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Erika Fischer‐Lichte, History of European drama and theatre

Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Geschichte des Dramas (1990) was certainly not the first history of drama or theatre I read, but this history is without any doubt the most challenging one I have been confronted with as an art sociologist with a background in theatre and theatre studies. During my own studies in the Netherlands, I had already been acquainted with Richard Souther’s brilliant study The Seven Ages of the Theatre (1968), in which he convincingly demonstrates how the same stages in the development of theatre – such as those of the costumed player, the religious festival or the roofed theatre – could be recognised in totally different cultures in entirely different temporal domains. Unfortunately the book is not available anymore, but it should be reprinted because it offers the (student) reader a real insight into what theatre is, because of what it does in culture. In this light, the publication of Fischer-Lichte’s book in English (not before 2002; it remains difficult finding important German research translated and published into English) certainly fills a gap. Just as most historical treatises, this book divides theatre history into a number of periods and subperiods, but here the core question of each chapter is how the theatre of the period concerned reflects society. What is more, this is demonstrated by a full dramaturgical analysis of one or two plays from the period concerned – resulting in an analysis in which theatrical structures and sociological insights intertwine. (In another famous German book, Publkumsdramaturgie, Volkert Klotz did something similar – he also succeeded in making comprehensible how art functions in a particular society.) The size of the present contribution does not give the opportunity to evoke even a feeling of how stimulating this form of cross-fertilising is in the historiography of the arts; nevertheless, the following small example is illustrative. Chapter 4 (of five), entitled ‘Dramatising the Identity Crisis’ covers the nineteenth century, starting with Von Kleist’s search for great personalities outside the bourgeois circles and ending with what Fischer-Lichte refers to as ‘the completion and end of the bourgeois theatre of illusion’. But before the latter point has been reached, history experienced ‘the fall of the bourgeois myths’ to which ‘the lie of the family’ contributed quite a lot. This lie was certainly a topic preoccupying Ibsen in many of his plays, from Pillars of the Community (1877), via Nora or The Doll’s House (1879) to The Wild Duck (1885).