W. E. Yates – författare

This is the first general history in English of theatre in Vienna, the one German-speaking city which, in the eighteenth century and for most of the nineteenth, sustained a theatrical life comparable to that of Paris or London. The book covers this theatrical culture from the beginnings of modern theatre in 1776 to the present day, relating it to social, political and intellectual history. It focuses primarily on the most important and productive theatres: the Burgtheater of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the commercial theatres that housed Viennese dialect comedy and operetta. Particular emphasis is placed on the dramatists and composers from whom the lasting importance of the theatres chiefly derives, and on the ideological pressures reflected in the repertory, in censorship (to which one chapter is devoted), and in press reception. The book draws on original documents including diaries, memoirs and reviews, and is accessible to general readers as well as specialists.

This 1972 text provides the student of German literature and European drama with a general introduction to Grillparzer's work. Dr Yates begins with a substantial biographical introduction which is one of the most detailed of its kind in any language. He then turns to the writings and introduces them linked by theme, identifying as Grillparzer's finest achievements the series of four dramas completed between 1823 and 1832. He also indicates the virtues characteristic of Grillparzer's work in general: the subtlety of his characterisation, his concern with moral values, the consistent ideals underlying his view of history and the human condition, and the essential theatricality of his drama. Dr Yates quotes freely; quotations from Grillparzer's prose are given in translation, those from the plays and poems are in the original with an English translation at the foot of the page. The aim throughout is to show the reader what is characteristic in the plays.

Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801-1862), for a quarter of a century the dominant actor on the popular Viennese stage, was the author of over eighty dramatic works, all but one of them comedies in the local Viennese tradition. It was only in the twentieth century that Nestroy's influence, above all as a satirist and master of language, was recognised. In this 1972 publication, the first book in English on Nestroy, Professor Yates centres his discussion of the possen (theatrical comedies) on the dominant comic elements of satire and parody, which are considered in close relation to the sources. He examines in detail five of Nestroy's best-known plays, considering them in relation to their Viennese setting and providing an introduction to the history and conditions of Viennese popular theatre from the early eighteenth century up to Nestroy's times, including an assessment of its relationship to other traditions of popular drama.