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The Weavers / Before Sunrise
6.5Gerhart Hauptmann
Hauptmann's naturalist plays — the collective working-class uprising brought to the European stage with unprecedented directness; the 1912 Nobel and the founding works of naturalist drama.
GBM Assessment (Score: 6.5/10)
The Weavers and Before Sunrise laid the foundation of naturalist drama, bringing working-class subjects to the European stage with unprecedented directness. The Weavers dramatizes a collective uprising rather than an individual hero’s story, while Before Sunrise applies an almost clinical naturalism to heredity and social environment. Together they opened the theater to the lives of ordinary laborers and the dispossessed, earning Hauptmann the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.
The Weavers drew its material from the historical Silesian weavers' revolt of 1844, transforming a regional uprising into a universal drama of exploitation and resistance. Hauptmann's social dramas exerted a lasting influence on Bertolt Brecht and the broader tradition of modern political theater that followed.
Europe & the Colonial World, 1892-1896
European imperialism at its zenith. Kipling writes of British India. Hauptmann brings workers to German theater. Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis is an international bestseller. Dickinson's poems appear posthumously. The Dreyfus Affair begins. The first modern Olympics are held in Athens (1896).
Awards & Adaptations
NOBEL 1912. Foundation of naturalist drama.
Recommended Edition
Mary Morison (1899)
