founded in, apart from Nürnberg, numer- ous towns all over Central and Southern Germany and Austria. On closer inspection, the literary output of individual members shows clearly that one of the aims was to provide for others of their class texts in plain, rhyming German as vehicles for religious and secular learning. Ways of improving the mind were not always easily acces- sible at the time: books were very expensive, not everyone could read, and those that could had in any case little time to do so simply because of their long working hours. Oral presentation of literature in the form of songs and plays was, for the audiences targeted by Hans Sachs and his fellow guildsmen, a much more convenient and di- gestible alternative. One further aim of the Meistersinger was the moral instruction of their audiences and readers. The dramas of Hans Sachs were first staged by himself and other craftsmen in Nürnberg, and later performed in other cities all over Germany. Since every play had to be ‘vetted’ by the Nürnberg City Council before it could be performed, and since the minutes of all such proceedings have survived, our knowledge of the city’s theatri- cal life is relatively good. The documents mention, for example, de- tails of which plays were presented to the censors for approval, and of when staging was permitted – as a rule from Candlemas until the first Sunday in Lent (the carnival season) and then only on Sundays and Mondays; they also tell us which buildings the Council made available for performances, and about those cases in which the Coun- cil exercised censorship. The three dramas I shall be discussing be- low were most probably first performed in one of the Nürnberg churches which, with the arrival of Martin Luther’s Reformation in 1525, were for a time no longer used for religious services. The ac- tual stage would be set up by the Meistersinger in the chancel. These churches were also used as venues for the Meisterlied sessions, in which songs would be rendered under the watchful eyes (or ears) of Merker, these being, as it were, guild-appointed sticklers for the 7 Still the best introduction for the following: Brunner (1976)..