Berliner Ensemble Adaptations

by Bertolt Brecht

  Act One

  1. (I, 1) The man with the child is new, also the appearance of the armed men accompanying Marcius, whose entry has been brought forward by some sixteen lines. The messenger’s entry has likewise been advanced. The citizens’ applause for their tribunes is new, as is Marcius’ expression of contempt for them (“And the newly baked/Tribunes”). The last twelve lines of the scene are new, and replace all Shakespeare’s ending after Marcius’ exit: Brutus now finds Marcius essential on military grounds, and the citizens, provided with a reason for leaving, no longer “steal away.”

  2. (I, 3. I, 2 is cut) Shakespeare’s scene with some cuts.

  3. (I, 4–10) Shakespeare’s seven scenes in the old Tieck translation.

  Act Two

  1. (II, 1) The opening exchanges between Sicinius and Brutus are new, as far as Menenius’ entry. His speeches have been cut to bare essentials, as far as the tribunes’ exit, eliminating all discussion of Marcius’ pride. At the end of the scene, when the tribunes are left alone, their exchanges are mainly new up to the point where Brutus says “I heard him swear,/Were he to stand for consul, never would he/Appear i’ the marketplace.” Their ensuing proposal (just before the messenger’s appearance) to tell the plebeians how Marcius hates them is cut.

  2. (II, 2) Shakespeare with a few cuts.

  3. (II, 3 followed by III, 1) The allusion to Marcius’ indispensability is new at the end of the first citizen’s second speech, together with the exchanges immediately following, as far as “Here he comes.” So is everything from the entry of the man with the child up to that of three more citizens—Shakespeare’s “two other citizens.” So is Coriolanus’ very Brechtian song. Then once Coriolanus has asked if he can change his clothes the rest of II, 3 is cut, so that the plebeians are no longer induced by the tribunes to revoke their votes (“almost all/Repent in their election”), and a new bridge passage inserted leading into III, 1 after the tribunes’ entrance, where Menenius says “Be calm, be calm.” This passage, from “Yes, that you may” to “Noble Marcius, what/Will you do with this grain if chosen consul,” confronts Coriolanus with the question of whether to distribute the new grain, and it is his refusal to do this that now makes the plebeians change their minds, on plain materialistic grounds (the fourth citizen’s “Where, Coriolanus, are the spoils /Of Corioli?”—another interpolated speech).

  The attempt to arrest him follows, as in III, 1, but more violently and on different grounds, his offence in Shakespeare having been that quickly over; almost as soon as the tribunes have called for his arrest he draws his sword, then is protected by the patricians and hustled out before worse can happen. Tribunes and people are accordingly not “beat in,” as in Shakespeare, while all else that follows—the tribunes’ threat to kill Coriolanus, their argument with Menenius and his offer to intercede—is cut.

  Act Three

  1. (III, 2) Virtually as in Shakespeare.

  2. (III, 3) Ditto, except that Brecht adds the interpolated comments by the citizens, cuts Sicinius’ suggestion that the people should vote “For death, for fine or banishment,” and instead of Shakespeare’s “Have you collected them by tribes?” substitutes the more modern concept of “chairmen of the electoral districts.”

  3. (IV, 1) Close to Shakespeare, with cuts.

  4. (IV, 2) Ditto.

  Act Four

  1. (IV, 3) In Shakespeare’s scene too “a Roman and a Volsce” meet on the highway and discuss Coriolanus’ banishment, but Brecht has rewritten it entirely in his own way, reminiscent in its mundane details of some of the dialogue in Lucullus.

  2. (IV, 4 leading to IV, 5) Close to Shakespeare, with the one scene prefacing the other as there. The comic ending with the three servants, after Coriolanus’ and Aufidius’ exit, is cut, though Brecht must surely have regretted losing their Schweykian comments on war and peace.

