Product Description

Customer Reviews (10)

actable translation
fine translation of a classic expressionistic piece----beautifully phrased and imagisitically florid.very clear in charaterization and in progression of time and events, albeit realities alternate between fantasy, imagnation and reality.Great for theatre teachers and studio acting teachers.For scene work, Wedekind is a wonderful writer. The division of scenes makes each sequence an event in itself.

From Outrage to Hilarity ...

... in just one century! There's little doubt in my reading mind that Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (conceived in San Francisco, born in Germany, miseducated in Switzerland) meant to shock the socks off the bourgeois public when he wrote 'Frühlings Erwachen' in 1891. It's a play about teenagers -- yes, Virginia, there were teenagers in 1891 -- doing things that even adults couldn't do on a conventional stage; there are explicit scenes of rape, suicide, homos*xuality, and mast*rbation. One teenage girl is a debauched artists' model, and a childish playmate! One 14-year-old girl is beaten and abused by her father, and another envies her for it. The latter pesters her mother for the 'secrets of reproduction', finds herself incomprehensibly pregnant after the rape, and dies in an ab*rtion.

"Spring Awakening" was first staged in Germany in 1906, in a heavily censored version. It played in New York for one day in 1917 but was condemned as obscenity. I wonder, would an audience in 2009 find this play horribly shocking, or would we smugly guffaw at the 19th Century moralities that it mocks. I have a feeling that the world has been so thoroughly Wedekinderized since 1891 that we'd need real blood and nudity on stage to be sufficiently shaken up. When the central character, the boy Melchior, is sent to the reformatory, for instance, he joins a circle of boys competing for a coin by trying to be the first to spurt s*men on it. That might startle even a New York audience toughened up by David Mamet.

Gnarly stuff, eh? Nevertheless, Wedekind meant his play to be uproariously funny, and it is. The scenes in which the adults - parents and teachers - reveal their utter hapless in consequentiality are fresh and witty still. The unexpected appearance of a ghost, the boy Moritz who'd blown his head off, in the final scene is a brilliant absurdity. This translation, by Jonathan Franzen, seems to me to catch the sardonic tone of Wedekind's original German very effectively. Even if you may never see a decent production of Spring Awakening, it's well worth reading, as the first vernal flower of the modern theater.

There is another listing on amazon of exactly the same book, available for a normal price.

From Outrageous to Hilarious ...
... in just a century! There's little doubt in my reading mind that Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (conceived in San Francisco, born in Germany, miseducated in Switzerland) meant to shock the socks off the bourgeois public when he wrote 'Frühlings Erwachen' in 1891. It's a play about teenagers -- yes, Virginia, there were teenagers in 1891 -- doing things that even adults couldn't do on a conventional stage; there are explicit scenes of rape, suicide, homosexuality, and masturbation. One teenage girl is a debauched artists' model, and a childish playmate! One 14-year-old girl is beaten and abused by her father, and another envies her for it. The latter pesters her mother for the 'secrets of reproduction', finds herself incomprehensibly pregnant after the rape, and dies in an abortion.

"Spring Awakening" was first staged in Germany in 1906, in a heavily censored version. It played in New York for one day in 1917 but was condemned as obscenity. I wonder, would an audience in 2009 find this play horribly shocking, or would we smugly guffaw at the 19th Century moralities that it mocks. I have a feeling that the world has been so thoroughly Wedekinderized since 1891 that we'd need real blood and nudity on stage to be sufficiently shaken up. When the central character, the boy Melchior, is sent to the reformatory, for instance, he joins a circle of boys competing for a coin by trying to be the first to spurt semen on it. That might startle even a New York audience today.

Gnarly stuff, eh? Nevertheless, Wedekind meant his play to be uproariously funny, and it is. The scenes in which the adults - parents and teachers - reveal their utter hapless in consequentiality are fresh and witty still. The unexpected appearance of a ghost, the boy Moritz who'd blown his head off, in the final scene is a brilliant absurdity. This translation, by Jonathan Franzen, seems to me to catch the sardonic tone of Wedekind's original German very effectively. Even if you may never see a decent production of Spring Awakening, it's well worth reading, as the first vernal flower of the modern theater.

