Abstract
In the two years between March 15, 1898 and April 1900, Heijermans wrote six one-act plays, Puntje, Het Antwoord, Nummer Tachtig, De Onbekende, De Machien,and Eén Mei, championing the cause of the workers and of socialism. The figure of Heijermans as the socialist speaker appears more or less obviously in all of these plays, and yet in the fall of 1900, Heijermans succeeded in creating a great and genuine drama, The Good Hope, in which he aroused sympathy for the working man not by palpable, though effective, rhetoric, but by a vivid, moving, and direct appeal to the emotions. Het Pantser, Ora et Labora, Bloeimaand, and Glück auf followed as later attacks on the negligence and cruelties of society, and all these dramas of social protest are linked by common themes and ideas.
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Notes
Cf. Heijermans, Verzamelde Tooneelspelen, II, 113.
Puntje was first published in De Jonge Gids, I (1897/98), 573–588. It was reprinted in the book Drie toneelstukjes, Bibliotheek van “De Jonge Gids,” V ( Amsterdam: Buys, 1899 ).
Troelstra, the foremost leader in the organization of the Socialist Party, was actually present at the convention for which the play was written. Cf. Verzamelde Tooneelspelen, II, 113.
The Anti-Revolutionary Party was a conservative political alliance, formed on an orthodox Calvinist base, to counteract the spirit of the French Revolution and the Socialist and Liberal forces.
Puntje, De Jonge Gids, 2, p. 586.
Heijermans and his first wife took part in this amateur performance. Cf. Chapter II, 36 above.
Het Antwoord was first published in De Jonge Gids, I (1897/98), 728–37. It then appeared in Drie toneelstukjes.
Het Antwoord, De Jonge Gids, 2, pp. 731–2.
Ibid., 3, p. 737.
Amieke first appeared in De Gids, LXI (Part I, 1897 ), 515–26.
Hunningher, Toned en werkelijkheid, 150.
Enquête over de behandeling van Politieke misdadigers in Nederlandsche Gevangenissen,“ De Jonge Gids, I (1897/98), 681–726; II (1898/99), 1–35, 224–37.
De Jonge Gids, II ( 1898, 99 ), 621–9.
Ibid., 2, p. 624; cf. Ghetto, I, 6, 40.
Nummer Tachtig, op. cit., 3, p. 625.
Heijermans, Nummer Tachtig, Tooneelbibliotheek, IIe serie, No. 2 (Amsterdam: Maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, [1912]).
Cf. NRC, November 3, 1903; M. Horn, ND, November 4, 1903; D., Het Tooneel, XXXIII (December 1903 ), 55–6.
Feest appeared as Falkland 473–4 and 487, AH, Dec. 15, 22 Av., 1906 and April 27 Av., 1907. It was republished as Feest, Tooneelbibliotheek, IIe serie, No. 8 (Amsterdam: Maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, [1912]).
Cf. V.[an] B.[ruggen], AH, March 15 Ocht., 1908; van Hall, De Gids, LXXVII (Deel II 1908), 177–78; Rössing, ND, March 17, 1908; Stokvis, Den Gulden Winckel, VII (May 1908), 72–3. Feest was also performed in New York (in German) at the Irving Place Theatre in March and April 1911.
Heijermans, De Onbekende, De Jonge Gids, II (1898/99), 703–10. The play was republished in Drie toneelstukjes.
De Machien was published for the first time in De Jonge Gids, III (1899/1900), 2–13. It appeared in book form in Tooneel-Studies, I (Bussum: van Dishoeck, 1904 ), 91–121.
De Machien, Tooneel-Studies, 3, p. 116.
Ibid., 4, p. 121.
Ibid., 3, p. 107.
Het Antwoord, 2, p. 734.
Ein Mei first appeared in De Jonge Gids, III (1899/1900), 681–92.
Heijermans, Eén Mei (Amsterdam: De maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, 1900 ), 5, p. 19.
De Jonge Gids, I (1897/98), 481–2.
Barmhartige Reeders,“ De Nieuwe Tijd, III (1898/99), 269–79.
Op Hoop van Zegen, De Jonge Gids, IV (December 1900), 133–53. It was republished in book form (Amsterdam: van Looy, 1901). Van der Horst, in 3o Jaar “Op Hoop van Zegen” (Maastricht-Amsterdam: Leiter-Nypels, 1931), 9, says that the original title of the play was Op Hoop van Gods Zegen (In Hope of God’s Blessing), but that he persuaded Heijermans to change this to Op Hoop van Zegen (In Hope of Blessing). In English the play has become known as The Good Hope.
