Piotr Baryka was a seventeenth-century Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 soldier

Soldier

A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...

 and writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, most probably of burgher origin, of whom very little is known. He is listed as one of the authors present at the coronation of Władysław IV. Between 1629-1633, Baryka wrote a Carnival comedy

Ribaldry

Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry"....

about a peasant who was turned into king (Z chłopa król). It was first staged as it was in 1633, and finally printed in 1637.

History

Piotr Baryka is one of the few of these playwrights whose names have come to us. The Peasant King, as its title indicates, carries a motif made popular in the introduction to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew — the seeming bestowal of noble rank upon a person of lowly birth. Several examples of this type of comedy have survived, and they include realistic depictions of all the popular customs and grotesquely humorous situations that parody in many cases the lofty themes of the "official" literature.

Sources

Attribution

• This article is based on the translation of the corresponding article on the Swedish Wikipedia. A list of contributors can be found there on the History section.

External links

• Z chłopa król at the Archive.org website