Driving Out a Devil explained
Driving Out a Devil (German: Er treibt den Teufel aus) is an early one-act farce by the 20th-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht.[1] It was written in prose, probably in 1919, and was first published in volume 13 of Brecht's Stücke.[2] The play charts the attempts of a self-confident and manipulative Bavarian peasant boy to outwit the vigilant parents of a girl of his village.[3] Ronald Hayman suggests that this play dramatises most clearly Brecht's own ability to influence people.[4]
Sources
- Brecht, Bertolt. 1994. Collected Plays: One. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen. .
- Hayman, Ronald. 1983. Brecht: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. .
- Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
- Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. .
- Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970. Introduction. In Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. . vii–xvii.
Notes and References
- Brecht (1994). The play's title is sometimes translated as He's Driving Out a Devil; see Hayman (1983, 50).
- Thomson and Sacks (1994, xvii) and Willett (1967, 27).
- Hayman (1983, 50-51).
- Hayman writes that the play shows us "the way Brecht imposed his will on both women and men" (1983, 50).
