"I masnadieri" was the first drama by German playwright Friedrich Schiller.
"I masnadieri" was published in 1781 and premiered on 13 January 1782 in Mannheim, Germany.
It was written towards the end of the German Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") movement and has been considered by many critics, such as Peter Brooks, to have influenced the development of European melodrama.
The play astounded its Mannheim audience and made Schiller an overnight sensation.
It later became the basis for Verdi's opera of the same name, I masnadieri -- Her Majesty's Theatre, Haymarket, Londra, 1847. Libretto: Maffei, tenore: Italo Gardoni come Carlo, figlio del conte di Moor.
The plot revolves around the conflict between two aristocratic brothers, Carlo and Francesco Moor.
The charismatic but rebellious student Carl is deeply loved by his father Massimiliano, conte di Moor.
The younger brother, Francesco, who appears as a cold, calculating villain, plots to wrest away Carlo's inheritance.
As the drama unfolds, both Francesco's motives and Carl's innocence and heroism are revealed to be complex.
The highly emotional language and the depiction of physical violence mark the play as a quintessential Sturm und Drang work.
At the same time, the play utilizes a traditional five act structure, with each act containing two to five scenes.
The play uses alternating scenes to pit the brothers against each other, as one quests for money and power, while the other attempts to
create a revolutionary anarchy
in the Bohemian Forest.
Many disturbing issues are raised in the play.
For instance, the drama questions:
-- the dividing lines between personal liberty and the law
-- the drama probes
the psychology of power,
the nature of masculinity and the essential differences between good and evil.
The drama strongly criticizes both the hypocrisies of class and religion and the economic inequities of society.
It also conducts a complicated inquiry into the nature of evil.
Schiller was inspired by the play Julius von Tarent (1774) by Johann Anton Leisewitz.[2]
Dramatis personae
He is a good person at heart, but also weak, and has failed to raise his two sons properly.
He bears responsibility for the perversion of the Moor family, which has caused the family's values to become invalidated.
The Moor family acts as an analogy of state, a typical political criticism of Schiller's.
The prince as a father of the nation is particularly condemned.
-
Carlo Moor, the count's older son, is a self-confident idealist.
- Franz Moor, his younger son, is an egoistic rationalist and materialist.
Carlo is good-looking and well liked by all.
Carlo holds feelings of deep love for Amalia.
After his father, misled by brother Franz, curses Carlo and banishes him from his home, Carlo becomes a disgraceful criminal and murderous arsonist.
While Carlo maintains a general spirit of melancholy about the promising life he has left behind for a life of lawlessness, together with his gang of robbers he fights against the unfairness and corruption of the feudal authorities, alla Robin Hood.
This despair leads to the urge to express and discover new goals and directions, and to realize his ideals and dreams of heroism.
Carlo breaks the law, for as he says, contra Kant, "the end justifies the means."
Carlo develops a close connection with his robbers, especially to Roller and Schweizer, but recognizes the unscrupulousness and dishonour of Spiegelberg and his other associates.
Amalia creates a deep internal twist in the plot and in Carl's persona.
Carlo swore allegiance to the robbers after Schweizer and Roller died for his sake, and he promised that he would never separate from his men.
So, Carlo cannot return to Amalia.
In deep desperation due to the death of his father,
Carlo eventually kills his true love
and decides to turn himself in to the law.
He is rather ugly and unpopular, as opposed to his brother Karl, but quite intelligent and cunning.
However, since his father loved only his brother and not him, he developed a lack of feeling, which made the "sinful world" intolerable for his passions, and he consequently fixed himself to a rationalistic way of thinking.
In the character of Franz, Schiller demonstrates what could happen if the moral way of thinking was replaced by the pure rationalization.
Franz strives for power in order to be able to implement his interests.
Additionally, he self-nominated himself to be captain in Karl's robber band, yet was passed up in favor of Karl.
Spiegelberg tries to portray Karl negatively among the robbers in order to become the captain, but does not succeed.
- Schweizer
- Grimm
- Razmann
- Schufterle
- Roller
- Kosinsky
- Schwarz
- Herrmann, the illegitimate son of a Nobleman
- Daniel, an old servant of Count von Moor
- Pastor Moser
- Pater
- A Monk
- Band of robbers, servants, etc.
Legacy
The play is referred to in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Fyodor Karamazov compares himself to Count von Moor, whilst comparing his eldest son, Dmitri, to Franz Moor, and Ivan Karamazov to Karl Moor.[3]English translations
Peter Newmark notes three translations in the Encyclopedia of Literary Translation:[4]- Schiller, Friedrich; Tytler, Alexander Fraser (trans.) (1792). The Robbers. G. G. & J. Robinson. http://books.google.com/books?id=Awj-tgAACAAJ. Public domain; widely available in many formats.
- Schiller, Friedrich; Lamport, F. J. (trans.) (1979). The Robbers, with Wallenstein. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-044368-4.
- Schiller, Friedrich; MacDonald, Robert David (trans.) (1995). The Robbers. Oberon. ISBN 978-1-870259-52-1. The same translation apparently also appears in Schiller: Volume One: The Robbers, Passion and Politics. Robert David MacDonald (Trans.). Oberon. 2006. ISBN 978-1-84002-618-4.
The two most prominent translations from the latter part of the twentieth century take very different approaches to this style.
F.J. Lamport’s 1979 translation, published in the Penguin edition, follows Schiller’s first epic-sized version and remains close to the original language, observing sentence structures, finding literal translations that emphasize the melodramatic aspect of Schiller’s work.
In contrast, Robert MacDonald’s 1995 translation, written for a performance by the Citizen’s Company at the Edinburgh Festival, includes some of Schiller’s own revisions, modernizes the language trying to find equivalences to reach his British target audiences.
While Lamport directs his translation toward an audience expecting classics as authentic as possible modeled on the original, McDonald opts for a performance translation cutting the text and interpreting many of the emotional moments that are left less clear in a more literal translation."
Michael Billington wrote in 2005 that Robert MacDonald "did more than anyone to rescue Schiller from British neglect."[6]
[edit] Unpublished translations
- Millar, Daniel and Leipacher, Mark (2010). The Robbers. Presented by the Faction Theatre Company.[7]
Adaptations
- I masnadieri (1847), opera by Giuseppe Verdi
- The Robbers (1913) at the Internet Movie Database, film directed by J. Searle Dawley and Walter Edwin
- Die Räuber (1957), opera by Giselher Klebe
[edit] References
- ^ Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Schiller's Wound: The Theater of Trauma from Crisis to Commodity (Wayne State University Press, 2001), page 32.
- ^ Johann Anton Leisewitz, Encyclopedia Britannica
- ^ Fydor Dostoyevsky. "The Brother's Karamazov". http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28054. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
- ^ Newmark, Peter (1998). "Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805)". In Classe, O.. Encyclopedia of Literary Translation. Taylor & Francis. pp. 1238–1239. ISBN 978-1-884964-36-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=C1uXah12nHgC&pg=PA1238.
- ^ van den Berg, Klaus (2009). "The Royal Robe with Folds: Translatability in Schiller’s The Robbers". The Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review 2 (2). http://drama.unc.edu/academic/mercurian/The_Mercurian_Vol_2_number_2.pdf.
- ^ Billington, Michael (29 January 2005). "The German Shakespeare:Schiller used to be box-office poison. Why are his plays suddenly back in favour, asks Michael Billington". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/jan/29/theatre.classics.
- ^ Berge, Emma (2010). "The Robbers". The British Theatre guide. http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/robbers-rev.htm.
[edit] External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Die Räuber (Friedrich Schiller) |
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