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Haupt- und Staatsaktionen

The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre | 1996 | 669 words | Copyright

Haupt- und Staatsaktionen, plays acted in German by the English Comedians and later by professional strolling players between 1685 and 1720, so named by Gottsched to distinguish them from the comic after-piece. They were usually concerned with the strong passions and elaborate intrigues of kings, emperors, and great warriors. The plots were taken from all available European sources and rewritten to provide an unsophisticated audience with a feast of rhetoric, often crude and bombastic, and spectacular effects featuring executions, ghostly apparitions, weddings, and coronations, the whole interrupted at frequent intervals by comic interludes featuring Hanswurst.

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PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Haupt- und Staatsaktionen." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Haupt- und Staatsaktionen." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-HauptundStaatsaktionen.html

PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Haupt- und Staatsaktionen." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-HauptundStaatsaktionen.html

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