Act One
1. The bows come from Lenz’s I, 1 and 2, and the suggestion that Läuffer’s father was too poor to complete his son’s education.
2. The middle of the scene (after the Klopstock quotations) and the gist of the privy councillor’s intervention are from I, 5 and 6.
3. Nearly all from Lenz’s I, 3.
4. Nothing.
5. Well over half from I, 4, including the argument over pay.
Act Two
6. Pätus and Bollwerk, and the episode of Frau Blitzer and the coffee are in II, 3, as is the lure of the theatre.
7. The second half from Lenz’s II, 2.
8. More than half from II, 1, including the lines “I was promised a horse to ride to Königsberg every three months.”
Act Three
9. Nothing, apart from the figure of Miss Rehhaar.
10. About half from II, 5, including the Romeo and Juliet quotation and Gustchen’s remark “Your father forbade you to write to me,” which shows the identification with Fritz.
11. About half is from the combined II, 6 and III, 1, notably almost the whole of the ending after the major’s wife irrupts.
12. The greater part comes from the fusion of III, 2 and 4 and IV, 3, including all Wenzeslaus’ pedantry.
13. About half is from the combined IV, 4 and 5.
Interlude
Nothing.
Act Four
14. (b) is new, but about half each of (a) and (c) come from V, 3 and 10, including Wenzeslaus’ applause for Läuffer’s action.
Act Five
15. Less than half is from V, 6. The reference to Seiffenblase (Soapbubble) is a loose end.
16. V, 11 and 12 provide the major’s appeal to Fritz’s philosophical disposition, and Fritz’s ensuing acceptance of the child.
17. Nearly all is from a fusion of V, 9 with the second half of V, 10, notably Lise’s love for Läuffer and Wenzeslaus’ reaction to it.
Changes during rehearsal
Notes by Egon Monk
During rehearsals the order of the scenes was quite often changed, shortened or added to. In most cases these alterations were not the result of any theoretical considerations but arose from the continual growth of the arrangement, the increasing elegance of the narration, the noting of social inaccuracies, the attempt to give lightness to the performance, and so on. Where the rehearsals revealed new and unsuspected potentialities in such characters as Pätus we tried to follow them up. […]
1. In scene 1 the audience learns from the privy councillor that Läuffer cannot get a job at the local school because he is not educated enough. In the privy councillor’s view he is just about adequate to “drum a little knowledge and good manners” into the major’s son, so that he may become a soldier like his father. This judgement is subsequently confirmed when scene 5 (the school scene) shows Läuffer stumbling pathetically over the simple Latin word “agricola.” It took one or two rehearsals for us to realize that it wasn’t enough just to establish that Läuffer was unqualified. If we wanted to explain his behaviour in terms of his situation in society we must give some indication of his origins. So we made the privy councillor follow up his remark “but he’s not trained for it” by adding “his father’s purse gave out before his finals.”
The reason why the production of The Tutor made so complete an overall impression was its accumulation of a large number of details, some of them very small.
2. So as to show how much more interested the major was in the origins of his fern than in those of his son’s prospective tutor (an idea that only evolved during the rehearsals) we had him add “’Sblood! Enough about that lout, we were talking about your fern here.”
3. Changes in the scene order usually led to changes in the text. In the first version of The Tutor Fritz von Berg in Halle renounced his holidays after Gustchen at Insterburg had allowed herself to be seduced. During rehearsal we realized what the right order of events had to be: it is because Fritz in Halle high-mindedly gives up spending the holidays at Insterburg with his Gustchen that she feels herself abandoned by him and so lets the tutor seduce her (she is taking a substitute). But since the play had contained no previous reference to Fritz’s wanting to come to Insterburg in the holidays we made Gustchen add, when plighting her troth to her Fritz by the bed in scene 2: “That you’ll always fly to the arms of your Gussie at holiday time and come back from the university in three years.” Fritz breaks his promise and Gustchen turns to the tutor. However, his experiences in Halle, where he sacrifices his holiday money for Miss Rehhaar, put him in a position to understand his Gustchen and forgive her.
4. We also wanted to show that Läuffer’s bodily needs arose from a lack of understanding on society’s part. […] He has to ensure that he can now and again get away from Insterburg. During the rehearsing of scene 5 we accordingly added the dialogue from “Major, would it be too bold of me” to “for two or three days?” Having put his request in the most obsequious possible way, Läuffer acknowledges the major’s half-assent with lavish motions of gratitude. He executes several marked bows in rapid succession, and in exchange for the faint prospect of a horse is prepared to shoulder any other burden the major puts on him. That is to say, not only the reduction which has just been effected in his salary but also the doubling of his responsibilities as tutor. The major fails to keep his promise and Läuffer, after a most desperate attempt to get the privy councillor to understand, allows his pampered body to commit a sin.
