Doctor Faust is disillusioned with academic disciplines. He learns black magic and makes a deal with the devil Mephistopheles, promising him his soul if the latter accepts to serve him for twenty-four years. Faust’s new domestic servant, Casperle, also learns to summon demons, and engages the services of the devil Auerhahn. However, he refuses to sell his soul to him. During the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Parma, Faust makes the Ancient Testament appear before them and attempts to seduce the duchess. But he is pursued by her husband, the Inquisition and the outraged people, because Casperle has used his links with the devil to carry out miracles. Faust flees to Constantinople and Auerhahn brings Casperle to Mainz. The final act relates Faust’s damnation. He does penance, but he is doomed when Mephistopheles promises him the most beautiful woman in the world – Helen of Troy. Faust is carried off by demons, while Casperle, now a night watchman, takes his revenge on his wife at the end of the play, for the domestic violence she inflicted on him.

String marionette

Not specified

Simrock Karl

Germany

Bonn

Printed

Scholar

Necromancy

Magic

University

Monkey

Pluto

Crow

Mainz

Perlicke

Drink

Pigtail

Dragon

Seduction

Inquisition

Italy

Couch

Vanity

Repentance

Nightwatchman

Lust

Future punishment

Spousal abuse

Tragic

Humorous

German

Monologue

Dilemma

Off-stage voice

Tragic irony

Misunderstanding

Comic Equivocation

Aside

Lazzi

Song

Pact with the devil

Versified passages

Dream

Appearance

Pyrotechnics

Chase

Theatre within the theatre

Domestic scene

Dance

Doctor Johannes Faust

Martin, a woodcutter, frees a fairy from an oak tree she has been trapped in for 500 years. The fairy gives him a ring that allows him to fulfil three wishes. Martin confides the secret to his wife Margreth, who tells Casperl, their neighbour. While Martin goes to ask the mayor and the priest for advice, Margreth, in conversation with Casperl, takes it upon herself to wish for a plate of sausages, even though she has the ring on her finger: her wish is immediately fulfilled. Seeing this, Martin retrieves the ring and, in his anger, vows that his wife will have sausages hanging from her nose. The wish comes true and the two men are no longer able to amputate Margreth's sausage appendages: all they can do is wish them away, and the gift of the three wishes is wasted.

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Munich

Poverty

Spell

Dwarf

Ring

Secret

Beer

Hypocrisy

Sausage

Fantasy

Burlesque

Grotesque

Fairy

Bûcheron

Kasperl

Metatheatre

Metamorphosis

Die drei Wünsche

The three wishes

The bishop Simplicius invites Chrysogonus, the nephew of the governor of Patras, for lunch. A gorgeous young woman, Luce, appears to him and asks for his protection: she has vowed to remain a virgin and fled from her father, who wanted to force her to marry. She is alone for a short while, and she reveals that she is Lucifer. Simplicius is flustered: he invites Luce to have lunch with them, and falls in love with her. He appeals to the apostle saint André (Saint Andrew) to stop him from giving in to temptation. Le Pauvre (Poor Man) appears and asks to have lunch with them. Luce agrees to let him, if he can answer three riddles. Le Pauvre answers and reveals that she is Lucifer, and that he is Saint André. While Lucifer disappears in Hell, Saint André sits down to eat with Simplicius and Chrysogonus.

France

Paris

Vegetarianism

Glutton

Charity

Devotion

Chastity

Temptation

Virginity

Devil

Religious

Lyrical

Comical

French

Apostle

Bishop

Servant

Poor

Saint Andrew

Address to the public

Disguise

Engulfment

Change of voice

La Dévotion à saint André

The Devotion to Saint Andrew

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.

Glove-puppet

Schnitzler Arthur

Austria

Vienna

Berlin

Spectator

Unfaithfulness

Duel

Self-consciousness of puppets

Local color

Argument

Wrangle

Hanswurst

Noise

Entertainment

Satirical

Marionetten

Burleske in einem Akt

Director

Poet

Bourgeois

Daughter

Count

Soldier

Waiter

Child

Duke

Father

Husband

Raisonneur

Wrestler

Dead woman

Valet

Death

Puppet theatre within the theatre

Metadiscourse on puppet theatre

Pantomime

Parody of formal language

Prologue

Stichomythia

Character thrown out of the scene

Zum großen Wurstel

To the big sausage

Martin is secretly in love with the beautiful Eleonora Lambriani, a mysterious dancer with a legendary reputation. However, he has already sworn his love to Sophie. When Martin prepares to leave in order to offer his life and his money to Eleonora, his cousin Cassian arrives at his house. Initially inconsolable because of the departure of her lover, Sophie changes from the virtuous girl to the woman expressing her desire for Cassian, then she elopes with him by jumping out of the window. Martin dies by the hand of Cassian, poor as a church mouse, as he has lost all his money in a dice game against Cassian.

