(W. A.)
(g)German Drama.
The history of the German drama differs widely from that of the English, though a close contact is observable between them at an early point, and again at relatively recent points, in their annals. The dramatic literature of Germany, though in its beginnings intimately connected with the great national movement of the Reformation, soon devoted its efforts to a sterile imitation of foreign models; while the popular stage, persistently suiting itself to a robust but gross taste, likewise largely due to the influence of foreign examples, seemed destined to a hopeless decay. The literary and the acted drama were thus estranged from one another during a period of extraordinary length; nor was it till the middle of the 18th century that, with the opening of a more hopeful era for the life and literature of the nation, the reunion of dramatic literature and the stage began to accomplish itself. Before the end of the same century the progress of the German drama in its turn began to influence that of other nations, and by the widely comprehensive character of its literature, as well as by the activity of its stage, to invite a steadily increasing interest.
It should be premised that in its beginnings the modern German drama might have seemed likely to be influenced even more largely than the English or the French by the copious imitation of classical models which markedThe Latin drama in Germany.the periods of the Renaissance and the Reformation; but here the impulse of originality was wanting to bring about a speedy and gradually a complete emancipation, and imitative reproduction continued in an all but endless series. The first German (and indeed the earliest transalpine) writer to follow in the footsteps of the modern Latin drama of the Italians was the famous Strassburg humanist Jacob Wimpheling (1450-1528), whose comedy ofStylpho(1480), an attack upon the ignorance of the pluralist beneficed clergy, marks a kind of epoch in the history of German dramatic effort. It was succeeded by many other Latin plays of various kinds, among which may be mentioned J. Kerckmeister’sCodrus(1485), satirizing pedantic schoolmasters; a series of historical dramas in a moralizing vein, partly on the Turkish peril, as well as of comedies, by Jacob Locher (1471-1528); two plays by the great Johann Reuchlin, of which the so-calledHennowent through more than thirty editions; and theLudus Dianae, with another play likewise in honour of the emperor Maximilian I., by the celebrated Viennese scholar Conrad Celtes (1459-1508). Sebastian Brant’sHercules in Bivio(1512) is lost; but Wilibald Pirckheimer’sEckius dedolatus(1520) survives as a dramatic contribution to Luther’s controversy with one of his most active opponents. TheAcolastus(1525) of W. Gnaphaeus (aliasFullonius, his native name was de Volder) should also be mentioned in the present connexion, as, though a Dutchman by birth, he spent most of his literary life in Germany. This Terentian version of the parable of the Prodigal Son was printed in an almost endless number of editions, as well as in various versions in modern tongues, among which reference has already been made to the English, for the use of schools, by J. Palsgrave (1540). Macropedius (Langhveldt) belongs wholly to the Low Countries. In Germany the stream of these compositions continued to flow almost without abatement throughout the earlier half of the 16th century; but in the days of the Reformation it takes a turn to scriptural subjects, and during the latter part of the century remains on the whole faithful to this preference.273These Latin plays may be called school-dramas in the most precise sense; for they were both performed in the schools and read in class with commentaries specially composed for them; nor was it except very reluctantly that in this age the vernacular drama was allowed to intrude into scholastic circles. It should be noticed that the Jesuit order, which afterwards proved soThe Jesuit drama.keenly alive to the influence which dramatic performances exercise over the youthful mind, only very gradually abandoned the principle, formally sanctioned in theirRatio studiorum, that the acting of plays (these being always in the Latin tongue) should only rarely be permitted in their seminaries. The flourishing period of the Jesuit drama begins with the spread of the order in the west and south-west of the Empire in the last decade of the 16th century, and then continues, through the vicissitudes of good and evil, with a curious intermixture of Latin and German plays, during the whole of the 17th and the better part of the 18th. These productions, which ranged in their subjects from biblical and classical story to themes of contemporary history (such as the relief of Vienna by Sobiesky and the peace of Ryswick), seem generally to bear the mark of their authorship—that of teachers appointed by their superiors to execute this among other tasks allotted to them; but, as it seems unnecessary to return to this special growth, it may be added that theextraordinary productiveness of the Jesuit dramatists, and the steadiness of self-repetition which is equally characteristic of them, should warn us against underrating its influence upon a considerable proportion of the nation’s educational life during a long succession of generations.
