|
''The Life of Edward II of England'' (German: ドイツ語:''Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England''), also known as ''Edward II'', is an adaptation by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht of the 16th-century historical tragedy by Marlowe, ''The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer'' (c.1592). The play is set in England between 1307 and 1326. A prefatory note to the play reads: :"Here is shown before the public the history of the troubled reign of Edward the Second, King of England, and his lamentable death :likewise the glory and end of his favourite, Gaveston :further the disordered fate of Queen Anne :likewise the rise and fall of the great earl Roger Mortimer :all which befell in England and specially in London, more than six hundred years ago."〔Brecht (1924, 180).〕 Brecht wrote his adaptation in collaboration with Lion Feuchtwanger. It is written mostly in irregular free verse, with two songs (one of which is from Marlowe's original), over twenty-one scenes.〔Willett (1967, 25-26).〕 Looking back at the play-text near the end of his life, Brecht offered the following assessment of their intentions: "We wanted to make possible a production which would break with the Shakespearean tradition common to German theatres: that lumpy monumental style beloved of middle-class philistines."〔Brecht, "On Looking Back Through My First Plays" (1954). In Willett and Manheim (1970, 454).〕 ==Influence on the development of epic theatre== The production of ''Edward II'' generated a moment in rehearsal that has become one of the emblematic anecdotes in the history of theatre, which marks a genuine event; a new organizing force had suddenly arrived on the theatrical scene and the shape of 20th-century theatre would come to be determined by the passage of the ‘''epic''’ through the dramatic, theatrical and performative fields. Walter Benjamin records Brecht's recollection in 1938 of the pivotal incident: :Brecht in turn quoted the moment at which the idea of epic theatre first came into his head. It happened at a rehearsal for the Munich production of ''Edward II''. The battle in the play is supposed to occupy the stage for three-quarters of an hour. Brecht couldn't stage-manage the soldiers, and neither could Asya (), his production assistant. Finally he turned in despair to Karl Valentin, at that time one of his closest friends, who was attending the rehearsal, and asked him: 'Well, what is it? What's the truth about these soldiers? What ''about'' them?' Valentin: 'They're pale, they're scared, that's what!' The remark settled the issue, Brecht adding: 'They're tired.' Whereupon the soldiers' faces were thickly made up with chalk, and that was the day the production's style was determined.〔Benjamin (1983, 115). Brecht also recounts the incident in his ''Messingkauf Dialogues'': "When the Ausburger () was producing his first play, which included a thirty minutes' battle, he asked Valentin what he ought to do with the soldiers. 'What are the soldiers like in battle?' Valentin promptly answered: 'White. Scared.'" (Brecht 1964, 69-70).〕 In this simple idea of applying chalk to the faces of Brecht's actors to indicate the "truth" of the situation of soldiers in battle, Brecht located the germ of his conception of 'epic theatre'. As Tony Meech suggests, the material that Brecht was re-working to a certain extent lent itself to this treatment, but it was the combination of several factors that enabled this production to become so significant: :With its historicised setting, its large cast and broad scope of action, this is the first of Brecht's plays which can usefully be called 'epic'. It was also the first of his adaptations of classic texts and his first attempt at fully collaborative writing. In both the writing and the direction of this play, Brecht entered into a new phase of his work for the theatre. Where each of the first three plays is, to some extent, a rejection of influences, ''Edward II'' is an attempt to lay the foundations of a new style of theatre, the development of which in practice and the definition of which in his theoretical writing would occupy Brecht for the rest of his working life.〔Meech (1994, 54-55).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Life of Edward II of England」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|