The Life of Edward II of England
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[edit] Overview of Bertolt Brecht's Drama
The Life of Edward II of England (Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England), also known as Edward II, is an adaptation of the sixteenth-century historical tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, entitled The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer (c.1592), by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Bertolt Brecht wrote his adaptation in collaboration with Lion Feuchtwanger. It is written mostly in irregular free verse, with two songs (one of which is from Marlowe's original), over twenty-one scenes.[1] Looking back at the play-text near the end of his life, Brecht offered the following assessment of their intentions:
- "We wanted to make possible a production which would break with the Shakespearean tradition common to German theatres: that lumpy monumental style beloved of middle-class philistines."[2]
The play is set in England between 1307 and 1326. A prefatory note to the play reads:
- "Here is shown before the public the history of the troubled reign of Edward the Second, King of England, and his lamentable death
- likewise the glory and end of his favourite, Gaveston
- further the disordered fate of Queen Anne
- likewise the rise and fall of the great earl Roger Mortimer
- all which befell in England and specially in London, more than six hundred years ago."[3]
[edit] Effect on Epic Theater
The production of Edward II generated a moment in rehearsal that has become one of the emblematic anecdotes in the history of theatre, which marks a genuine event; a new organizing force had suddenly arrived on the theatrical scene and the shape of twentieth-century theatre would come to be determined by the passage of the ‘epic’ through the dramatic, theatrical and performative fields. Walter Benjamin records Brecht's recollection in 1938 of the pivotal incident:
- "Brecht in turn quoted the moment at which the idea of epic theatre first came into his head. It happened at a rehearsal for the Munich production of Edward II. The battle in the play is supposed to occupy the stage for three-quarters of an hour. Brecht couldn't stage-manage the soldiers, and neither could Asya [Lacis], his production assistant. Finally he turned in despair to Karl Valentin, at that time one of his closest friends, who was attending the rehearsal, and asked him: 'Well, what is it? What's the truth about these soldiers? What about them?' Valentin: 'They're pale, they're scared, that's what!' The remark settled the issue, Brecht adding: 'They're tired.' Whereupon the soldiers' faces were thickly made up with chalk, and that was the day the production's style was determined."[4]
In this simple idea of applying chalk to the faces of Brecht's actors to indicate the "truth" of the situation of soldiers in battle, Brecht located the germ of his conception of 'epic theatre'. As Tony Meech suggests, the material that Brecht was re-working to a certain extent lent itself to this treatment, but it was the combination of several factors that enabled this production to become so significant:
- "With its historicised setting, its large cast and broad scope of action, this is the first of Brecht's plays which can usefully be called 'epic'. It was also the first of his adaptations of classic texts and his first attempt at fully collaborative writing. In both the writing and the direction of this play, Brecht entered into a new phase of his work for the theatre. Where each of the first three plays is, to some extent, a rejection of influences, Edward II is an attempt to lay the foundations of a new style of theatre, the development of which in practice and the definition of which in his theoretical writing would occupy Brecht for the rest of his working life."[5]
New York premiere of Bertolt Brecht's Edward II with Dan Southern as Gaveston at the Riverside Shakespeare Company, New York City, 1982.
[edit] Production History: The Munich Premiere, 1924
The play opened at the Munich Kammerspiele on March 19, 1924, in a production that represented Brecht's solo directorial début.[6] Caspar Neher designed the sets, as he had for the production of Brecht's In the Jungle the year before.[7][8] Oskar Homolka played Mortimer and Erwin Faber played Edward, with Maria Koppenhöfer and Hans Schweikart also in the cast.[9] According to Faber, Brecht's entire production, from the script to the staging of the scenes, was "balladesque."[10]
[edit] The New York Premiere, 1982
The New York premiere of Brecht's Edward II, as authorized by Bertha Case, literary representative for the Brecht estate in the United States,[11] took place Off Broadway on April 23, 1982, staged by the Riverside Shakespeare Company at The Shakespeare Center on West 86th and Amsterdam, directed by the W. Stuart McDowell, and sponsored by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival, with additional support from the Goethe House and Marta Feuchtwanger, widow of Lion Feuchtwanger, the acknowledged co-author of Brecht's original script.[12]
The Riverside Shakespeare Company production of Edward II featured Dan Southern as Gaveston (left) and Tim Oman as King Edward, with Andrew Achsen, Christopher Cull, Michael Franks, Margo Gruber, Joe Meek, Jason Moehring, Gay Reed, Count Stovall, Patrick Sullivan and Jeffery V. Thompson, and Dan Johnson, Larry Attille and Will Lampe (in photo below, left), directed by W. Stuart McDowell, with assistant director Jeannie H. Woods, with sets and lights by Dorian Vernacchio, costumes by David Robinson, properties by Valerie Kuehn, with an original score composed by Michael Canick for percussion and played by percussionist Noel Counsil in the side tower of the newly renovated theatre, The Shakespeare Center.[13][14]
The New York production of Edward II was grounded on interviews McDowell had made in Germany with cast members - Erwin Faber and Hans Schweikart - of the original 1924 Munich production of 1924, which had been Brecht's debut as stage director, in which Brecht had developed many of his revolutionary new staging and dramaturgical techniques of what came to be known as Epic Theatre, and which eventually had a profound impact on 20th century theatre.[15]
For more about the New York premiere of Edward II, see Riverside Shakespeare Company.
