Egmont

Egmont (published 1788; first performed 1789)

Historical Context

The historical Egmont lived from 1522-1568. In 1545 he married Sabine of Bavaria and in 1546 he was awarded the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1555 Charles V was replaced as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain by his son Phillip II. Egmont fought on the Spanish side in the war between Spain and France (1557-59). In 1559 Phillip appointed his half sister Margarete von Parma (1522-1586) as Regent of the Netherlands. Phillip sent orders for the Inquisition to be continued against the Protestants. The discontent of the Dutch nobility increased and in 1565 Egmont went to Spain to put the Netherlanders’ case before Phillip, who ignored him In 1566 there were Calvinist uprisings in the Netherlands and Catholic icons were destroyed. In April 1567 William of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1533-84) left for Germany, having learned that the Duke of Alba was about to occupy the Netherlands. Egmont stayed and Alba arrived in August. In September 1567 Alba invited Egmont to dinner and had him arrested. Egmont was executed in June 1568. After this, William of Orange (Oranien in Goethe’s play) led the Northern provinces in a decade-long uprising. In 1579 the Northern provinces declared their independence from Spain.

Goethe’s Play

Goethe’s main sources were the Jesuit historian Famianus Strada’s De bello Belgico decades duae and the Protestant Emanuel van Meteren’s Eygentliche und vollkommene historische Beschreibung des Niederländischen Kriegs.

Goethe’s play compresses the action of two years (August 1566-June 1568) into a few days or weeks, making it more dramatically effective, and bringing it slightly closer to the classical unity of time.

Goethe wrote this play in 1775, 1778-79, and 1782; he finished it in Rome in the summer of 1787. By the time he finished the play, Goethe had spent over a decade at the court in Weimar, and his politics had changed. No longer a rebellious member of the Sturm und Drang, he had become a part of the establishment. This transition means that the finished play is ambivalent about Egmont, both celebrating him and criticising him. Like Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen, Egmont has a traditional view of freedom: both characters want to preserve older, traditional privileges and habits, in the face of new authoritarianism. The first time we see Egmont in Act Two, he is not rebelling, but restoring order.

In Act One, Egmont does not appear but all the characters are talking about him: the citizens of Brussels; Margarete von Parma and her secretary Machiavelli; Klärchen, her mother and Brackenburg. Egmont’s omniprescence in Act One shows that he has a symbolic power and this anticipates the fact that he will be a symbol for resistance after his death. Machiavelli advises Margarete to be tolerant towards the Protestants, but Margarete replies that she must do as her brother Phillip II commands.

In Act Two, Vansen, a scribe with a murky past, tells the citizens of Brussels of their ancient privileges which forbid the monarch from interfering in religious matters without the agreement of the nobility and the estates. A fight breaks out. Egmont arrives and restores order. He tells the crowd to be patient, arguing in favour of reform from above, not from below:

Allen Beistand sollt ihr finden; es sind Maßregeln genommen, dem Übel kräftig zu begegnen. Steht fest gegen die fremde Lehre und glaubt nicht, durch Aufruhr befestige man Privilegien. Bleibt zu Hause; leidet nicht, daß sie sich auf den Straßen rotten. Vernünftige Leute können viel tun.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/goethe/egmont/egmont21.html

You shall find every support; measures are being taken to meet these troubles with forceful disciplinary action. Stand fast against the foreign teachings and do not believe that you can secure your privileges through rebellion. Stay at home, do not permit them to form gangs on the streets. Reasonable people can achieve much.

Jetter remarks that Egmont’s neck seems ripe for the executioner’s axe. Egmont returns home and deals with affairs of state with his secretary. Egmont receives a letter from Count Oliva containing some friendly warnings. Oliva’s letter mentions the controversial servants’ uniforms which Egmont introduced, bearing a bundle of arrows (the symbol of the Netherlands). Egmont protests that this is not treason, but only a bit of fun. Oranien arrives and warns Egmont that the Duke of Alba is on his way. He tells Egmont not to meet with Alba, since Alba plans to arrest them. Egmont refuses.

In Act Three, Margarete tells Machiavelli that although she will retain the title of Regent, she is being effectively removed of her duties: Alba will be taking over. Egmont visits Klärchen. He takes off his coat and shows her the magnificent order of the Golden Fleece. Egmont tells Klärchen to distinguish between his private and public self.

In Act Four, Vansen, Jetter, Soest and the carpenter discuss Alba’s arrival; Vansen declares that Egmont is a fool to stay in town. The Duke of Alba converses with his son Ferdinand. Ferdinand says that he looks forward to being friends with Egmont. Alba tells Ferdinand not to be so frivolous: Egmont and Oranien are to be arrested. A letter arrives from Oranien saying that he will not come to dinner. Egmont arrives and advises Alba to be a cautious ruler. He compares the people of the Netherlands to a noble horse which must be ridden with care, and governed fraternally:

Und ebenso natürlich ist's, daß der Bürger von dem regiert sein will, der mit ihm geboren und erzogen ist, der gleichen Begriff mit ihm von Recht und Unrecht gefaßt hat, den er als seinen Bruder ansehen kann.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/goethe/egmont/egmont43.html

And is just as natural that the citizen wants to be governed by someone who was born and raised with him, who has the same concept of right and wrong as him, someone whom he can regard as his brother.