While the scholars of the German Renaissance, who became so largely the agents of the Reformation, eagerly dramatized scriptural subjects in the Latin, and sometimes (as in the case of Luther’s protégé P. Rebhun274) in the nativeBeginnings of the vernacular German drama.tongue, the same influence made itself felt in another sphere of dramatic activity. Towards the close of the middle ages, as has been seen, dramatic performances had in Germany, as in England, largely fallen into the hands of the civic gilds, and the composition of plays was more especially cultivated by the master-singers of Nuremberg and other towns. It was thus that, under the influence of the Reformation, and of the impulse given by Luther and others to the use of High German as the popular literary tongue, Hans Sachs, the immortalHans Sachs.shoemaker of Nuremberg, seemed destined to become the father of the popular German drama. In his plays, “spiritual,” “secular,” andFastnachtsspielealike, the interest indeed lies in the dialogue rather than in the action, nor do they display any attempt at development of character. In their subjects, whether derived from Scripture or from popular legend and fiction,275there is no novelty, and in their treatment no originality. But the healthy vigour and fresh humour of this marvellously fertile author, and his innate sympathy with the views and sentiments of the burgher class to which he belonged, were elements of genuine promise—a promise which the event was signally to disappoint. Though the manner of Hans Sachs found a few followers, and is recognizable in the German popular drama even of the beginning of the 17th century, the literature of the Reformation, of which his works may claim to form part, was soon absorbed in labours of a very different kind. The stage, after admitting novelties introduced from Italy or (under Jesuit supervision) from Spain, was subjected to another and enduring influence. Among the foreign actors of various nations who flitted through the innumerableThe English comedians.courts of the empire, or found a temporary home there, special prominence was acquired, towards the close of the 16th and in the early years of the 17th century, by the “English comedians,” who appeared at Cassel, Wolfenbuttel, Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, &c. Through these players a number of early English dramas found their way into Germany, where they were performed in more or less imperfect versions, and called forth imitations by native authors. Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Luneburg276(1564-1613) and Jacob Ayrer (a citizen of Nuremberg, where he died, 1605) represent the endeavours of the early German drama to suit its still uncouth forms to themes suggested by English examples; and in their works, and in those of contemporary playwrights, there reappears no small part of what we may conclude to have been the “English comedians’”répertoire.277(The converse influence of German themes brought home with them by the English actors, or set in motion by their strolling ubiquity, cannot have been equal in extent, though Shakespeare himself may have derived the idea of one of his plots278from such a source). But, though welcome to both princes and people, the exertions of these foreign comedians, and of the native imitators who soon arose in the earliest professional companies of actors known in Germany, instead of bringing about a union between the stage and literature, led to a directly opposite result. The popularity of these strollers was owing partly to the (very real) blood and other horrors with which their plays were deluged, partly to the buffoonery with which they seasoned, and the various tricks and feats with which they diversified, their performances. The representatives of the English clowns had learnt much on their way from their brethren in the Netherlands, where in this period the art of grotesque acting greatly flourished. Nor were the aids of other arts neglected,—to this day in Germany professors of the “equestrian drama” are known by the popular appellation of “English riders.” From these true descendants of the mimes, then, the professional actors in Germany inherited a variety of tricks and traditions; and soon the favourite figures of the popular comic stage became conventional, and were stereotyped by the use of masks. Among these an acknowledged supremacy was acquired by the nativeHans Wurst(Jack Pudding)—of whose name Luther disavowed the invention, and who is known already to Hans Sachs—the privileged buffoon, and for a long series of generations the real lord and master, of the German stage. If that stage, with its grossness and ribaldry,Separation between the stage and literature.seemed likely to become permanently estranged from the tastes and sympathies of the educated classes, the fault was by no means entirely its own and that of its patron the populace. The times were evil times for a national effort of any kind; and poetic literature was in all its branches passing into the hands of scholars who were often pedants, and whose language was a jargon of learned affectations. Thus things continued, till the awful visitation of the Thirty Years’ War cast a general blight upon the national life, and the traditions of the popular theatre were left to the guardianship of the marionettes (Puppenspiele)!
When, in the midst of that war, German poets once more began to essay the dramatic form, the national drama was left outside their range of vision. M. Opitz, who holds an honoured place in the history of the German languageThe literary drama of the 17th century.and literature, in this branch of his labours contented himself with translations of classical dramas and of Italian pastorals—among the latter one of Rinuccini’sDaphne, with which the history of the opera in Germany begins. A. Gryphius, though as a comic dramatist lacking neither vigour nor variety, and acquainted with Shakespearian279as well as Latin and Italian examples, chiefly devoted himself to the imitation of Latin, earlier French, and Dutch tragedy, the rhetorical dialogue of which he effectively reproduced in the Alexandrine metre.280Neither the turgid dramas of D. C. von Lohenstein (1665-1684), for whoseCleopatrathe honour of having been the first German tragedy has been claimed, nor even the much healthier comedies of Chr. Weise (1642-1708) were brought upon the stage; while the religious plays of J. Klay (1616-1656) are mere recitations connected with the Italian growth of theoratorio. The frigid allegories commemorative of contemporary events, with which the learned from time to time supplied the theatre, and the pastoral dramas with which the idyllic poets of Nuremberg—“the shepherds of the Pegnitz”—after the close of the war gratified the peaceful longings of their fellow-citizens, were alike mere scholastic efforts. These indeed continued in the universities andgymnasiato keep alive the love of both dramatic composition and dramatic representation, and to encourage the theatrical taste which led so many students into the professional companies. But neither these dramatic exercises nor theludi Caesareiin which the Jesuits at Vienna revived the pomp and pageantry, and the mixture of classical and Christian symbolism, of the Italian Renaissance, had any influence upon the progress of the popular drama.
