Jak kupiec Symonowicz trafił do polskiej komedii

Abstract

How Merchant Symonowicz Found his Way into Polish Comedy On 4th March 1766, Franciszek Bohomolec’s Małżeństwo z kalendarza (“Marriage by the Calendar”) was performed in Warsaw on the newly opened national stage. The play features an episodic character of a Warsaw merchant who immediately after the premiere was recognised as a satire on Symon Der Symonowicz, the owner of breweries and manufacturer of wine goods. The account of the lampoon attack on Symonowicz, though accepted as a fact, can also be called into question. The author of the article examines both the origin of this circulating account (the reports of the Saxon agent Johann Heine) as well as the text of the drama and the theatrical context (the aesthetic principles of the National Theatre) to outline a more complex and ambiguous background of the anecdote about the first Armenian in Polish comedy.

Keywords

• Symon Der Symonowicz
• Franciszek Bohomolec
• Johann Heine
• Małżeństwo z kalendarza
• Polish Armenians
• Polish theater