Danton's Death, Georg Buchner, Howard Brenton, A&C Black, 2010, 1408132834, 9781408132838, 64 pages. This is your rhetoric translated. These wretches, these executioners, the guillotine are your speeches come to life. You have built your doctrines out of human heads… Why should an event that transforms the whole of humanity not advance through blood? 1794: the reaches its climax. After a series of bloody purges the life-loving, volatile Danton is tormented by his part in the killing. His political rival, the driven, ascetic Robespierre, decides Danton's fate. A titanic struggle begins. Once friends who wanted to change the world, now one stands for compromise the other for ideological purity as the guillotine awaits. A revolutionary himself, George Büchner was 21 when he wrote the play in 1835, while hiding from the police. With its hair-raising on-rush of scenes and vivid dramatisation of complex, visionary characters, Danton's Death has a claim to be the greatest political tragedy ever written. In his newly-revised translation, Howard Brenton captures Büchner's exhilarating energy as Danton struggles to avoid his inexorable fall..

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Georg BГјchner , Gilbert Frederick Hartwig, Georg BГјchner, 1953, , 334 pages. . This is your rhetoric translated. These wretches, these executioners, the guillotine are your speeches come to life. You have built your doctrines out of human heads...Why should an event that transforms the whole of humanity not advance through blood? 1794: the French Revolution reaches its climax. After a series of bloody purges the life-loving, volatile Danton is tormented by his part in the killing. His political rival, the driven, ascetic Robespierre, decides Danton's fate. A titanic struggle begins. Once friends who wanted to change the world, now one stands for compromise the other for ideological purity as the guillotine awaits. A revolutionary himself, George Buchner was 21 when he wrote the play in 1835, while hiding from the police. With its hair-raising on-rush of scenes and vivid dramatisation of complex, visionary characters, Danton's Death has a claim to be the greatest political tragedy ever written. In his newly-revised translation, Howard Brenton captures Buchner's exhilarating energy as Danton struggles to avoid his inexorable fall.

'Mr Brenton's script is demanding, compressed, even poetic.' Quentin Letts, Daily Mail, 23.07.10 'A classic political thriller set against the fervour of the French Revolution un which a battle of wills and philosophies is dramatically played out between two opposing real-life protagonists' Mark Shenton, Sunday Express, 01.08.10

Georg Buchner is widely acknowledged as the forefather of modern theatre. On his death at the age of 23, he left behind some outstanding dramatic works: his historical drama, Danton's Death, 'the most remarkable first play in European culture' (Guardian), the innovatory tragedy, Woyzeck, and the absurdist comedy, Leonce and Lena. Howard Brenton had written for the Royal Court, RSC, and the National before Romans in Britain (1980) was famously prosecuted by moral crusader, Mary Whitehouse. In addition to many plays, he has been a lead writer on TV's Spooks. His recent work for the stage includes Paul (National), In Extremis (Globe) and Never So Good (National).

Georg Büchner wrote his works in the period between Romanticism and Realism in the so-called Vormärz era in German history and literature. The goal of the politically liberal poets of this period was that literature of a sham existence would again become an effective organ for renewing political and social life. They were opposed to the Romantics and against the restoration of the old order from prior to the Napoleonic Wars. They fought against convention, feudalism and absolutism, campaigned for freedom of speech, the emancipation of the individual, including women and Jews, and for a democratic constitution. They created a trend-poetry and time-poetry - in other words, poetry that dealt with problems of the time and with a commitment to liberal political ideas. Other writers of this trend and period were Heinrich Heine (author of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen and Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (author of Faust and Erlkönig) and Franz Grillparzer (author of Weh dem, der lügt).

Whilst working on it Buchner always feared arrest. It only reached print in 1835 after being heavily cut and having the politics softened by sexual innuendo. Research for the play started in late 1834 and he completed a first version of the complete script in five weeks from mid January to mid February 1835. The same year saw a version published by Karl Gutzkow in the Literatur-Blatt of Eduard Duller's Phönix. Frühlings-Zeitung für Deutschland and a book-version in Johann David Sauerländer's Phönix-Verlag, including both the original and Duller's version and giving them the subtitle Dramatic Scenes from France's reign of terror to appease the censor. This makes it the only one of Büchner's plays to be published in his lifetime, albeit in a heavily censored version.

Its use of numerous historical sources and extensive quotations from original political speeches meant that the play was seen in the 20th century as the precursor to documentary theatre. Until 1979 no one had explored the themes and inner connections within Buchner's work between Eros and Violence systematically - that year saw Reinhold Grimm treat it in text und kritik, Georg Büchner, and it was continued in the present Georg Büchner Jahrbuch 11 (2005–2008).

The play follows the story of , a leader of the French Revolution, during the lull between the first and second terrors. Georges Danton created the office of the Revolutionary Tribunal as a strong arm for the Revolutionary Government. With this, to be accused of anything real or imagined was to be condemned to death without trial, proofs, evidence or witnesses. Within months he knew this power was a terrible mistake and fought to have it ended. Robespierre stopped him and used the Tribunal to have Danton and all opposition killed, consolidate his power and slaughter uncounted thousands of French men, women, and children. Ultimately he followed Danton to the guillotine. Witnesses describe Danton as dying bravely comforting other innocents executed with him.

