In the wonderland of theatre

Eduard Vilde as a playwright

Vilde began to love theatre already as a schoolboy. He might even have become an actor and not a writer (as he was included in the cast of a few plays at the theatre Vanemuine in the late 1880s) but he said himself that he was not talented enough. As a journalist writing critical articles he was also closely connected with the theatre. These pieces were never brief annotations, Vilde was deeply interested in the future of the Estonian theatre and frequently spoke about the issues concerning it. For a short time in 1918 Vilde worked as the dramaturge of the theatre Estonia. It was one of Vilde’s greatest dreams to be able to write plays but he could finally realise the dream in exile. And he wrote only three plays in all.

Vilde found his subject matter in the bourgeois life of the young urban citizen, practically devoid of traditions and the attitude of the intellectuals to art. This theme and approach were a novelty in Estonian drama. Vilde’s first play The Inscrutable Mystery (1912) deals with the problems of art and non-art, snobbery and thirst for fame. Vilde wrote the play in nine months and worked ardently all the time. “I wrote my play with great enthusiasm, quite different from the sinful practices of previous years.” (Articles and letters, 1957). As earlier Vilde had always been pressed for time, this play was his first work he could make an initial a rough copy.

Vilde had expected recognition, but the play caused scandal and fuss. It was not enough that it made the local intellectuals quite mad, Vilde did not get the expected award of the Estonian Literary society either.

However, he gained good material from all the fuss for his next play The Hobgoblin (1913). Like in the first play, Vilde continued being ironical about the unculturedness of the society and their thirst for fame. The dialogue of the play is witty and the characters exciting. The play was successfully staged at home and in Finland and made Vilde as popular again as he had been after his success with The Peasant War at Mahtra. Vilde who had been lodging in quite primitive conditions in exile was for the first time able to rent a flat and buy furniture of his own just for the money that The Hobgoblin brought in. The people still use some of the catchwords of the play today (like: Once Vestman is the top-dog and Piibeleht underneath, then Vestman becomes the underdog and Piibeleht is atop).

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The Inscrutable Mystery, 1912

The Hobgoblin, 1913

The Link, 1917