1 A much shorter version of this paper was read at the symposium “CALLing, Expanding, Transcending” organized on the occasion of Bernhard Kettemann’s sixtieth birthday in January 2006. I dedicate this paper to Bernhard. My sincere thanks go to Johann Hüttner for providing invaluable information on nineteenthcentury Vienna theatre and some bibliographical references; furthermore, to Theresa Illés for tracing references to Ira Aldridge’s stay in Vienna in the contemporary Viennese press, and to Susanne Reichl for a number of welcome comments and references. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 32 (2007) Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation of Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Padlock Herbert Schendl The present paper discusses an unusual case of code-choice in a Viennese farce from the late 1850s, Carl Juin’s Das Vorhängeschloß. One of the main characters of this play, the black servant Mungo, uses English as well as English-German code-switching in the otherwise German play, though English was hardly ever used on the 19 th century Viennese stage. Trying to account for this clearly marked use of language, the paper first looks at the source of Juin’s play, Isaac Bickerstaff’s comic opera The Padlock (1768). In a second step, the historical context in which Das Vorhängeschloß was written and produced is analysed. A link to the highly successful Continental tour of the black British-American actor Ira Aldridge is established, whose English production of The Padlock on the Viennese stage in 1853 is considered as a trigger for Juin’s German adaptation of The Padlock. An additional model for Juin’s language use is found in Aldridge’s bilingual production of The Merchant of Venice, also shown in Vienna in 1853. 0. Introduction 1 Literary language in general and dramatic language in particular have a variety of functions, among them perhaps most prominently the characterisa- Herbert Schendl 26 2 For the use and functions of nonstandard English in literature see, e.g. Mair (1992), Taavitsainen, Melchers and Pahta (1999), Reichl (2002: 107-111). 3 For a recent survey on grammatical approaches to code-switching see Muysken (2000). 4 For a survey on historical code-switching see Schendl (2002), for modern studies on written code-switching see Callahan (2004). tion of the different dramatis personae and their changing relations to other characters of a play, but also to the audience. Since dramatic texts are texts ‘written to be spoken’, they are generally thought to be closer to spoken language than more formal text types and thus to occupy an intermediate position between spoken and written. Some obvious linguistic features to place dramatic characters socially, regionally, emotionally or in relation to their own or their interlocutors’ gender and age are the use of specific phonological, lexical, morphological or syntactic features, which may be marked socially, regionally or stylistically. 2 Other frequently used devices are more pragmatic and include, for example, the use of interjections, speech acts such as curses or apologies, discourse markers, and malapropisms. A further strategy for achieving such effects is the use of material in other languages, i.e. bilingualism and code-switching, which will be the main focus of the present paper. The study of code-switching in living speech has been a rapidly expanding field of research since the 1970s, starting with individual studies of spontaneous code-switching between English and Spanish in New York, or English and French in Canada. While individual case studies of bilingual interaction were the focus of early research, soon more theoretical aspects of code-switching became central. On the one hand, syntactic-grammatical approaches tried to discover general, possibly universal syntactic constraints on the switching behaviour of bilingual speakers within specific linguistic models. 3 On the other hand, the functions of code-switching were studied from a functional-pragmatic point of view, starting with Gumperz , whose list of functions of switching is still often quoted. More recent theoretical models worth mentioning are Myers-Scotton’s ‘Matrix Language Frame Model’ and Auer’s conversation analytic approach. In general, theoretical models of code-switching have been based on and have tried to account for spoken data, which have been extensively collected and analysed for many language pairs. Written code-switching, on the other hand, has attracted less scholarly attention and still lacks a theoretical framework of its own, though there is a vast amount of written code-switching data both from the history of English and from the modern period, data which has increasingly been subject to linguistic analysis. 4 However, there is growing awareness that written code-switching both in literary and non-literary texts is a valid research topic in its own right, not only in regard to its relation to spoken data. Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 27 5 For the purpose of this paper, we will use the well-established definition of code-switching as the alternate use of different languages in one piece of discourse or conversation, while we will disregard the switching between different varieties of the same language. 6 For a more detailed discussion of the functions of code-switching in English medieval drama, see Diller (1997/ 98). Code-switching by definition always includes an aspect of code-choice, and the use and change of a specific code in a bilingual conversation at a given point in time may be highly functional, both in real-life situations and on stage. 5 Since dramatic texts are addressed to an audience and, except for soliloquies, to one or more dramatis personae, the functional range of switching in drama may be considerable and, as in real life, furthermore depends on the status which the involved languages and their speakers have in a specific society or speech community, a status which may obviously change over time. Code-switching in English drama may not be as frequent as switching in other written text types such as novels or religious texts, and it has so far not received a lot of scholarly attention, although it has a long history. In medieval drama, code-switching between English and Latin, less frequently between French and Hebrew, was already used in a variety of functions. 