Alarcos: Ein Trauerspiel; Historisch-kritische Edition mit Dokumenten by Friedrich Schlegel, ed. by Mark-Georg Dehrmann, with the assistance of Nils Gelker (review)

Abstract

Friedrich Schlegel, Alarcos: Ein Trauerspiel; Historisch-kritische Edition mit Dokumenten. Ed. Mark-Georg Dehrmann,with the assistance of Nils Gelker. Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2013- 229 pp.Should they be asked what they know about Alarcos, Friedrich Schlegel's one and only completed drama, literary scholars will perhaps recall the scandal at its May 29, 1802, premiere in Weimar. Here Goethe, acting in his capacity as theater director, allegedly stood up and told the audience to cease their laughter following the lines announcing the death of the play's tyrannical king upon the spectral appearance of Alarcos's wife, whom her husband had murdered so that Alarcos might marry the king's daughter: *Aus Furcht zu sterben ist er *gar gestorben / Hat wuthend *so in Angst den Tod erworben (48; on the asterisks, see below).Whoever cannot say any more about Schlegel's play is in good company. Nils Gelker observes in his assessment of the reception of Alarcos: Gerade im Schatten der theoretischen Texte Friedrich Schlegels bleibt es selbst der professionellen Leserschaft weitgehend verborgen (211). To a large degree, such ignorance attests to the success of the polemics launched against Atareos by opponents of the Schlegel brothers, such as Garlieb Merkel, Karl August Bottiger, and August von Kotzebue, as illustrated by the twelve reviews from the years 1802 and 1803 contained in this edition. For example, a friend of Friedrich Nicolai identified by Mark-Georg Dehrmann as Gerhard Anton Gramberg concludes his long and often maliciously perceptive comparison of Atareos with passages from Hofmannswaldau, Lohenstein, Zesen, and other Baroque writers by pronouncing the following verdict on Schlegel's efforts: Aus Furcht zu sudeln hat er gar gesudelt, / Hat wuthend so in Angst das Ding verhudelt (175)-a parody that Ludwig Ferdinand Huber cites in his own anonymous review of Gramberg's pamphlet in the September 2, 1803, edition of Kotzebue's Der Freimuthige (178). Likewise, the reviewer of Atareos in Nicolai's Neue allegemeine deutsche Bibliothek concedes that Schlegel's drama does contain a large number of attractive rhyme assonances, but then observes: desto seltener sind die Assonanzen fur Verstand und Herz, und es ist wohl keine Frage, wohin es endlich mit unserer Poesie kommen musse, wenn man jene kindische Spielereyen in Tragodien als glanzende Vorzuge ruhmt (114).Thanks to Dehrmann, we are now in a position to make an informed and dispassionate assessment of Atareos. Dehrmann proceeds from the original edition published by Unger in 1802 (Hans Eichner selected the final version of 1823 for volume 5 of the Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe) and then provides an apparatus that includes not only the pagination and variants from the various editions of Atareos between 1802 and 1823 but also the use of asterisks to indicate semantically significant variations. …