Alba is unimpressed. His guards arrest Egmont and take him away.

In Act Five, Klärchen tries to incite the crowd to rescue Egmont, remind them that his blood has already flowed for them, but without success. Blanckenburg tells her to come home; she is outraged at his denial of his loyalty to Egmont. In prison, Egmont thinks of Klärchen: if only she were a man, she would be the first to rescue him. At home, knowing that Egmont is going to be executed, Klärchen drinks poison. Ferdinand visits Egmont in prison and tells him that he has always been his idol, and that his life will be meaningless once Egmont is dead. Egmont is heartened, and reassures Ferdinand:

du verlierst mich nicht. War dir mein Leben ein Spiegel, in welchem du dich gerne betrachtetest: so sei es auch mein Tod. Die Menschen sind nicht nur zusammen, wenn sie beisammen sind; auch der Entfernte, der Abgeschiedene lebt uns.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/goethe/egmont/egmont52.html

You will not lose me. If my life was for you a mirror in which you liked to contemplate yourself, then let my death be this to you also. People are not only together when they are next to each other; the distant or departed one still lives for us.

Here Egmont anticipates his own posthumous influence, since his death will create a martyr figure which Oranien will use very effectively in the years to come. Egmont recommends Ferdinand to Klärchen and bids him farewell. Egmont lies down to sleep, and freedom appears to him in the guise of Klärchen, who shows Egmont the bundle of arrows, the symbol of the united provinces of the Netherlands. She hands him a laurel wreath. Then Egmont wakes up. It is morning, and time for his execution.

Schiller’s Review and Revision of the Play

In 1788 Schiller reviewed Egmont for the Jena Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. His three main objections: (i) we continually hear of Egmont’s greatness, but we never see it onstage; (ii) the piece lacks tragic greatness; (iii) the ending, which Schiller described as a ‘Salto Mortale in eine Opernwelt’; ‘a death leap into a world of opera’. The first criticism is arguably unfair, since almost everything Egmont says and does bears witness to his great optimism, charm, and lust for life.

The first performances of the play in Mainz in 1789 and in Weimar in 1791 were unsuccessful and so in 1796, at Goethe’s request, Schiller produced a revised version of the play. Schiller’s version cut the scenes with Margarete von Parma and with Klärchen, and accentuated Alba’s sadism.

The incidental music for Egmont was written by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, but Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his own version, first used in 1814.

The play contains several bisexual allusions, as W. Daniel Wilson has shown (see reading list below, Wilson (1996)). The technique of Act One, in which other characters’ conflicting opinions about the main protagonist are presented, is also used by Schiller in Wallenstein’s Lager; Wallenstein’s Camp. Egmont is set at the same historical moment as Schiller’s Don Carlos. Echoes of Egmont can be found in Büchner’s drama Dantons Tod; Danton’s Death, and Thomas Mann’s novel Felix Krull (cf. E. Schonfield, Art and its Uses in Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull, London, 2008, pp. 20-23).

Further Reading

Matthew Bell, ‘“This was a man!” Goethe’s Egmont and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’, Modern Language Review 111:1 (2016), 141-61

Steffan Davies, ‘Schiller’s Egmont and the Beginnings of Weimar Classicism’, in Schiller: National Poet – Poet of Nations: A Birmingham Symposium, ed. by Nicholas Martin (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 123-38

John M. Ellis, ‘The Vexed Question of Egmont’s Political Judgment’, in Tradition and Creation: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Mary Wilkinson, ed. by C.P. Magill, Brian A. Rowley and Christopher J. Smith (Leeds: Maney, 1978), pp. 116-30

Irmgard Hobson, ‘Oranian and Alba: The Two Political Dialogues in Egmont’, Germanic Review 50 (1975), 260-74

Edward T. Larkin, ‘Goethe's Egmont: Political Revolution and Personal Transformation’, Michigan Germanic Studies 17:1 (1991), 28-50

Ritchie Robertson, ‘Goethe and Machiavelli’, in The Present Word: Culture, Society and the Site of Literature. Essays in Honour of Nicholas Boyle, ed. by John Walker (London: Legenda, 2013), pp. 126-37

Raleigh Whitinger, ‘The Ironic “Tick” in Goethe's Egmont: The Potentials and Limits of the Modern Heroic and Poetic Ideal’, Goethe Yearbook 14 (2007), 129-46

Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, ‘The Relation of Form and Meaning in Goethe’s Egmont’, in Goethe: Poet and Thinker (London: Arnold, 1962), pp. 55-74

W. Daniel Wilson, ‘Hunger/Artist: Goethe’s Revolutionary Agitators in Götz, Satyros, Egmont, and Der Bürgergeneral’, Monatshefte 86 (1994), 80-94

W. Daniel Wilson, ‘Amazon, Agitator, Allegory: Political and Gender Cross(-Dress)ing in Goethe's Egmont’, in Outing Goethe and his Age, ed. by Alice A. Kuzniar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 125-46

Further Reading in German

Steffan Davies, ‘Goethes Egmont in Schillers Bearbeitung – ein Gemeinschaftswerk an der Schwelle zur Weimarer Klassik’, Goethe-Jahrbuch 123 (2006), 13-24