Nestroy and the Critics

Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801-62) dominated the Viennese popular stage from the early 1830s until his retirement in 1860, both as an actor, and as the author of some 80 plays, mostly satirical comedies with farcical plots illuminated by virtuoso word play. His reputation, however, has always been mixed. This book, the first ever survey of the whole history of Nestroy criticism, traces the changing critical reactions to him, beginning with contemporary records, which show how he often offended the morals of conservative theatre critics; his acidic wit led to his being considered a destructive cynic, an assessment which became a critical orthodoxy in the half-century after his death. It was not until 1912 that he was 're-discovered' by Karl Kraus as a linguistic genius, and in the last 40 years the rise in his reputation has been meteoric. The story Professor Yates traces is not just one of changing fashion, with shifts in critical judgement, but of the struggle to establish a reliable evaluation of Nestroy's stature reflected in the many attempts to establish a definitive text of his work.