Visit

Dice game

Journey

Loyalty in love

Sadness

Nostalgia

Encounter

Confession

Luck

Deception

Battle story

Suicide attempt

Femme fatale

Parodistic

Der tapfere Kassian

Puppenspiel in einem Akt

Plot twist

Love story

Deceived naivety

Teichoscopy

Der tapfere Cassian

The brave Cassian

The Prologue begins where Molière’s play ended: Don Juan is going down the long stairway into Hell with the statue of the Commander. When he hears Sganarelle scream “My wages!”, he climbs back up to kick his servant, then comes back down. The statue of the Commander is surprised by his courage and offers to bring him back to life. But La Griffe du Diable (The Devil’s Claw) holds Don Juan back by his clothes. In the end, Don Juan is granted another ten years of life, as he makes a deal with La Griffe: during these ten years, he will continue to corrupt women and claim new victims. Ten years later, this extension is about to come to an end. Don Juan lives in Venice and believes that the Devil has forgotten about him. He is getting ready to have dinner and then go out. A puppeteer is passing in the street, and he invites Don Juan to his home, where he performs his show for him. From the glove-puppet booth, Polichinelle talks to Don Juan, who is reminiscing about the shows he saw as a child. Polichinelle kills Pierrot and Cassandre. He is bitten by a dog then attempts to seduce a doll, using Don Juan’s advice, and finally kills her. Don Juan asks that the puppeteer cut some scenes and get to the moment the Devil takes Polichinelle away. Then he provokes the puppet of the Devil by saying that he would not fear being carried off by him. The puppeteer leaves the booth, reveals that he is the Devil and sits at a table to dine with Don Juan. Don Juan enthuses over his conquests. He asks Sganarelle for the list of the women he seduced, which he then tears up. The Devil turns into a violinist and makes the scraps of paper dance: the Shadows of the one thousand and three women seduced by Don Juan arrive in gondolas. The Devil challenges Don Juan to recognise these women, but he gets them all wrong. Don Juan, who believed he had seduced and possessed all these women, realises that they had him wrapped around their fingers, and that even the tears they shed because of him were fake. He claims his victories, but he is told that he never did anything with them, and that he never knew how to love. Out of desperation, Don Juan reminds the Devil about the scale of his provocation when he gave a coin to Le Pauvre (The Beggar) “out of love for humanity”. But the Devil makes the Pauvre appear, and the latter throws the coin in Don Juan’s face and forbids him from claiming that he has embodied any kind of revolt. The Devil proves to Don Juan that he was only controlled by ribaldry, like Polichinelle. Rather than sending him to the fires of Hell, which is what the seducer proudly demands, the Devil sentences him to become a puppet in a booth.

Rostand Edmond

Cambo-les-Bains

Haughtiness

Woman

Suffering

Presumption

Evil

Ridiculous

Revolt

Love

Venice

Deal with the Devil

Dramatic

Sketch by George Barbier for the Puppetteer's costume in Edmond Rostand's La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan, 1922.

Don Juan

Commander

Statue

Sganarelle

Ghost

Polichinelle

Pulcinella

Cassandre

Pierrot

Doll

Play in verse

Disguised character (false identity)

Metonymy (mode of characterisation)

Apparition of the Devil

Blow-with-a-stick

Crowd

Unveiling

La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan

Don Juan's Last Night

Three women – young Janet, her mother, and her grandmother – take refuge in a stable while a storm and the temptations of St. Anthony are raging outside. Janet asks in vain to be explained what these temptations are. Saint Anthony (called Anthony Perkins) is in a cell and only has his Halo, his Clock, and his Calendar as friends. He prays to Zeus to send him temptations, for they never reach him. Time flies, and he ends up dying of boredom. Shortly after Anthony’s death, the now old Queen of Sheba enters his cell, accompanied by Gustave Flaubert. The Queen of Sheba dies, disappointed that she could not tempt Anthony. Flaubert asks two eunuchs to bury them. Cleo di Patra appears in the sky, surrounded by angels. The play ends with a great ballet and a funeral cortege.

Craig Edward Gordon

The Temptation of St Anthony

La Tentation de saint Antoine