SOURCE: "The Shifting Scene," in Raimund and Vienna: A Critical Study of Raimund's Plays in Their Viennese Setting, Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 53-84.

In the following essay, Prohaska studies Raimund's use of local color in his early dramas. She summarizes, "Raimund was completely the master of local parody but in his search for a form in which he could express his more ambitious concepts, he sometimes allowed his vision to blind him. "

I

The popular dramatist in Vienna did not use local colour in his plays in order to present a realistic picture of the society in which he lived. He did, however, use it extensively to create the illusion that his plays were set in Vienna. The creation of this illusion was an inexhaustible source of comedy on the popular stage and it constituted the basic element of a dramatic form which was a mainstay of the...