Three plays by Frederic Hebbel

Chapter 89: FOOTNOTES:

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About This Book

The volume gathers three intense verse-dramas that probe personal obsession, social pressure, and the costs of moral conviction. One play stages a stark, violent confrontation between a determined woman and overwhelming military or patriarchal force, exploring duty and vengeance. Another presents a domestic tragedy set in a narrow bourgeois milieu, tracing a woman's fall, the father's rigid authority, and the grinding effects of shame and poverty. A third sketches royal passion and political jealousy, where love and honor collide with suspicion and ruin. Across the pieces the prose is austere and compressed, emphasizing psychological torment, moral ambiguity, and a severe realism that foregrounds character over spectacle.

FOOTNOTES:

A He here imitates Rhodope’s voice, intimating that he has overheard her reproof of Hero.

B A mistake of Hebbel’s for Jael.

C These words are a sneer, being a repetition of the twice-repeated phrase “nicht so.” Salome’s “nicht so?” means “not in that way?” but Herod uses the same interrogative form in the sense of “nicht wahr?” The familiar touch brings out the sneer.

D German: Ich muss “du” zu dir sagen.

E Using “du.”