6 In Middle English drama, Latin, for example, is frequently used as the ‘divine’ language in the religious sphere, though there are exceptions to this tendency. In the following dialogue from the Mary Play of the N-Town Cycle, Mary switches into Latin when she quotes the texts of the Magnificat and the Gloria, while Elizabeth provides an English version of the Latin text after every second line. This dialogue-like presentation in two different languages is “a convenient device to differentiate the women’s status, but by rhyming the English with the Latin the latter is made less distant from the former than it usually is” (Diller 1997/ 98: 525, from where the quotation is taken): (1) Mary Play (ll. 1492-1539) Maria: For þis holy psalme I begynne here þis day: Magnificat: anima mea dominum Et exultauit spiritus meus: in deo salutari meo Elizabeth: Be þe Holy Gost with joye Goddys son is in þe cum, þat þi spyryte so injouyid þe helth of þi God so. M.: Quia respexit humilitatem ancille sue Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generaciones E.: For he beheld þe lownes of hese hand-mayde e, So ferforthe for þat all generacyonys blysse ou in pes. […] M.: This psalme of prophesye seyd betwen vs tweyn, In hefne it is wretyn with aungellys hond; The use of different languages in the dialogues between the young King Henry and Katharine in Shakespeare’s history play Henry V is another Herbert Schendl 28 7 For details on Juin’s work see <www.ricercamusica.ch/ dizionario/ 389.html>. famous early example of the functional use of different codes in dramatic language (cf. Kürtösi 1994): (2) W. Shakespeare, Henry V, V.ii. 229-36 Henry. How answer you, la plus belle Katharine du monde, mon très cher et divine déesse? Katharine. Your majesté ave fausse French enough to deceive the most sage demoiselle dat is en France. Henry. Now, fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true English I love thee Kate. However, this is not the place to present a historical survey on the distribution and functions of code-switching in English drama, though such a diachronic study might be of both linguistic and literary interest (see also Callahan 2004: 86f.). The present paper will rather look in some detail at an unusual case of code-choice and code-switching between English and German in a mid-nineteenth-century Viennese play, Das Vorhängeschloß (1857), an adaptation from an English eighteenth-century source. 1. Code-Choice and Code-Switching in Carl Juin’s Das Vorhängeschloß (1857) 1.1 The Play and Its Source Carl Giugno (1818-1891), also known under his pseudonym Carl Juin, was a prolific and, in his time, quite popular Viennese dramatist and composer, though his limited literary and musical merits have not granted him any lasting place in the history of Austrian literature or music. Having learned his father’s profession as a chimney-sweep, he early in life started his career as writer and composer and wrote a total of more than twenty libretti, some of them co-authored, not to mention his compositions. 7 In 1857, Juin wrote a farce in one act, with music by K. Binder, called Das Vorhängeschloß, which, as the title page of the original printed text proclaims, was performed with huge success (“mit brillantem Erfolg gegeben”) at the Carl-Theatre. The Carl- Theatre was a popular theatre in Vienna’s suburb Leopoldstadt, where Juin’s plays had been shown for a number of years, and whose director from 1854 was the well-known Austrian playwright and actor Johann Nestroy. Das Vorhängeschloß was adapted from the English mid-eighteenthcentury ‘comic opera’ The Padlock (1768), a fact which is acknowledged on its title page, though its author, the popular Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaff Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 29 8 The Padlock, in turn, is based on Cervantes’ El Celoso Estremeño known in English as The Jealous Husband. - The eighteenth-century ‘comic opera’ “combined traditional English comedy plots with music […] The songs were integral to the characters who sang them and were germane to the plot”. (Tasch, Introduction, in Bickerstaff 1981: x) 9 According to Marshall and Stock, Don Diego is “an ageing and very rich West Indian planter […] Leander, a young student of a nearby school” (1958: 71), but there is no indication of this in the original play, which explicitly gives Salamanca as location, and refers to Leander as a student of the university of Salamanca. 10 For Bickerstaff’s place in eighteenth-century anti-slavery drama see Sypher (1942/ 1969: 235-38); for a detailed discussion of Mungo’s language in The Padlock see Schendl (forthcoming); for the history of American minstrel shows see Toll (1974). (1733-1808? ) is not given any credit there. 8 The general plot of The Padlock and its Viennese adaptation are similar and rather simple. A rich old miser wants to marry a young girl whose money he is after. During a short absence, he locks her up with his servants, securing the door by means of a large padlock. But his precautions are thwarted by a young man in love with the girl, who is helped by the black servant Mungo and an elderly female housekeeper. Apart from that general frame and the central figure of Mungo in both versions, the original and the adaptation differ considerably, and Juin used his source rather freely. Das Vorhängeschloß is located in Cuba and all of its characters are Germans either living on or visiting the island, while the location of The Padlock is Salamanca and its characters are Spanish. 9 The enormous success of Bickerstaff’s play, which was performed in Britain, the United States and on the European continent well into the second half of the nineteenth century (see below section 2.), was mainly due to the character of Mungo, a caricature of a black slave from the West Indies, who made the audience laugh. He is portrayed as being comical and naive but also somewhat cunning, an impression which is reinforced by his use of a non-standard West Indies dialect, and in a number of ways Mungo anticipates the stereotypes of African Americans conveyed by nineteenth-century American minstrel shows. 