The program for the première contained this note: “The Scheveningen costumes do not indicate that the action takes place there.” Cf. van der Horst, op. cit., 11 for a reproduction of this program. The play has sometimes been associated with Scheveningen, probably because of the costumes. For an interesting description of Scheveningen and its people at that time, see Edmondo de Amicis, Holland, translated from the 13th edition by Helen Zimmern (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, [1894]), I, 214 ff.
Op Hoop van Zegen (Amsterdam: van Looy, 1914), I, 1, 4.
Ibid., I, 8, 18.
w Ibid., II, 11, 63.
Ibid., II, 11, 66.
Ibid., II, 16, 76.
Ibid., III, 6, 102.
Ibid., IV, 18, 140.
Ibid., IV, 21, 143.
Originally the play did not end here, for at this point the bookkeeper continued the action of the play until the final curtain by reading aloud the appeal to charity, which was to be placed in the newspaper for the benefit of the widows and orphans. Some of the critics pointed out that the elimination of this scene would make the ending of the play more effective, and Heijermans apparently shared this opinion, for he soon cut out the bookkeeper’s scene, and had the curtain fall when Kniertje stumbles out of Bos’s office.
Some of the critics approved, but the praise was by no means unanimous. Cf. Giovanni (J. Kalif), AH, December 26 Ocht., 1900; Rössing, ND, December 27, 1900; De Meester, NRC, January 23, 1901; Het Tooneel, XXX (January 1901), 37–38, 43–44, 47–48; F. C.[oenen] Jr., De Kroniek, VII (January 1901), 13–14; van Hall, De Gids, LXV (February 1901), 378–82; van Deyssel, De XXe Eeuw, VIII (Nov. 1902 ), 557–62.
Cf. van der Horst, op. cit., 15–16. B. Canter, T, Dec. 28 Av., 1900.
Antoine himself played the part of a policeman. Cf. André Antoine, Mes Souvenirs sur le Thédtre Antoine et sur l’Odéon ( Paris: Grasset, 1928 ), 205–6.
Cf. Max Beerbohm, “A `Dreary’ Play,” The Saturday Review, LXXXXV (May 1903), 548–9. Beerbohm turns the lack of appreciation for Heijermans’ play into an opportunity to attack Englishmen for having neither artistic taste nor aesthetic sensitivity. Also The Times, April 28, 1903.
This production ran for forty-nine performances. In a review of the play, Joseph Wood Krutch, “Dutch Interior,” The Nation, CXXV (November 1927), 485–86, wrote, “… Heijermans built better than the theorist of naturalism thought necessary. His impulse toward social protest served only to supply him with an attitude and to sharpen his observation so that he might make the old story of the rotten ship and the wives at home real once more by giving it a local habitation and a name among particular people, in a particular place, at a particular time. He had the gift for indignation but he had much more conspicuously the gift for character drawing and for situation; so that he has painted the life of a fishing village with something of that realism, at once uncompromising and yet loving, which once served as the mark of his coutrymen’s graphic art… there is… an individual vitality in the characters which makes them refuse to be merely either representatives of a class or straw men to serve as the subject of an argument. The play has life in it and it will not take its place quietly upon the shelf with the other documents for the study of an out-moded school.” Cf. also John Mason Brown, “Sermons in Plays,” Theatre Arts Monthly, XI (December 1927), 895–97, 899; F. R. B., “The Good Hope,” The Outlook, CXLVII (November 1927), 340–41; J. Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, October 19 and 23, 1927; The New York Herald Tribune, October 19, 1927; B. V. McCarty, The Billboard, XXXIX (Oct. 1927), 11; Theatre Magazine, XLVII (Jan. 1928), 70.
Barmhartige Reeders,“ op. cit., 269. This body was identified by the initials on the shirt, while the body of Barend is identified by the pair of silver earrings. Cf. Op Hoop van Zegen, IV, 9–15, 122–37.
Barmhartige Reeders,“ op. cit., 271–2.
Op Hoop van Zegen, II, 11, 67.
Ibid., I, 4, 10.
Ibid., III, 8, 105.
Ibid., I, 14, 34.
Ibid., I, 14, 36.
Ibid., III, 3, 85.
Jo later turns on her for this. Cf. ibid., III, 6, 103.
Ibid., IV, 16, 137.
