Aubry's dog
Aubry's Dog, or Bondy's Forest, is one of the most successful melodramas of the 19th century. It came from the Parisian poet and theater director René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt . The knight's play was premiered on June 18, 1814 under the title Le Chien de Montargis, ou la Forêt de Bondy, mélodrame historique en trois actes et à grand spectacle in the Parisian Théâtre de la Gaîté on the Boulevard du Temple and remained in the repertoire without interruption until 1834 . The London premiere in the translation by William Barrymore took place in the same year at the Theater Royal in Covent Garden .
The German translation by Ignaz Franz Castelli to the music of Ignaz von Seyfried was published on October 4, 1815 at the Königliche Schauspiele Berlin . The competing product by Joseph August Adam ( The Dog of Aubri de Montdidier, or the duel on the island of Notre-Dame. A romantic play in four acts ), already performed in Vienna in September 1815, failed to prevail over Pixérécourt and Castelli's version. - The piece spread throughout Europe in a short time. It led to Johann Wolfgang Goethe's departure from the Weimar Theater.
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The plot goes back to a legend from the 14th century, which is first handed down in a letter from Julius Caesar Scaliger : A knight and favorite of King Charles V , Aubry de Montdidier, is killed in 1371 by his rival Robert de Macaire in the forest Bondy murdered. Aubry's hunting dog, the only one who saw the crime, succeeds in directing suspicion on Macaire. In order to bring about a kind of divine judgment , the king decides to let the accused fight the dog.
The best known was a version that was allegedly noted by Michel de Montaigne as a handwritten note in a copy of his essays (on the Apologie de Raimond Sebond , livre II / 12, where a story by Plutarch about a juggler 's dog is quoted); however, it is definitely a fake. Pixérécourt gives a total of eight sources for his dramatization, including Jean-Baptiste de Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye and Philippe-Auguste de Sainte-Foix .
A statue of the battle is still a symbol of the French community of Montargis to this day .
Dramatization
The success of the theatrical version was due to the fact that a trained dog appeared next to a mute role , which enabled a mime actor to play an important role in the play: The mute servant Eloi is suspected of murdering his master Aubry because he is picked up with personal belongings of Aubry. However, he cannot defend himself because of his disability.
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THE SENESCHALL: But by what incomprehensible coincidence did you have these objects? (ELOI replies that it was not a coincidence.)
If it was not at all a coincidence, explain the circumstance that gives rise to your indictment. (ELOI uses all the art of pantomime to explain that poor AUBRY, now dead and unable to confirm the truth, gave him the items to carry to Paris.)
They say that Aubry will leave them to you has to transport them? Where? (ELOI points to Paris.)
So to Paris. And who should you take them to? (ELOI tries with all her might to express that it is AUBRY'S mother.)
GONTRAN: My daughter? (ELOI says no.)
THE SENESCHALL: A friend? (
Same answer.) URSULA: Maybe his mother? (ELOI affirmed.)
In the end and in dire straits, he is relieved by Aubry's dog Dragon, who also cannot speak in a human way. In the end there is no fight like the one in the legend. The myth of the story is replaced by the search for clues in the style of a modern crime story. The dog is killed by his opponents, but the murderer is convicted using a belt with which he tied the dog to the crime scene.
complement
The name for the Briard dog breed is sometimes traced back to Chien d'Aubry , so it happened that the role of the dog in Pixérécourt's version was taken over by a trained Briard. A Viennese actor named Karsten and his trained poodle offered himself for the first German performances . The then famous dog Munito also appeared in this play.