10 The short passage in (3) illustrates some of the non-standard linguistic features of Mungo’s speech, such as the use of you as possessive, of me in subject position, the non-standard form of question, and lexical items such as Massa and lilly: (3) Isaac Bickerstaff, The Padlock (1768) (I. vi, Don Diego and Mungo) Dieg. How now. Mungo. Ah, Massa, bless you heart. Dieg. What’s that you are muttering, Sirrah? Mungo. Noting, Massa, only me say, you very good Massa. Dieg. What do you leave your load down there for? Mungo. Massa, me lilly tire. […] Dieg. Can you be honest? […] Mungo. What you give me, Massa? Herbert Schendl 30 11 Interjections and names have not been counted, contractions like don’t have been counted as two words; numbers have been rounded. This section has only provided a brief glance at the literary source of Juin’s Das Vorhängeschloß. The matter will be taken up again in section 2.2. 1.2 Language Choice in Das Vorhängeschloß This section will take a closer look at the use of language in Das Vorhängeschloß, especially Mungo’s speech, which clearly differs from that of its source, The Padlock. Not surprisingly for a play written in England, language choice in The Padlock does not reflect the real linguistic situation of the location depicted in the play, namely Salamanca. Though all the characters except Mungo evidently are Spaniards, they speak standard English, while Mungo, as already mentioned, speaks a kind of West Indies dialect. In the Viennese adaptation, on the other hand, all characters except Mungo are presented as Germans living on or visiting Cuba, and thus their use of the German language on stage would correspond to their language choice in real life. Their black servant Mungo, however, uses more or less standard English with quite a number of non-standard forms (or simply mistakes). However, when talking with his German interlocutors, Mungo often switches into a broken German full of grammatical mistakes. More specifically, Mungo’s songs and monologues, which do not address a German-speaking dramatis personae, are - with the exception of the monologue in scene 17 - monolingual in English, while he frequently switches from English to German in his dialogues with the German characters of the play (see below for details). Thus Mungo’s choice of language in Das Vorhängeschloß is also quite realistic, i.e. it would mirror real-life linguistic behaviour of a black slave working in a German-speaking household on Cuba, though Mungo’s frequent non-standard English forms cannot be clearly linked to a specific non-standard variety of English. Apart from the features mentioned above, Carl Juin’s adaptation changed his model quite substantially also in regard to the amount of speech delivered by the individual characters, making Mungo the central figure of his play. In The Padlock, Mungo’s part is only about 800 words long, while the number of words spoken by all the other characters together is about 5,800. 11 In Das Vorhängeschloß, on the other hand, Mungo’s part is about 1,270 words, i.e., it is about fifty percent longer than in the original, while the part of all the other characters together amounts to a mere 3,000 words, which is only slightly more than half of the length of their counterparts in The Padlock. Thus, Mungo’s part makes up for almost thirty percent of the Viennese adaptation. Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 31 12 Evident mistakes by the translator or printer such as ‘shellen’ for ‘shelter’d’ as well as spelling mistakes such as ‘don’, ‘Äbove’, which are not found in The Padlock, will generally not be commented upon in the following analysis. A closer look at some aspects of Mungo’s speech behaviour yields a number of highly interesting results. The text of Mungo’s monolingual English entrance song under (4) is taken over rather literally from The Padlock, though its original non-standard features have been largely removed, except for me in subject position in ‘Me wish to the Lord me was dead’. 12 (4) Mungo’s Entrance Song in Das Vorhängeschloß and The Padlock C. Juin, Das Vorhängeschloß, scene 4 I. Bickerstaff, The Padlock, I. vi Dear heart, dear heart What a terrible life J’ve led A dog a dog a dog has a better That’s shellen [sic, for ‘sheltered’] and fed - All Night and day it’s the same My pain is their game Me wish to the Lord me was dead Whate’ers to be done Poor black must run Mungo here Mungo there Äbove and below, Siräh come Siräh go! Do so and do so - oh! - oh! Dear heart, what a terrible life am I led, A dog has a better that’s shelter’d and fed: Night and day ‘tis de same, My pain is dere game; Me wish to de Lord me was dead. What e’er’s to be done, Poor black must run; Mungo here, Mungo dere, Mungo every where; Above and below, Sirrah come, Sirrah go, Do so, and do so. Oh! Oh! Me wish to de Lord me was dead. Immediately after the entrance song, Das Vorhängeschloß has the monologue quoted under (5), which is actually Mungo’s entrance monologue in The Padlock, where it already occurs a few lines before the song. Here again some of the original non-standard features from Bickerstaff’s text have been retained in the Viennese adaptation, such as d-deletion in tire ‘tired’, and two cases of possessive him (him inperance And him damn insurance), whose original function was possibly not recognized. (Cho for original ‘Go’, and gon for original ‘you’ may be either misprints or misunderstandings.) (5) Carl Juin, Das Vorhängeschloß (scene 4, Mungo) Cho get you down gon dam / Hamper! You carry me now! / Curse my old Massa, sending / Me al ways here and there for / One something to make me tire / Like a mule curse him inperance / And him damn insurance! Herbert Schendl 32 13 The only other songs in Das Vorhängeschloß are two German songs sung by the young sea captain Albert in scenes 8 and 9, while in the original play Mungo sings two songs on his own and part of a quartet and of the finale, while the other characters sing a total of thirteen songs. However, the adherence to the original becomes much less pronounced in the remaining part of Juin’s adaptation, where only a few rather short passages of Mungo’s original text have been taken over. In the Viennese play, Mungo sings four monolingual English songs with a total of about 340 words, but only the first of these (cf. above under (4)) has been taken over from The Padlock, while his three other songs are new additions (for their possible source see section 3. below). 