ABSTRACT
It is 1837 and one man is shaving another; or, more precisely, a soldier is shaving a captain; or, for those who are more politically inclined, a servant is shaving his master. This master is only referred to as Captain, but the servant goes by the name Woyzeck. The name and the basic story are drawn directly from the tabloids of the day but the implications remain sadly pertinent to a new millennium. The great dramatist, Heiner Müller, upon receiving the Büchner Award in literature, astutely noted, “The tragedy of Woyzeck is that there are still Woyzecks, all across this globe, shaving Captains.” Müller pulls this iconic image from the political unconscious and forces it out into the open: The oppressed are still shaving their oppressors. And with this observation comes the deeper, perennial question, what keeps the Woyzecks of the world from taking their collective razors and drawing them across the fat throats of the men who are the very cause of their despair?. Ultimately, as we know, Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck will take another steel blade and plunge it into the chest of the one person he cares for more than anything else in the entire world, his lover Marie. It is she, not the Captain, that becomes the victim of Woyzeck’s anger. Especially since the Captain is in collusion with the Doctor. The two are performing a series of experiments on Woyzeck to see how little an infantry man needs to be fed and still be effective in his duties. Currently Woyzeck’s diet is restricted solely to peas. The results have been dubious, weakening poor Woyzeck’s stamina and exasperating his propensity to hear certain voices. But this is part of Büchner’s dramatic conceit, it is informative to compare Büchner’s rendering of the story with the known facts of the actual case. It will help us understand why Büchner believes we will be closer to truly understanding Woyzeck on the stage than in the contents of even the most astute medical file.