Three revolutionary groups are presented at the start of the play - Danton's supporters, Robespierre's supporters, and those who do not agree with how the Revolution has evolved. Danton and Robespierre have different views on how to pursue the revolution - Danton's supporters back the end of Robespierre's repressive measures, which have already caused great suffering among the people, and they did not find in the Revolution the answer to the material and moral questions facing mankind. One citizen deplores the fact that his daughter has been forced into prostitution to support her family. Danton accepts his friends' proposal to meet Robespierre but this meeting proves to be fruitless and Robespierre resolves that Danton must be killed, though he still doubts that this decision is just.

Danton's friends press him to fight or flee Robespierre's supporters, but Danton does not see any need to do so and does not believe that the French National Convention will dare to act against him. Danton confides the guilt he feels for the September Massacres in his wife Julie. Danton is imprisoned and led before the National Assembly, which is divided - it feels it has no choice but to acquit him. However, Robespierre and Saint-Just reverse its opinion.

The prisoners discuss the existence of God and life, and an attempt to prove that God does not exist fails. Danton's supporters are transferred to the Conciergerie. During this time the revolutionary tribunal arranges for its jury to be made up of honest and faithful men. Danton appears confidently before the tribunal, impressing the public with his willingness for justice to be done. Seeing the hearers' sympathy for Danton, the court is adjourned. The tribunal's members invent a plot to change the public's mind. At the tribunal's second sitting, the people stop supporting Danton, due to his lifestyle. Danton's liberal programme is revealed as unacceptable to the masses.

Danton and his supporters are condemned to death. Danton and his friend exchange thoughts on life and death. Danton's wife Julie, to whom he has pledged to be loyal beyond death, poisons herself at their home. The people show themselves to be curious and ironic on Danton's way to the scaffold. When Lucile Desmoulins sees her husband Camille mount the scaffold, she goes mad and resolves to die too, crying "Long live the king!" and thus guaranteeing her own death sentence.

He is portrayed as a man, at his ease, with innate hedonism, with respect for the recent successes of the Revolution but doubts as to its other objectives. The atmosphere around Danton is marked by wine, gaming and easy women. This is contrary to the realities of the revolution, characterised by poverty, begging, drunkenness and prostitution (1.5). Danton was once poor and owes his current wealth to a gift from the Duke of Orleans, who tried to bribe his way to the French throne and gave Danton a gift as part of this attempt (S. 74, Z. 1–13).

Danton is also portrayed as a hero who stands up against Robespierre's unnecessary killings (Einfach Deutsch; S. 73, Z. 9–12): You want bread and he throws out heads. You thirst and he leads you to the guillotine to lick up the blood. He even takes his premature death as inevitable, with a death wish: Life is evidently a burden to me, please take it away from me, I long to be there to take it off (S. 60, Z. 13–14). Danton has a strong bond of love to his wife Julie, without whom he will not die.

He is shown as recognising the plight of the people, who admire him as "virtuous" and "the incorruptible". Even he is not always virtuous, as is already visible at the start of the play in his conversation with Danton. Robespierre is accused of killing people in order to distract from the ongoing famine. He is presented both as a man with a social conscience and as one who moves against Danton to convince the people of their own power. Other revolutionaries describe Robespierre's policy as that of a terrorist. Georges Danton had been one of the leaders of the French Revolution along with , but he began to have doubts about the Terror that had consigned opponents of the revolution to the guillotine. He was arrested, condemned and executed. Robespierre himself would not long survive him. He would be guillotined a few weeks later in July, or Thermidor as it was known in the revolutionary calendar. The play concerns the political crisis within the revolutionary movement that led to the deadly conflict between Danton and Robespierre and the beginning of the reaction that would shortly bring Napoleon Bonaparte to power.

The events and personalities involved in this conflict have been an endless and fruitful source of fascination for writers, historians and revolutionaries. Büchner’s play was one of the first and most brilliant literary attempts to grapple with the subject. He wrote it in 1835 in a matter of five weeks when he was on the run from the authorities in Hessen, where he had been involved in a revolutionary uprising. So shocking did it seem in the 19th century that it was not premiered until 1902. Since then it has come to be regarded as one of the key starting points of modern European literature. It is perhaps better known in Germany than on the British stage, but it is a play to which English writers have repeatedly returned. Trevor Griffiths has written about Danton’s last night in Who Shall be Happy ... ? and Danton reappears in his A New World meeting with Thomas Paine in prison as he does in Büchner’s play. The National Theatre production is Howard Brenton’s second version of the play.

Why should this play have such a powerful attraction? The reason is the range of themes, all them relevant to the modern world, which it addresses. Danton’s Death examines the nature of revolution, the relationship between men and women, friendship, class, determinism, materialism and the role of theatre itself. It seems to offer an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration. The problem is that if any one of those themes is emphasised at the expense of the others then the entire character of the work is transformed.