  3. (IV, 6) This is the IV, 4 of Brecht’s plan, though in the event the changes are less radical than proposed there. In Sicinius’ opening speech “without the hero” is a gloss. The citizens’ remark at the end about Coriolanus’ scorched-earth policy is new, while the second citizen’s final question and Sicinius’ curt “Yes” take the place of the original first citizen’s “I ever said we were i’ the wrong when we banished him” and the second citizen’s reply “So did we all.…”

  4. (IV, 7) Aufidius’ closing speech is a paraphrase of the original, and the reference to the smoke signal is new (as are those in succeeding scenes); otherwise the scene is as in Shakespeare.

  Act Five

  1. (V, 1) Brutus’ speech is new, with its order to distribute arms to the people. Otherwise Shakespeare’s scene differs in having the tribunes on stage throughout, and its opening and closing speeches have been cut.

  2. (V, 2) Shakespeare with cuts, notably of the closing exchanges.

  3. (part of V, 4) The first half of the scene is new, with its evidence that a minority of the patricians are ready to join the plebs in defending the city. The ensuing exchanges between Comlnius and Sicinius are a shortened form of the Menenius-Sicinius dialogue at the beginning of the original V. 4. But Brecht’s conclusion, again, is new, with its important statement by Brutus in lieu of Shakespeare’s “the ladies have prevailed” and the jubilations that follow.

  4. (V, 3) Two speeches by Coriolanus and one by Volumnia have been cut, during which Shakespeare makes him kneel to her, then refuse to let her kneel to him. Volumnia’s first long speech (“If silence were possible”) has had its beginning paraphrased, while her second, which shows her making use of every possible ground of appeal, has been entirely rewritten apart from its last three lines, so as to bring out (a) Coriolanus’ dispensability, (b) the people’s armed resistance, and (c) the patricians’ dilemma whether to use the Volsces to defeat this resistance or vice versa. In Shakespeare Coriolanus’ exclamation “O mother, mother” is followed by

  Behold the heavens do ope,

  The gods look down, and this unnatural scene

  They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!

  You’ve won a happy victory for Rome.…

  Aufidius admits to being moved, and the scene ends, in flat contradiction to Brecht, with the lines “all the swords/In Italy, and her confederate arms,/Could not have made this peace.”

  5. (V, 5, showing Volumnia’s triumphal return to Rome, has been cut) New scene, in which Brutus’ couplet recalls the interscene verses in Galileo. It takes the place of the altered V, 5 proposed in Brecht’s plan.

  6. (V, 6) The scene has been simplified by eliminating Aufidius’ “three or four conspirators” (who incidentally provided Christopher Isherwood with the title of his first novel) and instead having his officers kill Coriolanus with no preliminary instructions. The senators, a little confusingly, replace Shakespeare’s lords of the city (of Antium, that is), and then everything after Coriolanus’ death is cut: Aufidius helping to bear away the body, while the lords resolve “Let’s make the best of it.”

  7. Entirely new. The suggestion in Brecht’s plan is here reversed, and the ladies are not allowed to wear mourning.

  THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC AT ROUEN, 1431

  Texts by Brecht

  Dialectical factors in the adaptation and production of The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431

  (B) Interest common to occupying power and collaborationist clergy: destroy Joan. Clash of interests: the English wish to destroy her qua rebel, the clergy qua heretic.

  (A) When Joan calls for the expulsion of the English her spiritual judges sheepishly lower their heads. They know what they do.

  (A) In the second scene (opening of the trial) the clergy are all battling against Joan, but at the same time they are battling against one another for the honour of being the one to win the battle. They interrupt each other; one of them will contemptuously read the documents while another is examining the accused; Manchon, having been sent back to his place after a foolish question of his has given Joan an opening to launch an attack, thereafter sits and sulk
s, without taking any interest in the progress of the case.

  (B) Cut off from the people, Joan suddenly breaks down (in the eighth scene). But it can be observed (in the sixth) how her isolation keeps undermining her resistance.

