COMEDY (burlesque farce)
PLACE AND TIME OF EVENT: Note on the third page: "The action takes place on April 1, 1911."
SOURCE: The archive of the Dramatic Society contains a manuscript that is probably the only surviving copy of Govekar's play (ref. DD 646, Slovene author Smehoslav Veselko). A folder with the same reference number also contains manuscript roles.
PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
The premiere took place on March 19, 1911. The author is also listed on the leaflet under the pseudonym Smehoslav Veselko. The comedy was directed by Hinko Nučič, who also played Knight Mortimer.
Writer, editor and translator Fran Govekar (1871 – 1949) worked as a publicist and later as a magistral clerk after completing his studies in Vienna. He also lived to see his retirement from the City Hall in 1931 as a senior magistral councilor. Throughout all periods of his writing and professional career, he was also intensely devoted to the theatre: he wrote plays, translated drama texts, was the secretary of the Dramatic Society and the Ljubljana Theatre, intendant and theatre director. After the First World War, he was a co-founder and member of the board of directors of the Slovenian Theatre Consortium.
Govekar began publishing short stories during his student years, influenced by naturalistic literary models. The pinnacle of his prose work is the novel In the blood (1896). At the same time, his plays were also being created, which he designed with more traditional approaches; in addition to "public education" spectacles with singing, in his mature period he also wrote dramas Cramp and Twilight and the burqa Sharivari, which is only briefly mentioned by literary historians. With this comedy, Govekar undoubtedly wanted to appeal to a wider audience.
KRAPAN'S MARE
Phrase Krpan's mare was first used by Ivan Cankar as the title of his satire, with which he tackled the current Ljubljana theatrical events after the premiere of Martin Krpan – thus, for more than a hundred years, he has been indicating the ever-current theatrical dilemma: a high artistic level and consideration of artistic criteria at all levels of theatrical production, or adaptation to the audience and commercialization of theatrical activity. Krpan's mare is said to represent an absolute victory for the advocates of collection.
We can assume that comedy also served this purpose. Sharivari, but Govekar was not successful in filling the coffers this time. Burka soon sank into oblivion.
Govekar, who as the intendant of the Ljubljana theatre himself set the stage or imposed his chosen ones on the editorial staff of the Slovenski narodow, who wrote theatre reviews or newspaper reports according to his taste, also had his "own" magazine, in which he himself reported on events in the theatre he ran; he also published his "criticism" of his own play Martin Krpan. As editor Slavs and advocate of the "people-educational" drama movement, in his review of theatrical events in the 1905/06 season, he contemplates the staging of Kristanova Ljubislav, also attacked Cankar. Govekar, who as intendant prevented the staging of Cankar's plays, indirectly boasted in the article about the sold-out halls filled by his Martin Krpan:
"A man would weep or rage if his heart were not so full of shame and contempt! What an ovation our insincere and condescending audience gave to the pioneers of our literary drama, e.g. Vošnjak, Funtek, Gangl! At the premieres of their plays they were showered with wreaths, they were stormily called to the stage, – but at the first rerun there was no one left in the theatre! And what happened to Cankar! ˈHey, Cankar is our great intellectual, the wittiest, the finest, the most literary…!ˈ At the premiere of his play Jacob Ruda and King of Betajnova, the Slovenian theatre trembled with excitement, amazement and admiration; the critics searched for superlatives in all dictionaries and – all other playwrights were spared the shame of absolute nothingness… But the rerun – empty, in pubs and cafes mockery, ridicule and tearing! And they said: this is not for the theatre! This is boring! Write us something national for the masses, which will fill the theatre thirty times from floor to ceiling, so that it will be performed in our last village and fill our widest audience with enthusiasm. We want national plays for our people, who are not aristocrats, but farmers, workers, craftsmen! – We believed these voices and filled the theatre sixty times from floor to ceiling for them; we filled their coffers and brought into the house crowds that had never been in the theatre before. But the snobs showed us their tongues and rushed us: “This is a craft, a scoundrel, a literary scandal!” Give us literature!
Govekar then went on to pardon Etbin Kristan, who, in his opinion, as a playwright had fallen prey to snobs, and his drama Ljubislav however, it was a failure at its premiere (Slovan IV. 1905/06, no. 5, pp. 158-159).
Na Govekar's article is in the magazine Our notes first Etbin Kristan reacted, and then Cankar came forward with texts in the same magazine Krpan's mare and Govekar and Govekars. Both records were also published in a book edition a year later (Krpan's mare, Ljubljana, 1907).
In his satires, he harshly dealt with Govekar:
"For example, Govekar walks around Ljubljana looking for something to dramatize. Anyone who saw him would think: 'This is a well-built man who is getting fat and doesn't think about anything.' No, Govekar is crying. He is crying that he is more popular in the suburbs of St. Peter's than Shakespeare and Ibsen. I have never experienced such selflessness, crying bitterly in front of his numerous audience: 'Oh, people of God, how you pity me, that you can't afford anything better!' And he kept selling.
It is criminal that I name Govekar. He dramatizes with a bleeding heart, not because he has no ideas of his own, but because he is a typus. There are legions of Govekars; it is true that not all of them dramatize, but there are Govekars nonetheless. They do not graze in only one field; they are scattered all over the country, and most of them go into politics to graze. They are all heroes of a double conviction. With tears in their eyes, the Govekars complain to me: ˈA beautiful thing is a conviction, a beautiful thing is an ideal – but people are uneducated, they demand stupidity on stage, in books and at meetings, and I have a family!ˈ An ordinary Govekar, like countless others who walk our streets, sits with me in a tavern, meets me on the road and wrinkles his face in sorrowful lines: ˈIt is true, you are right: we live in a manure pit!ˈ And what does an honest man do the next morning when he has slept through his ideals? ˈNo, you are wrong! "Not we, patriots, we are not the guides of the audience; the audience is our guide, and because the audience is stupid, we are stupid too!"...
Cankar's arguments were so convincing that they caused an avalanche of reactions to the intendant's controversial procedures. Govekar had to resign in November 1906; he was succeeded by Friderik Juvančič, but Govekar quickly managed to return and take over the leadership: between 1908 and 1912 he was again the director of the Provincial Theatre. Burka Sharivari It thus easily took over the Ljubljana stage, and some of Cankar's plays were only performed in our central theatre many years later.
Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland – in addition to the English knight Mortimer and the leader of the hajduks, Baron Trenk – is mainly accompanied by the heroes of Govekar's dramatizations of Josip Jurčič's novels, all of which predictably revolve around each other and around the high nobility imported from other literary works and historical circumstances.
Govekar also moved a hotel to the Šentflorjansko Valley At the white horse from the operetta of the same name, set to music by Ralph Benatzky. The operetta was performed simultaneously on the same stage, so there was no need to change the scene at all. Of Cankar's characters, he retained only Concordat, the villain from the Saint Florian Valley.
This creates an indescribable mess, which ends predictably: in the end, almost everyone finds their match, and the hotelier and the villain provide the erotic playfulness of the final scene.