In the Theater Royal in Dublin , the rumor that the dog, which had been a regular participant (and was quite popular with the audience), had not been adequately rewarded and was now failing its service at the performance scheduled for December 16, 1814, caused anger among the expectant audience. They asked to speak to the theater manager in charge. When he refused, the audience smashed the interior of the theater. The so-called dog riots lasted for several days and eventually led to the resignation of the theater director. And that was, among other reasons, the end of the theater in this place.
consequences
Carl Friedrich Zelter, for example, was able to glean some positives from the Berlin premiere in a letter to Goethe. At the instigation of the actress Karoline Jagemann , the melodrama was given in April 1817 at the Weimar court theater for Grand Duke Carl August , who was a great dog lover. Actor Ludwig Devrient gave the murderer Macaire . Because Goethe's resistance to this performance was unsuccessful, he successfully asked for his release from the court theater.
The aristocratic preference for dogs and horses was in direct competition with the bourgeois striving for education , which had been emancipated since the 18th century. What had been achieved suddenly appeared to be undone. These social problems and Goethe's old age are given as reasons for the break with his patron and superior Carl August. According to Goethe's earlier practice, entertainment pieces were an integral part of the theater schedule: "[...] it would be easy to prove that he gave a huge number of pieces that didn't surpass Aubry's dog".
A journalist composed the verses of Friedrich Schiller's poem An Goethe (1800) "Appearance should never reach reality / And if nature wins, art must escape" as follows: "The stage should never resemble the dog stable / And comes the poodle, the poet must give way. ”- The play was parodied by Joachim Perinet ( Dragon, the dog of Aubri or: Der Wienerwald , 1816) and by Pius Alexander Wolff ( The dog of Aubry. Posse in one act , 1818). Goethe's departure from the theater, in turn, was reflected in The Dog of Aubri. Ein Zeitbild (1869) dramatized by Albert Lindner .
In 1909, Georges Monca shot a silent film for Pathé based on the script by Romain Coolus.
The lecture The Dog of Aubry , which Gustaf Gründgens gave to the National Socialist Association of Comradeship of German Artists in 1943 , promoted a nationalist, above all anti-French condemnation of the play (“The limit of how far we can go, has forever 'The dog of Aubry 'shown ”).
In 1983 Jean Amila published a detective novel Le chien de Montargis , which alludes to the legend.
literature
- René de Pixérécourt: Le Chien de Montargis ou La Forêt de Bondy , Paris: Barba 1814
- René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt: Le Chien de Montargis / The dog of Montargis , bilingual edition, University Publishing House Bamberg 1994. ISBN 3-9235-0721-6
- Gustaf Gründgens : The dog of Aubry , in: Ders .: Reality of the theater , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1953, pp. 82–110
- Harald Wentzlaff-Eggebert: Le Chien de Montargis , in: Klaus Manger (Hrsg.): Goethe and the world culture . Heidelberg: Winter 2003, pp. 403-424. ISBN 3-8253-1499-5
- Samantha Hardy: The Text of Muteness in Personal Injury Litigation, in: Law Text Culture, 11: 2007, pp. 317–334, URL: http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 1050 & context = ltc , accessed on March 1, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://perso.orange.fr/gatinais.histoire/Chien_de_Montargis.htm (French)
- ↑ Guilbert de Pixérécourt, Théâtre choisi , Paris: Tresse 1842, vol. 3 p. 119
- ^ Pixérécourt, Le Chien de Montargis , Act II, scene 10; ibid, p. 166f.
- ↑ History of the City of Dublin: From the Earliest Accounts to the ..., Volume 2, by John Warburton, James Whitelaw, Robert Walsh. Cadell and Davies Verlag, 1818 in Google Book Search
- ↑ Carl Friedrich Zelter: To Goethe , No. 264, in: Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer (Ed.): Correspondence between Goethe and Zelter, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1833, Vol. 2, p. 321
- ↑ ETA Hoffmann: Complete Works, ed. Carl Georg von Maassen, Munich and Leipzig: Georg Müller 1910, fourth volume, pp. 277–278
- ↑ Ruth B. Emde: Self-Staging in Classic Weimar: Caroline Jagemann, Göttingen: Wallstein 2004, p. 920. ISBN 3-89244-743-8
- ^ General German Real Encyclopedia, Leipzig: FA Brockhaus, Vol. 1, 1819, p. 409