Phantasmagorias of Power: Hebbel's Drama Gyges und sein Ring

Friedrich Hebbel wrote his play Cyges und sein Ring between 1853 and 1854, hence only a few years after the March Revolution of 1848. He prefaced the play with a brief note that he apparently found necessary for the reader's orientation. "The action," he indicated, "is prehistorical and mythic; it takes place within a temporal span of twice twenty-four hours." 1 This sentence offers information about the temporal dimensions of Gyges from two perspectives, although the sentence's parts, aligned in peaceful parataxis, stand in nearly comical incongruity with each other. On the one hand, there are the technical specifications of the length of action: "twice twenty-four hours" tied to a tacit concession that Hebbel's most classical play in this way lacks one of the basic requirements of classical drama, temporal unity. This fact is not u-ivial, for the catastrophe of Gyges takes place in, as it were, the temporal fold between the two days of dramatic action. And it does so in a locus removed from the audience's view: the royal bed-chamber. However great the nocturnal intrigue's theatrical potential-a peculiar menage a trois involving a loving king, his naked wife, and a voyeur