13 Furthermore, Mungo speaks four monologues (three of them monolingual in English) with a total length of 245 words, which leaves about 680 words spoken by Mungo in dialogues with a German-speaking character. The main linguistic interest of these dialogues lies in a relatively large number of code-switches from English into German on Mungo’s part. A typical instance of this switching is found in the dialogue between Hochstratten, the old German owner of a plantation in Cuba, and his black servant Mungo, quoted under (6). Interestingly, the German and English parts are - though not always consistently - differentiated typographically in the original text edition of the play; in the following quotations bold print will be used for the English words, while italics will indicate Mungo’s switches to German: (6) Carl Juin, Das Vorhängeschloß (scene 5, Hochstratten and Mungo) Hochstr. Du Schlingel! Ich werde Dich schimpfen lehren! Mungo. Massa, bless your heart, massa; Mungo nicht wieder thun. Hochstr. Steh auf! Mungo. No! Hochstr. Ob Du aufstehen wirst! Mungo. Yes, massa. Hochstr. Da her! Mungo. Yes massa. […] Hochstr. Und wo hast Du Dich so lange herumgetrieben? Mungo. He? I do not understand. Hochstr. Wo bist Du gesteckt? Mungo. An die Market. Hochstr. Was? So lange auf dem Markt? Mungo. Weite Weg! - Much people, viel men arme Mungo stoßen um. […] Massa nicht bös sein, aber die nichs [sic] fortune - Mungo very unglücklich - I have lost - a piece of the fifth Dollar ich hab verloren ein Stuck von die Dollar - that is the rest. Hochstr. Was? […] Wo kommt die kleine Münze her? Mungo. It is very warm to day - das groß Hitzen hab geschmelzt die Dollar in die Hand von die Mungo. Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 33 14 As usual in code-switching research, every switch from English into German is counted once, but not the switching back into English from German. 15 As mentioned above, the typographical distinction between the two languages is not always carried out consistently, which makes the distinction between the two languages sometimes impossible. The difficulty is increased by the fact that Austrian (and Viennese) German has a number of forms which both in print and in speech are more or less identical with the English forms. This phenomenon of ‘blurred’ switching points as in “Here is a Leiter.” (scene 10) has also been observed in real code-switching data. On the basis of the typographical distinction of the first printing of the text, here in the above sentence has been analysed as English, while the rest of the sentence as German, since Viennese German has the forms is a for standard German ist eine, even though is a could also be English. Similar problems arise with “here”, whose pronunciation in the two languages is rather similar. - The difficult distinction between borrowing and code-switching is not relevant for a literary text. The total number of Mungo’s code-switches from English to German is 42, the number of German words in these switches being 144. 14 Of these 42 switches, four are found in the fourth monologue in scene 17, when the drunken Mungo staggers around the stage, while the majority of 38 switches occur in dialogue. As seen in the table under (7), the length of the switches (with names not counted) varies, but the majority of switches, namely 33, is between one and four words long, while the two longest switches are eleven and twelve words long. (7) Length of Switches into German (Words per Switch) Length 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 11 12 Number 8 11 8 6 2 1 3 1 1 1 The following linguistic analysis of Mungo’s switching will first briefly look at some syntactic features, before discussing its functional-pragmatic aspects. As the above table shows, less than twenty percent of Mungo’s switches are single-word switches, particularly nouns, adjectives and verbs, but also twice the German definite article die, a closed class lexical item (see 8.1); more than half of the switches, namely twenty-two, are ‘intersentential’, i.e. occur between sentences and sentence-like constituents (8.2). The remaining twelve are ‘intrasentential’ switches and thus occur between and within larger sentence constituents such as noun phrases, verb phrases and prepositional phrases (see 8.3): 15 Herbert Schendl 34 16 The discussion of syntactic constraints on switching and of possible switching points dominated code-switching research for a long time, see Muysken (2000) for a discussion of this issue. Today there is widespread agreement that only tendencies and preferred switching points exist, but no absolute constraints, cf. Muysken (1995). 17 For an analysis of a small corpus of Middle English texts along these lines and a comparison of the results with those of modern code-switching studies see Schendl (2000). (8) Types of Syntactic Switching Patterns in Mungo’s Speech in Das Vorhängeschloß (8).1 Single Word Switches You ara [sic] Zauberer (scene 13) Much people, viel men (scene 5) Mungo very unglücklich (scene 5) Give it to me friend Mungo probir (scene 13) Mungo will drink only die half, and the rest give to the friend again. (scene 10) (8).2 Intersentential Switches Massa, bless your heart, massa; Mungo nicht wieder thun. (scene 5) It is very warm to day - das groß Hitzen hab geschmelzt die Dollar in die Hand von die Mungo. (scene 5) Ah good morning dear friend! - have you not a little of brandy in the bottle. Mungo großes durstig. (scene 9) Oh one of the friend - geht nix! Mungo often tried do so! Oft probirt. (scene 13) Old thief! He always beats the poor good niggers! Mungo nicht schlagen! (scene 17) (8).3 Intrasentential Switches Mungo sich also sitzen a little an die Korb. (scene 5) Much people, viel men arme Mungo stoßen um. (scene 5) Mungo purchase brandy for die große Durst. (scene 5) O dear, o dear - what does a Mann mit so viele wive [sic]. (scene 9) perhaps we are to find die Schlüssel zu die vini. (scene 13) Here is the Schlüssel zu die cellar! (scene 13) Hier ist die Schlüss’l of die old massa. (scene 16) The greater part of the switching patterns found in the play seem to correspond to patterns found in modern spoken code-switching, though there is also a small number of more unusual switching points, as the switched definite article in ‘Mungo will drink only die half’. 16 However, since a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the syntactic switching points, e.g. between or within a prepositional phrase, etc., is of no particular relevance for the topic of this paper, this issue will not be discussed any further. 