Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Although scorned as “sickly and stupid” by William Wordsworth in his Preface (1800) to the Lyrical Balads (Wordsworth 1974, 1: 128), German tragedies attracted huge audiences in London. The influence of German drama on the British stage increased in the 1780s, and by the end of the 1790s, as noted by Allardyce Nicoll, “the enthusiasm for the drama of Kotzebue and his companions” had risen to a height of popularity (Nicoll 1927: 66, quoted in Wordsworth 1974: 172n.). Although many German plays were adapted for the British stage, there was little interest in the “destiny drama” (Schicksalstragödie) that enjoyed a decade of popularity in Germany early in the nineteenth century. Best exemplified in Zacharias Werner's The Twenty-fourth of February (1806; Der vierundzwanzigste Februar), these plays depicted a character compelled by a malignant destiny to commit a horrible crime. The concept of fate from classical Greek drama was redefined in terms of contemporary notions of nature, nurture, and familial pathology. Extremely popular, however, were the plays of August von Kotzebue, with more than 20 adaptations performed on the London stage between 1796 and 1801. Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Reue (1789), translated by Benjamin Thompson as The Stranger (1798), starred Sarah Siddons in the role of Mrs Haller and John Phillip Kemble in the title-role of the Stranger. Sarah Siddons also played ... log in or subscribe to read full text