Langendijk, Pieter

Born July 25, 1683, in Haarlem; died there, July 18, 1756. Dutch playwright and poet. Son of a stonemason.

Langendijk was popular as a writer of comedies about the life of the Dutch third estate, including Don Quixote at Kamachov’s Wedding (1699), The Braggart (1712), and Mutual Nuptial Deceit (1714). The hero of Krelis Louwen, or Alexander the Great at a Poets’ Feast (1715) is a wealthy peasant who dreams of getting an aristocratic title. The Mathematicians, or The Runaway Missy (1715) is a biting satire on learned scholastics.

Langendijk’s plays prepared the way for the Dutch bourgeois drama. Langendijk used the traditions of folk farce, the kluchten, as a base for the independent development of Dutch literature.