Director's Discretion
Jonathan Franzen's translation of the Frank Wedekind play, SPRING AWAKENING, will give you an honest taste of what the playwright truly wrote so many years ago.Opinions of it will probably be influenced by each reader's history.Are you reading it after seeing the play?Are you reading it after seeing the musical?Are you reading it -- as I did -- without having seen any stage production?I picked it up due to all the hype in the press about the recent productions -- both musical and straight up.

In the introduction to this edition, Franzen is extremely critical of the musical and the liberties taken with Wedekind's work.I'm not surprised, however.Although the play does include stage directions, many scenes seem a bit confusing.For instance, when Melchior rapes Martha in the hayloft, readers of this play would never know it -- at least initially.All we get is Martha saying "Oh -- oh -- oh!" repeatedly (sounding somewhat like an old Dick and Jane primer from way back).

So yes, all those teen topics are here, just in early 20th century muted tones.If you know the play already, it'll all make perfect sense.If not, act like a director and direct your imaginary actors as you read.It will make up for any gaps and give the comic lines some extra pizazz.Apparently, "director discretion" is the thing with this interesting play.

Great Buy
I read the whole play in one day. It isn't quite as good as the musical, but anyone who likes the music will enjoy the play as well. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Good Novella with 2 Average Stories Included
This collection consists of a novella and two short stories, and all three show Wedekind's interest in sexuality beyond societal norms. The title novella is by far the most disturbing, as it describes a sort of distopian society where young children are trained in dancing and theater for the adult society's pedophilic viewing. Wedekind leaves the possibility that the society described is an imaginary one, but his presentation certainly puts any theatrical presentation that involves children in an unfavorable light. The short stories, "The Sacrificial Lamb" and "The Burning of Egliswyl" show similar interest in abnormal sexual appetites and roles. While I wouldn't use these three stories to indicate that Wedekind is a master of short fiction, but I would certainly be interested in reading some of his drama.

Fascinating
Mine-Haha is a mildly disturbing and completely enthralling novella about a mysterious boarding institution.The girls who attend the school care for each other almost from infancy, and they know little of their future.They are instructed in dance and music by a handful of instructors, and spend their prepubescence completely isolated.In the end they are thrust out into society, with nary a question about their future.Mine-Haha presents a quiet exploration of sexuality and bodily consciousness, while developing a progressive technique of education, performance, and gender roles.
... Read more

Product Description
"The complete script to Frank Wedekind's symphony - or rather a cacophony - of deotic sexual rhetorics. Eric Bentley's achievement here as translator is a beautifully playable and juicy English; his larger gift is the opening to us of what must be ranked as among the supreme masterpieces of nineteenth-century theater." - Donald Lyons, The New Criterion ... Read more

Product Description
Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) is rightly called the prophet of sexuality in modern drama. He himself wandered the world in the company of adventurers, libertines, "perverts," and underground figures, seeking to "know love in all its manifestations." Society's antagonism toward the power of sex is the motivating force in the entire body of his work. And yet Wedekind was a moralist in the strictest sense: sex, he seems to say, is its own enemy. His concept of morality was ambivalent: a child of the Victorian age, he was torn between conventional bourgeois morality and the new morality of sexual freedom. It is difficult to overestimate Wedikind's role in contemporary drama, as a vital force in modern expressionism and as a direct forerunner of the so-called Theater of the Absurd, especially in the work of such seminal writers as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Reacting against the bathos of neo-romanticism and the stolidity of naturalism, he struck deep roots.