17 Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 35 After this brief syntactic analysis, let us now look at the functional aspect of Mungo’s bilingual speech in Das Vorhängeschloß. Here we have to distinguish between two different levels. On the microlevel of Mungo’s monologues and dialogues, the only clearly discernible function of individual codeswitches is ‘reiteration’ (cf. Gumperz 1982: 78), i.e. translating or paraphrasing an English sentence or phrase into German, in this case to make it understood by the non-English-speaking audience, see the examples in (9) taken from different dialogues: (9) I have lost a piece of the fifth Dollar ich hab verloren ein Stuck von die Dollar (scene 5) Mungo often tried do so! Oft probirt. (scene 13) Old massa, we two fellows we are to rest alone - wir bleiben allein! (scene 18) This is particularly evident in Mungo’s monologue from scene 17 in (10), where three out of four switches have this specific function (stage directions in brackets and italics): (10) Oh! Hohoho! (Weint.) Old thief! He always beats the poor good niggers! Mungo nicht schlagen! For if you do so Mungo shall beat you again! […] I will have my wine. (Trinkt.) Oh! I am very sick! - O ich bin sehr krank! (Herzt die Flasche und singt.) Ill [sic] go to bed - where is my Jacket? Dam, die Jacke is verzaubert. I am very miserable! O, ich bin sehr krank! However, Juin also used another strategy to make Mungo’s English sentences or phrases understood by the audience, namely to have them ‘reiterated’ in German in the next turn by his German-speaking interlocutor, see the quotation from scene 16 in (11): (11) Mungo: The old Soldier climbed into the house through the windows! Hochstratten: Was? Ein Soldat in mein Haus gedrungen? Wo ist er? Considering the ‘macrolevel’ of the whole play and Mungo’s part in it, his code-switching evidently serves a more general function and has to be seen as a specific strategy used by the author of the Viennese adaptation. It has been mentioned above that in The Padlock, Isaac Bickerstaff made Mungo speak a kind of West Indies dialect as one of several ways to make Mungo a comical and funny character, a strategy which went down very well with the British audience. In Das Vorhängeschloß, Mungo’s use of English, a language little known in contemporary Vienna, and his frequent switching into broken German not only make him ‘funny’, but also mark him as an outsider, a representative of ‘the Other’, an impression which is reinforced by the exotic location of the play, Cuba. These attributes together with his very low Herbert Schendl 36 18 On the topic of ‘the Other’ in Vienna’s suburban theatres of the nineteenth century, see Hüttner (2003); for a wider discussion of this topic see also the other contributions in Bayerdörfer and Hellmuth (2003). 19 For a more detailed discussion of stereotypes on the English in nineteenth-century popular Viennese theatre see Hüttner (2003: 97-99). The following paragraph is based on Hüttner and on personal information provided by Johann Hüttner, see note 1. social status and his actions - both funny but sometimes also aggressive - not only amused the audience and gave rise to laughter, but also satisfied their desire for seeing foreign characters on stage. 18 However, with Juin’s Mungo there seems to be less open racial discrimination than in The Padlock, i.e., the Viennese Mungo is more of a clown or jester than the English one. This becomes even more apparent when one looks at the presentation of other foreigners on the contemporary suburban Viennese stage, such as Turks and Frenchmen, who were often depicted in a very negative and openly hostile way (see Hüttner 2003: section 7). However, by modern standards, there is undoubtedly a racist dimension with regard to the choice of language and the overall presentation of Mungo in both plays. 2. Das Vorhängeschloß in Its Contemporary Viennese Context 2.1 English Characters and the Use of English on Stage The extensive use of English and of code-switching between English and German in a mid-nineteenth-century Viennese farce written for and performed at a theatre with a mainly lower-middle class audience must seem surprising for the modern reader, the more so considering that English, as already mentioned, was still a less known foreign language in Vienna (and most of Europe) at the time, French being the lingua franca as well as the language of culture for the educated. This raises a number of questions about the general use of English and the presentation of the English on the contemporary Viennese stage, which, however, can only be addressed very briefly here. A further, at least as puzzling question is how Carl Juin ever got the idea of adapting an English play of doubtful literary merit written almost a century earlier. Let us briefly look at these two questions in turn, starting with the English characters and the use of English on the contemporary Viennese stage. 19 In quite a number of contemporary Viennese plays, including some by the highly popular Johann Nestroy, we find references to England and the English. The English characters are stereotypically presented as rich and eccentric, sometimes also as quite knowledgeable in railway engineering and machinery, and they are often shown or referred to as heavy drinkers (Hüttner 2003: 98). In Nestroy’s Der konfuse Zauberer, we find the English Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 37 20 There are, however, shorter code-switched passages from other languages, particularly French and Italian to be found in various contemporary plays. Thus, in Flott! , another play by C. Juin published in 1857, Nina, a young Viennese girl, in act I, scene vii, speaks some Italian words and phrases mixed with broken German to make the amorous Flott think she is Italian. These switches evidently have a very different function from Mungo’s codeswitching. 