The history of the German stage remains to about the second decennium of the 18th century one of the most melancholy, as it is in its way one of the most instructive, chapters of theatrical history. Ignored by the world of letters,The stage before its reform.the actors in return deliberately sought to emancipate their art from all dependence upon literary material. Improvisation reigned supreme, not only in farce, whereHans Wurst, with the aid of Italian examples, never ceased to charmhis public, but in the serious drama likewise (in which, however, he also played his part) in thoseHaupt- und Staatsactionen(high-matter-of-state-dramas), the plots of which were taken from the old stores of the English comedians, from the religious drama and its sources, and from the profane history of all times. The hero of this period is “Magister” J. Velthen (or Veltheim), who at the head of a company of players for a time entered the service of the Saxon court, and, by reproducing comedies of Molière and other writers, sought to restrain the licence which he had himself carried beyond all earlier precedent, but who had to fall back into the old ways and the old life. His career exhibits the climax of the efforts of the art of acting to stand alone; after his death (c. 1693) chaos ensues. The strolling companies, which now included actresses, continued to foster the popular love of the stage, and even under its most degraded form to uphold its national character against the rivalry of the opera, and that of the Italiancommedia dell’ arte. From the latter was borrowed Harlequin, with whomHans Wurstwas blended, and who became a standing figure in every kind of popular play.281He established his sway more especially at Vienna, where from about 1712 the first permanent German theatre was maintained. But for the actors in general there was little permanence, and amidst miseries of all sorts, and under the growing ban of clerical intolerance, the popular stage seemed destined to hopeless decay. A certain vitality of growth seems, under clerical guidance, to have characterized the plays of the people in Bavaria and parts of Austria.
The first endeavours to reform what had thus apparently passed beyond all reach of recovery were neither wholly nor generally successful; but this does not diminish the honour due to two names which should never beF. K. Neuber, Gottsched, and the Leipzig school.mentioned without respect in connexion with the history of the drama. Friederike Karoline Neuber’s (1697-1760) biography is the story of a long-continued effort which, notwithstanding errors and weaknesses, and though, so far as her personal fortunes were concerned, it ended in failure, may almost be described as heroic. As directress of a company of actors which from 1727 had its headquarters at Leipzig (hence the new school of acting is called the Leipzig school), she resolved to put an end to the formlessness of the existing stage, to separate tragedy and comedy, and to extinguish Harlequin. In this endeavour she was supported by the Leipzig professor J. Chr. Gottsched, who induced her to establish French tragedy and comedy as the sole models of the regular drama. Literature and the stage thus for the first time joined hands, and no temporary mischance or personal misunderstanding can obscure the enduring significance of the union. Not only were the abuses of a century swept away from a representative theatre, but a large number of literary works, designed for the stage, were produced on it. It is true that they were but versions or imitations from the French (or in the case of Gottsched’sDying Catofrom the French and English),282and that at the moment of the regeneration of the German drama new fetters were thus imposed upon it, and upon the art of acting at the same time. But the impulse had been given, and the beginning made. On the one hand, men of letters began to subject their dramatic compositions to the test of performance; the tragedies and comedies of J. E. Schlegel, the artificial and sentimental comedies of Chr. F. Gellert and others, together with the vigorous popular comedies of the Danish dramatist Holberg, were brought into competition with translations from the French. On the other hand, theEkhofLeipzig school exercised a continuous effect upon the progress of the art of acting, and before long K. Ekhof began a career which made his art a fit subject for the critical study of scholars, and his profession one to be esteemed by honourable men.
