Casperl wants to immigrate to America, but is cast ashore on an African island populated by cannibals. There he meets the German naturalist Gerstlmaier, who at first mistakes him for a parrot and ends up hiring him as a servant. But the cannibals capture him while he is sleeping. He swears not to drink any more beer if he manages to escape, whereupon the god Neptune frees him and allows him to return to Europe on the back of a dolphin. Casperl is then abducted by a large bird which releases him in the market place of his hometown, where his arrival causes general panic. Casperl has sworn not to drink any more beer, so he goes to the tavern to drink several to celebrate his return home.

String marionette

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Germany

Munich

Printed

Africa

Navigation

Island

Robinson

Cannibalism

Natural sciences

Ornithology

Savage

Scholar

Exoticism

Beer

Small town

Comical

Parodistic

Fantasy

German

Ein culturhistorisches Drama in zwei Aufzügen

Kasperl

Night watchman

Tambour

Neptune

Crocodile

Dolphin

Instrumental tune

Macaronism

Monologue

Word for another

Song

Talking animal

Deus ex machina

Scene of recognition

Parody of formal language

Casperl unter den Wilden

Casperl in the wilderness

Marianne – the wife of a poor lumberjack – sends her starving children Hansel and Grethel in the woods, so that they pick some berries. But the children are captured by the cannibalistic naturalist Fleischmann, at the same time as the travelling tailor Kasperl Larifari, who believes he will find bed and board at his house. They are locked inside chicken coops and fattened. Kasperl is enraged. To calm him down, Fleischmann allows him outside the cage to drink some wine with him. He intends on eating him right after. But they both get drunk, while the professor’s maid, Katharine, helps the children escape and reports the cannibal to the police. Kasperl takes advantage of the general confusion to escape too. The professor chases him and then gives up. He wants to find the children but falls asleep in the end, exhausted. Kasperl finds him and sews the two legs of his pants together. Eventually, the court bailiff arrives with the children’s father, Peter. When they find Fleischmann, he is unable to move, and Peter kills him with an axe. The children come out of hiding and, at the end of the play, Kasperl declares that wickedness has been punished, virtue rewarded and that they all need to go to an inn now.

University

Philosophy

Tale

Poverty

Misery

Cage

Forest

Justice

Hunger

Drunkard

Drunkenness

Cruelty

Perversity

Burlesque

Title page illustrated by the author in the original collection

Der Menschenfresser

Teacher

Night

Moon

Hidden character

Murder on stage

Off-stage voice

Animated natural element

Chase

Dialect as a social marker

Caricature

Confinement

Versified passages

Hansel und Grethel

Hansel and Gretel

Casperl is evicted by his landlord and starts looking for a job. He is employed by professor and explorer Gerstenzucker, as…a monkey! Indeed, the professor’s monkey, Schimpanse, has just died. He was trying to teach him human culture to prove that man and monkey are related. But Casperl is ill-behaved. He poses as Gerstenzucker and treats one of his female visitors with extreme uncouthness. Then he fights the professor, wreaks havoc on the inn and sows discord in town. Everyone ends up at the police station, where the fake monkey is exposed. As other characters try to throw him behind bars, Casperl knocks everyone unconscious and, at the end of the play, goes drinking to celebrate the final victory of Darwinism.

Casperl unter den Wilden

Ein culturhistorisches Drama in zwei Aufzügen

Hansel und Grethel

Schimpanse, der Darwinaffe

Intermezzo in einem Aufzug