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Willem Bilderdijk’s tragedy Floris de Vijfde (1808)

This article focuses on Willem Bilderdijk’s play Floris de Vijfde (Floris v), which he wrote in 1808 for King Louis Napoleon. This play is studied form different perspectives in order to get a complete picture of the content, context, function and reception of this work. It offers new biographical information on Bilderdijk’s life in the context of the Kingdom of Holland and focuses on Bilderdijk’s ideas on theatre in relation to Floris de Vijfde and on his ideas about national history. Furthermore, attention is paid to the political context in which the piece was written and to the political function that it fulfilled. Finally, this article presents an extensive overview of the reception and nachleben of the play in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.