About the work
Nur Ruhe! is a farce with songs in three acts by Johann Nestroy, premiered on 17 November 1843 at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt as a benefit performance for the author. The play ranks among Nestroy's more sharply socially critical farces of the early 1840s.
Plot
The 55-year-old tanner Anton Schafgeist wants to retire and hand his business to his nephew Heinrich Splittinger, but on that very day a party stranded by a carriage accident moves into his house. Inheritance schemes, marriage plans and a hidden document throw the household into chaos, and Schafgeist is even wrongfully arrested, before it emerges that young Peppi is in fact his daughter, long believed dead. In the end Peppi marries Franz, heir to the business, and Schafgeist finally gets his longed-for peace.
Cultural significance
The premiere turned into a fiasco: after protests from the audience, the play was pulled from the schedule after just four performances, and contemporary critics panned it almost unanimously. Scholars attribute the failure to the unsparing realism of its social portrait, which unsettled an audience expecting lighter fare from Nestroy.