Michael Grandage’s production of Danton’s Death at the National Theatre, starring Toby Stephens as the revolutionary Georg Danton, is beautifully staged. It uses a simple and elegant set to good effect. The final execution scene is powerfully done. Many of the performances are first rate: Elliot Levey as Robespierre, Kirstie Bushell as Julie, Danton’s wife, and Eleanor Matsuura as the prostitute Marion, are particularly strong. Yet something is missing. What on earth is it all about? Why is Robespierre trying to kill Danton? Why can Danton not resist? It might almost be a personal dispute between these two men and Danton’s inability to avoid his death the result of an unaccountable, psychological lethargy on his part.

The immediate problem is that Brenton has removed two small scenes from the original play. Both of them are crowd scenes. They are very short scenes in an already short play and it is difficult to see that there was any good reason for dropping them. Running time is hardly a question. The play gains nothing in clarity without them. In fact it loses something crucial. The effect of taking them out is to unbalance the whole work because omitting them removes a character that has a vital role to play in the conflict between Danton and Robespierre. That character is not an individual, or rather it is the many individuals who make up the crowd, the mass of the population, the sans culottes, the poor who must get their living by selling their labour and their bodies on the streets of Paris. Once this element is removed from the play we are left with a largely personal drama in which two individuals are pitted against one another in a conflict that lacks any substantial basis in the wider framework of social relations.

Danton without the crowd is not really Danton. He is left as a rather effete, weary man who simply cannot be bothered to take the necessary action to defend himself. What brought Danton to the head of the revolution was his relationship with the sans culottes. He expressed their material interest in overthrowing the unequal state of affairs that existed in France under the ancien regime and establishing a more just society. Robespierre was able to defeat him because he still reflected the interests of that social layer. If that relationship is left out of the play then Robespierre loses his historical stature and is reduced to a rather dogmatic man with a prissy concern for morality. Neither man is truly himself once the crowd scenes are taken out of the play. Other characters and themes of the play are similarly left hanging in the air without the crowd scenes. The prostitute Marion has a long monologue in which she explains her attitude to sexuality. It is strangely out of context without one of the missing scenes in which a husband and wife argue about their daughter who has turned to prostitution to support the family. In isolation Marion’s monologue appears distinctly misogynistic as though Büchner wanted to present women as calculating, mercenary and lacking in profound human feelings.

The point which Büchner is making only becomes clear when Marion’s speech is set beside one of the missing scenes in which a citizen declares, “Yes, a knife, but not for the poor tart. What has she done? Nothing. It’s her hunger what whores and begs. A knife for the people that buy the flesh of our wives and daughters.―

When Marion’s monologue and the missing scene are brought together we can see that Büchner is saying that the quality of personal, sexual relations is diminished by a society that is dominated by social inequality and in which some people must sell their sexual favours to survive. Marion’s lack of affect has a social basis when both scenes are present. The absence of genuine intimacy in private sexual relations is organically connected in the play to the character of public social relations.

In the 19th century Danton’s Death offered a new way of looking at sexual relationships and the dramatic techniques Büchner developed to express his insights were no less new. Even in the early 20th century when Büchner was revived there was something shocking about his clear-eyed, unsentimental attitude towards sexuality and his sudden shifts from intensely private and intimate scenes to the public arena. To cut these sudden shifts out of the play is to make it a less revolutionary piece of theatre than it was and has no justification when modern theatre audiences would hardly be confused by such a technique. What was a revolutionary technique in Büchner’s day is the stock in trade of modern cinema and television. A film or television director can cut between scenes as rapidly as Büchner and expect his audience to grasp what is happening.

Howard Brenton has no problem with such rapid shifts in his own television work for the thriller Spooks. Modern theatre-goers already have this dramatic vocabulary at their disposal. What they do not have is Büchner’s grasp of the impact of gross social inequalities on intimate sexual relationships which they are predisposed to understand in precisely those sentimental terms that Büchner rejected. Marion’s monologue retains its shocking character in the National Theatre production, but it is reduced to a purely personal statement that has no wider social significance once the crowd scenes are removed. Like Danton and Robespierre she has been pulled out of context by this simple excision of two small scenes. The revolutionary implications of her speech are lost and the audience’s preconceptions are not challenged. http://edufb.net/1226.pdf http://edufb.net/794.pdf http://edufb.net/241.pdf http://edufb.net/1713.pdf http://edufb.net/838.pdf http://edufb.net/547.pdf http://edufb.net/718.pdf http://edufb.net/2524.pdf http://edufb.net/2338.pdf http://edufb.net/200.pdf http://edufb.net/1975.pdf http://edufb.net/301.pdf http://edufb.net/1850.pdf http://edufb.net/1003.pdf http://edufb.net/43.pdf http://edufb.net/1306.pdf http://edufb.net/1337.pdf http://edufb.net/2332.pdf http://edufb.net/1557.pdf http://edufb.net/2348.pdf