Act II
The Encyclopedia
The people, plays, movements and ideas that tore up the rulebook.
- Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron dePerson1732–1799
- Watchmaker, spy and playwright whose Figaro comedies (The Barber of Seville, 1775; The Marriage of Figaro, 1784) mocked aristocratic privilege. Also founded the first society defending authors' rights.
- Bourgeois Drama (drame bourgeois)Movementc. 1730–1790
- Serious plays about ordinary middle-class lives rather than kings and heroes. Championed by Diderot and Lessing; anticipated by Lillo's The London Merchant (1731).
- Büchner, GeorgPerson1813–1837
- Radical pamphleteer and author of Danton's Death and the fragmentary Woyzeck — a working-class tragedy so ahead of its time it was not staged until 1913.
- Diderot, DenisPerson1713–1784
- Editor of the Encyclopédie. His theory of the 'fourth wall' and his Paradox of the Actor reshaped ideas of realism and performance.
- Fourth WallTerm1758
- Diderot urged actors to perform as if an invisible wall separated them from the audience — a founding idea of modern realism.
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang vonPerson1749–1832
- Sturm und Drang pioneer (Götz von Berlichingen, 1773), later director of the Weimar court theatre and author of Faust.
- Goldoni, CarloPerson1707–1793
- Reformed Italian commedia dell'arte by replacing masks and improvisation with written scripts and recognisable people (The Servant of Two Masters).
- Hernani, Battle ofEvent1830
- Premiere of Victor Hugo's verse drama at the Comédie-Française, marked by nightly clashes between Romantic supporters and classicists.
- Hugo, VictorPerson1802–1885
- His Preface to Cromwell (1827) was the manifesto of French Romantic drama: mix the grotesque and the sublime, abandon the classical unities.
- Kleist, Heinrich vonPerson1777–1811
- Author of The Broken Jug and The Prince of Homburg, plays of psychological extremity that sat uneasily with Weimar classicism.
- Lessing, Gotthold EphraimPerson1729–1781
- Critic and dramatist (Emilia Galotti, Nathan the Wise). His Hamburg Dramaturgy launched the idea of the dramaturg and a German national theatre.
- Licensing ActEvent1737
- British law requiring the Lord Chamberlain to approve all plays — a censorship regime that lasted until 1968.
- Marriage of Figaro, ThePlay1784
- Beaumarchais's comedy, banned for years by Louis XVI, in which a servant outwits a count. Adapted by Mozart and Da Ponte in 1786.
- MelodramaMovementc. 1800–
- Popular genre perfected by Pixérécourt: music, spectacle, clear villains and virtuous victims. The ancestor of film and TV storytelling.
- Nathan the WisePlay1779
- Lessing's plea for religious tolerance, set in Jerusalem during the Crusades; its 'ring parable' became an Enlightenment touchstone.
- Neoclassical UnitiesTerm17th c.–
- Rules of time, place and action derived from Aristotle. Breaking them became the Romantics' rallying cry.
- Robbers, ThePlay1781 / staged 1782
- Schiller's debut: a noble son turned outlaw against a corrupt world. A defining work of Sturm und Drang.
- Schiller, FriedrichPerson1759–1805
- Dramatist and theorist (Intrigue and Love, Don Carlos, Mary Stuart, William Tell) who saw the stage as a 'moral institution'.
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe — The CenciPlay1819
- A Romantic tragedy of incest and tyranny, refused by the censor and not publicly staged in Britain until the 1920s.
- Sturm und DrangMovementc. 1767–1785
- 'Storm and Stress': German proto-Romantic rebellion valuing emotion, nature and genius over rational rules.