21 Between 1768 and 1776, The Padlock saw 142 performances at Drury Lane and another 70 at Covent Garden (cf. Tasch, Introduction, in Bickerstaff 1981: xx), and in this same character Punschington, whose main purpose in life is to drink punch (in German Punsch). On the other hand, poor English characters are virtually absent from contemporary Viennese plays, and very few are not members of the nobility. However, in spite of such frequent references to and appearances of English characters on the contemporary stage, we only find isolated English words and the odd English phrase in the plays, as when the desperate Schmafu shoots himself after having exclaimed in English “Yes Goddam - Yes! ” (J. Nestroy, Der konfuse Zauberer, III, 23). Linguistically interesting is James Inslbull in Nestroy’s Theaterg’schichten (1854), who speaks German with English word order (for further details see Hüttner 2003: 99). In view of this situation, Mungo’s extensive use of English and English-German code-switching clearly departs from contemporary Viennese stage conventions. - This leads to the next question, namely how Carl Juin may have got the idea of writing a farce based on Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Padlock in the first place. 2.2 English Language Productions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Vienna: Ira Aldridge Quite generally, adapting foreign plays to the Viennese stage was in no way unusual in the nineteenth century, and with copyright laws being extremely lax and virtually non existent in Austria (see Yates 1996: 116), authors felt free to use foreign plays extensively for their adaptations (Hüttner 2003: 88-90), even without acknowledging their sources. Johann Nestroy, for example, adapted three of his plays from English originals, though, on the whole, French influence predominated (Yates 1996: 115f., Hüttner 2003: 88f.). 20 In order to be able to answer the second question asked above, namely how Juin got the idea of choosing a mid-eighteenth-century English play, we have to briefly look at the reception of The Padlock on the English and European stage up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The Padlock was first shown at Drury Lane Theatre in London, then under the management of David Garrick, in 1768. In the first production and for a number of years to come, the role of Mungo was played by the white British composer, dramatist and actor Charles Dibdin, who had also written the music for the songs of The Padlock. 21 With his blackened face, Dibdin was Herbert Schendl 38 period, at least 23,000 copies of the text were sold (Tasch 1971: 155); for further information on the play and its history see Tasch (1971: chapter 8). 22 Aldridge came to Britain in 1824, where he successfully toured the British Isles for more than a quarter of a century, a few times also playing on London stages. For details on his life see Marshall and Stock (1958); Hill (1984); Mortimer (1995). one of the earliest examples of the ‘blackface’, which was to become extremely popular especially in nineteenth-century American minstrel shows. In the following year, the production was successfully taken to the United States, where the play was frequently performed till the late 1830s (cf. Tasch 1971: 153-58). In England, the mainly positive reception of The Padlock and Dibdin’s success as Mungo made him integrate the songs and speeches of this role into an equally successful one-man show about black people in 1787. However, at a time when slavery and slave-trade were still legal in countries under British rule, though their abolition was hotly debated, the play and show also provoked criticism of the way in which black people were portrayed on stage, see, e.g., the critical “Epilogue to ‘The Padlock’” in the Gentleman’s Magazine from October 1787 (<http: / / www.brycchancarey.com/ slavery/ padlock1.htm>). The play saw a particularly successful revival in nineteenth-century Britain, when the African American actor Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) made the part of Mungo one of his favourite roles from the late 1820s onwards till his death. 22 Aldridge, who also actively supported the abolition movement, often played the parts of Othello and Mungo on the same evening to make his audience aware of the contrasting presentation of black people on stage, i.e. the noble black against the comic black slave or servant. At the same time he turned Mungo’s part “into a rebellion against slavery” (Hill 1984: 20), developing “the character of a simple, apparently stupid, slave into a rebel against slavery” (Marshall and Stock 1958: 75). But in spite of his success, Aldridge also met with open racial prejudice in the London press, which eventually made him go on his first Continental tour with a carefully selected group of English actors from 1852 to 1855 (Marshall and Stock 1958: 177). Starting in Brussels, Aldridge toured the major cities of Germany (Berlin, Leipzig, Cologne, Bonn, etc.), the Austro-Hungarian empire (Vienna, Prague, Budapest), Poland and Switzerland, to name the main stages of his tour. He was enthusiastically received and praised for his naturalistic acting, for which he received numerous honours by the Belgian and the Prussian kings and by German princes. The young Austrian emperor Francis Joseph awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold in 1854. His most successful roles on this tour were the great Shakespearean characters such as Othello, Macbeth, Shylock, and the part of Mungo in The Padlock. Around February 11, 1853, Aldridge arrived in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, where he played in a number of performances Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 39 23 A separate paper on Ira Aldridge’s stay in Vienna is in preparation. 24 ‘In the vaudeville: “The Padlock” Ira Aldridge playing the role of the Negro Mungo, showed that he is as great a comedian as he is a tragedian. The cunning and naïve good naturedness of the Negro as he presents it, as well as the scene in which he is drunk are the best which comedy may achieve. Even with those who do not understand a single word of English, this achieves an extraordinary comic effect. The songs presented are highly interesting because of their originality. […] Nobody interested in real art should miss Ira Aldridge’s performance.’ at the Carl-Theatre between February 15, and March 12, 1853, and from April 19 to 22. His reception in Vienna by critics and audience was as enthusiastic as it had been on previous stops of his tour, documentated, for instance, by the highly positive review of his first performance of Othello in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung (17 Feb. 1853). 