Arden of Faversham relates the murder of Thomas Arden - the mayor of Faversham - orchestrated by his wife and her lover.

Rod and string marionette

Not specified

Great Britain

Canterbury

Printed excerpts

Murder

Rewriting

Unfaithfulness

Tragic

English

Husband

Gentleman

Mayor

Wife

Tailor

Lover (man)

Traitor

Murderer

Punch

Innkeeper

Arden of Faversham

Hanswurst is thrown out like trash from the stage of the Berlin theatre following the success of Voltaire’s tragedy Alzire. He is exiled to Salzbourg, where he lodges at Stoffel Knips’ house and seduces his host’s wife. Stoffel Knips catches them in the act and throws them out. Hanswurst’s distress is such that he tries to kill himself. But thunder strikes the branch on which he was hanging. Two Turks pass by the unconscious couple and take them aboard their felucca going to Turkey. During the trip, Madame Knips gives birth to two children – a boy and a girl – who grow extremely fast. In Turkey, Hanswurst is castrated to be made a eunuch in the Sultan’s seraglio. Madame Knips fell in the sea with her son during the trip, but she manages to swim to shore. She competes with her daughter for the Sultan’s favours; Hanswurst takes offence and makes a scene. He is banished by the Sultan as a result, and returns to Berlin, where he meets a prostitute. He recognizes one of the brothel’s clients as his own son, who also escaped drowning and became a pedant professor of philosophy. During a lecture he gives on the German almanac Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, published by Friedrich Christoph Nicolai, all the characters on stage die from atrocious diarrhoea.

Schink Johann Friedrich

Germany

Berlin

Printed

Turkey

Sultan

Seraglio

Prostitution

Suicide

Education

Literary criticism

Sturm und Drang

Genie

Adventure

Navigation

Human castration

Mutilation

Childbirth

Storm

Tempest

Scatology

Colic

Fart

Fornication

Triviality

Obscenity

Satirical

Anonymous illustration on the title page of Johann Friedrich Schink's collection Marionettentheater

German

Hanswurst

Madame Knips

Turk

Sailor

Daughter

Physician

Slave

Lady

Old woman

Prompter (theatre)

Scene of recognition

Bawdy equivocation

Splitting of the body

Prologue

Address to the public

Love story

Hanging scene

Play in verse

Epilogue

Unexpected turn of events

Brothel scene

Foul language register

Allusion to current literary events

Hanswurst von Salzburg mit dem hölzernen Gat

Hanswurst of Salzbourg with the wooden arse

Mrs Kasperl comes to ask her husband for money when Kasperl finds a cook to whom he has promised to marry her and who has just brought him a sausage and some wine. The two women argue with Kasperl and start fighting. Kasperl knocks them both out and locks them in a chest. Alerted by the noise, the night watchman comes to question him. Kasperl explains to him that the two women had a quarrel over some plums inside the chest, offers some to the watchman and closes the lid on the unfortunate man who has put his head in it. Then he leaves, announcing that he will throw the chest into the water...

Glove-puppet

Reinhardt Carl

Munich

Sausage

Wine

Woman

Shrew

Couple

Household

Married life

Kitchen

Glutton

Plums

Quarrel

Comical

Farcical

Grotesque

Kasperl

Madame Kasperl

Night watchman

Blow-with-a-stick

Argument

Domestic scene

Frau Kasperl und die Köchin

Mrs Kasperl and the cook

The bachelor Gripandouille courted Polichinelle's wife, Colombine, who rejected him. Two jealous neighbours, Mrs Cassandra and Mrs Cababuche, slandered Columbine. To warn her of this, Gripandouile wrote her a letter in which he made an appointment with her. But this letter fell into the hands of the neighbours. Gripandouille found out about it and, wanting to take revenge, told Cassandra that his wife had an appointment with a lover. In the meantime, Mrs Cababuche told Polichinelle that Colombine had an appointment with her lover. Polichinelle went to the appointment but, mistaking Mr and Mrs Cassandra for Colombine and her lover, he beat them up. Then, realising his mistake, he hit Mrs Cababuche because she had lied to him. The two shrews then urged their husbands to kill Polichinelle, but he persuaded the two men to go and consult a sorcerer instead to find out the truth about their wives. The sorcerer revealed the wickedness of the two women. The Gendarme and the Commissioner, called in to administer justice, hanged the two women to the great satisfaction of the husbands.

