Hey, I’ll have you know morality plays were nothing to sneeze at! :) We got one of the biggest ongoing spectacles of 20th/21st century German language theatre out of them. (Context: fin du siecle writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal it on the idea of writing Jederman, a play modelled on medieval morality plays like Everyman, Max Reinhardt staged it in Salzburg getting the cooperation of the local arch bishop for having every church ringing their bells at a key point, and it has been staged every year since. (Well, okay, not when the Nazis were in charge, but other than that.) (Most German language actors and actresses have “must play Everyman - male - or Lust - female in Salzburg” in their CV.)
Okay, but seriously now, [Bad username or unknown identity: “cahn”] put the problem very well. Bear also in mind that Racine and Corneille were already a century old in Fritz’ youth; he wasn’t into Beaumarchais now, was he? And by blindly following Voltaire’s doctrine that Shakespeare (or any of the Brits) wasn’t any good, he didn’t himself any favours, either. (The young Sturm und Drang poets of the 1770s going through a Shakespeare craze and coming out inspired to do their own stuff also started the German love affair with Shakespeare that later, when the 1800s turned more and more nationalistic, went to such ridiculous extremes as scholars trying to prove Will really had been German. Such idiocy aside, though, that love affair never ended, and both Goethe and Schiller would not have become the writers they did if they hadn’t been full fledged participants. It wasn’t that they disliked Corneille and Racine, or didn’t know their work well, btw, Schiller tried his hand at a Phedre translation, and Goethe had Cid discussions with visitors. But good old Shakes was their passion.)
Back to Fritz: while I had known about his refusal to acknowledge German literature, I hadn’t known, until reading the Fritz & music book and catching up with more recent biographies, that he wasn’t much better with modern (to his day) composers. I mean, he was anti-Gluck, for God’s sake. (Don’t even ask whether the existence of Haydn or young Mozart registered.) He liked Hasse well enough, but anything later was bad, and Gluck’s opera innovations were of the devil. (Well, the vaguely deist equivalent thereof.)
Now reforming your country’s laws etc. is all very well, but if you really want your country to become leading in culture, than that’s not how to do it. (His nephew wasn’t a genius - nor was he the utter idiot Fritz saw him as, following his father’s tradition of humiliating the crown prince in public - but he did much better in terms of encouraging the arts, and it was then that Berlin started to be home to salons, writers and painters.)
ETA: for contemporary contrast, what Catherine did in Russia: write comedies in Russian, to encourage others to write in Russian. Bear in mind that Russian hadn’t been her native language, or indeed the language of the court (which was French, as everywhere else in Europe).
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Re: War of the Roses, Rokoko Edition
Date: 2019-10-08 05:09 am (UTC)Okay, but seriously now, [Bad username or unknown identity: “cahn”] put the problem very well. Bear also in mind that Racine and Corneille were already a century old in Fritz’ youth; he wasn’t into Beaumarchais now, was he? And by blindly following Voltaire’s doctrine that Shakespeare (or any of the Brits) wasn’t any good, he didn’t himself any favours, either. (The young Sturm und Drang poets of the 1770s going through a Shakespeare craze and coming out inspired to do their own stuff also started the German love affair with Shakespeare that later, when the 1800s turned more and more nationalistic, went to such ridiculous extremes as scholars trying to prove Will really had been German. Such idiocy aside, though, that love affair never ended, and both Goethe and Schiller would not have become the writers they did if they hadn’t been full fledged participants. It wasn’t that they disliked Corneille and Racine, or didn’t know their work well, btw, Schiller tried his hand at a Phedre translation, and Goethe had Cid discussions with visitors. But good old Shakes was their passion.)
Back to Fritz: while I had known about his refusal to acknowledge German literature, I hadn’t known, until reading the Fritz & music book and catching up with more recent biographies, that he wasn’t much better with modern (to his day) composers. I mean, he was anti-Gluck, for God’s sake. (Don’t even ask whether the existence of Haydn or young Mozart registered.) He liked Hasse well enough, but anything later was bad, and Gluck’s opera innovations were of the devil. (Well, the vaguely deist equivalent thereof.)
Now reforming your country’s laws etc. is all very well, but if you really want your country to become leading in culture, than that’s not how to do it. (His nephew wasn’t a genius - nor was he the utter idiot Fritz saw him as, following his father’s tradition of humiliating the crown prince in public - but he did much better in terms of encouraging the arts, and it was then that Berlin started to be home to salons, writers and painters.)
ETA: for contemporary contrast, what Catherine did in Russia: write comedies in Russian, to encourage others to write in Russian. Bear in mind that Russian hadn’t been her native language, or indeed the language of the court (which was French, as everywhere else in Europe).