ABSTRACT
The rare and incomplete archival sources concerning the presence and activities of women associated with English troupes in early modern Germany offer little on the actual performances, stagecraft and reception of their actresses, or the behaviour of their audiences, male or female. These issues are illuminated in an account that represents an astoundingly rich, and previously unrecognized, source of information concerning itinerant mixed-gender troupes of ‘English comedians’. It occurs in a novel by Beer published only three decades after actresses first toured with English troupes. The 356-page illustrated autobiography Beer wrote, under his own name, during the last decade of his life, makes no reference to his considerable literary oeuvre. Although a few of his writings, notably Narren=spital, achieved wide popularity, his identity as novelist remained largely undiscovered until Richard Alewyn recognized Beer’s prolific pseudonymously published literary writings as one coherent oeuvre.1 Literary historians who pay tribute to Beer’s extensive use of non-prose interpolations draw particular attention to his characteristic device of extended theatrical scenes, reading them as ‘mini-satires’ glossing the novels in which they occur.2 One such episode that has escaped critical attention occupies three chapters of Beer’s Maul=Affen of 1683, describing a visit and performance by a mixed-gender troupe of ‘English comedians’.3 This may be regarded as a virtually self-contained episode, with the proviso that any reading of Beer’s literary writings has to be firmly contextualized within the distortions of their weighty didactic and artistic agenda. This agenda is influenced by the literary conventions of their time, by the demands of Beer’s very individual genius and by his own personal viewpoint concerning the threat of itinerants to sedentary professional performers such as himself. An invaluable multiple perspective on Beer’s reception and literary assimilation of genuine itinerant performers is offered by the impact, on his writings, of the most spectacular quack death of its era, that
1 Alewyn, Johann Beer. Studien. (NB: Maul=Affen is one of several since-disputed works, but until a more convincing author than Beer is suggested, it seems appropriate to discuss it in the context of his work.)
of Charles Bernoin. It made such a powerful impression on Beer that he recorded it in both literary and autobiographical versions, whose comparison confirms the extent to which his literary agenda was shaped by eyewitness experience. Viewed in this context, Maul=Affen offers a uniquely detailed account of an early modern mixed-gender ‘English’ troupe, by a skilled writer whose professional musical and dramatic skills, matchless ear for dialogue and dialect, and deep interest in every type of spectacle, qualify him as a reliable and trustworthy reporter.
