La Ronde (play)
| La Ronde | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Arthur Schnitzler |
| Date premiered | 1920 |
| Original language | German |
| Setting | Vienna in the 1890s |
La Ronde (the original German name is Reigen) is a play written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and first printed in 1900 for his friends. It scrutinizes the sexual morals and class ideology of its day through a series of encounters between pairs of characters (shown before or after a sexual encounter). By choosing characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses boundaries of class.
Schnitzler's play was not publicly performed until 1920, on 23 December in Berlin and 1 February 1921 in Vienna. (An unauthorized production was mounted earlier, in Budapest in 1912.) The play elicited violent critical and popular reactions against its subject matter.
The titles of the play—in German Reigen and in French La Ronde—refer to a round dance, as portrayed in the English nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses.
La Ronde was first printed in 1900 for private circulation. In 1903, the first German-language edition was published in Vienna, selling some 40,000 copies, but was banned by the censors a year later. A German editor was found in 1908 to publish the play from Germany. In 1912, it was translated into French and in 1920 into English, and published as Hands Around. In 1917 an English translation written by Marya Mannes was published by Boni & Liveright, inc.
Schnitzler's play was not publicly performed until 1920, on 23 December 1920 in Berlin and 1 February 1921 in Vienna. The play elicited violent critical and popular reactions. Schnitzler suffered moralistic and personal attacks that became virulently anti-Semitic. Schnitzler was attacked as a Jewish pornographer and the outcry came to be known as the "Reigen scandal." Despite a 1921 Berlin court verdict that dismissed charges of immorality against the play, Schnitzler withdrew La Ronde himself from public production in German-speaking countries.
The play remained popular in Russia, Czechoslovakia, and especially in France, where it was adapted for the cinema twice, in 1950 and again in 1964. In 1982, forty years after Arthur Schnitzler’s death, his son Heinrich Schnitzler released the play for German-language performances.
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