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Lea Reiff: ‘The Shadow of a King’: Power and Precarious Masculinities in Plays by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and Friedrich Schiller

Mainly focusing on the historical tragedy Maria Stuart in Schottland (1860) by the Austrian author and playwright Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916), this paper deals with a take on the historical material which does not highlight the execution of the Queen of Scots, but her path from ruler in her own dynastic right to her abdication. Based on the observation that the tragedy, as an explicit commentary on Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart, “directly address[es] […] the apparently inherent contradiction between femininity and the capacity to wield political power effectively” (Kord 1994, 97), I aim to show that it does not only stage the emergence of a new gendered power structure but also contests it. A contemporaneous binary and physically determined conception of gender is exhibited as a “neuerfundene Naturgeschichte” (‘recently invented natural history’; Ebner-Eschenbach, qtd. in Harriman 1985, 30). Unlike previous interpretations, my paper will focus on the male dramatis personae. I will analyze the impact their struggle for hegemony has on Maria's transformation from ‘sovereign’ to ‘woman’. Therefore, I will ask which models of hegemonic masculinity are negotiated in the tragedy - especially with a view to their political dimension - and which (explicitly or implicitly violent) techniques are employed regarding a specific use of language and symbols of power. The oscillating use and ambiguity of central terms such as clemency/meekness, honor or loyalty/devotion (“Milde”, “Ehre”, “Treue”) in a field of tension between dynastic sovereignty and bourgeois family, for example, illustrate and enable a change from status (“Stand”) to gender as the dominant category of socio-hierarchical placement. Regarding the topic of the conference, the aim is to show how the emergence of new gendered power structures can not only be legitimized and naturalized, but also revealed and subverted on stage.