  (B) The fourth scene (market day in Rouen) shows how the people are divided and confused by the clergy’s ingenious solution of libelling the great patriot as a heretic; but also how this causes the clergy to lose ground.

  (A) Fear (at the sight of the executioner) stimulates Joan to make particularly bold answers. The more the church needs and uses such people, the less inclined she is to submit to its authority.—It is not the church’s threats but her own mistaken assumption as to the people’s passivity that temporarily breaks down Joan’s resistance.

  (A) (B) Once she hears of the popular unrest in Rouen of which she is the centre, her anger is directed against the Bishop of Beauvais, and it is anger at herself. For having lost faith in the people.

  [BFA, vol. 24, pp. 404–5.]

  The last crowd scene

  We took an astonishingly long time to work out the right attitude for the English soldiers, in fact we had quite a few performances behind us. They need to be brutal and on edge. When they turn their backs on the crowd they feel their backs and necks threatened even though the crowd is held off by a rope. Then when they thrust the crowd back (the rope having been coiled up) there is a characteristic instant. The crowd has collected in front of the peasant’s son, the loose woman is hysterically screaming “Henry, go home!” One of the soldiers has given ground; he lowers the point of his pike. Will he run the wine merchant through? For three seconds everything stops. Then the soldier holds it level across his body once more, and growling “Back, back” continues to push back the crowd.

  It is important to have fifteen seconds’ pause as the burning starts, after the loose woman has softly remarked “Now!” and the prayers of the kneeling nuns have come to a stop in the middle of the Hail Mary. And it is likewise important that everyone should stare towards the stake (assumed to be on the apron), even right through the episode with the executioner and the peasant’s son.

  [BFA, vol. 24, p. 407. The last-mentioned episode is not in our text.]

  Editorial Note

  Adapting Anna Seghers

  Anna Seghers’ radio play, which provided eleven of the seventeen scenes, together with the bulk of their dialogue, was first broadcast by the Belgian (Flemish-language) radio in 1935 and subsequently published in the Moscow Internationale Literatur. In 1950 it was broadcast by the East German radio. By using crowd noises and shouts, together with anonymous voices, it provided a feeling of the popular presence all through. The effect of this on Joan is much more lightly suggested than in the adaptation; the key which Brecht seized on is Joan’s “Why are the people so gay” after her interrogation by La Fontaine (in Brecht’s Scene 4), which the adaptation shifts to follow the threat of torture (two scenes later). Joan hears the crowd’s shouts when she recants, and “draws in her breath”; nothing else is said to explain why she puts on men’s clothes again during the ensuing popular riots. Altogether Seghers’ court proceedings take up a far larger proportion of the play than those in the adaptation, while her crowd is more of a collective force and less differentiated, with none of Brecht’s genre scenes.

  The problem, then, for Brecht and Besson was (a) to make a full length play of this, (b) to bring out Seghers’ implication that Joan’s mystical voices somehow became the voice of the tangible people, and (c) to establish those people not as radio sound effects but as a group of individuals on the stage. This was done by taking the eleven sections into which the radio play falls—they are separated by clearly marked pauses or breaks—making separate scenes of them, and adding three entirely new crowd scenes (8, 10, and 11); which means that the second half of the cast list (i.e., all the characters after “English soldiers”) are likewise new. At a later stage the opening and closing scenes in the Touraine countryside were added, with Jacques Legrain as a symbol of the French wine-growing peasantry recurring right through the play. The girls’ song in these scenes was new, as was the mocking verse about Bishop Cauchon in the crowd scenes, the former being very freely derived from Christine de Pisan’s poem of 1429: the first stanza from verse 35 and the third from verse 46. A second key remark was introduced in Cauchon’s last interview with Joan (13) after she has put on a man’s clothes once again; discussing her recantation she confesses “But then I doubted the people; I thought they wouldn’t care if I died, and just go on drinking their wine. But they knew all about me the whole time!”

