What do you think?
Rate this book
Three Comedies
Nestroy's three comedies will acquaint the English-speaking public with the colorful nineteenth-century Viennese dramatist and actor, whom they may know only through Thornton Wilder's adaptation of a Nestroy play as The Matchmaker, which ultimately became the popular musical Hello, Dolly!
Nestroy is still widely played in Germany, Switzerland, and especially in Austria. The comedies included here are among his best and have already been performed by drama groups in the United States.
The translation successfully overcomes the formidable challenge of Nestroy's wide use of wordplay and the Viennese idiom and offers the reader a sparkling version of the three comedies. In their introduction the translators tell how and why they undertook the task.
Nestroy is still widely played in Germany, Switzerland, and especially in Austria. The comedies included here are among his best and have already been performed by drama groups in the United States.
The translation successfully overcomes the formidable challenge of Nestroy's wide use of wordplay and the Viennese idiom and offers the reader a sparkling version of the three comedies. In their introduction the translators tell how and why they undertook the task.
Textbook Binding
First published June 1, 1967
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 1, 2018
Oh, these are fun!
I stumbled upon this collection while failing to locate an English translation of Einen Jux will er sich machen (the inspiration for Hello, Dolly, the Thornton Wilder plays that inspired Hello, Dolly, and Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle). I’m glad I decided to check out these three plays – some of the only plays by Nestroy ever translated into English – because they’re charming.
Some background: Johann Nestroy was a nineteenth-century actor and playwright who predominately wrote starring vehicles for himself. In fact, his acting was considered so central to the plays that they weren’t performed for a half-century after his death. He was also written off as a low-brow comedian, and it would only be in the early 20th century that he would be embraced as a philosopher satirist. His work, couched in the Viennese dialect, is also difficult to translate: more than once while reading about him, I encountered the joke that it’s impossible to translate Nestroy into German. (For those not familiar with that part of the world, Austria’s primary language is German, but Nestroy wrote in such a unique Viennese dialect that it’s apparently difficult even for other German speakers to understand him.)
Anyway, Nestroy is considered more or less impossible to translate. As the two men responsible for this edition say, these plays are “tampered” translations – not direct and with considerable latitude (they updated some of the jokes to align with the 1960s, when this collection was published).
Having not read the original versions, I can’t say what this tampering entailed. What I can say is that I found all three plays hilarious and am disappointed Knight and Fabry didn’t mess with more of Nestroy’s work (at least, nothing that was published). I’ve been paraphrasing a few passages since finishing, and even my horrific butchering of the lines gets laughs (the exchange about love and its sequel marriage, featured in The Talisman, made me laugh out loud when I read it).
These would be delightful to see staged. Also, I’m totally onboard with more people tampering with Nestroy’s work if it means more of his work available in English. Highly recommended.
I stumbled upon this collection while failing to locate an English translation of Einen Jux will er sich machen (the inspiration for Hello, Dolly, the Thornton Wilder plays that inspired Hello, Dolly, and Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle). I’m glad I decided to check out these three plays – some of the only plays by Nestroy ever translated into English – because they’re charming.
Some background: Johann Nestroy was a nineteenth-century actor and playwright who predominately wrote starring vehicles for himself. In fact, his acting was considered so central to the plays that they weren’t performed for a half-century after his death. He was also written off as a low-brow comedian, and it would only be in the early 20th century that he would be embraced as a philosopher satirist. His work, couched in the Viennese dialect, is also difficult to translate: more than once while reading about him, I encountered the joke that it’s impossible to translate Nestroy into German. (For those not familiar with that part of the world, Austria’s primary language is German, but Nestroy wrote in such a unique Viennese dialect that it’s apparently difficult even for other German speakers to understand him.)
Anyway, Nestroy is considered more or less impossible to translate. As the two men responsible for this edition say, these plays are “tampered” translations – not direct and with considerable latitude (they updated some of the jokes to align with the 1960s, when this collection was published).
Having not read the original versions, I can’t say what this tampering entailed. What I can say is that I found all three plays hilarious and am disappointed Knight and Fabry didn’t mess with more of Nestroy’s work (at least, nothing that was published). I’ve been paraphrasing a few passages since finishing, and even my horrific butchering of the lines gets laughs (the exchange about love and its sequel marriage, featured in The Talisman, made me laugh out loud when I read it).
These would be delightful to see staged. Also, I’m totally onboard with more people tampering with Nestroy’s work if it means more of his work available in English. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review