#transgegmont

[sherbertilluminated]

Both Don Carlos (1787) and Egmont (1788) get way funnier if you imagine them as taking place in the same continuity. After the events of Don Carlos, the Duke of Alba departs for Flanders thinking. Wow. That was both deeply stressful and preventable. Seeing my king like that made me feel emotions that I as a military man do not want to confront. Time to do some violence that reifies my position in the unstable imperial hierarchy. Clear my head. Good thing I'll never have to deal with my son falling for such an idealistic rebel traitor.

And then guess what. Guess what happens.

[sherbertilluminated]

his ass does NOT know about the Marquis of Posa

"...if only some decent soul would inform Phillip that it's more suitable for a king to rule over citizens of two faiths than to turn them against one another," Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Egmont: ein Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen, 1788

[sherbertilluminated]

Thinking about the prison scene in Egmont again and the way Ferdinand is gendered.

The German original,

oh welche Stimme reichte zur Klage!

is closer to "what voice would be sufficient for grief." But throughout the scene Ferdinand characterizes his own uncontrollable desire to lament Egmont and his hopeless cause as feminine. Whereas Egmont is a model of stoic self-control, Ferdinand refuses to be silent.

Goethe's borrowing from the influential greek model—on which I am admittedly not an expert—which delegates the task of grieving to women. But Clärchen, the important woman in Egmont's life, dies more or less with him. In death they are complimentary and triumphal. Which leaves the task of grieving to the illegitimate and thus marginal Ferdinand, an accomplice with a voice too loud for his assignment.

Historically, this is all Sturm und Drang. It's possible to read Ferdinand as a man whose grief is, if not entirely socially-acceptable, then at least justifiable by the story in which he finds himself. But I'm experimenting with a translation for performance and am really excited by the possibilities of gendering this character.

If anyone knows more about gender and this play I'd be so happy to hear from you; I am the proverbial "windblown, ecstatic amateur" and am still in the research stages of this translation!