[edit] Works cited
- Brecht, Bertolt. 1924. Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England. Potdsam: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag.
- ---. Brecht, Bertolt. 1924. The Life of Edward II of England. Trans. Jean Benedetti. In Collected Plays: One. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen, 1970. ISBN 041603280X. p.179-268.
- ---. Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. British edition. London: Methuen. ISBN 041338800X. USA edition. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0809031000.
- McDowell, W. Stuart. "Actors on Brecht: The Early Years." In Brecht Sourcebook, New York: Routledge, 1999. p.71 - 83. ISBN 0415200431.
- Meech, Tony. 1994. "Brecht's Early Plays." In Thomson and Sacks (1994, 43-55).
- Sacks, Glendyr. 1994. "A Brecht Calendar." In The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Ed. Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521414466. p.xvii-xxvii.
- Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. ISBN 041334360X.
- Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970. Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 041603280X.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Willett (1967, 25-26).
- ^ Brecht, "On Looking Back Through My First Plays" (1954). In Willett and Manheim (1970, 454).
- ^ Brecht (1924, 180).
- ^ Benjamin (1983, 115). Brecht also recounts the incident in his Messingkauf Dialogues: "When the Ausburger [Brecht] was producing his first play, which included a thirty minutes' battle, he asked Valentin what he ought to do with the soldiers. 'What are the soldiers like in battle?' Valentin promptly answered: 'White. Scared.'" (Brecht 1964, 69-70).
- ^ Meech (1994, 54-55).
- ^ Up until that point, Brecht had co-directed a production of Paster Ephraim Magnus by Hans Henny Jahnn with Arnolt Bronnen in 1923, been involved with rehearsals during the productions of his plays Baal (1923), In the Jungle (1923), and Drums in the Night (1922, both productions), and had withdrawn from directing a production of Bronnen's Vatermord (1922) at the experimental Junge Bühne after the actors had walked out and he had been taken to hospital suffering from malnourishment; see Sacks (1994, xvii-xviii) and Willett and Manheim (1970, viii).
- ^ According to Willett (1967, 26), four drawings from Neher's design for Edward II were published in Brecht's Stücke II in 1924 (Berlin: Kiepenheuer).
- ^ An additional (fifth) drawing by Neher appeared on the cover of the first edition (1924) of Leben Eduards... depicting three figures, presumably Queen Anne, King Edward, and Gaveston, facing forward, with a banner before them which reads "Das Leben König Edward II von England." Brecht, Leben Eduards... Cover and p. 1
- ^ Willett (1967, 25-26) and Sacks (1994 xvii-xviii).
- ^ See "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years," by W. Stuart McDowell, in The Brecht Sourcebook, Carol Martin, Henry Bial, editors (Routledge, 2000)p. 71 - 83.
- ^ The New York premiere of Edward II was authorized by Bertha Case (literary representative of the estates of Kurt Weill and of Bertolt Brecht up to her death in 1984), and by Stefan Brecht, in August of 1981, to take place the following year, produced by the Riverside Shakespeare Company and sponsored by the New York Shakespeare Festival. See "Bertha Case" in The New York Times, December 13, 1984.
- ^ The dedication page in the first edition of Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England reads: "Dieses Stück schrieb ich mit Lion Feuchtwanger - Bertolt Brecht." Brecht, Leben Eduards... (1924, 3).
- ^ "Brecht; Another Production", The New York Times, February 6, 2000. The New York premiere of Edward II by the Riverside Shakespeare Company was authorized in 1981 by Berta Case, then literary agent for the Brecht estate in America.
- ^ For more about the New York premiere of Brecht's Edward II see Riverside Shakespeare Company.
- ^ See the interviews with Faber and Schweikhardt in "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years," by W. Stuart McDowell, in The Brecht Sourcebook, Carol Martin, Henry Bial, editors (Routledge, 2000).
