The Theater Practice of the Sturm und Drang

Summary

The plays of the Sturm und Drang hardly impress us with their plots, which are often melodramatic; nor with their characterization, which frequently lacks depth; nor, again, with the quality of their language, which is seldom memorable. What distinguishes the drama of this period is its theatrical energy. A nation whose theater had lain semidormant under the constraints of French neoclassicism now awakened with a start, creating works that can be fully appreciated only in performance.

Ironically, however, the exciting theatricality and controversial content of the Sturm und Drang dramas made it difficult if not impossible for many of them to be staged at the time. Although premiered in 1782, Schiller's Die Räuber had to be adapted to a seven-act structure and was not performed as Schiller had written it until 1861. Wagner's Die Kindermörderin was banned from performance in Berlin and reached the stage only in the far-flung Pressburg (now Bratislava) in 1777, although, thanks to the addition of a happy ending, it was performed in Frankfurt two years later. Lenz's Die Soldaten fared even worse: it was not performed until 1863. What we encounter here, to my knowledge for the first time in the history of theater, is the curious spectacle of young playwrights creating works for a stage that did not yet exist.

Of course, there had been earlier writers who wrote plays without any hope or intention of having them performed; for example, the nun Hrotsvit. In the main, however, dramatists, from the ancient Greek tragedians to the playwrights of the eighteenth century, wrote for the stage they knew.