Among the authors contributing to Mme. Neuber’s Leipzig enterprise had been a young student destined to complete, after a very different fashion and with very different aims, the work which she and Gottsched had begun. The critical genius of G.Lessing.E. Lessing is peerless in its comprehensiveness, as in its keenness and depth; but if there was any branch of literature and art which by study and practice he made pre-eminently his own, it was that of the drama. As bearing upon the progress of the German theatre, his services to its literature, both critical and creative, can only be described as inestimable. TheHamburgische Dramaturgie, a series of criticisms of plays and (in its earlier numbers) of actors, was undertaken in furtherance of the attempt to establish at Hamburg the first national German theatre (1767-1769). This fact alone would invest these papers with a high significance; for, though the theatrical enterprise proved abortive, it established the principle upon which the progress of the theatre in all countries depends—that for the dramatic art the immediate theatrical public is no sufficient court of appeal. But the direct effect of theDramaturgiewas to complete the task which Lessing had in previous writings begun, and to overthrow the dominion of the arbitrary French rules and the French models established by Gottsched. Lessing vindicated its real laws to the drama, made clear the difference between the Greeks and their would-be representatives, and established the claims of Shakespeare as the modern master of both tragedy and comedy. His own dramatic productivity was cautious, tentative, progressive. His first step was, by hisMiss Sara Sampson(1755), to oppose the realism of the English domestic drama to the artificiality of the accepted French models, in the forms of which Chr. F. Weisse (1726-1804) was seeking to treat the subjects of Shakespearian plays.283Then, in hisMinna von Barnhelm(1767), which owed something to Farquhar, he essayed a national comedy drawn from real life, and appealing to patriotic sentiments as well as to broad human sympathies. It was written in prose (likeMiss Sara Sampson), but in form held a judicious mean between French and English examples.
The note sounded by the criticisms of Lessing met with a ready response, and the productivity displayed by the nascent dramatic literature of Germany is astonishing, both in the efforts inspired by his teachings and in thoseEfforts of the theatre and of literature.which continued to controvert or which aspired to transcend them. On the stage, Harlequin and his surroundings proved by no means easy to suppress, more especially at Vienna, the favourite home of frivolous amusement; but even here a reform was gradually effected, and, under the intelligent rule of the emperor Joseph II., a national stage grew into being. The mantle of Ekhof fell upon the shoulders of his eager younger rival, F. L. Schröder, who was the first to domesticate Shakespeare upon the German stage. In dramatic literature few of Lessing’s earlier contemporaries produced any works of permanent value, unless the religious dramas of F. G. Klopstock—a species in which he had been preceded by J. J. Bodmer—and the patrioticBardiettenof the same author be excepted. S. Gessner, J. W. L. Gleim, and G. K. Pfeffel (1736-1809) composed pastoral plays. But a far more potent stimulus prompted the efforts of the younger generation. The translation of Shakespeare, begun in 1762 by C. M. Wieland, whose own plays possess no special significance, and completed in 1775 by Eschenburg, which furnished the text for many of Lessing’s criticisms, helps to mark an epoch in German literature. Under the influence of Shakespeare, or of their conceptions of his genius, arose a youthful group of writers who, while worshipping their idol as the representative of nature, displayed but slight anxiety to harmonize their imitations of him with the demands of art. The notoriousUgolinoof H. W. von Gerstenberg seemed a premonitory sign that the coming flood might merely rush back to the extravagances and horrors of the old popular stage; and it was with a sense of this danger in prospect that Lessing in his third important drama, the prose tragedyEmilia Galotti(1772), set the example of a work of incomparable nicety in its adaptation of means to end. But successful as it proved, it could not stay the excesses of theSturm und Drangperiodwhich now set in. Lessing’s last drama,Nathan der Weise(1779), was not measured to the standard of the contemporary stage; but it was to exercise its influence in the progress of time—not only by causing a reaction in tragedy from prose to blank verse (first essayed in J. W. von Brawe’sBrutus, 1770), but by ennobling and elevating by its moral and intellectual grandeur the branch of literature to which in form it belongs.
Meanwhile the young geniuses of theSturm und Dranghad gone forth, as worshippers rather than followers of Shakespeare, to conquer new worlds. The name of this group of writers, more remarkable for their collective significanceThe Sturm und Drang.than for their individual achievements, was derived from a drama by one of the most prolific of their number, M. F. von Klinger;284other members of the fraternity were J. A. Leisewitz285(1752-1806), M. R. Lenz286and F. Müller287the “painter.” The youthful genius of the greatest of German poets was itself under the influences of this period, when it produced the first of its masterpieces. But Goethe’sGötz von Berlichingen(1773), both by the choice and treatment of its national theme, and by the incomparable freshness and originality of its style, holds a position of its own in German dramatic literature. Though its defiant irregularity of form prevented its complete success upon the stage, yet its influence is far from being represented by the series of mostly feeble imitations to which it gave rise. TheRitterdramen(plays of chivalry) had their day like similar fashions in drama or romance; but the permanent effect ofGötzwas, that it crushed as with an iron hand the last remnants of theatrical conventionality (those of costume and scenery included), and extinguished with them the lingering respect for rules and traditions of dramatic composition which even Lessing had treated with consideration. Its highest significance, however, lies in its having been the first great dramatic work of a great national poet, and having definitively associated the national drama with the poetic glories of the national literature.
