Theatre
The Spanish Brabanter
Spaanschen Brabander
Synopsis
In Amsterdam, Jerolimo Rodrigo, a ruined Brabanter from Antwerp who passes himself off as a gentleman and ends up believing it, walks the streets in a nobleman's clothes without a penny in his pocket. He takes into his service Robbeknol, a starving young beggar, who soon discovers that his master has more manners than bread. Around them parade the people of the neighbourhood, gossips, craftsmen, prostitutes and the miser Geraart, while Jerolimo's creditors begin to lose patience.
Context
The subject comes from Lazarillo de Tormes, a Spanish picaresque novel translated into Dutch in 1609: the author moved the action to Amsterdam, changing the names, places, period and the Spaniard into a Brabanter, because, he said, the common people resembled him in every respect. The comedy, in five acts, was first performed in Amsterdam in 1617 and printed the following year. Each character speaks the language of his own milieu, and the speech of Antwerp is mocked as much as that of Amsterdam. H. David Brumble translated it into English in 1982.
Who it is for
A comedy in verse in the spoken Dutch of the early seventeenth century, difficult without notes. School editions give it with a version in modern Dutch, and an English translation exists.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the greatest comedy of the Dutch Golden Age and the most widely read play by its author; eighteenth in the canonical survey of 2002.