Driving Out a Devil

Driving Out a Devil
Written by	Bertolt Brecht
Original language	German
Genre	One-act farce
Setting	Bavaria

Driving Out a Devil (German: Er treibt den Teufel aus) is an early one-act farce by the 20th-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht.^[1] It was written in prose, probably in 1919, and was first published in volume 13 of Brecht's Stücke.^[2] The play charts the attempts of a self-confident and manipulative Bavarian peasant boy to outwit the vigilant parents of a girl of his village.^[3] Ronald Hayman suggests that this play dramatises most clearly Brecht's own ability to influence people.^[4]

References

1. Brecht (1994). The play's title is sometimes translated as He's Driving Out a Devil; see Hayman (1983, 50).
2. Thomson and Sacks (1994, xvii) and Willett (1967, 27).
3. Hayman (1983, 50-51).
4. Hayman writes that the play shows us "the way Brecht imposed his will on both women and men" (1983, 50).

Sources

• Brecht, Bertolt. 1994. Collected Plays: One. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-68570-5.
• Hayman, Ronald. 1983. Brecht: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78206-1.
• Squiers, Anthony. An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht: Revolution and Aesthetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2014. ISBN 9789042038998.
• Thomson, Peter and Glendyr Sacks, eds. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge Companions to Literature Ser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41446-6.
• Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. ISBN 0-413-34360-X.
• Willett, John and Ralph Manheim. 1970. Introduction. In Collected Plays: One by Bertolt Brecht. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-03280-X. vii–xvii.