The Romantic Movement I: Background and Beginnings in Germany

The Romantic Movement, like the Neoclassical before it, spanned all the arts from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. In fact it went well beyond the arts, being as much a social and political force as one of culture, Romanticism rejects reason and the rational, as preached by the Neoclassicists. The French philosopher Rousseau argued that a higher truth exists beyond the norms of human reason, which might be glimpsed, if only briefly, by exploring the infinite variety of creation. Rousseau wrote that the best places to explore are those that have not been spoiled by artificial laws and governments. Politically this meant revolt against the establishment. The French Revolution was a catalyst, and throughout Europe in the early nineteenth century rebellions abounded, culminating in failed attempts all over the continent to overthrow monarchies in 1848. 

     

Comparing the new movement with neoclassicism, in a neoclassic play, characters are situated in a room with four doors or in front of a palace – a general setting – where they resolve mighty problems in less than 24 hours, through the use of reason. 

      

For the Romantics, a higher truth than reason might be found in the seeming infinity of nature.  As you reach for this infinity, however, you become aware of a duality in human existence, dualities such as physical-spiritual; body-soul; finite-infinite. Humans are constantly frustrated as their spirits try to transcend their physical state.. The Romantic poet Shelley expressed this brilliantly in his “Ode to the West Wind.”

 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee…

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life!  I bleed...

Through ART we can be freed, momentarily, from this frustration, because through art we can get at least a glimpse of the ultimate truth. The artist/genius offers such glimpses. Ordinary people admire the artist, but they also recognize that the artist is a bit different, and that s/he can be a little strange – even, possibly, dangerous.

In spite of all the excitement the new movement generated, it created problems for the theatre.  First, the Romantic rejects rules. Why should a genius confine her or himself in a single setting, or “the appearance of reality,” while on a quest for the infinite? And how is the infinite variety of existence and inspirational insight into the cosmos supposed to fit in a few hours’ time behind a proscenium arch? 

To offer an example of how the Romantic movement spanned the arts, Gericault’s great painting “The Raft of the Medusa” is based on a true story of a nightmarish shipwreck and an even more nightmarish ride on a raft by the survivors. A melodrama of the story was produced, named The Shipwreck of the Medusa.  While the play was being performed in London, Gericault’s painting was displayed there as well, to incredible numbers, at least 50,000 visitors.  Not long after this, a panorama, 10,000 feet long, on the Wreck of the Medusa was also displayed in London, and hundreds of thousands saw it

To offer another, Delacroix’s famous painting “The Death of 

Sardanopolous” was inspired by Lord Byron’s play on the subject.  Delacroix depicted the last act, in which the tyrant’s attendants are forced to die with him.

Early romantic playwrights emulated Shakespeare, who became a perfect model for them, though the Romantics seemed unable to duplicate his tight structure and his suspenseful and exciting plots.

      

Romantic theory began in Germany, where the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel coined the term Romanticism, and used it to 

Schlegel

contrast the new art with the classic.  And Schlegel LOVED Shakespeare, using the Bard as an exemplar of the new style in essays on the Romantic versus the Classic.  Schlegel translated 17 of Shakespeare’s plays into German, and his romantic criticism was translated. It was read by the likes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who advocated the new form in England, and by Stendhal and Mme de Stael, who introduced it to France.  Schlegel is a great example of a critic having international and lasting impact.

      

Germans began writing romantic dramas of their own.  Franz Grillparzer created protagonists who were alienated wanderers, 

motivated by high ideals, but creating events that ended in disaster. One of his more famous is King Ottakar’s Rise and Fall (1824), though it’s rarely performed today. Ludwig Tieck created fantastic comedies on subjects such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Puss in Boots,” but with ironic satire included.  Johann Nestroy 

wrote romantic fantasies early in his career, and later focused on dramas and especially comedies that involved ordinary people.  He was a well-known performer as well, and usually played one of the leading comic characters.  Nestroy’s play Out for a Lark (1842) is about two clerks who decide to have a night out. He lifted the story from John Oxenford’s farce, A Day Well Spent, and it became the basis for Thornton Wilder’s The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder later re-wrote as The Matchmaker, which was made into the musical Hello Dolly, which Tom Stoppard adapted as On the Razzle.  That’s quite a theatrical genealogy!

      

The two most important German writers of the Romantic period wrote in what I’d call the “disturbingly modern” category.  Perhaps not surprisingly, their plays are more often performed in the 

twentieth century than they were in the nineteenth.  The first is Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who committed suicide long before his plays were produced.  The Prince of Homburg (1811), a play of tortured passions, is his masterpiece.  In it a young officer is sentenced to death because he disobeyed a military order, even though by this 

The Prince of Homburg at the Donmar Warehouse 2010

disobedience he won the battle.  In a highly complex situation, he is pardoned, but only after he admits that his act was motivated by ambition, and after he has begged, rather unheroically, for life. Among Kleist's other plays is Penthesilea, a version of the story of Achilles and an Amazon princess (the title character. Little revived outside of Germany, Kleist's plays still hold the stage there and occasionally in other countries, though rarely in the U.S. today.

      

Even darker than Kleist’s work is that of Georg Büchner (1813-1837. His plays, like Kleist’s, were not produced until well after his

 early death.  His two finest plays are Danton’s Death (1835) and Woyzeck (1836).  Danton’s Death is a terrific account of the great French revolutionary, Danton, who begins to question his motivation for the blood on his hands and then is guillotined himself.  Woyzeck, fragments of a play never finished, tells the story of a pathetic soldier who is the pawn of experimenting doctors, his superiors, and his wife, whom he brutally murders when he discovers her affair with a sergeant major.  Critics have called this play a drama 50 years ahead of its time.  Important theatre companies in Europe and America produce it regularly. 

 

A young Brian Cox (last prisoner on the right) played Danton in this production

One of the reasons that Büchner’s and Kleist’s plays were not produced during the lifetimes of their authors was that in Germanic countries, dominated by very old-fashioned Habsburg rulers, 

censorship was rampant in the nineteenth century -- and it’s something we must remember as we talk about Romantic drama.  Every play was closely scrutinized by the authorities, and often had to be re-written before it could be produced. Dramas much more tame than Buchner’s Woyzeck or Kleist’s Prince of Homburg often never saw production.  It takes a healthy society to laugh at itself, and society in much of nineteenth century Europe was fairly unhealthy!