The four plays in this volume represent the cream of hiswork. Spring's Awakening is the first play openly to discuss theproblems of adolescence and puberty, and to this day it is one of themajor plays in the international modern repertory. Lulu is Wedekind'squintessential study of the archetypal feminine in her unwitting andunwilling destructiveness of life while attempting to raise it to itshighest pinnacle. Liberation is Lulu's goal, a goal she chases downthe paths of experience with a vengeance. Sexual liberation, socialliberation, political liberation, personal liberation, the liberationto be her own being. Nobody owns her, though every man she encounterstries mightily. Nobody can handle her, as every man she meetsattempts. Nobody knows who or what she is, and that's the way shewants it. The Tenor is one of the great farces in dramaticliterature. Its hero Gerardo is the epitome of the self-servingegocentric matinee idol of the age, the great Wagner Singer of his generation, whom women of all sizes and shapes and ages pursue with a single intent: to bed him no matter what. The play is a tour-de-force of brilliant dialogue, wit, and situation, and it has successfully held the stage since the time of its first production. The Marquis of Keith is rightly considered Wedekind's masterpiece of dramatic construction. It concerns the dealings of a would-be entrepreneur who is caught between two ethical premises: the life of the pleasure-seeking sensualist and that of the idealistic moralist. Mr. Mueller's brilliant, idiomatic new translations of these staples of modern repertory give renewed life to some of the theater's most enturable and famous works. ... Read more

Product Description
Spring's Awakening is a tragi-comedy of teenage sex. Its fourteen-year-old heroine, Wendla, is killed by abortion pills. The young Moritz, terrorized by the world around him, and especially by his teachers, shoots himself. The ending seems likely to be the suicide of Moritz's friend, Melchior, but in a confrontation with a mysterious stranger (the famous Masked Man) he finally manages to shed his illusions and face the consequences. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

A rude awakening
There has been renewed interest in Wedekind's most famous play, following the Broadway musical adaptation of it (currently on tour) achieving some success.Also keeping this 1891 play in print is the fact that it is a favorite text for University German courses.It certainly is a milestone in German theater, anticipating the Expressionist movement by a few years and shaking up audiences then and now and, given the explicit sexual acts called for by the script, it can in more than one sense be described as a 'seminal' work.

The play satirizes the sexually oppressive society of fin de siècle Germany, in a straightforwardly polemical, full-frontal manner.It is, to put it mildly, a challenge to anyone wanting to stage it with any fidelity to the script.That's one reason why it's worth reading, rather than just seeking out an actual performance.You'll find the musical adaptation, for instance, a good deal different from the original text.

The many Biblical and Classical references in the play will be lost on most modern audiences, although they would have been familiar to contemporary audiences and authentically part of the education of the characters portrayed.Today, we need editorial help and Eric Bentley provides this.Those footnotes and the translation itself are fine.I am less happy with the 'Ten Notes' that Bentley provides as an introduction.They are rather self indulgent and include 3 pages of very poor verse, for which I assume Bentley is responsible.So if you want to delve deeper into the historical context and cultural significance of the play, you will need to supplement this text with other critiques.Fortunately, there are many available online.
[PeterReeve]

A Rather Dated Work
I bought this title after hearing all the buzz about the current Broadway musical of the same name inspired by this original. I personally found it dated, full of the cliches of late Imperial German culture and its outlook: histrionic, melodramatic and just plain corny. Perhaps readers more sympathetic to or in-tune with that epoch and its values might find this a moving or interesting read. What I got from it, though was a clearer idea of why the post-World War I Weimar Republic's avante-garde couldn't wait to sweep away the cultural system that produced this kind of stuff.

In light of this play, society hasn't changed much today
I assigned this play to my drama class this fall. At first reading, I witnessed my students' eyes light up and watched them get involved in serious introspection and discussion for the first time. They were inspired. One ignorant parent contacted school administration, and the play was officially banned from our school and the classroom. What a shame.Sad to say...the narrowmindedness of parents haven't changed much in 100 years. Maybe this parent should read the play and then try to get to know her teenager a little better.

nothing special
this play took me about an hour to read, and moved very slowly in my opinion. I love the musical adaptation, but reading this was not exciting at all, it felt like I was reading it for class.

