Summary
Johann Nestroy: On the ground floor and on the first floor or the capriciousness of happiness
This Nestroy's folk piece with a double title thematizes social differences, simultaneously emphasizing the fictitious, which led the interpreters of his work to different interpretations - some saw only a comic game that plays with contrasts, while others saw in it a social fable about the enrichment of the poor, a "Vienna midsummer night's dream" or even a "political allegory" of the joke. "On the ground floor and on the first floor or On the vagaries of fortune" is in any case a critique of time, society and ideology, presented in the form of an entertaining theater that mocks human relationships, even erotic ones, in which everything becomes a commodity, and even the power of love depends on the power of money. The capriciousness of happiness problematizes money and love, the commercialization of life that is given as fate, especially the overestimated role of money that determines all human and social relationships, documenting the commodity character of love, morality and other values. At the same time, the social order is interpreted as static, and change seems impossible, while the power of love, which surpasses social classes, manages to create a bond between up and down, but only because of changed material circumstances that still fail to change the value system.
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