A comedy in blank verse, The Broken Jug is one of the most famous works by Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811). It tells the story of Adam, a village magistrate who must judge a crime he has committed. The plot consists mainly of a court hearing, which is reenacted in its entirety and in natural time. What is being tried has happened in the past and is revealed only gradually. The play, like Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, is therefore a prime example of an analytical drama. Like the comedies of Shakespeare and Molière, The Broken Jug has a serious core and touches on the tragic in places.
The starting point for the play was a painting by Jean-Baptiste Geuze that Kleist saw in a friend's house in Bern: "La cruche cassee," which depicts a pretty girl holding a broken jug as a symbol of her lost virginity.
[The Broken Jug, by Jean-Baptiste Geuze (1771)]
Set around 1685 in the courtroom of Huisum, a fictional Dutch village in the province of Utrecht, the plot revolves around the titular broken jug, which belongs to a woman named Marthe Rull. She accuses Ruprecht, the fiancé of her daughter Eve, of breaking the jug in her house the night before. Ruprecht claims that a stranger broke into the house and escaped through a window, knocking the jug off the windowsill.
Clerk Licht catches Judge Adam in the morning as he is bandaging fresh wounds. Adam explains that he tripped getting up and fell against the stove. Licht doesn't argue, but suggests that he believes it was an erotic adventure of his superior in which a powerful rival got in his way.
Then court administrator Walter, a member of the judicial council, arrives in the village. He has been sent from Utrecht to check the court records and files. Adam panics, especially since his judge's wig has disappeared and there is no replacement. On top of that, it is court day and the plaintiff, the defendant and the witnesses are already waiting at the door. Walter demands to attend the trial, the inspection of the coffers and files will take place later.
Now Judge Adam, like King Oedipus of old, is forced to judge a crime he himself committed. But unlike the ancient hero, he knows this from the beginning, that the deed is an outrage, and that he himself is a villain. Accordingly, he does everything in his power to prevent the solution of the case, in which, in addition to the jug, a betrothal has (almost) been broken.
The way he tries to hide his guilt by conducting the trial in a way that defies all rules of judicial impartiality, by influencing and confusing the witnesses, sometimes with threats, sometimes with sweet words, is most comical. Like a snake, he twists and turns to divert suspicion to others, which exposes him to contempt. Sweating with fear, however, he is cornered, which allows human compassion to sprout. The flourishing imagination with which he invents new excuses makes him almost sympathetic at times.
But court administrator Walter and clerk Licht are not blinded by this. Both are interested in solving the case, but for very different reasons. Walter is interested in reforming the administration of justice in the countryside, while Licht wants to become a village judge himself. Step by step, the trial reveals the following facts: the unknown person who hastily escaped through Eva's bedroom window on the eve of the trial, knocking the jug off the ledge, was him, Judge Adam himself. It was neither the defendant, Eve's fiancé Ruprecht, nor his alleged rival Lebrecht, nor even the devil, as the witness Mrs. Brigitte, who examined the scene of the crime together with Licht, claims.
The circumstantial evidence speaks a clear language: there are the two head wounds Adam suffered when Ruprecht twice banged the broken door handle over the head of the unrecognized fugitive - the jealous man had previously kicked in the door and literally stormed the chamber. Then there is Adam's club foot, which of course explains the trail in the snow from the crime scene across the village to the judge's house. Finally, there is the missing judge's wig: Mrs. Brigitte proudly places it on the table; it got caught in the vine trellis under Eve's bedroom window.
Now Walter advises the judge to resign, the dignity of the court is at stake. But Adam will not listen. All right, says Walter, then he should put an end to it and pronounce sentence. In the ensuing uproar, Adam decides that Ruprecht should go to jail for disobeying the court. Now Eve steps forward and admits for the first time that it was Adam who was in her room last night and who broke the jug on his escape.
This finally makes room for the full truth: Adam lied to Eve that her fiancé was threatened with military service in the East Indies, from which, as is well known, only one man in three returns. So he blackmailed his way into her chamber. Even at the time of the trial, Eve feared that Adam's blackmailer had the power to snatch her fiancé away from her. Therefore, she remained silent for a long time about what really happened.
Although Eve does not explicitly state that Adam did not seduce her, Ruprecht is ashamed and begs her forgiveness for calling her a "harlot. However, there was already a shadow of jealousy over the relationship before Adam's interference. Ruprecht has asked Eve if she has had any contact with his rival Lebrecht, but she does not give a clear answer and only turns the accusation around. The night before the trial, Ruprecht sneaks into Eve's house. His suspicions are confirmed when he does not find Eve alone. However, he does not reveal himself, but hides behind a bush in order to witness what happens between Eve and her unknown visitor - he even feels a voyeuristic "lust".
Walter assures Ruprecht that his conviction will be overturned, Ruprecht and Eve reconcile, and Eve gives Ruprecht a kiss. The wedding can take place, Walter has done something to improve the administration of justice, the ambitious Licht becomes the new village judge, and punishment awaits old Adam. Only the jug is not repaired, much to the annoyance of Eva's mother, the plaintiff Frau Marthe. She had been so eager to accuse Ruprecht of the crime because anyone other than the fiancé in Eve's bedroom would have destroyed the good reputation of her child and her house. But the pitcher was also dear to her. At least she described it in detail at the beginning of the trial, together with the recent history of the Netherlands (the fight against Spain) depicted on it, and thus immortalized it.
The village judge Adam is more than just a lecherous old man, a stock figure in the comedy of all ages. It is not for nothing that he is called "Adam" and the seductive young woman who is his counterpart is called "Eve". The play is thus about a "second fall" in which man sits in judgment on his own guilt. Just as Adam, the first man, falls victim to his pride in wanting to "be like God," the village judge Adam also falls victim to vice, in his case lust, which leads him (apparently not for the first time) to want to "fall into a bed. The village judge Adam is also expelled from his "paradise" (the office of judge and the prosperity associated with it). According to the motif of the "second fall", Eve must also have "sinned", and indeed it is obvious that much more than just a glass was broken during her rendezvous with the old judge.
German text at Wikisource and at Project Gutenberg.
Greatest Plays of All Time
[This post has been partly translated and edited from the relevant article in the German version of Wikipedia]