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• Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage by Jonathan M. Hess
• Meri-Jane Rochelson

In Deborah and Her Sisters, Jonathan Hess restores the history of an extraordinarily popular nineteenth-century play, first performed in Germany in 1849 and then—in a variety of versions, titles, and languages—throughout the world until the 1920s. Analyzing the various texts of the play as well as its performance and reception history, Hess makes the case that Salomon Hermann Mosenthal’s play Deborah, as well as its English descendant, Augustin Daly’s Leah, the Forsaken (along with French, Italian, and other versions with heroines of other names), gave Jewish and non-Jewish “theatergoers the pleasures and thrills of compassion with female Jewish suffering” (7), promoting a positive philosemitism that contributed to liberal feeling. Although history proved such political sentiment short-lived, Hess’s documentation of the Deborah phenomenon brings to light both the history of a widely performed play and the transnational importance of Jewish themes and Jewish–Christian relations in nineteenth-century theatre.

Deborah and Her Sisters approaches its subject from several directions, in each case buttressed by thorough research and ample visual illustration. Its introduction provides an overview, delineating the thesis and establishing the focus of each chapter. Chapter 1, “Anatomy of a Tearjerker,” analyzes Deborah and the American Leah. Hess underlines the significance of central plot points: the Jewish heroine’s love for a Christian, a misunderstanding that separates them, the heroine’s passionate curse of her erstwhile beloved at the center of the play, and her reconciliation with but departure from the Christian community at its end. In some versions the departure is an actual leave-taking, with the Jewess going off with a group of her people to America or Palestine. In others, it is the heroine’s onstage or impending death. In most versions, however, we see that the reconciliation scene follows incidents of antisemitic speech or violence, thus allowing for an audience’s collective experience of sympathy while leaving the future of Jews in Christian states uncertain at best. Hess points out, however, that by setting his play in the late 1700s, Mosenthal foregrounds it against Emperor Joseph II’s 1782 Edict of Tolerance toward the Jews of Habsburg Europe, a modest but highly symbolic reform. With such a historical referent, Hess argues, audiences could “feel a lasting mode of secular compassion with Jewish suffering” (54), albeit paired with “smugness and complacency” (64).

Chapter 2 examines the international success of Deborah in various incarnations, with an emphasis on British and American productions, although Hess notes that by the end of the nineteenth century the play was translated into at least fifteen languages and performed throughout the world as well as in Europe and North America. While basic elements of the story remained in each version, its time and place settings were often changed for topicality, and it appeared as poem, novel, and opera as well as spoken drama. Illustrations, from carte-de-visite photographs to parodies, show how widely images of actresses performing Deborah or Leah circulated. They emphasize the Orientalism of the protagonist’s costume as well as the broad familiarity of the play. Hess develops the chapter’s titular themes, “Sensationalism, Sympathy, and Laughter,” through extensive archival research in texts of the plays [End Page 115] and in the massive body of memoirs, reviews, and newspaper notices that he makes excellent use of throughout the book. The chapter title itself suggests the responses the play evoked, especially in North America and Britain, as it performed its combination of melodramatic and cultural work.

Chapter 2 also introduces Kate Bateman, who launched her career playing Leah onstage and remained most closely identified with the role. Chapter 3 more extensively develops the play’s importance in her career as well as those of actors such as Avonia Jones and Nance O’Neil (in America...

审核人：

• 黛博拉和她的姐妹们：十九世纪的情节剧和许多著名女演员如何将犹太教推上世界舞台，乔纳森·赫斯（Jonathan M. Hess）
• 梅里·简·罗切尔森（Meri-Jane Rochelson）

乔纳森·赫斯（Jonathan Hess）在黛博拉（Deborah）和她的姐妹们（Sisters）中，重温了19世纪极为流行的戏剧的历史，该戏剧于1849年在德国首次演出，然后以各种版本，标题和语言在全世界范围内播出，直至1920年代。分析剧中的各种文本，以及它的性能和接收历史，赫斯使情况所罗门赫尔曼莫森索的发挥狄波拉，以及它的英文后裔，奥古斯丁达利的莉亚，被遗忘（连同法语，意大利语和其他版本的女主角一起使用），使犹太人和非犹太人“剧场同伴对女性犹太人的痛苦有同情的快感和快感”（7），促进了积极的慈善主义，为自由主义的感觉做出了贡献。尽管历史证明这种政治情绪是short花一现的，但赫斯对德博拉现象的记录既揭示了广泛表演的历史，也揭示了犹太主题和犹太基督徒关系在19世纪剧院中的跨国重要性。

黛博拉和她的姐妹们从多个方向研究了这个主题，在每种情况下都经过深入研究和充足的视觉插图的支持。它的简介提供了概述，描述论文并确定每一章的重点。第1章，“撕纸机解剖”，分析了黛博拉和美国利亚。赫斯强调了主要情节观点的重要性：犹太女主人公对基督徒的热爱，使她们与众不同的误解，女主人公对剧本中心所钟爱的热情诅咒，以及她与基督徒社区的和解但与之背道而驰。结尾。在某些版本中，离开是实际的请假，犹太人与一群人一起去美国或巴勒斯坦。在其他情况下，这是女主角的舞台上或即将死亡。但是，在大多数版本中，我们看到和解场景是在反犹太言论或暴力事件之后发生的，因此允许听众集体同情，同时充斥着基督教国家中犹太人的前途。赫斯指出，但是，通过设定他在1700年代后期的表现，莫森塔尔（Mosenthal）将其视作反对约瑟夫二世皇帝（Emperor Joseph II）1782年对哈布斯堡王朝欧洲犹太人的宽容令，这是一次适度但极具象征意义的改革。赫斯认为，有了这样的历史参照物，听众可以“感受到犹太人痛苦的世俗同情的持久模式”（54），尽管与“自满和自满”相辅相成（64）。

第2章探讨了黛博拉（Deborah）在国际上的成功尽管赫斯指出，到19世纪末，该剧已被翻译成至少15种语言，并在世界各地以及欧洲和北美进行了演出，但其形式都以英国和美国的作品为重点。尽管每个版本都保留了故事的基本元素，但由于时事性，故事的时间和地点设置经常发生变化，并以诗歌，小说，歌剧和口头戏剧的形式出现。插图，从点菜照片到模仿秀，都显示出表演黛博拉或莉亚的女演员的图像流传得多么广泛。他们强调主人公服装的东方主义以及对戏剧的广泛熟悉。赫斯通过对戏剧文本的广泛档案研究，开发了本章的主题主题：“感觉主义，同情心和笑声”。[结束第115页]以及大量的回忆录，评论和报纸通知中，他在整本书中都很好地利用了它。本章的标题本身就暗示了这出戏的反应，特别是在北美和英国，因为该戏结合了戏剧性和文化性。

第2章还介绍了凯特·贝特曼（Kate Bateman），凯特·贝特曼（Kate Bateman）的职业生涯是在舞台上扮演莉亚（Leah），并一直与该角色关系最为密切。第3章更广泛地阐述了该剧以及她的演员，例如Avonia Jones和Nance O'Neil（在美国）的重要性。