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"But Where Am I ?": Coriolan by J. M. R. Lenz

I propose to write about the variations on a theme when a tragic Shakespearean hero undergoes changes at the hands of a German romantic, namely the dramatist Jacob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751-92). Lenz, whose artistic genius burned itself out before he was 26, always maintained that Phantasie, his imagination was his source of strength as well as comfort. He was the same age as Thomas Chatterton, five years older than William Blake, and a member of the influential German literary movement Storm and Stress. Signs of strain, of a mind sorely assailed, led Lenz to write frantically before he collapsed in 1778. Two years earlier he set down in a letter to his Swiss mentor Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) what is in essence a romantic manifesto: "I ask nothing, want nothing but a shadow-for only a shadow can tie me to this world, which is abhorrent to me in every way. [...] I know too well that these are shadows, that it's a dream, a lie, but who cares-as long as it has its desired effect."1The German romantics inherited from Jean Jacque Rousseau his obsession with the self. But the works of Shakespeare were equally important and a favorite source of inspiration, particularly when his characters lend themselves to that "self-consuming role. The Roman Caius Marthas Coriolanus (491 BC) is one such case in point. He is the central character in Shakespeare's last tragedy and also the central character in the closet drama Coriolan by Lenz.2 In keeping with Shakespeare's epic scope, the historical canvas is broad, the language is as varied as the panorama, ranging from the robust colloquialism of the common people to the courteous of the patricians, and the tenderness of intimate family exchanges. The adaptation of a narrative text from one medium to another and one language to another of course is nothing new in western culture. However the history of this particular narrative is especially remarkable for its close dependence upon one sovereign source: Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans.One would be forgiven if one thought that the young Goethe, or Schiller, was the first to be hailed "the German Shakespeare." Not in the least. The rather illustrious title was awarded to Lenz at the age of 23 for his play The Tutor (1774). Lenz was an iconoclast of the old form of drama when Shakespeare offered him the raw material. A cross-cultural English literary tradition was particularly virulent at the time, and Lenz translated Pope's Essay on Criticism and (part of) Shakespeare's notoriously difficult comedy Love's Labours Lost. He kept a diary in English, wrote a play entitled The Englishman (1776) and studied Shakespeare in the original with Goethe's muse, Frau von Stein. However, between his acclaimed critical essays About the Theatre (1774) and About the Changes in the Theatre of Shakespeare lay five years during which his dramatic theories underwent considerable modification.3 References to Shakespeare loom large in his works, but he slowly shifts away from a boundless enthusiasm for the English Bard towards a genuine insight into new dramatic forms and style. His "lyrical" or "closet" dramas Friends Make the Philosopher (1776) and The Englishman mentioned above are such examples, as is his Coriolan. Lenz foregoes with these works any possibility of stage performance, whereas he certainly wrote The Tutor (1774) and The Soldiers (1776) with the intention of theatrical production in mind.Coriolan had its first public reading in March 1776 before members of the Strasbourg German Society. It was not published until 1913.4 Lenz dedicated the piece to his host the Duke of Weimar and a fair copy, set down in a small exercise book in the poet's own hand, is kept in the archives in Weimar. Critics are divided about how to define the play. Some say it is a "celebrated unfinished Storm and Stress translation" of Shakespeare's last tragedy.5 Judging by the manuscript this is clearly not the case, simply because the script ends with an explicitly underlined final sentence. …