The Organs of the Brain by August von Kotzebue

The Organs of the Brain:
A Farce in Three Acts
by August von Kotzebue

translated by Eric v.d. Luft
with an introduction, an essay,
and an extensive bibliography of
the first decade of phrenology

The need has long existed to account for the great variety of
material which was written and printed in hundreds of works by
other authors besides Franz Joseph Gall between the time when
Gall first announced his skull theories in 1798 and the time
when he finally published them himself in 1810. Quite a few
phrenological bibliographies have been published, notably those
of Choulant (1844), M bius (1903 and 1905), Temkin (1947),
Lant ri-Laura (1970), Heintel (1985), and Wyhe (2004). But
the bibliography attached to this translation of Kotzebue's
play is the most nearly complete of any which have so far
appeared for this period.

This is a very funny play!

From the Translator's Introduction:
"The Organs of the Brain is quite representative of the style of farce
which was abundantly popular in western Europe in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, the type epitomized in the Figaro plays
of Pierre Beaumarchais, the comic operas of Gioacchino Rossini, and the
sentimental plays of Elizabeth Inchbald. It has all the usual elements of
such theatre: cross-dressing, deceit, clown figures, a bombastic lord,
sneaky servants, clever women, stupid men, threats of violence,
emotional blackmail, police involvement, and complicated polygons -
not just triangles - of love. All in all, these formulaic elements give us
the impression of prefiguring the Jeeves and Wooster stories of
P.G. Wodehouse."