In his review of the 1903 production in London, Max Beerbohm, op. cit., 549, wrote, “To pretend that he is a conventional villain merely because he speculates in unseaworthy ships is to deny the possible existence in Holland of what the late Mr. Plimsoll proved to exist in England. Perhaps it was some vague memory of Mr. Plimsoll’s crusade that led these critics into the deeper absurdity of decrying the play as `a pamphlet.’ Certainly, it is a criticism of certain things in life which the author holds to be horrible and unjust. In that sense it is a pamphlet. But it is also a very fine and scrupulous work of art. There is nothing incongruous in this duality. True, there is always the danger that an artist who is inspired by a moral purpose may distort life so as to make his moral the more striking. But he does not necessarily do so. Certainly, Heijermans has not done so. I wish that some of our so purely artistic dramatists could, through their coldly observant eyes, see life half as clearly and steadily as it is seen through the somewhat flashing eyes of Heijermans.”
Op Hoop van Zegen, I, 8, 16–18.
Ibid., IV, 10, 127.
Ibid., II, 11, 64.
Ibid., III, 6, 100.
Ibid., IV, 13, 131.
Paul Goldmann, Die “neue Richtung”. Polemische Aufsätze über Berliner Theater Aufführungen ( Wien: Stern, 1903 ), 51.
Op Hoop van Zegen, I, 7, 16.
bs Ibid., III, 6, 97–102.
For a discussion of the influence of Die Weber on The Good Hope, cf. Chapter VIII below.
Published in AH as Falkland 269, July 6 Av., 1901. It was never republished.
Schetsen, II, 138–45.
Holland’s Militairisme,“ De Jonge Gids, II (1898/99), 62–4, 185–98, 368–77.
L. H. A. Drabbe, “Het dappere Hollandsche leger,” De Jonge Gids, III (1899/ 1900), 315–20, 415–28, 576–87.
Kautsky, “Militairisme en Socialisme in Engeland,” De Jonge Gids, III (1899/ 1900 ), 588–600.
Cf. NRC, January 13, 16, February 19, 1901.
Cf. the footnote to the fragment (Act II) of Het Pantser published in De Jonge Gids IV (1902), 714–34. Another fragment (Act III) appeared in De XXe Remo, IX (January 1902), 50–63. The play was published in book form as Het Pantser (Amsterdam: van Looy, 1902 ).
Het Pantser, op. cit., III, 12, 125.
Ibid., II, 2, 52.
Heijermans got the idea for this effect when he saw the silhouetted figure of a shoemaker late one night in Amsterdam. Cf. van der Horst, Het Volk, January 15 Av., 1936; also Schim, Schetsen, I, 111–15.
Het Pantser, op. rit., II, 11, 85.
Ibid., III, 6, 102.
Ibid., III, 9, 110.
Footnote to Het Pantser, De Jonge Gids, loc. cit.
Het Pantser, op. cit., III, 6, 99.
Ibid., II, 11, 81.
Cf. Giovanni, AH, December 1 Ocht., 3 Av., 1901; ND, December 3, 1901; NRC, December 18, 1901; Het Tooneel, XXX (December 1901); van Hall, De Gids, LX VI (January 1902 ), 183–4.
van der Horst, Het Volk, January 30 Av., 1936.
Brief in Schemer first appeared as Falkland 703 in AH, August 15 Av., 1914. It has been published in book form along with De Buikspreker and Ben Heerenhuis to hoop (Amsterdam: Dc Maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, 1921). ‘6 Ibid., 17.
Ibid., 18.
Cf. Rössing, Xl), August 17 Av., 1914; Watch, Groot-Nederland, XII (January 1912i, 128–7.
De Buikspreker was first published as Falkland 704 in AH, August 22 Av., 1914.
In Falkland 401, Bescheiden request aan Minister Kuyper in take het Vredespaleis, AH, February 18 Av., 1905
Heijermans applied for the job of porter at the Peace Palace.
Een Heerenhuis to Koop, op. cit., 43.
Ibid., 45.
Ora et Labora first appeared in print when Act III was published in De XXe Eeuw, IX (April 1902), 451–72, but the whole play was printed as a book, Ora et Labora (Amsterdam: van Looy, 1903 ).
Ibid., 1.
Ibid., I, 2, 8–9.
Ibid., II, 9, 53.
Ibid., II, 14, 68.
Ibid., III, 14, 111.
