| This study of the uses of fairy tales and their motifs in modern European drama begins with the symbolist reaction against realism and naturalism in the last decade of the 19th century. In the vanguard of a second romantic revolution, Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Sologub, Ibsen, Hofmannstahl, and Yeats all turned to fariy tales and other anti-realistic forms to bring poetry and spiritual meaning back into the theatre. Elements from the folk tales of Perrault and the Grimms and from the literary tales of H. C. Andersen can be found in their plays, as well as allusions to a tradition of fairy lore and legend about contacts between the human world and a numinous Other World of spirits and the dead.The symbolists and playwrights after them have amply demonstrated the importance of simple folk forms as literary resources. Writers turn to fairy tales not merely because, as fundamentally dualistic structures, the tales are ready-made for adaptation, but also to take advantage of their fantasy, magic, and symbolism. Most of all, playwrights are challenged by the standing invitation to reinterpret their archetypal structures, to discover new ways to make them speak from the stage to each new generation.Fairy-play plots typically take one of two forms, either the "Undinepattern," which envisages the conflict of two worlds as a tragic relationship between a human being and a fairy lover, or the A-B-A "Visit to Fairyland," a pattern of enchantment and disenchantment like that in A Midsummer Night's Dream. These two structures can be made to carry a great variety of tones and meanings, ranging from sunny optimism to the darkest pessimism. Cocteau, Giraudoux, and Lesya Ukrainka, for example, have written fairy plays of spectacle and high theatricality. Ibsen, Hauptmann, Hofmannstahl and others see in the opposition of two worlds an allegorical conflict between art and life. Ironists like Barrie, Bergman, Gombrowicz, and Audiberti, following Maeterlinck, invert their tales and the expected happy ending to produce disillusionment and despair. Evgeny Shvarts applies the melodramatic fairy-tale moral scheme to modern totalitarian politics and produces emancipatory parables of heroism, defending the right of the community to define itself in the face of the dragon-tyrant. |