5. During rehearsal the student Pätus emerged as the most interesting character in the play after Läuffer. Where Läuffer castrates himself physically—which of course at the same time stands for a spiritual castration: the abjuring of rebellion—the self-castration practised by Pätus can only be understood in a spiritual sense. Pätus in The Tutor goes the opposite road to Schiller’s: his Misère declines from extravagance to banality in the course of the play. To make this development clear we had first to lead Pätus to the highest summits before letting him fall headlong into the pit of philistine self-satisfaction. An opportunity was provided by the Kant quotation in the first student scene. Initially we chose a passage about apodictic and assertive sentences […] with the result that Pätus, whom we meant to play a considerable part in our play, seemed not merely to Bollwerk but also to such spectators as occasionally came to rehearsals to be a muddleheaded clown whom nobody could possibly take seriously. We replaced it with an extract about the Ding an sich, but this made matters no better. Stage and auditorium alike confirmed that Bollwerk was right to ridicule Pätus’ Kant-worship; which was not at all what we had intended. Finally we picked a passage from Kant’s work “Zum ewigen Frieden,” which had the desired effect. Pätus had to attain a genuine ethical high point before writing his thesis on war as the father of all things. He achieves something like greatness by his stubborn loyalty to Kant’s truly progressive views. He is tellingly subversive, even if only in his ideas. He explains his stubbornness in another sentence added later: “And my ’No’ … to some supreme leader.” Bollwerk doubts whether such views are useful, but nobody supports him, Fritz too having said “It doesn’t seem so wrong to me.”
So we had the high point from which the fall could take place. […]
6. In scene 12 we tried to show how Wenzeslaus the schoolmaster, once he has been so generous as to open his house to the fugitive Läuffer, realizes his protégé’s potential as cheap labour and, after overcoming his initial mistrust, decides to exploit Läuffer’s predicament for his own advantage. At rehearsal it became clear that miming alone was not enough to make his intention evident. So we introduced an extra sentence after Wenzeslaus’ big speech on the obligations of a German schoolmaster, to be spoken when he had sunk back in his armchair, exhausted by this effort: “I assume, young man … yes, that’s how it is.” Wenzeslaus has shielded Läuffer as one shields the ox that is due to pull one’s cart.
7. We found in the course of rehearsal that in scene 14, where Lise says that her g
uardian would not give her to an officer because of the unsettled life and lack of possessions, we had to make Läuffer exclaim “And me? What have I got?” Subsequently, when Wenzeslaus asks him how he means to support her, Läuffer is telling the truth when he says he has told her already. As long as he remains capable of embarking on marriage he is hampered by his bad social position, and only his incapacity for marriage, after once castrating himself, puts him in a position to support his wife. […]
8. Castration of the body is followed by castration of the mind. When Läuffer writes his letter to Major von Berg, begging him for God’s sake not to deprive him of an existence for which he has made certain sacrifices, we added a postscript in which he promises “always to teach the martyrdom of our Hero-King without omissions.”
9. Right up to the dress rehearsal we were uncertain whether the play ought to end with Fritz’s return to Insterburg after the Pätus sub-plot has been rounded off, and his reconciliation with Gustchen, or with the castrated Läuffer’s engagement to the schoolmaster’s daughter. Till then the ending had been the phony idyll of the von Berg family reunion, complete with punchbowl and tears of joy over the happy turn of events as brought about by God. It was only after the dress rehearsal that we decided to end the play with Läuffer. For the tutor’s splendours and miseries are the subject of the story, and it was he who had been the pretext for an evening spent probing the causes of the German Misère.
[From the previously unpublished “Hofmeister Textänderungen währendder Probe” written up by Egon Monk from his rehearsal notes after discussion with Brecht in the summer holidays of 1950. These and Herr Monk’s other unpublished notes on the production appear to have been destined for a “Model Book” which was never published. For Brecht’s conception of the German Misère see p. xii.]
CORIOLANUS
Texts by Brecht
Enjoying the hero
As for enjoying the hero and the tragic element, we have to get beyond a mere sense of empathy with the hero Marcius in order to achieve a richer form of enjoyment. We must at least be able to “experience” the tragedy not only of Coriolanus himself but also of Rome, and specifically of the plebs.
There is no need to ignore the “tragedy of pride,” or for that matter to play it down; nor, given Shakespeare’s genius, would this be possible. We can accept the fact that Coriolanus finds it worthwhile to give his pride so much rein that death and collapse “just don’t count.” But ultimately society pays, Rome pays also, and it too comes close to collapsing as a result. While as for the hero, society is interested in another aspect of the question, and one that directly concerns it, to wit the hero’s belief that he is indispensable. This is a belief to which it cannot succumb without running the risk of collapse. Thereby it is brought into irreconcilable conflict with this hero, and the kind of acting must be such as not only to permit this but to compel it.
