"'I\II!!!'fl"'" HERBERT LINDENBERC;E R y como siempre ha sido 10 que mas ha alegrado y divertido la representaci6n bien aplaudida, y es representaci6n la humana vida, una comedia sea HISTORICAL la que hoy el cielo en tu teatro vea. The Maker to the World, in Calderon, El gran teatro del mundo DRAMA Und jetzt an des Jahrhunderts ernstem Ende, Wo selbst die Wirklichkeit zur Dichtung wird ... The Relation Schiller, Prologue to Wallenstein of Literature Vergangenes historisch artikulieren heisst nicht, es erkermen "wie es denn eigentlich gewesen ist ." Es heisst, sich einer Erinnerung bernachtigen, wie sie im Augenblick einer Gefahr aufbIitzt. and Reality Walter Benjamin, "Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen" THE llNIVERSTTY OF CHICAGO PRESS CIIICA(;O AND LONDON PREFACE ONE California, Riverside; and Rose Zimbardo of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, for their willingness to chat with me about various aspects of the project and to offer suggestions, information, and ideas. HISTORICAL DRAMA I wish to express my gratitude, as well, to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for its generous fellowship; to Washington University, AND HISTORICAL REALITY St. Louis, for granting me a sabbatical leave early in the project; to Stanford University for funds for typing and photocopying; to Evelyn Barnes and Jo Guttadauro for patiently and accurately typing the manuscript; and to the Comparative Literature secretary at Stanford, Mrs. Gloria Spitzer, for her usual persistence and skill in supervising its difficult early and final stages. LEVELS OF REALITY Before you study the history study the historian ....Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment. E. H. Carr, What Is History? Die Geschichte objektiv denken ist die stille Arbeit des Drama­ tikers; namlich alles aneinander denken, das Vereinzelte zum Ganzen weben: iiberall mit del' Voraussetzung, dass eine Einheit des Planes in die Dinge gelegt werden miisse , wenn sie nicht darinnen sei. FREQUENTLY CITED EDITIONS Nietzsche, "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil del' Historie fiir das Leben" The following works will be cited in the notes by the author's name and volume number alone. II historical fact establishes a work's claim to represent reality, historical ,I, .una should be the most realistic of dramatic forms. The much-vaunted Brecht, Bertolt. Stiicke. 12 vols. Berlin and Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, ,,·.dism of writers such as Ibsen and Chekhov is, after all, built out of 1953-59. Citations are from the reprint of 1961-62. '" Llgined characters going their fictional rounds; an audience's acceptance of Buchner, Georg. Samtliche Werke und Briefe. Ed. Werner R. Lehmann. 4 t lurr worlds as "real" must be based on its faith that the everyday problems vols (still incomplete). Hamburg: Wegner, 1967-. ,,,,,I household objects with which these dramatists are concerned present a Corneille, Pierre. Theatre. Ed. Pierre Lievre and Roger Caillois. Paris: II""e plausible, or intense, or significant version of reality than the public Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1950. Since all citations are from volume 1, ".:,II(·S traditional to historical plays. What we accept as "real" differs widely the volume number will not be given in the notes. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Werke, Hamburger-Ausgabe. Ed. Erich Trunz et I, (I'll age to age: a serious mind of the late nineteenth century would have felt al. 14 vols. Hamburg: Wegner, 1948-60. II «(luld better experience reality in Ghosts or The Father than in those highly Racine. Jean. Oeuvres completes, Ed. Raymond Picard. Paris: Bibliotheque , 1... 1orical performances of Edwin Booth or Henry Irving impersonating de la Pleiade, 1950. Since an citations are from volume 1, the volume I{"hard III. number will not be given in the notes. The issue of whether or not we experience "reality" in a literary work (an Schiller, Friedrich. Werke, Nationalausgabe. Ed. Julius Petersen et al . 44 vols '·.·.11(' present in one form or another since Plato) has become especially intense (still incomplete). Weimar: Bohlau, 1943-. .III' ing recent generations. Throughout most of the Western tradition, Quotations from Shakespeare will be identified in the text rather than in I\'I urrs (or at least their critics) made verisimilitude rather than reality itself notes; they are based on the New Arden edition, ed. Una Ellis-Ferrnor et al. Ii ... goal toward which they strove. They could thus present a historical (London: Methuen, 1951-). Quotations from Coriolanus, Hamlet, and , 11.11 .utcr or action within a broad framework of accepted notions. Historical Richard III, which had not yet appeared in the New Arden at the time of IILlllTial had the same status as myth: both belonged to what Horace called wriling, a rr- from the New Cambridge edition, ed. John Dover Wilson "I",hlicly known matters" ("publica materies")! and both depended--indeed, (Callll>ridgc: Cambridge University Press, editions of I!):,H. I!1:,·l. and 1959 ',1 ill do ,I<-pcnd Oil an audicncc's willingrwss to assimilate the portrayal of a 1'·SIW(liv(·ly). HISTORICAL DRAMA AND HISTORICAL REALITY LEVELS OF REALITY familiar story or personage to the knowledge it already brings to the theater. 