Marin Držić

Držić's sculpture in Dubrovnik

Marin Držić (* 1508 in Dubrovnik , † May 2, 1567 in Venice ), in Italian Marino Darsa , was a Croatian writer from Dubrovnik. He was a great comedy writer of Croatian literature of the Renaissance .

Life

Marin Držić came from a poor simple middle-class family. He was forced to train as a deacon before going to Siena in 1538 , which was then under Spanish rule. Large gatherings of people were forbidden there, but there were always illegal theater performances, which he regularly attended. In Siena he began to write, he tried himself as a poet in the style of troubadour poetry . But above all he wrote dramas, both comedies and shepherd and shepherd games . Many of his unprinted works were lost.

When he returned to Dubrovnik, theatrical life was in full bloom and enjoyed great popularity among all the stands. Držić wrote numerous commissioned comedies, for example for the annual carnival. With Marin Držić, permanent theater groups were formed in the city for the first time. This meant that the characters in a play were adapted to the actors. For the first time there was also a prologue (foreword).

The first known comedy that premiered in the Dubrovnik court was Tirena . This piece is on the one hand an idyllic shepherd's game, with fairies and fantastic creatures and a very sophisticated language, but on the other hand also shows a very realistically depicted world of the farmers with the associated vernacular. So it is, not only in terms of content, but also in terms of language, a shepherd and shepherd game on two levels. This discrepancy between the nobility and the peasants was supposed to look comical.

His most famous drama is called Dundo Maroje . This is about an old man who sends his son to Florence with 5000 ducats . However, his son Maro goes to Rome and meets a young lady (a courtesan) there and squanders the money with her. The father becomes suspicious and goes to look for his son, with his fiancée in tow. In the end he finds it with 3,000 ducats left in the sack and takes it home with him. In this piece, other people also play an important role, such as B. the servant who takes care of the comedy, as he is very experienced and organizes small frauds. The piece is written in the Dubrovnik vernacular, but there are also passages in Italian.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Die kleine Enzyklopädie , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, Volume 1, page 388

Web links

• Literature by and about Marin Držić in the catalog of the German National Library
• Marin Držić Museum