Thus, in the classical period of that literature, of which Goethe and Schiller were the ruling stars, the drama had a full share of the loftiest of its achievements. Of these, the dramatic works of Goethe vary so widely in form andGoethe.character, and connect themselves so intimately with the different phases of the development of his own self-directed poetic genius, that it was impossible for any of them to become the starting-points of any general growths in the history of the German drama. His way of composition was, moreover, so peculiar to himself—conception often preceding execution by many years, part being added to part under the influence of new sentiments and ideas and views of art, flexibly followed by changes of form—that the history of his dramas cannot be severed from his general poetic and personal biography. HisClavigoandStella, which succeededGötz, are domestic dramas in prose; but neither by these, nor by the series of charming pastorals and operas which he composed for the Weimar court, could any influence be exercised upon the progress of the national drama. In the first conception of hisFaust, he had indeed sought the suggestion of his theme partly in popular legend, partly in a domestic motive familiar to the authors of theSturm und Drang(the story of Gretchen); the later additions to the First Part, and the Second Part generally, are the results of metaphysical and critical studies and meditations belonging to wholly different spheres of thought and experience. The dramatic unity of the whole is thus, at the most, external only; and the standard of judgment to be applied to this wondrous poem is not one of dramatic criticism.Egmont, originally designed as a companion toGötz, was not completed till many years later; there are few dramas more effective in parts, but the idea of a historic play is lost in the elaboration of the most graceful of love episodes. InIphigeniaandTasso, Goethe exhibited the perfection of form of which his classical period had enabled him to acquire the mastery; but the sphere of the action of the former (perfect though it is as a dramatic action), and the nature of that of the latter, are equally remote fromSchiller.the demands of the popular stage. Schiller’s genius, unlike Goethe’s, was naturally and consistently suited to the claims of the theatre. His juvenile works,The Robbers,Fiesco,Kabale und Liebe, vibrating under the influence of an age of social revolution, combined in their prose form the truthful expression of passion with a considerable admixture of extravagance. But, with true insight into the demands of his art, and with unequalled single-mindedness and self-devotion to it, Schiller gradually emancipated himself from his earlier style; and with his earliest tragedy in verse,Don Carlos, the first period of his dramatic authorship ends, and the promise of the second announces itself. The works which belong to this—from theWallensteintrilogy toTell—are the acknowledged masterpieces of the German poetic drama, treating historic themes reconstructed by conscious dramatic workmanship, and clothing their dialogue in a noble vestment of rhetorical verse. The plays of Schiller are the living embodiment of the theory of tragedy elaborated by Hegel, according to which its proper theme is the divine, or, in other words, the moving ethical, element in human action. In one of his later plays,The Bride of Messina, Schiller attempted a new use of the chorus of Greek tragedy; but the endeavour was a splendid error, and destined to exercise no lasting effect. The reaction against Schiller’s ascendancy began with writers who could not reconcile themselves with the cosmopolitan and non-national elements in his genius, and is still represented by eminent critics; but the future must be left to settle the contention.
Schiller’s later dramas had gradually conquered the stage, over which his juvenile works had in this time triumphantly passed, but on which hisDon Carloshad met with a cold welcome. For a long time, however, its favouritesThe popular stage.were authors of a very different order, who suited themselves to the demands of a public tolerably indifferent to the literary progress of the drama. After popular tastes had oscillated between the imitators ofGotzand those ofEmilia Galotti, they entered into a more settled phase, as the establishment of standing theatres at the courts and in the large towns increased the demand for good “acting” plays. Famous actors, such as Schröder and A. W. Iffland, sought by translations or compositions of their own to meet the popular likings, which largely took the direction of that irrepressible favourite of theatrical audiences, the sentimental domestic drama.288But the most successful purveyor of such wares was an author who, though not himself an actor, understood the theatre with a professional instinct—August von Kotzebue. His productivity ranged from the domestic drama and comedy of all kinds to attempts to rival Schiller and Shakespeare in verse; and though his popularity (which ultimately proved his doom) brought upon him the bitterest attacks of the romantic school and other literary authorities, his self-conceit is not astonishing, and the time has come for saying that there is some exaggeration in the contempt which has been lavished upon him by posterity.289Nor should it be forgotten that German literature had so far failed to furnish the comic stage with any successors toMinna von Barnhelm; for Goethe’s efforts to dramatize characteristic events or figures of the Revolutionary age290must be dismissed as failures, not from a theatrical point of view only. The joint efforts of Goethe and Schiller for the Weimar stage, important in many respects for the history of the German drama, at the same time reveal the want of a national dramatic literature sufficientto supply the needs of a theatre endeavouring to satisfy the demands of art.
