German and French Themes in Early American Drama.

Abstract

Today the theatrical repertoires of most countries regularly list for the same season plays written by authors of various nations. Shakespeare and Schiller, Pirandello and Lorca, Brecht and Frisch, Yeats and Shaw, Ibsen and Strindberg, Giraudoux and Beckett, Miller and Wilder are known by the theatre-goers of any cultural metropolis of the West. To a certain extent a similar mutually bene ficial symbiosis of works by widely different authors on the same stage already existed in early America. However, since the country did not yet possess a theater of its own, it could hardly make any original contribution to the development of the genre. Furthermore, during the revolutionary age and even much later unknown or mediocre playwrights often attracted a larger public in America's growing cities than did generally recognized ones. It was not until the generation of O'Neill that a distinctly Ameri can theater was born. For well over two centuries, however, hun dreds of plays had been produced on the North American continent. They were either imports from the Old World or, if written by Amer icans, they followed some structural and thematic patterns common in the Western tradition. The history of the slow emergence of an autochthonous American drama shows that mainly three literatures competed in the theatrical arena of the country: English, French, and German. English was by far the most influential. And, instead of hampering the success of the other two, it helped both of them in their endeavors to conquer the American playhouses. Many French and German dramas had been translated by Englishmen and were well known in England. They were shipped to America from Lon don rather than from Paris or Berlin. We shall not study here the role of Great Britain in the race for the American stage. An analysis of the early struggle for supremacy between the French and German theater shows that the final victory was won by