23 Soon Vienna was seized by a kind of ‘anglomania’ and the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung reported such a craze for English language and literature with Viennese society that all English textbooks were sold out within days (see Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 19 Feb. 1853). During his stay in Vienna, Aldridge also performed Bickerstaff’s The Padlock a few times, always as the second play after a tragedy. His performance as Mungo was again highly praised, and it even led to the composition of a set of waltzes (“Der Padlock Walzer”) (Mortimer 1995: 90). The Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung (23 Feb. 1853), writes the following: (12) In der Vaudeville: “The Padlok” [sic] zeigte sich Ira Aldridge in der Rolle des Negers Mungo als ein ebenso großer Komiker, wie er ein Tragiker ist. Die Schlauheit und naive Gutmüthigkeit des Negers, wie er sie darstellt, sowie die Rauschscene sind das Höchste, was die Komik zu leisten vermag. Auch bei Jenen, die kein Wort Englisch verstehen, ist diese Komik von außerordentlicher Wirkung. Die vorgetragenen Lieder sind wegen ihrer Originalität höchst interessant. […] Möge Niemand, der sich für echte Kunst interessirt, versäumen, die Leistung Ira Aldridges zu sehen. 24 [my emphasis] The above quotation also gives important information on the language in which Aldridge and his company performed - a point central for the present paper. There is ample evidence that throughout his Continental tour, Aldridge himself always spoke his parts in English (see Marshall and Stock 1958: 177; Mortimer 1995: 62), and the above quote from the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung is not the only evidence for his acting in English in Vienna. More complex is the question which language was used by the rest of the company. As mentioned above, Aldridge began his Continental tour with a group of English actors (Marshall and Stock 1958: 177; Mortimer 1995: 62) and the performances given by that group were fully in English. We know from a playbill from the Stadttheater Leipzig from late November 1852 that this English company was still with him at that time (Marshall and Stock 1958: 177); however, already “after six months Aldridge is playing without Herbert Schendl 40 25 ‘Since Mr Ira Aldridge is very keen on presenting himself to the Viennese audience as Shylock (in “The Merchant of Venice”), but cannot produce this play with his own troupe, he them, speaking his roles in English, with the local companies playing in German” (Marshall and Stock 1958: 177; cf. also Mortimer 1995: 62). This seems to imply that he already did so during his stay in Vienna, a view which, however, cannot be reconciled with the following facts. C.H. Stephenson, one of the members of Aldridge’s English troupe, states in a reply in Notes and Queries: (13) On the 3 rd of Jan., 1853, Aldridge and his troupe, much reduced in numbers, appeared at the Italian Opera-House, Berlin. On the Sunday, Jan. 16 th , they appeared by royal command at the Court Theatre, Potsdam. They then travelled to Stettin, Posen, Frankfurt-on-Oder, Breslau, Vienna, Presburg, Pesth, etc. (Stephenson 1872: 373, my emphasis). This statement is corroborated by information given in the Almanach für Freunde der Schauspielkunst (1854, for the year 1853), where it is explicitly stated that Aldridge played in Vienna “mit seiner englischen Gesellschaft” (387). There we also find the information that Othello, Macbeth, The Padlock, and the ‘main scenes’ from Richard III were performed in English and similarly, Tasch (1971: 159) states that the Viennese performances of The Padlock were in English. However, due to his “much reduced” English troupe, not all plays could be produced by them, so that Aldridge resorted to the above-mentioned strategy of performing in certain cases with local German-speaking companies. Marshall and Stock in their discussion of the performances from January 1853 claim that “Aldridge must soon have come to the conclusion that it was better for the plays to be given in the mother tongue of the audience, with the single exception of his own role” (1958: 180). However, a bilingual production seems to have been used in Vienna only for a single play, namely Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Again the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung provides interesting evidence for this practice and its reasons: (14) Da Herr Ira Aldridge einen besonderen Werth darauf legt, sich in der Rolle des Shylock (im “Kaufmann von Venedig”) dem Publikum Wiens vorzuführen, dieses Stück aber mit seinem Personale nicht besetzen kann, hat er die Mitglieder des Carl=Theaters ersucht, in diesem Stücke die Rollen in deutscher Sprache darzustellen, […] Wir werden also im Laufe dieser Woche den gewiß seltenen Genuß haben, den “Kaufmann von Venedig” gleichzeitig in deutscher und englischer Sprache dargestellt zu sehen. In Breslau und auf allen bedeutenden Bühnen, wo dies gleichfalls der Fall war, hat die Aufführung ungeachtet ihrer Ungewöhnlichkeit außerordentlich gefallen, da sie den Vortheil gewährt, dem Publikum, welches der englischen Sprache nicht mächtig ist, die Darstellung des Aldridge als Shylock sehr zu verständigen. 25 (Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung, Sunday, 27 Feb. 1853) Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 41 has asked the members of the Carl-Theatre to play the characters in this play in German, […] Therefore, in the course of this week we will have the certainly rare pleasure to see the “Merchant of Venice” simultaneously performed in the German and English language. In Breslau and all the other important theatres where this has already been done, the production has, in spite of its unusualness, been extraordinarily successful, since it enables the public that does not know any English to understand very well Aldridge’s performance as Shylock.’ 26 There is, however, evidence that in later years Aldridge also produced The Padlock in bilingual productions in other European cities, see the reference in his last letter from Lodz from 1867, in which “he expresses concern that the German version of it [i.e. The Padlock], […] despatched in a hamper of his belongings, has not arrived in time for rehearsals”. (Mortimer 1995: 89). 27 “Das Vorlegschloß’, a German adaptation of ‘The Padlock’, which has become known here through Ira Aldridge. The little play, mediocre in every respect, is merely the background for the actor playing ‘Mungo’, in which part of the life of a slave is illustrated. […] The actor also presented the ‘negro songs’ with that childish merriness which characterizes the child of nature. […] The theatre was tightly packed.’ Though the Viennese critics seem to have been in two minds about this bilingual performance (see Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 5 March 1853), Marshall and Stock are certainly right with their claim that “[e]vents were to prove him right in this most daring innovation, never before or since attempted by an actor in so many different countries” (1958: 180). However, as already stated above, on the testimony of the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung and the Almanach it is certain that The Merchant of Venice was the only bilingual performance in Vienna, and that Bickerstaff’s The Padlock was performed completely in English by Aldridge and his troupe. 26 Only four years after Aldridge and his company had played The Padlock at the Carl-Theatre in Vienna, the play was produced there again in Juin’s German adaptation Das Vorhängeschloß discussed above. It was first announced as Das Vorlegschloß [sic] in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung (21 Apr. 1857) with explicit reference to Ira Aldridge’s English performance in the following way: (15) ‘Das Vorlegschloß’, eine deutsche Bearbeitung des durch Ira Aldridge hier bekannt gewordenen “the padlok” [sic]. Das Stückchen, in jeder Beziehung geringfügig, ist die bloße Staffage für den Darsteller des “Mungo”, in dem ein Stück Sklavenleben genreartig veranschaulicht werden soll. […] Auch die “Negerlieder” trug der Künstler sehr charakteristisch mit jener kindischen Lustigkeit vor, die den Naturmenschen kenntlich macht. […] Das Haus war dicht gefüllt. 27 The Viennese actor playing Mungo was a certain Karl Treumann, whose acting was highly praised. However, there is no reference to C. Juin’s authorship nor to any unusual use of language (except, possibly, the reference to the “Negerlieder”) in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung. This is surprising in view of the fact that the printed text (see bibliography) explicitly names Herbert Schendl 42 28 Unfortunately, no possible link to Aldridge has been found in Juin’s papers in the Wiener Stadtbibliothek. Carl Juin as author and states that the play is ‘based on the English The Padlock’ - though equally surprisingly, the printed text does not name Bickerstaff as its author. Further confusion is caused by the fact that the play is referred to alternatively as Das Vorhängschloß and Das Vorlegschloß within a few days. We have clear evidence that Carl Juin was already writing for the Carl- Theatre during Aldridge’s performances there in 1853 and thus it is highly likely that he had seen Aldridge playing Mungo in The Padlock - at least he must have heard of its enormous success there. Equally likely, he must have been aware of the bilingual performance of The Merchant of Venice. These two factors provide in all likelihood the background for the unusual linguistic experiment in his own adaptation of The Padlock, with Mungo using English in an otherwise German production, much like Aldridge as Shylock had used English with an otherwise Viennese cast in The Merchant of Venice. However, Juin added code-switching as a dramatic strategy in quite an innovative way, possibly also in order to facilitate understanding for an audience which predominantly would not have known any English (see also section 2.2 above). We do not know whether C. Juin ever heard about Aldridge’s bilingual performance of The Padlock in other European cities (see note 26 above), nor on which version of Bickerstaff’s play his adaptation is based. In scenes 6, 11 and 18 of Das Vorhängeschloß there are three songs in English not found in Bickerstaff’s original text. These new songs are actually two well-known American ‘minstrel songs’ almost contemporary with Das Vorhängeschloß, namely, “Boatman dance” and “Buffalo girls”, which were first printed in Dan Emmett’s collection of 1843 (Nathan 1962). None of these new songs have so far been linked to Aldridge’s performance, but we know that Aldridge repeatedly inserted new songs into his productions of The Padlock, in particular “Opposum up a gum tree”, and “The Negro boy” (Marshall and Stock 1958: 82f.), both of which were also sung in the Leipzig performance mentioned above, but also Russian songs about slavery in St. Petersburg (Tasch 1971: 161). On the other hand, the “Boatman” song ideally fits into Juin’s new plot, in which Albert, the young man in love with Leonore, is a German sea captain, so that it seems equally plausible that these songs were Juin’s own additions - the more so since parts of these songs are also quite cleverly integrated into Mungo’s prose speech. 28 Language Choice as a Dramatic Device in an Early Viennese Adaptation 43 3. Conclusion The present paper originally started out as a basically linguistic study of code-choice and code-switching in a mid-nineteenth-century Viennese adaptation of an English play. However, it soon became clear that only a more interdisciplinary approach would do justice to the - for the period highly unusual - use of language in the play. Carl Juin’s version shows influences both from Isaac Bickerstaff’s original play in the choice of Mungo’s clearly marked use of language and from Ira Aldridge’s bilingual performances in Vienna, with the integration of two early American minstrel songs as an additional innovation when compared to the original. The two main functions of Mungo’s use of language in Das Vorhängeschloß are firstly to increase the ‘Otherness’ of the character of the black servant, though in a less racist way than in the original, but secondly also to add to the comic effect of the part, which made the audience laugh by using stereotypes of the naïve and cunning black. The Padlock increasingly developed into an anti-slavery play, particularly in the almost forty years in which Ira Aldridge played the role in many parts of Britain and the Continent. Das Vorhängeschloß, on the other hand, seems to have remained a rather unique and isolated experiment, and could not establish a new Viennese tradition of bilingual plays or extensive dramatic code-switching, particularly not in English. Both the topic and the use of the - at the time widely unknown - English language seem to have offered little attraction to the Viennese audience in the long run. 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