170186 SE MA Seminar (2010W)

Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, with its philosophical account of a ritualistic mode of theatrical performance, stands at the heart of modern drama. The profound effect of this text is, however, difficult to grasp without a view of the development of the romantic and classical theatre which preceded it. Particularly important in the century before Nietzsche were the rediscovery of Shakespeare and Greek tragedy. If these events could be pinned down to one person, it should be David Garrick, a playwright, director, and England's greatest actor. Garrick overthrew the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and plot in favor of a new unity of character. What followed—Sturm und Drang, the inner theatre of Romanticism, Wagner's liturgical music drama—are phases of a modern art which did not aim so much to moralize as to construct a political community. Knowledge of the earlier forms of this theory is necessary to understanding its results in the twentieth century.