  To take the scenes briefly:

  1. New, not in Seghers.

  2. Developed from anonymous crowd remarks at the opening of the radio play, which provide about half the dialogue.

  3. Far the greater part comes from the radio play, with some rearrangement. The new passages tend to stress the role of the English as occupiers—e.g., the opening exchanges, and other use of the English language in Brecht’s original play—together with the subservience of the French authorities towards them.

  4. The middle section is new, including the exchanges about Catherine of La Rochelle and her visions.

  5. Built round the exchanges between several (anonymous) assessors a little later in the radio play about Gerson’s affidavit. Here the remarks are shared among identifiable characters. The market setting and whole first half of the scene (with the fishwife and company) are new, as are the closing speculations about Joan’s virginity.

  6. Almost entirely from the radio play.

  7. From the radio play, but shifted back to come between the sight of the torture instruments and Joan’s recantation.

  8. New. The phrase of the scene title “Joan thinks the people have forgotten her” (penned by Brecht on one of his lists of scenes) can only refer back to the previous scene.

  9. In the radio play Joan’s recantation takes place in the audible presence of the crowd, and while the bishop begins reading the sentence and the executioner holds a burning torch ready to light the pyre. Maître Érard and his role are new. The condemnation read here by the bishop is that read by Chation in Seghers; virtually all the rest of the dialogue is new apart from the sentry’s final remark. The English anger at Joan’s escape is less laboured in the radio play.

  10. New.

  11. New.

  12. Apart from the first two remarks about collaboration with the English and the final hand-washing, this is virtually as in the radio play.

  13. Like all the other scene titles and locations, this, with its “Joan has heard the voice of the people” is Brecht’s. The scene is from the radio play, except the allusions to the people between the Bishop’s “But you have publicly recanted” and his “In other words you are obstinate and guilty of a relapse.” Here Anna Seghers simply had Joan say “Because I didn’t know what a recantation meant.”

  14. Mainly from the radio play.

  15. The crowd remarks here are partly from the end of the radio play, partly from the recantation scene (when the pyre was about to be lit). Brecht has shuffled them and distributed them to his individual characters. In the radio play the man who lit the flames is seized with remorse, and dominates the ending with his cries.

  16. New.

  DON JUAN

  Texts by Brecht

  On the adaptation

  Notes on the Production

  1

  As setting, preferably Molière’s original stage with its splendid perspectives, chandeliers, bare indications; the world as the grandees’ ornamental fishpond.

  2

  The acting to be utterly serious, i.e., this is a society which takes itself very seriously indeed.

  3

  The great seducer never demeans himself by using specific erotic tricks. He seduces by means of his costume (and his way of wearing it), his position (and his barefaced abuse of it), his wealth (or his credit), and his reputation (or the self-assurance given him by his fame). He appears as a se
xual Great Power.

  4

  Certain incidents can be accompanied by Lully’s music. The conversations with Donna Elvira in the first and last acts are thereby made to lose their tragic character and become more suitably melodramatic. A flourish (mort) on the horns goes very well with the avenging brother’s (Don Alonsa’s) appearance in the third act.

  [BFA, vol. 24, pp. 412–13]

  Don Juan as a Character

  Don Juan is not an atheist in any progressive sense. His unbelief is not a militant one, calling for people to act. It is just a lack of belief—Don Juan may even believe in God, he would merely rather He was not mentioned, since this might disturb his own life of pleasure.—He will make use of any argument that gets a lady on her back, and equally any that gets her off his.

  We are not on Molière’s side here. His vote goes to Don Juan—the Epicurean (and follower of Gassendi) supporting the Epicurean. Molière ridicules heavenly justice, he feels this dubious arrangement for repressing joie de vivre is right up heaven’s street. The only opponents he allows Don Juan are cuckolded spouses and so on.—We are against parasitic joie de vivre. Unfortunately the only bon vivant we can point to is the tiger.