The Image of Judith in Drama: From the 16th Century to Modernism

The article analyzes the features of various interpretations of the image of Judith from the apocryphal Book of Judith in drama from the 16th century to the modernism era. From the 16th to the early 17th centuries, Judith’s image fully corresponded to the canons of school drama, which can be traced on the example of dramas Judith by S. Birck, Holofernes by G. Alberti, Judith by M. Bohme. The main feature of such plays was the construction of the plot in accordance with the requirements of the Lutheran school drama, in which the biblical canon was observed, but at the same time it corresponded to historical and political realities, as evidenced by the expanded titles of the plays. At the end of the 17th century, on the example of the Moscow comedy Judith by J.G. Gregory, a pastor of the Lutheran church of the German Quarter in Moscow, we can find the inclusion into the play on the biblical story of new comedic elements that directly affect the behavior of the main characters, which gives new touches to the portrait of Judith. In the 17th-century heroic biblical opera drama Judith by M. Opitz, the heroine is a fragile woman with a male heart. In the 19th century, Judith’s image receives a new interpretation in C.F. Hebbel’s tragedy Judith; it takes the image of Judith beyond the biblical canon, explaining the heroine’s actions with simple human passions, which is new in the construction of the femininity of the image. A parody of Hebbel’s drama, Judith and Holofernes, written by J. Nestroy can be considered the forerunner of modernist interpretations of Judith’s image. In the parody, the author ridicules gender cliches, replacing the concepts of masculinity and femininity via travestism. At the beginning of the 20th century, there are two significant dramas associated with the biblical plot of Judith, The Jewish Widow by G. Kaiser and A Sicilian Idyll and Judith: A Conflict by T.S. Moore. If Kaiser’s play bears obvious features of a buffoonery associated with ridiculing gender stereotypes created by the then new-fangled psychoanalysis, then Moore’s play is much more careful in the biblical way, focusing on the heroine’s motivation and feelings. In the Russian drama of the era of modernism, the most significant work on the plot of Judith is the tragedy in verse Judith by N.V. Nedobrovo. On the one hand, Nedobrovo follows the biblical canon at the level of the plot structure; on the other, he transforms the image of Judith, who goes the way from a warrior maiden to a helpless virgin who remained a prisoner in the enemy camp. The analysis gives an idea of the shifts in constructing the image of Judith associated with the peculiarities of the perception of biblical history at different times, which is important for understanding the interpretations of female biblical images in world literature as a whole.

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