Written in 1891 and JUST as relevant today! Teen angst and puberty
Who'd have believed that this work, first created in 1891, could still be just as accessable and classic today? But it was - and is- although it was surrounded by a swirl of controversy when first published. The play focuses on teen sexuality, abortion, angst, guilt and all the throes of puberty and adolescence. As of this writing, it has received many Tony Awards, well deserved.
If you don't have a chance to see the play in person, this is the next best thing. If you'd like to hear the music, check this out:

Spring Awakening (2006 Original Broadway Cast) ... Read more

Product Description
The four plays in this volume cover the pre-World War I period through to the Weimar Republic. The are: "Spring Awakening" and "The Marquis of Keith" by Frank Wedekind; "Purgatory of Ingolstadt" by Marieluise Fleisser; and Odon von Horvath's "Tales from the Vienna Woods". ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1914.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What is darker tahn black?
We jump in this second Lulu play to after her trial and imprisonment, a year and a helf later. Countess Geschwitz has managed to get Lulu some cholera-infected underwear making her and herself sick. They both were taken to hospital for treatment and Lulu escapes by impersonating Countess Geschwitz. We have gone seriously down. The student Hugenberg, expelled from his school, is in some reform-school from which he escapes to make a short anecdotic apparition in the play. Alva is on the run since the death of his father whose paper he has sold. But he does not have any success in his writing any more. Lulu arrives and Alva declares his love to her, but an ambiguous love because his love is nothing but a musical metaphor of her body. We close this first act on this metaphor that may promise something, but what, since she is on the run for the murder of Alva's father to whom she was married? Then the descent into hell goes very fast. They move to Paris and Lulu is blackmailed by Count Casti Piani who wants to sell her to a brothel in Cairo, Egypt. She has to run. At the same time the acrobat Rodrigo tries to blackmail her into giving him twenty thousand marks she would ghet from Alva. She has to get rid of him, which she manages with the help of Countess Geschwitz and Schigolch, her old friend, father or whatever, since we will never know for sure. But at the same time Alva gets ruined because he had invested all his money in Jungfrau railway shares through te banker Puntschu, and these shares are brutally devalued, which brings into the picture an episode of antisemitism. She runs away with Alva, Schigolch and Geschwitz, leaving the corpse of Rodrigo behind. She moves to London where she becomes a plain streetwalker and we see her customers. The first one, Hunidei, is a religious freak who forces her to keep silent. The second client, Kungu Poti, is the son of an African emperor. He knocks Alva on the head when Alva tries to defend Lulu from the rape Kungu Poti is on the point of carrying out. Schigolch gets the body out of the way into Lulu's room. The third client is Dr Hilti, a university tutor in philosophy, who runs away when he discovers the dead Alva. Finally the fourth client, Jack (not yet the Ripper like in Alban Berg's opera) arrives. He will finish the cleaning up of the place by killing Countess Geschwitz first and then Lulu. Altogether only Schigolch will survivewho had gone down to the pub to have some Christmas pudding. This second Lulu play is bringing her so low that we kind of sigh with relief when they are all dead, even if Jack is loose in London, but London is a lair of killers and thieves. At last they are at peace. That's amazing how death seems to be a liberation from life, a salvation from sin. In this drama there is no hope and cannot be any, no possible freedom in survival. We think of Gustav Malher who reaches the very same and similar point when he expresses his belief death is a liberation too but with the future or perspective to go back to the earth and join or merge with the universal cycle of cosmic energy. Humanity can only dream of cosmic salvation in this godless century. Wedekind paints a picture that is darker than black, an unescapable total damnation in life and no future beyond, except to get free of that damnation by dying.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine, University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University of Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines.
... Read more

Product Description
This is a new edition in the "Drama Classics" series from Nick Hern Books. It is very affordable and ideal for students and perfomers. Frank Wedekind's once-banned and still controversial German play from 1891 focuses on a group of clasmates and explores teenage sexuality holding up a mirror to our own times. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Jena : Erich Lichtenstein; Publication date: 1920; Subjects: Literature; Drama / General; Drama / Continental European; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / European / German; Literary Criticism / Drama; ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more