Castle Wetterstein

Description

""At the beginning stands Wedekind." So wrote German literary critic Rudolf Kayser in 1917 of the new forms of expressionist theatre that were then becoming central to German culture. In the first decades of the twentieth century Frank Wedekind--an actor and a cabaret singer as well as a playwright--was widely acknowledged to be Germany's most important modern dramatist after Brecht (on whose work he had a considerable influence). The subject matter of his plays brazenly challenged the social mores of Wilhelmine Germany, expressing disdain for its commercialism, its social conservatism, its moral prudery, and its sexual repressiveness. In Schloss Wetterstein (Castle Wetterstein), one of his most important plays, Wedekind offers a satirical take on marriage and the bourgeois nuclear family; at the play's center is a rebellious teenage girl who turns to prostitution after her upbringing in an unstable household. The play was published in 1912, but a performance ban was put into effect immediately, and continued until after Wedekind's death. This new edition offers a fresh translation, an illuminating brief introduction, and a selection of background materials that help to set the play in context."--

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