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Puss in Boots
Johann Ludwig Tieck
(Der gestiefelte Kater; wr. 1796, prod. 1844).
Three-act fairy tale, satirising the unimaginative audiences of Tieck's day, in which the prologue and epilogue are constantly interrupted by the audience, the author, and the stage technicians.
Gottlieb, a poor farmer, and his talking cat, inherited from his father, set out to make Gottlieb's fortune. The cat, the cleverer of the two, formulates a plan to obtain a kingdom for Gottlieb. He goes to Popanz (Bogey), an evil landowner who can transform himself into any animal he desires, and outsmarts him by challenging him to change himself into a mouse, which the cat promptly devours. By stealing Gottlieb's clothes while he is swimming, the cat arranges matters so that the King and Princess of the land rescue him while passing by in their carriage. The Princess falls in love with Gottlieb, and they are married in regal fashion.
At the end the author enters to ask the audience's true
opinion of his play. With the exception of a few decorative
scenes and excerpts from Mozart's The Magic Flute the play
is rejected. The author explains in vain that his aim was to
free the spectators from intellectual judgements and
literary bias and to take them back to their childhood.
(Peter Jelavich)