2 11I,llly deserving great men."7 Racine's defensiveness, clothed in what sel'lIlS 10 Achilles must be portrayed as "restless, irascible, unyielding, and hard," II'; all absurd legalism, is an extreme instance in the long and complex ("(II ifl iCl Horace tells us, and Medea as "fierce and invincible."3 1...1ween poetry and history which has been a central issue in criticism siuc« In publicly known matters, reality or plausibility exists essentially within .\1 istotle, I might add that we today would be concerned not with the legal the consciousness of the audience. Commentators on the first part of Henry 1'J('priety ofJunie's becoming a vestal virgin but with its dramatic propriciy: VI never tire of reminding us that Shakespeare's audience knew Joan of Arc '.1111'(' it is difficult for us to share the seventeenth century's conception of the only as an evil force. In the twentieth century her story has become generally - ouvcnt as a proper refuge for a raped woman, we can all too easily view known to the point that any writer is forced to recognize and cope with those [uuic's flight as the only inauthentic action within what is otherwise one of the aspects of her career which we are all familiar with-her voices, her death at '~I cutest of historical dramas. the stake, her heroic role in battle. If he wishes to secularize her voices, or Although we may be considerably less literal-minded than the seventeenth bring her back, as Shaw does, to face her friends or enemies after death, he is '('Illliry in evaluating a dramatist's use of history, we retain considerable still working within the system of meanings we attach to her. Schiller, writing .iwareness of the relationship of a play to its source. Our modern prefaces to of her before she had entered the popular consciousness to the degree she has ,J1dlT historical plays generally expend a goodly amount of space on how the in our own century, could allow her to die actively in battle instead of w i iter used the chronicles he was working from; often, in fact, the relevant passively at the stake, and we allow him this freedom (as we allow Shakespeare ',IIUlce material is reprinted in an appendix. Although our tendency to stress to blacken her name) through our historical sense that even the most public 111l' importance of sources is doubtless a product of the "positivistic" mode of stories change their meanings from one era to another. A playwright writing '" liolarship which dominated literary study earlier in our century, it is also, I about George Washington for an American audience today could doubtless I hink, a kind of "common-sense" attitude which we have learned to take for portray a measure of Machiavellianism beneath Washington's noble exterior, I',' .mted : our first notion in reflecting about a history play is not to view it as and he could even endow him with a sizable group of imaginary children; yet .111 imaginative structure in its own right but to ask how it deals with its given our consciousness of at least the existence, if not the precise personality hist orical materials. Thus, we have learned to marvel at the way famous of Martha Washington, under no circumstances could he make him a I'.lssages such as Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra on her barge and bachelor. A poet is better off never having met his historical characters, said \',.Iumnia's final plea to Coriolanus utilize much of the diction and even Goethe, referring to Egmont, whom he presented as an amorous bachelor .vut ax of their sources, or at the fact that about one-sixth of Dantons Tad instead of a husband with a dozen children as his sources indicated.v What a ( /1(/ nton 's Death) consists of close paraphrase or translation of Buchner's spectator doesn't know, to take off from the old saying, will not harm his ',lIl11'ces.8 Conversely, we marvel at the way Corneille built Cinna out of a mere response. 111I('e pages each in Seneca and Montaigne, or how Racine, as he himself "Where the event of a great action is left doubtful, there the Poet is left I".asts in his preface, created Berenice out of even sparser materials-- a line or Master," Dryden wrote in his preface to Don Sebastian, a play whose I wo in Suetonius :" or at how such youthful-seeming heroes as Shakespeare's historical background was sufficiently thin to leave Dryden's imagination l lorspur, Goethe's Egmont, and Kleist's Prince Friedrich von Homburg would ample room for creativity.f Dryden was, of course, living at a time when ."1 have been portrayed as middle-aged if their authors had been sticklers for people had begun to distinguish carefully between truth and legend, but .11 curacy.