Notes

Alan Swanson: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Scandinavisch Instituut, Postbus 716, NL-9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands. [swanson@let.rug.nl]

1. Beth Hennings, ed., Ögonvittnen om Gustav III (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1960), pp. 55-56. See also Erik Lönnroth, Den stora rollen. Kung Gustaf III spelad av honom själv (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1986), p. 35.

2. Beth Hennings, Gustav III. En biografi (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1957), p. 180.

3. Franklin D. Scott, Sweden. The Nation’s History (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), p. 215. See also Gunilla Dahlberg, Komediantteatern i 1600-talets Stockholm, Stockholmsmonografier 106 (Stockholm: Stockholms stad, 1992), pp. 144-46 passim.

4. See especially the discussion, among other places, in Book X (around 604e and following), where Plato allows those kinds of plays and poetry which portray proper civic sentiments. See, too, the discussion of this aspect of the Republic by M.F. Burnyeat, ‘Art and Mimesis in Plato’s ‘Republic,’’ London Review of Books, 20 (21 May 1998): 3-9.

5. Dahlberg, Komediantteatern, pp. 333-414.

6. In Sweden, as on the Continent, there was also theatre in schools, usually in Latin as a teaching device in the use of the language and in rhetorical practice. Strindberg recalls this in the opening scene of Mäster Olof.

7. Owing to the importance of the lion-house as a permanent theatrical venue, Gunilla Dahlberg discusses its admittedly problematical physical aspects at some length in Komediantteatern, pp. 292-332. The lion came to Stockholm as part of the war-booty from the siege of Prague in 1648 and lived until 1663.

8. Dahlberg, Komediantteatern, p. 258.

9. On Rosidor’s troupe and its repertory, see Lennart Breitholz, “Två teaterhistoriska bidrag. I, Rosidoriska teatersällskapets repertoar,”Samlaren NF27(1946): 79-84, and Carl-Allan Moberg, “Essais d’operas en Suède, sous Charles XII,” Publications de la societé française de musicologie (=Mélanges de musicologie), Series 2, Tômes 3-4(1932/33): 123-32.

10. Breitholz, “Rosidoriska teatersällskapets repertoar,” pp. 80-83.

11. See the table in Laurence Kitching, “Wandernde Spieler im Baltikum im 17. Jahrhundert und ihre Suppliken im Revaler Stadtarchiv,” in Kitching, Das deutschsprachige Theater im baltischen Raum, 1630-1918, Thalia Germanica 1 (Frankfurt a/M: Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 68-70.

12. See the fliers in Rudolf Björkman, “Die Hochteutschen Comoedianten,” Samlaren 29(1908): 83-90.

13. Tryggve Byström, Svenska komedien 1737-1754. En studie i Stockholmsteaterns historia, (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1981), pp. 113-14.

14. See, for instance, her letters to her brothers and sisters in Luise Ulrike, die schwedische Schwester Friedrichs der Grossen, ed. by Fritz Arnheim, 2 vols. (Gotha: Perthes, 1909-10), where, with a few early exceptions, operas by Hasse and Graun, with Italian texts (I:79), she reports only on French plays.

15. See the repertory chronology in Byström, Svenska komedien, pp. 111-27.

16. See Ester-Margaret von Frenckell, Comoedie directeuren Carl Gottfried Seuerling och dess hustru theater directeurskan Margaretha Seuerling (Helsingfors: Frenckellska Tryckeri, 1953), and Gunilla Dahlberg, “Till E.K. Maj:ts aflägsnare undersåtares noje,” in Claes Rosenqvist, ed., Att resa var nödvändigt (Gideå: Vildros, 1990), pp, 18-48, esp. 30-33.

17. The most important study of this company is still Johan Flodmark, Stenborgska skådebanorna. Bidrag till Stockholms teaterhistoria (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1893).

18. See the drastic description of its state in Gustaf Johan Ehrensvärd, Dagboksanteckningar förda vid Gustaf III:s hof, ed. by E.V. Montan, 2 vols (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2nd ed. 1878), I:211-12, and the less-colourful discussion in Flodmark, Strenborgska skädebanorna, pp. 1-17.

19. Indeed, until almost the end of the last century, most plays were performed with some kind of music around them, if only overtures and entr’acte music. The repertory is discussed at length in Flodmark, Stenborgska skådebanorna.

20. For Stenborg’s application to the king and a description of the event, see Flodmark, Stenborgska skådebanorna, pp. 41-46, and the more scathing description of the performance by Ehrensvärd, Dagboksanteckningar, I:213-14. Ehrensvärd, however, asserts that the afterpiece was Jakob Ichsell’s translation of Poullain de Saint-Foix’ L’Oracle (1740), but the advertisement billed Legrand’s play.

21. For a brief survey of these beginnings, see Alan Swanson, “Kellgren’s Libretto for Aeneas i Carthago,” Scandinavian Studies, 72(2000): 381-84, and Alan Swanson and Bertil van Boer, “A Swedish Reinterpretation of Handel’s Acis and Galatea,” Scandinavian Studies, 65(1993): 29-49.

22. Beth Hennings, Ögonvittnen, pp. 114-15. However, Charles Serfass, “Le Théâtre français en Suède au XVIII siècle et au début du XIX,” p. 43, asserts without source that it was the Council which caused him to quit the stage.

23. See the calendar in Magnus Blomkvist, “Nöjeslivet i Stockholm 1773-1806,” Trebetygsuppsats, Institutionen för teater- och filmvetenskap, Stockholms universitet, 1972.

24. See B. Guston, “Eggert och Küster. Konsertverksamhet och kompositioner,” Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning 7(1925): 51, 53. See also Nils Personne, Svenska teatern, 8 vols. (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1913-27):III, 13-16.