Abstract
In the dramas of NP van Wyk Louw the deed manifests itself in different ways, which probably is the reason why most literary critics, after the publication of the drama Germanicus in 1956, considered the main character, Germanicus, to be very passive. Accordingly, the merits of the drama were called into question. Their criticism centred on their judgement of the nature of the concept deed (revealed as a derived noun deed from the verb to do). Traditionally, the meaning of the Afrikaans verb doen (“to do”) is regarded to be so general that its meaning can be seen as “empty”. The lexical item deed (“daad”), as a noun derived from the verb to do, can therefore be judged in a similar way. In this discussion, the semantic contents of the polysemous meanings of the noun deed are examined against the background of the drama Germanicus, which was created as a conceptual blend of three different historical sources and an imagined world. A distinction is drawn between four different senses of the noun deed, typographically represented as deeda (referring to accomplished non-specific actions, frequently contrasted...