Theatre
Vara
Not translated into English
Mārtiņš Zīverts · 1944
Synopsis
Lithuania, 1263. King Mindaugas has rejected the authority of the pope and renounced Christianity, while a Tatar envoy seeks to make him an ally. He gathers his nobles and names Marte, the wife of Daumantas, as the new queen. Outwardly a despot, who has had the pious lord Daujats executed on a false accusation, he defends an idea of kingship: whoever holds power cannot act otherwise, and it is better to save the people without honour than to let them perish with honour.
Context
Premiered in Riga in 1944, the year her author reached Sweden, the play has forty-nine scenes held in a strict unity of place, time and action. Mārtiņš Zīverts called it synthetic, built in a single movement in which everything converges on one great scene, the twenty-fourth, which carries the king's only long speech; no chorus and no other monologue. The journal Lituanus reads in it a tragedy in which not right and wrong are opposed, but two rights, around the worth of a sovereign and the nature of power. It appears, with Āksts and Minhauzena precības, in the selection of his plays published in Riga in 1996.
Who it is for
A historical tragedy in one piece, with no division into acts. It helps to know that Mindaugas was the first king of Lithuania.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by the journal Lituanus as its author's best full-length play, though some prefer the comedy Minhauzena precības.
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