Abstract

As a playwright, August Wilhelm Iffland is best known for his sentimental domestic plays and dramas which enjoyed wild popularity amongst theater audiences from the late eighteenth century until about the early to mid-nineteenth century. One of Iffland’s earliest successes, The Foresters (1785), draws on a criminal case involving interrogational torture for a late-stage conflict in act five. Iffland’s source material for The Foresters was the author’s first dive into the popular practice of adapting the contents of criminal court cases into literary or theatrical narratives and announcing them as such. This essay analyzes the play’s engagement with contemporary discourses on legal reform in the 1780s, and the extent to which Iffland’s early work actually explores these problems. By staging serious legal themes such as torture in a domestic, middle-class setting for an enlightened audience, The Foresters allows us a glimpse at how popular plays might try to make sense of the complex relationship between the progressive legal reform efforts in the German territories and the legacy of seemingly outdated legal institutions.

摘要

作为一名剧作家，奥古斯特·威廉·伊弗兰 (August Wilhelm Iffland) 以其感伤的国内戏剧和戏剧而闻名，从 18 世纪后期到大约 19 世纪中叶，这些戏剧在戏剧观众中广受欢迎。Iffland 最早的成功作品之一，The Foresters (1785)，在第五幕中借鉴了一个涉及审讯酷刑的刑事案件，以应对后期冲突。Iffland 为The Foresters提供的原始资料是作者第一次深入研究将刑事法庭案件的内容改编成文学或戏剧叙事的流行做法，并以此类方式宣布它们。本文分析了该剧与 1780 年代法律改革的当代话语的互动，以及伊弗兰早期作品在多大程度上实际探讨了这些问题。通过在国内中产阶级环境中为开明的观众上演诸如酷刑等严肃的法律主题，森林人让我们得以一瞥流行戏剧如何试图理解德国领土上的进步法律改革努力之间的复杂关系以及看似过时的法律制度的遗产。