Theatre
לישרים תהילה
Not translated into English
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto · 1743
Synopsis
An allegorical play in verse, written for a wedding, whose characters are qualities. Truth has promised Crowd that his son, Righteousness, would marry Crowd's daughter, Praise. But an army of Confusion has sacked the city, and Arrogance, son of Covetousness raised in the house of Imagination, passes himself off as the son of Truth thanks to the ruses of his friend Deceit. Crowd is taken in; Righteousness, supported by his friend Reason and his nurse Patience, wanders and finds consolation with a hermit, Search, while the wedding of Praise to the impostor is being prepared.
Context
It is Luzzatto's third and last play, written in Amsterdam for the wedding of his friend and pupil Jacob de Gavis, and printed in 1743 in fifty copies, three years after his treatise Messilat yesharim. It has three parts, divided into dialogues that the author himself summarises at the head of each, each carrying a moral lesson: the crowd led astray by deception, the contempt of fools for the wise, trust in God. The Encyclopaedia Judaica reads in it an echo of the persecutions he had just suffered; the play was imitated by the Hebrew writers of the Enlightenment.
Who it is for
A short verse play, with no French edition. It is best to know that the characters bear the names of virtues and vices, and that its language is that of the Bible.
Prizes and reception
The most mature of its author's three plays according to critics; it influenced Hebrew drama of the following century and was often reissued.
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