[BFA, vol. 24, pp. 402. Written in 1951 or 1952.]
Plan of the play
Brecht often wrote documents in lower case, and his practice has been preserved here [Editor].
I
1 ROME caius marcius is prepared to quell a revolt of the starving plebs, but the threat of war with the volsces leads the senate to make the plebs concessions: they are given tribunes.
2 ANTIUM aufidius is advancing on rome at the head of the volsces.
3 ROME mother and wife see caius marcius off to the war.
4 CORIOLI caius marcius takes corioli, a volscian city. caius marcius is dissatisfied with his troops because they fight less well when taking it than when defending their own city.
II
1 ROME the city welcomes caius marcius as a conqueror. the tribunes are worried that he will put up for consul.
2 ROME the senate asks coriolanus to solicit the citizens’ votes according to custom.
3 ROME coriolanus goes begging and is elected. the tribunes expose his plans for the plebs.
III
1 ROME coriolanus rejects the plebeians’ demand for grain and attacks the tribunes.
2 ROME coriolanus is persuaded by his mother volumnia that it is worth apologizing to the people for the sake of power.
3 ROME instead of apologizing coriolanus loses control, insults the people, and is banished.
4 ROME volumnia and some senators accompany coriolanus to the city gate.
5 ROME volumnia curses the tribunes.
IV
1 CORIOLI a roman and a volscian discuss the situation.
2 ANTIUM coriolanus hires himself out to aufidius as leader of an army against rome.
3 ROME rome is seized by panic when it is learnt that coriolanus is moving on rome at the head of the volsces.
4 CORIOLI aufidius is merely waiting for rome to surrender before taking action against coriolanus.
V
1 ROME the senate sends menenius out to negotiate with coriolanus. it is not going to risk arming the plebs.
2 CORIOLI coriolanus packs menenius off without listening to his reasoned arguments.
3 ROME the tribunes call on the people to arm itself.
4 CORIOLI volumnia moves her son to turn back.
5 ROME rome receives volumnia without thanks on her return.
6 ANTIUM coriolanus is killed by the volsces.
7 ROME rome gives certain patrician ladies leave to wear mourning for coriolanus.
[Bertolt Brecht Archive [henceforth BBA] 1769/02–3. This characteristic dissection of the story, emphasizing and at times adjusting what Brecht regarded as the points of interest, exists in at least three versions in the Brecht Archive, all identical except that one of them is amended so as to cut III, 1. The plan presumably dates from an early stage of the work on the play.]
Four short notes
(1) General
I don’t believe the new approach to the problem would have prevented Shakespeare from writing a Coriolanus.
I believe he would have taken the spirit of our time into account much as we have done, with less conviction no doubt, but with more talent.
(2) The first scene
It is only by studying the unity of opposites that a proper disposition of the opening scene of Coriolanus becomes feasible; and this is the foundation on which the entire play rests. How else is the director to bring out the difference between Menenius Agrippa’s phony ideological attempt to unify patricians and plebeians, and their real unification as a result of the war?
(3) A question arising from the first scene
What is the relationship between Marcius and the Senate? The patricians flatter Marcius (“’tis true that you have lately told us, /The Volsces are in arms.”). Marcius stifles his unease at the concession of the tribunate, as he is anxious to get a command in the war. But Marcius is made subordinate to Cominius, and the fact that Cominius has to remind him of his former promise suggests that he is at first none too pleased at this.
(4) Act IV, scene 4
In Act IV, scene 4 the citizens shouldn’t change their opinions (as in Shakespeare) so as to regret Coriolanus’ banishment; the nobility, however, should be clearly shown to be afraid (not for Rome, but for their own lives).
This can be brought out
(i) by having the citizens remark that it is better to have a vulture like Coriolanus against them than fighting in their ranks;
(ii) by letting the nobility fall into a panic, like a lot of flustered hens whose cock has flown off to a neighbouring farmyard. They tremble to such an extent before their social equal that the weapons they are collecting fall from their hands.
[(1), BFA, vol. 24, p. 403; (2), BFA, vol. 24, p. 402, and are attributed to1951–52. (3) no longer appears in print. (4) is an unpublished note (BBA 1769/06) headed “Suggestions by Brecht.” The result will be seen in the adaptation, where only one of the suggestions was carried out, and that in modified form.]
Study of the first scene of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus
B. How does the play begin?
R. A group of plebeian
s has armed itself with a view to killing the patrician Caius Marcius, an enemy to the people, who is opposed to lowering the price of corn. They say that the plebeians’ sufferance is the patricians’ gain.
Berliner Ensemble Adaptations Page 41