Cf. ND, February 4, 1902; Giovanni, AH, February 2 Ocht., 3 Av., 1902; F.[rans] C.[oenen], De Kroniek, VIII (February 1902), 50; van Hall, De Gids, LXVI (March 1902), 559–61; Het Tooneel, XXXI (February 1902), 80–81; V.[an] B.[ruggen], Het Volk, February 4, 6, 1902.
op Hoop van Zegen, III, 5, 89.
Ora et Labora, I, 7, 17–18.
The Good Hope contains one change of scene, for the last act takes place in Bos’s office, but the scene remains the same in all three acts of Pray and Work.
Ora et Labora, II, 9, 53.
Ibid., I, 2, 7.
Ibid., II, 1, 38.
Ibid., II, 9, 53.
Ora et Labora, II, 4, 45. Cf. II, 9, 54–55; Op Hoop van Zegen, I, 14, 35–36.
De Jonge Gids, IV (May 1901), 508–12.
Cf. Besje, which appeared as Falkland 294 in AH, May 24 Av., 1902, Schetsen, VII, 224–243, a touching story about a granny’s visit to her granddaughter and her return to the squabbling of the home. It mentions some of the same characters who appear in Patient Death. Cf. also Grootmoeder, (Falkland 352, AH, October 24 Av., 1903 ) Schetsen, X, 178–87.
Bloeimaand, Tooneel-Studies, III (Bussum: van Dishoeck, 1905 ).
Ibid., II, 18, 86.
Cf. Sylvia in Glück auf!, below, I, 4, 13–14.lla Cf. AH, February 8 Av., 14 Av., 1904; ND, February 9, 1904; NRC, February 9, 10, 20, 1904; T, February 15, 1904; I. L., Het Tooneel, XXXIII (February 1904), 92–4; van
Hall, De Gids, LXVIII (1904), 574–80. For Heijermans’ reply to his critics see AH, February 14 Ocht., 1904 as well as the postscript to Bloeimaand.
Ibid., II, 9, 70.
In Een mijnbezoek, Schetsen, XV, 16, Heijermans described this German miners’ expression as a greeting of touching earnestness in the black, lugubrious galleries, where each falling stone excited your attention, every faint crack frightened you, every shining little lamp became a bonfire.“
De Nieuwe Tijd, XIII (1908), 117–24, 208–16. After the publication of the play in book form (Amsterdam: De Maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, 1911), part of Act IV appeared in De Nieuwe Tijd, XVII (1912), 1–12, 112–25.
Een mijnbezoek, 20.
Heijermans gives an account of the origin of this play in the preface; Glück auf!, v-vii.
Ibid., vi; cf. Een mijnbezoek, 1–3.
Heijermans explains why he chose a German setting for this play, and, at the same time, makes an amusing comment on the kind of criticism he often had to face, in De Nieuwe Tijd, op. cit., footnote on 213: “The significance of the so-called Germanization of the names and other data in this play of the mines is none other than the avoidance of the difficulty that there is only one insignificant state mine in Holland.
In order not to localize the dramatic motif and not to occasion a visit to the particular mine by the assembled critics of this country — just as they went to sample butter in a particular Home at that time with Bloeimaand (a wonderfully unforgettable farce) — the situation is kept on a more general plane by the aforementioned change, and we spare the gentlemen an expedition with obstacles.“ In his review of the première, van Bruggen, AH, December 27 Av., 1911, reported that the audience applauded so insistently at the end of the third act that Heijermans, whose reluctance to appear upon the stage was well known, finally stepped before the footlights and bowed to the audience.
Cf. Rössing, ND, December 26, 1911; NRC, December 27 Ocht., 28 Av., 1911, January 2, February 2, 1912; Frans Coenen, Groot-Nederland, X (February 1912), 283–88; Vaillant, Het Tooneel, XLI (February 1912), 53–54; Lasalle, De Gids, LX XVI (February 1912), 375–85. Cf. also letter from Heijermans, AH, December 27 Av., 1911.
Glück auj!, II, p. 47; cf. Een mijnbezoek, 7–8.
Ibid., III, 5, 91; cf. Een mijnbezoek, 9.
Cf. Chapter VII below, 190 ff.
Glück auf!, I, 8, 26; II, 13, 71.
Ibid., II, 7, 60; IV, 9, 134; Op Hoop van Zegen, IV, 13, 131.
Ibid., II, 15, 73; III, 1, 81.
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© 1954 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Holland
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Flaxman, S.L. (1954). The Men Hemmed in with the Spears. In: Herman Heijermans and His Dramas. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9155-5_4
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