Meanwhile the so-called romantic school of German literature was likewise beginning to extend its labours to original dramatic composition. From the universality of sympathies proclaimed by this school, to whose leaders GermanyThe romantic school.owed its classical translation of Shakespeare,291and an introduction to the dramatic literatures of so many ages and nations,292a variety of new dramatic impulses might be expected; while much might be hoped for the future of the national drama (especially in its mixed and comic species) from the alliance between poetry and real life which they preached, and which some of them sought personally to exemplify. But in practice universality presented itself as peculiarity or even as eccentricity; and in the end the divorce between poetry and real life was announced as authoritatively as their union had been. Outside this school, the youthful talent of Th. Körner, whose early promise as a dramatist293might perhaps have ripened into a fulness enabling him not unworthily to occupy the seat left vacant by his father’s friend Schiller, was extinguished by a patriotic death. The efforts of M. von Collin (1779-1824) in the direction of the historical drama remained isolated attempts. But of the leaders of the romantic school, A. W.294and F. von Schlegel295contented themselves with frigid classicalities; and L. Tieck, in the strange alembic of hisPhantasus, melted legend and fairy-tale, novel and drama,296poetry and satire, into a compound, enjoyable indeed, but hardly so in its entirety, or in many of its parts, to any but the literary mind.
F. de La Motte Fouqué infused a spirit of poetry into the chivalry drama. Klemens Brentano was a fantastic dramatist unsuited to the stage. Here a feeble outgrowth of the romanticists, the “destiny dramatists” Z. Werner297—theLater dramatists.most original of the group—A. Müllner,298and Baron C. E. v. Houwald,299achieved a temporaryfurore; and it was with an attempt in the same direction300that the Austrian dramatist F. Grillparzer began his long career. He is assuredly, what he pronounced himself to be, the foremost of the later dramatic poets of Germany, unless that tribute be thought due to the genius of H. von Kleist, who in his short life produced, besides other works, a romantic drama301and a rustic comedy302of genuine merit, and an historical tragedy of singular originality and power.303Grillparzer’s long series of plays includes poetic dramas on classical themes304and historical subjects from Austrian history,305or treated from an Austrian point of view. The romantic school, which through Tieck had satirized the drama of thebourgeoisieand its offshoots, was in its turn satirized by Count A. von Platen-Hallermund’s admirable imitations of Aristophanic comedy.306Among the objects of his banter were the popular playwright E. Raupach, and K. Immermann, a true poet, who is, however, less generally remembered as a dramatist. F. Hebbel307is justly ranked high among the foremost later dramatic poets of his country, few of whom equal him in intensity. The eminent lyrical (especially ballad) poet L. Uhland left behind him a large number of dramatic fragments, but little or nothing really complete. Other names of literary mark are those of C. D. Grabbe, J. Mosen, O. Ludwig308(1813-1865), a dramatist of great power, and “F. Halm” (Baron von Münch-Bellinghausen) (1806-1871), and, among writers of a more modern school, K. Gutzkow,309G. Freytag,310and H. Laube.311L. Anzengruber, a writer of real genius though restricted range, imparted a new significance to the Austrian popular drama,312formerly so commonplace in the hands of F. Raimund and J. Nestroy.
During the long period of transition which may be said to have ended with the establishment of the new German empire, the German stage in some measure anticipated the developments which more spacious times were to witness inThe German stage of the latter half of the 19th century.the German drama. The traditions of the national theatre contemporary with the great epoch of the national literature were kept alive by a succession of eminent actors—such as the nephews of Ludwig Devrient, himself an artist of the greatest originality, whose most conspicuous success, though nature had fitted him for Shakespeare, was achieved in Schiller’s earliest play.313Among the younger generation of Devrients the most striking personality was that of Emil; his elder brother Karl August, husband of Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, the brilliant star of the operatic stage, and their son Friedrich, were also popular actors; yet another brother, Eduard, is more widely remembered as the historian of the German stage. Partly by reason of the number and variety of its centres of intellectual and artistic life, Germany was long enabled both to cherish the few masterpieces of its own drama, and, with the aid of a language well adapted for translation, to give admittance to the dramatic masterpieces of other nations also, and to Shakespeare in particular, without going far in the search for theatrical novelty or effect. But a change came over the spirit of German theatrical management with the endeavours of H. Laube, from about the middle of the century onwards, at Vienna (and Leipzig), which avowedly placed the demands of the theatre as such above those of literary merit or even of national sentiment. In a less combative spirit, F. Dingelstedt, both at Munich, which under King Maximilian he had made a kindly nurse of German culture, and, after his efforts there had come to an untimely end,314at Weimar and at Vienna, raised the theatre to a very high level of artistic achievement. The most memorable event in the annals of his managements was the production on the Weimar stage of the series of Shakespeare’shistories. At a rather later period, of which the height extended from 1874 to 1890, the company of actors in the service, and under the personal direction, of Duke George of Saxe-Meiningen, created a great effect by their performances both in and outside Germany—not so much by their artistic improvements in scenery and decoration, as by the extraordinary perfection of theirensemble. But no dramaturgic achievement in the century could compare in grandeur either of conception or of execution with Richard Wagner’s Bayreuth performances, where, for the first time in the history of the modern stage, the artistic instinct ruled supreme in all the conditions of the work and its presentment. Though theRing of the Nibelungsand its successors belong to opera rather than drama proper, the importance of their production (1876) should be overlooked by no student of the dramatic art. Potent as has been the influence of foreign dramatic literatures—whether French or Scandinavian—and that of a movement which has been common to them all, and from which the German was perhaps the least likely to exclude itself, the most notable feature in the recent history of the German drama has been its quick response to wholly new demands, which, though the attempt was made with some persistence, could no longer be met without an effort to span the widths and sound the depths of a more spacious and more self-conscious era.315
(h)Dutch Drama.
