Abstract
In the Introduction the meaning and implications of the term
"social drama" are examined and the general aims of the thesis out¬
lined. The first main section is concerned with the development of
domestic drama in the 1840's. In the opening Chapter I have first
looked briefly at the literary situation of the time. I have then
discussed the conception of G-utzkow's domestic plays and tried to
establish some basic connections between these and other polemic
plays written in the years leading up to the Revolution of I848. In
the second chapter I have analysed the structure of the dramatic
action in Ludwig's 'Der Erbforster' and attempted to disclose the
diversity of the imaginative drives underlying its conception and to
see in these evidence of the dramatist's own uncertainty about his
real artistic aims. In the final part of this first section I have
examined Hebbel's 'Maria Magdalena' and tried to re-assess its
position in the development of the burgerliches Trauerspiel. I
have emphasised in particular the dramatist's largely intuitive
concern to go beyond the available methods of dramatic realism and
to embody substantially new forms of imaginative enquiry.
The second section of the thesis deals with the work of Ludwig
Anzengruber. After briefly discussing his aims as a popular
dramatist I have looked at his peasant plays. In these works there
is, I have argued, a basic discrepancy between the playwright's
propogandist purpose and the shaping tendency of his creative
imagination which was still profoundly responsive to the fundamental
insights of the tragic tradition. In the discussion of Anzengruber's
Viennese plays in the following chapter I have again tried to show a
severe tension "between his overt conciliatory aims and his
extremely pessimistic vision of social existence.
The final section of the thesis is devoted to a study of
Naturalism and is in four parts. In the first of these the
attempts of the Naturalists to define a new form of drama are
discussed. In these I have emphasised what I see as their central
concern to reconcile their modern, scientifically influenced out¬
look with their sense of the formal identity of the drama as an
aesthetic mode. In the following chapter I have looked at those
Naturalist plays which sought to portray the lives of individuals
hound together by their dependence upon their economic environment
and have studied in particular the different ways in which the
dramatists have attempted to express this determinist vision in
dramatic terms.
In the next part attention is focussed on other Naturalist
plays in which the individual is seen as the victim of socialcultural change yet at the same time as capable of transcending his
social experience. These works, I have suggested, offer a helpful
approach to the dramas of Halbe. The tense, exploratory energy of
his plays stems largely (it has been argued) from our awareness of
the essential ambiguity of the hero* s experience of life and from
our inability to relate it clearly to the dramatist's comprehensive
analysis of social processes. The final chapter deals with
Hauptmann*s domestic tragedies. In discussing these I have stressed
an apparent discontinuity between the external action and the
protagonist's deepening sense of disruption and abandonment. Our
responses to these works are shaped, I have claimed, by a basic
uncertainty about the inward experience of the central figure and
about the character and significance of the process which
eventually brings about his destruction.
In the Conclusion the main findings of the study are briefly
summarised and some of the main developments in the drama in the
second half of the 19th century re-assessed.
