Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)
dr. Ferenc Kerényi: A Dramatic Poem from Hungary to the Theaters of the World
however, was not the only case of borrowed scenery. The adherence to the principles of Meiningenism demanded a sumptous stage setting and, for financial reasons, this expensive scenery often had to be borrowed from a previous production. Due to the success of the Vienna Exhibition, the same scenery was used in 1892 when the Tragedy was put on by the National Theatre in Prague, then again in 1893 in the Lessing Theater in Berlin. Later theatres in Plzen and Brno (1904, 1905) borrowed the scenery of the Prague revival of the Tragedy while Cracow borrowed its scenery from the Vienna Kaiseijubiläums-Theater after its 1903 run. The path of a play in the theatrical world is never without its darker moments. Its fate is strongly influenced by the traditions, including theatrical and literary traditions, and political atmosphere of the country in which it is performed. The Tragedy of Man is no exception to this rule. In Vienna, for example, Madách was accused of treating the biblical story too freely, although it was the Hamburg theatre company which, when showing the play in Vienna, did not stop at the Lord’s last words, but added one more visionary scene to the Tragedy in which the Virgin Mary appeared on stage promising redemption. Again in Vienna, the censor made it clear that the Marseillaise, the anthem of the French Revolution, could be used only as a means to depict the atmosphere of the times. In 1892 the Marseillaise provoked demonstrations, first in the theatre and later in the streets of Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. After lengthy deliberations, the Minister of Internal Affairs decided to ban the performances. The success of the Cracow production, on the other hand, was greatly jeopardized by the many excellent dramatic poems of Polish literature. The greatest resistance in the history of the Tragedy — the traces of which can still be felt today — was met in Berlin and, in general, in German speaking countries where Madách was considered simply an imitator of Goethe. It was unfortunate that the productions in Hamburg, Vienna and Berlin were all based on Lajos Dóczi’s German translation. Dóczi had previously translated Goethe’s Faust into Hungarian and it was inevitable that the text of the Tragedy echoed Goethe’s spirit and style. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, new trends in 24