Among other modern European dramas the Dutch is interesting both in its beginnings, which to all intents and purposes form part of those of the German, and because of the special influence of the so-called chambers of therederykers(rhetoricians), from the early years of the 15th century onwards, which bear some resemblance to the associations of the master-singers in contemporary higher Germany. The earliest of their efforts, which so effectively tempered the despotism of both church and state, seem to have been of a dramatic kind; and a manifold variety of allegories, moralities and comic entertainments (esbatementenor comedies,kluitenandfactienor farces) enhanced the attractions of those popular pageants in which the Netherlands surpassed all other countries of the North. The Low Countries responded more largely to the impulse of the Renaissance than, with some local exceptions, any other of the Germanic lands. They necessarily had a considerable share in the cultivation of the modern Latin drama; and, while the author ofAcolastusmay be claimed as its own by the country of his adoption as well as by that of his birth, G. M. Macropedius (Langhveldt) (c. 1475-1508), who may be regarded as the foremost Latin dramatist of his age, was born and died at Hertogenbosch or in its immediate vicinity. Macropedius, who belonged to the fraternity of the Common Life, was a writer of great realistic power as well as of remarkable literary versatility.316The art of acting flourished in the Low Countries even during the troubles of the great revolt; but the birth of the regular drama was delayed till the advent of quieter times. Dutch dramatic literature begins, under the influence of the classical studies cherished in the seats of learning founded before and after the close of the war, with the classical tragedies of S. Koster (c. 1585-c. 1650). The romantic dramas and farces of Gerbrand Bredero (1585-1618) and the tragedies of P. Hooft (1581-1647) belong to the same period; but its foremost dramatic poet was J. van den Vondel, who from an imitation of classical models passed to more original forms of dramatic composition, including a patriotic play and a dramatic treatment of part of what was to form the theme ofParadise Lost.317But Vondel had no successor of equal mark. The older form of Dutch tragedy—in which the chorus still appeared—was, especially under the influence of the critic A. Pels, exchanged for a close imitation of the French models, Corneille and Racine; nor was the attempt to create a national comedy successful. Thus no national Dutch drama was permanently called into life.
(i)Scandinavian Drama.
Still more distinctly, the dramatic literature of the Scandinavian peoples springs from foreign growths. In Denmark, where the beginnings of the drama in the plays of the schoolmaster Chr. Hansen recall the mixture ofDenmark.religious and farcical elements in contemporary German efforts, the drama in the latter half of the 16th century remained essentially scholastic, and treated scriptural or classical subjects, chiefly in the Latin tongue. J. Ranch (1539-1607) and H. S. Sthen were authors of this type. But often in the course of the 17th century, German and French had become the tongues of Danish literature and of the Danish theatre; in the 18th Denmark could boast a comic dramatist of thorough originality and of a wholly national cast. L. Holberg, one of the most noteworthy comic poets of modern literature, not only marks an epoch in the dramatic literature of his native land, but he contributed to overthrow the trivialities of the German stage in its worst period, which he satirized with merciless humour,318and set an example, never surpassed, of a series of comedies319deriving their types from popular life and ridiculing with healthy directness those vices and follies which are the proper theme of the most widely effective species of the comic drama. Among his followers, P. A. Heiberg is specially noted. Under the influence of the Romantic school, whose influence has nowhere proved so long-lived as in the Scandinavian north, A. Ohlenschläger began a new era of Danish literature. His productivity, which belongs partly to his native and partly to German literary history, turned from foreign320to native themes; and other writers followed him in his endeavours to revive the figures ofThe modern Norwegian drama.Northern heroic legend. But these themes have in their turn given way in the Scandinavian theatre to subjects coming nearer home to the popular consciousness, and treated with a direct appeal to the common experience of human life, and with a searching insight into the actual motives of human action. The most remarkable movement to be noted in the history of the Scandinavian drama, and one of the most widely effective of those which mark the more recent history of the Western drama in general, had its origin in Norway. Two Norwegian dramatists, H. Ibsen and Björnsterne Björnson, standing as it were side by side, though by no means always judging eye to eye, have vitally influenced the whole course of modern dramatic literature in the direction of a fearlessly candid and close delineation of human nature. The lesser of the pair in inventive genius, and in the power of exhibiting with scornful defiance the conflict between soul and circumstance, but the stronger by virtue of the conviction of hope which lies at the root of achievement, is Björnson.321Ibsen’s long career as a dramatist exhibits a succession of many changes, but at no point any failure in the self-trust of his genius. His early masterpieces were dramatic only in form.322His world-drama ofEmperor and Galileanwas still unsuited to a stage rarely trodden to much purpose by idealists of Julian’s type. The beginnings of his real and revolutionary significance as a dramatist date from the production of his first plays of contemporary life, the admirable satirical comedyThe Pillars of Society(1877), the subtle domestic dramaA Doll’s House(1879), and the powerful but repellentGhosts(1881),323which last, with the effects of its appearance, modern dramatic literature may even to this day be said to have failed altogether to assimilate. Ibsen’s later prose comedies—(verse, he writes, has immensely damaged the art of acting, and a tragedy in iambics belongs to the species Dodo)—for the most part written during an exile which accounts for the note of isolation so audible in many of them, succeeded one another at regular biennial intervals, growing more and more abrupt in form, cruel in method, and intense in elemental dramatic force. The prophet at last spoke to a listening world, but without the amplitude, the grace and the wholeheartedness which are necessary for subduing it. But it may be long before the art which he had chosen as the vehicle of his comments on human life and society altogether ceases to show the impress of his genius.
