Humor and Dignity
Some will ask: What, jokes in "Urfaust", the sketch for "Faust, der Tragödie erster Teil? Yes, Scherze in der Tragödie!
When the young Goethe wrote Urfaust, he was under a great artistic experience: he had read Shakespeare. And in Shakespeare there is the famous mixture of seriousness and fun, there are the bully scenes in the tragedies, which make his works so lively and realistic.
It is undoubtedly the famous German misery that has cost us the comedy plays Goethe could have written. Even on the "Faust" dust has settled by the hundredweight in the playground of our theatres during the last hundred years.
In the tragic parts the tender has become cute, the grand has become grandiose, the despair has become representative, the stormy has become decorative. The comic parts, in keeping with the dignity of the place (namely, the usually state theatre) and taking into account the importance of a classic, have become dull, dry, and above all unimaginative.
But true respect for classical works must be for the greatness of their ideas and the beauty of their forms, and it is paid in the theatre by performing the works productively, imaginatively, and vividly. There is no opposition between dignity and humour. In the great ages laughter resounded from Olympus.
Bertolt Brecht
Source of text and further information about this event: http://www.katakombe-frankfurt.de/Faust-Fruehe-Fassung.58.0.html?&no_cache=1&st=16
