Images of Goethe through Schiller's Egmont

337 Pages·2014·25.794 MB·English

by  John, D

IImmaaggeess ooff GGooeetthhee tthhrroouugghh SScchhiilllleerr's's E Eggmmoonntt
Analysing a forgotten, unpublished performance script of Friedrich Schiller's
adaptation of Goethe's play Egmont, David John examines the collaboration be-
tween the two playwrights as a means of addressing fundamental questions on
the roles of text and performance. He shows that performance, not text, consti-
tutes the essence of dramatic and theatrical experience.
John argues that shifting the focus from the text to the efficacy of perfor-
mance requires broadening our concept of performance beyond what occurs on
stage and its critical reception to include the daily life of the society that pro-
vides its context. It follows from this semiotic approach that there can be no
fixed text or understanding of Egmont or of Goethe himself— only multiple im-
ages. John's exploration of image includes literary motifs, acting, staging, and
social role playing, with particular reference to Goethe's development as an
artist and cultural icon.
In addition to presenting a comprehensive analysis of the play and a discus-
sion of Egmont's reception from its first appearance to the present (including
productions on both stage and screen), John provides an in-depth performance
analysis based on the theories of Alter, Burns, Carson, Fischer-Lichte, Goffman,
Pavis, and Schechner. The book includes the complete Mannheim manuscript
(M372), critically edited and published as a performance text for the first time.
DAVID G. JOHN is professor of German, University of Waterloo.
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Images of
Goethe through
Schiller's Egmont
DAVID G. JOHN
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
McGill-Queen's University Press 1998
ISBN 0-7735-1681-6
Legal deposit third quarter 1998
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and
Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council
for the Arts for its publishing program.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
John, David G. (David Gethin), 1947-
Images of Goethe through Schiller's Egmont
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-1681-6
I. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Egmont. 2. Schiller, Friedrich,
1759-1805.1. Title.
PTI9I5.E4J64 1998 832'.6 C097-901278-3
This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc.
in 10/12 Adobe Garamond.
Catharinae
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Illustrations 23, 36,168-75, 186-88, 200-08, 225
Introduction 3
1 Egmont as Text: Scholarly Documentation 24
2 Egmont. Ein Trauerspiel in drey Aujziigen 36
3 From Text to Performance 92
4 Reflections of the Text in Performance 123
5 Text and Image 148
6 Acting I: Image on Stage 176
7 Acting 2: The Director's Image 189
8 Acting 3: Image in Society 209
9 Goethe and Egmont Today: Stage and Screen 226
Conclusion 268
Notes 271
Works Cited 305
Index 320
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Acknowledgments
I wish to express first my gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for its generous funding over the several years of
research for this book, and to the Otto-Mann-Stiftung whose support in the last
phase enabled me to complete it.
With sincere appreciation I turn then to an academic's best friends, the li-
brarians and archivists whose expertise and engaged assistance gave me such
open access to the materials necessary for my investigation. My contact with
them never failed to leave me with a sense of admiration for their professional-
ism, competence, and academic integrity. Foremost among these are Liselotte
Homering, director of the theatre collection of the ReiB-Museum in
Mannheim, to whom I have turned many times over the past twenty years, and
to whom I owe permission to publish the Egmont manuscript in Chapter 2. A
number of others deserve mention: the library staff of my home university,
the University of Waterloo, especially the interlibrary loan personnel, Helena
Calogeridis of the German section and Michelle Sawchuk of Fine Arts; Chris
Hughes and Dorit Sachs of Central Photographic; the superb Wiirttember-
gische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart, my home base for a productive sabbatical
year; Katharine A. Lochnan of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Maija Vilcins of the
National Gallery of Canada, Antony V. Griffiths of The British Museum De-
partment of Prints and Drawings, Stefaan Hautekeete of the Musees Royaux
des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, J.F.Heijbroek of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and
personnel of the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerp; the
archivists of the Sammlung Oskar Fambach at the University of Bonn; Ulrike
Miiller-Harang, Goethe-Nationalmuseum Weimar, and the staff of the Anna-
Amalia-Bibliothek; further, Michael Assmann, Anhaltliches Theater Dessau;