All audiences

France

Paris

Duranty Louis Émile Edmond

Gossip

Vilification

Malice

Jealousy

Neighbour (Woman)

Revenge of the husbands

Trap

Bad marriage

Shakespeare

French

Polichinelle

Magician

Police Superintendant

Colombine

Letter

Spectacular turn of events

Misunderstanding

Les Voisines

The neighbours

The play is set in Orleans in 1867. Madame Pétenvert (a widow) and Mademoiselle Euphémie are accommodating two captains – Vachard and Chiclair – for three months. They quickly fall in love with their guests and would like to marry them. However, the two captains take advantage of the situation and spend their time talking, in a light-hearted manner, about politics, the army and, at the same, about women, billiards and their love of good food. One day, they are invited to dinner at the colonel’s house. The dinner ends with the two captains being drunk and getting the landladies’ houses mixed up. Thus, the two men being sick, captain Vachard spends the night with Mademoiselle Euphémie while captain Chiclair sleeps with Mademoiselle Pétenvert. The following day, after leaving the houses, they both accuse each other of having disrespected them, because of the state of their slippers and of the beds. However, this conversation about honour ends up being a commentary on the night they have just spent with the two women. The captains accuse the colonel of having treated them “too well” and the latter, in response, orders them to go back to their respective landladies and to marry them.

Maurice Sand (Maurice Sand)

Nohant

Politics

Army

Soldier

Dinner

Entertainment

Wedding

Eugène Lambert, George Sand, Maurice Sand : marionette de Madame Pétenvert.

La Garnison d’Orléans, Les Deux Capitaines.

Captain

Colonel

Waiter

Widow

Host

Servant

Domestic servant

Allusion to current political events

Comedy of language

Situation comedy

Nous dînons chez le colonel

We are dining at the colonel's

Pierrot has been dead for six months when he meets Arlequin in the Underworld. Arlequin has just arrived and tells Pierrot that Colombine quickly forgot all about him after he died. First, she went with Valère, then with Arlequin himself, after he and Martine divorced. After having met Platon (Plato) and Socrate (Socrates) and spied on their conversations, Pierrot and Arlequin begin philosophising about women. When they meet Pluton (Pluto), they ask him to bring Martine and Colombine, whom they yearn to see. The two women are taken alive to the Underworld, but they reject Arlequin and Pierrot as they refuse to live with dead men. To keep them away, Martine sends them both on a mission with Pluton and Caron (Charon). The young women meet Platon and Socrate too, who are both affected by the women’s living flesh. Arlequin is jealous and ready to fight Socrate. However, Pluton comes back and tells Martine and Colombine that Valère has already replaced them both. They ask to be brought back to earth, and Pluton grants their wish. After they are gone, Pluton and Arlequin declare that no woman is trustworthy, but Diotime (Diotima) appears and reminds them of the transfiguring power of love.

Pigeon Amédée

Descent into hell

Death

Love

Carnal love

Philosophy

Greek mythology

Afterlife

Dialogue of the dead

Philosophical tale

Pierrot

Arlecchino

Socrates

Plato

Choir

Pluto

Diotima

Apparition

Spying scene

L'Amour dans les Enfers

Love in the Underworld

The play takes place on a island of dreams. Mère-Grand learns that Myrrhine has distanced herself from her five sisters to dream on her own by the sea. She worries about it, as this daydreaming can only carry the young woman off towards reality. Myrrhine confirms that the “bandeau d’illusion” (the blindfold of illusion) has indeed been lifted from her eyes, and that she no longer believes in fairytales, only in love: she loves the Chevalier Tavonin (Knight Tavonin) and believes that she is loved by him too. The Knight appears on a small boat with Aurore, his new lover, and rejects Myrrhine. In her despair, she calls on the Génie des Arbres (the Genie of the Trees) and the Fée des Mousses (the Moss Fairy), but they are powerless—they cannot console her now that she has lost her illusions. Myrrhine kills herself by jumping into the sea. Mère-Grand blames her death on the Knight, but he replies saying that he is Love incarnated and that all of Myrrhine’s sisters will suffer the same fate, as their eyes will eventually be opened too.

Belgium

Illusion

Dream

Reality

Belief

Island

Childhood

Teenagers

Fairy

Plant world

Funeral procession

Fantasy

Grandmother

Knight

Revelation

Allegory

Le Bandeau d'illusion

The Blindfold of illusion

The Viennese public attends a puppet show in the Prater. The play in question features a hero who is unwillingly involved in a foursome with his lover Liesl and the Duke and Duchess of Lawin. The duel between him and the Duke is cancelled, but he loses the interest of the Duchess and the love of Liesl in the process. Death comes. The audience, which has not stopped commenting on the play, intervenes more and more loudly and the performance turns into a scandal. It is no longer clear who is a spectator, who is a puppet, until a man in a blue coat enters the stage... and cuts the strings of the puppets with a sword, thus discriminating between animate and inanimate.

Arden of Faversham

Hanswurst von Salzburg mit dem hölzernen Gat

Frau Kasperl und die Köchin

Les Voisines

Nous dînons chez le colonel

L'Amour dans les Enfers

Le Bandeau d'illusion

Zum großen Wurstel

Burleske in einem Akt

Der tapfere Cassian

Puppenspiel in einem Akt

Hell (1916)

1st version