(j)Drama of the Slav Peoples.
As to the history of the Slav drama, only a few hints can be here given. Its origins have not yet—at least in works accessible to Western students—been authoritatively traced. The Russian drama in its earliest or religious beginnings is stated to have been introduced from Poland early in the 12th century; and, again, it would seem that, when the influence of the Renaissance touched the east of Europe, the religious drama was cultivated in Poland in the 16th, but did not find its way into Russia till the 17th century. It is probable that the species was, like so many other elements of culture, imported into the Carpathian lands in the 15th or 16th century from Germany. How far indigenous growths, such as the Russian popular puppet-show calledvertep, which about the middle of the 17th century began to treat secular and popular themes, helped to foster dramatic tendencies and tastes, cannot here be estimated. The regular drama of eastern Europe is to all intents and purposes of Western origin. Thus, the history of the Polish drama may be fairlydated as beginning with the reign of the last king of Poland, Stanislaus II. Augustus, who in 1765 solemnly opened a nationalPolish.theatre at Warsaw. This institution was carried on till the fatal year 1794, and saw the production of a considerable number of Polish plays, mostly translated or adapted, but in part original—as in the case of one or two of those from the active pen of the secretary to the educational commission, Zablonski. But it was not till after the last partition that, paradoxically though not wholly out of accordance with the history of the relations between political and literary history, the attempts of W. Bogulawski and J. N. Kaminski to establish and carry on a Polish national theatre were crowned with success. Its literary mainstay was a gifted Franco-Pole, Count Alexander Fredro (1793-1876), who in the period between the Napoleonic revival and the long exodus fathered a long-lived species of modern Polish comedy, French in origin (for Fredro was a true disciple of Molière), and wholly out of contact with the sentiment that survived in the ashes of a doomed nation.324His complaint as to the exiguity of the Polish literary public—a brace of theatres and a bookseller’s handcart—may have been premature; but a national drama was most certainly impossible in a denationalised and dismembered land, in whose historic capital the theatre in which Polish plays continued to be produced seemed garrisoned by Cossack officers.
Much in the same way, though with a characteristic difference, the Russian regular drama had its origin in the cadet corps at St Petersburg, a pupil of which, A. Sumarokov (1718-1777), has been regarded as the founder of the modernRussian.Russian theatre. As a tragic poet he seems to have imitated Racine and Voltaire, though treating themes from the national history, among others the famous dramatic subject of the False Demetrius. He also translatedHamlet. As a comic dramatist he is stated to have been less popular than as a tragedian; yet it is in comedy that he would seem to have had the most noteworthy successors. Among these it is impossible to pass by the empress Catherine II., whose comedies seem to have been satirical sketches of the follies and foibles of her subjects, and who in one comedy as well as in a tragedy had the courage to imitate Shakespeare. Comedy aiming at social satire long continued to temper the conditions of Russian society, and had representatives of mark in such writers as A. N. Ostrovsky of Moscow and Griboyedov, the author ofGore et uma.
In any survey of the Slav drama that of the Czech peoples, whose national consciousness has so fully reawakened, must not be overlooked. A Czech theatre was called into life at Prague as early as the 18th century; and in the 19th its demands, centring in a sense of nationality, were met by J. N. Stepinek (1783-1844), W. C. Klicpera (1792-1859) and J. C. Tyl (1808-1856); and later writers continued to make use of the stage for a propaganda of historical as well as political significance.