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

Apparition

Pyrotechnics

Chase

Theatre within the theatre

Domestic scene

Dance

Doctor Johannes Faust

Jan Klaassen meets with Langhals, whose neck inconceivably grows longer and longer. Langhals disappears when Jan Klaassen throws himself at him to break his neck. Jan Klaassen violently bangs himself. Katrijn, his wife, hears his screams and comes running: she tells him that she would have rather found him dead. Jan Klaassen wants to beat her with a stick. During their pursuit, Death appears in Katrijn’s stead. Jan Klaassen raises his stick and Death disappears. Jan Klaassen decides to go for a drink, but changes his mind at the last minute and ends the play with a song condemning alcoholism and its harmful effects.

Glove-puppet

All audiences

Netherlands

Monster

Argument

Burial

Alcohol

Farcical

Dutch

Jan Klaassen

Long-neck

Death

Blow-with-a-stick

Final song

Lengthening of a character

Langhals en de dood

Long-neck and Death

The tailor Bock lodges a complaint with the mayor Salzmaier against Kasperl, his tenant, for night-time disturbances. Salzmaier wants to put him in prison, but Kasperl, warned by his clerk friend Spritzler, pretends to be Garibaldi, entering the Tyrol leading 50,000 men. He takes up residence in Salzmaier's house, flirts with his wife Margarethe and drinks so much beer... that everyone recognises him: the play ends with a general brawl.

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Munich

Excessive drinking

Beer

Army

Comical

Burlesque

Satirical

Ein politisches Trauerspiel, aus dem Italienischen übersetzt

Clerk

Kasperl

Madame Kasperl

Tailor

Innkeeper

In der Ferne das Garibaldische Armeekorps

Inn scene

Political allegory

Parody of formal language

Word for another

Dialect

Macaronism

Disguise

Brawl

Kasperl als Garibaldi

Kasperl as Garibaldi

After a prologue in which Casper announces, among other things, that he is going to cut off the ears of children who are not well-behaved, the performance begins. Casper announces that, out of boredom, he wants to become a soldier. He shows his insubordination towards the non-commissioned officer who undertakes to train him by beating him with sticks. The non-commissioned officer sends him to the devil, who arrives: Casper kills him. He returns to his wife, announcing that he will be a general. She hits him with a broom, takes his stick back and they fight.

Sonneberg

Soldier

Military

Silliness

Insubordination

Violence

General

Stick

Wickedness

Broom

Household

Couple

Ironic

Non-commissioned officer

Devil

Prologue

Stichomythia

Apparition of the Devil

Casper will Soldat werden

Casper wants to become a soldier

In a tavern, Virgili presents four short stories that take place in a circus and have the themes of solitude, failure and death in common. A clown, in love with a trapeze artist, kills her partner; a trainer treats his wife as if she were a circus animal and ends up killing her; a young juggler kills his father with the needles he uses to inject cocaine; a soldier, a musician in the circus band who raped girls and killed children during the war, ends up shot as a deserter.

Doctor Johannes Faust

Langhals en de dood

Kasperl als Garibaldi

Ein politisches Trauerspiel, aus dem Italienischen übersetzt

Casper will Soldat werden

El circ de la fosca

Obra per a un actor i titelles