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DRAMA
Under the section French Drama (below), the history of the Theatre Libre is outlined. Within three or four years of its inception M. Antoine’s experiment had been imitated in Germany, England, and America. The Freie Biihne of Berlin came into existence in 1889, the Independent Theatre of London in 1891. Similar enterprises were set on foot in Munich and other cities. In America several less formal experiments of a like nature were attempted, chiefly in Boston and New York. Nor must it be forgotten that in Paris itself the Theatre Libre did not stand alone. Many other thedtres d cote sprang up, under such titles as “ Theatre d’Art,” “ Theatre Moderne,” “ Theatre de FAvenir Dramatique.” The most important and least ephemeral was the “ Theatre de FCEuvre,” founded in 1893 by M. Lugne-Poe, which represented mainly, though not exclusively, the symbolist reaction against naturalism. The impulse which led to the establishment of the Theatre Libre was, in the first instance, entirely French. If any foreign influence helped to shape its course, it was that of the great Russian novelists. Tolstoi’s Puissance des Tdnebres was the only “ exotic ” play announced in M. Antoine’s opening manifesto. But the whole movement, in France and elsewhere, was soon to receive a potent stimulus from a somewhat unlikely quarter. Born in 1828, the Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen was already an old man before his fame became European. His youth and middle life had been devoted to romantic tragedy and satiric drama in verse. Not till 1877 did he finally restrict himself to prose and to the modern world. In the series of plays which then followed he anticipated the process of evolution which was to lead, both in France and Germany, through prosaic realism to an intensely imaginative treatment of everyday life, touched here and there with symbolism. As a matter of fact, the author of Brand and Peer Gynt was above all things a poet. In essaying a literal and photographic transcript of reality, he was merely, as it were, trying a new set of tools. He is least himself in his most prosaic play, Pillars of Society. In its successors the poet gradually but decisively reasserts himself, and shakes off the trammels of the theoretic realist. Still, there was a sufficient element of realism, narrowly so called, in A Doll’s House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, and The Wild Duck to awaken the enthusiasm of the realist party, just as the symbolists afterwards hailed with delight The Lady from the Sea, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf. Ibsen’s early romantic plays had been known in Germany since 1875. In 1878 Pillars of Society, and in 1880 A Doll’s House, achieved wide popularity, and held the German stage side by side with A Bankruptcy, by Bjornstjerne Bjornson (6. 1832). But these plays had little influence on the German drama. Their methods were, indeed, not essentially different from those of the French school of the Second Empire, which were then dominant in Germany as well as everywhere else. It was Ghosts (acted in Augsburg and Meiningen 1886, in Berlin 1887) that gave the impulse which, coalescing with the kindred impulse from the French Theatre Libre, was destined in the course of a few years to create a new dramatic literature in Germany. During the middle decades of the century Germany had produced some dramatists of solid and even remarkable talent, such as Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1865), Heinrich Laube (1806-1884), Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878), and Gustav Freytag (1816-1895). Even the generation which held the stage after 1870, Paul Heyse (b. 1830), Paul Lindau (b. 1839), and Adolf Wilbrandt (b. 1837), with numerous writers of light comedy and farce, such as Wichert, Blumenthal, Yon Moser, L’Arronge, and Schonthan, had produced a good many works of some
merit. But, in the main, French artificiality and frivolity predominated on the German stage. In point of native talent and originality, the Austrian popular playwright Ludwig Anzengruber (1839-1889) was probably well ahead of his North German contemporaries. It was in 1889, with the establishment of the Berlin Freie Buhne, that the reaction definitely set in. In Berlin, as afterwards in London, Ghosts was the first play produced on the outpost stage, but it was followed in Berlin by a very rapid development of native talent. Less than a month after the performance of Ibsen’s play, Gerhart Hauptmann (b. 1862) came to the front with Vor Sonnenaufgang, an immature piece of almost unrelieved Zolaism, which he soon followed up, however, with much more important works. In Das Friedensfest (1890) and Einsame Menschen (1891) he had transferred his allegiance from Zola to Ibsen. His true originality first manifested itself in Die Weber (1892) • and since that time he has produced nine or ten plays in several different styles, but all bearing the stamp of a potent individuality. His most popular productions have been the dramatic poems Hannele and Die Versunkene Glocke, the low-life comedy Der Biberpeh, and the low-life tragedy Fuhrmann Henschel. Other remarkable playwrights belonging to the Freie Buhne group are Max Halbe (b. 1865), author of Jugend and Mutter Erde, and Otto Erich Hartleben (f>. 1864), author of Hanna Jagert and Eosenmontag. These young men, however, so quickly gained the ear of the general public, that the need for a special “free stage” was no longer felt, and the Freie Buhne, having done its work, ceased to exist. Unlike the French Theatre Libre and the English Independent Theatre, it had been supported from the outset by the most influential critics, and had won the day almost without a battle. The productions of the new school soon made their way even into some of the subventioned theatres; but it was the unsubventioned Deutsches Theater of Berlin that most vigorously continued the tradition of the Freie Buhne. One or two playwrights of the new generation, however, did not actually belong to the Freie Buhne group. Hermann Sudermann (6. 1857) produced his first play, Die Ehre, in 1888, the year before the Freie Buhne came into existence, and his most famous work, Heimat, in 1892. In him the influence of Ibsen is very clearly perceptible; while Arthur Schnitzler of Vienna, author of Liebelei, may rather be said to derive his inspiration from the Parisian “ new comedy.” The promoters of the Theatre Libre had probably never heard of Ibsen when they established that institution, but three years later his fame had reached France, and Les Revenants was produced by the Theatre Libre, 29th May 1890. Within the next two or three years almost all his modern plays were acted in Paris, most of them either by the Theatre Libre or by L’Gmvre. Close upon the heels of the Ibsen influence followed another, less potent, but by no means negligible. The exquisite tragic symbolism of Maurice Maeterlinck (b. 1862) began to find numerous admirers about 1890. In 1891 his one-act play Elntruse was acted ] in 1893, Pelleas et Melisande. By this time, too, the reverberation of the impulse which the Theatre Libre had given to the Freie Buhne began to be felt in France. In 1893 Hauptmann’s Die Weber was acted in Paris, and, being frequently repeated, made a deep and lasting impression. The English Theatre Libre, the Independent Theatre, opened its first season, 13th March 1891, with a performance of Ghosts. This was not, however, the first introduction of Ibsen to the English stage. On 7th June 1889 (six weeks after the production of The Profligate), A Dolls House was acted at the Novelty Theatre, and ran for three
