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German stage; their tragedies almost always affording a mixture of heroic and subaltern personages, give little room to this species of humor. The pompous majesty of the French theatre is alone capable of giving force to the contrast of a burlesque. We remark in Shakspeare, and sometimes in the German writers also, a bold and singular manner of displaying, even in tragedy, the ridiculous side of human nature; and when the power of pathos can be set in opposition to this impression, the effect of the whole becomes greater. The French is the only theatre in which the boundaries of comedy and tragedy are distinctly marked; everywhere else, genius, like the lot of nature, employs gayety as the means of sharpening grief.

I have seen at Weimar some of Terence's plays literally translated into German, and played with masks, nearly resembling those of the ancients; these masks do not cover the whole countenance, they only substitute more comic or more regular features for the real features of the actor, and give to his person an expression analogous to that of the character he is to perform. The physiognomy of a great actor is vastly superior to this; but the middling class of performers gains by it. The Germans seek to appropriate to themselves the ancient and modern inventions of all countries; nevertheless, they possess nothing really national, in respect of comedy, but popular buffoonery, and pieces in which the marvellous furnishes matter for pleasantry.

An example of this may be cited in an opera which is performed on all the stages from one end of Germany to the other, called the Nymph of the Danube, or the Nymph of the Spree, just as the piece happens to be played at Vienna or at Berlin. A knight has become the object of a fairy's passion, and is separated from her by circumstance; a long while after he marries, and chooses for his wife a very worthy woman, but who has nothing seductive, either of wit or imagination the knight accomodates himself as well as he can to this situation, which appears to him so much the more natural, as it is common; for few persons understand that it is superiority of sou

and of intellect that most nearly approaches to the original of our nature. The fairy is unable to lose the remembrance of her lover, and pursues him by the wonders of her art; every time that he begins to establish himself in his domestic economy, she draws his attention by prodigies, and thus awakens in him the recollection of their past affection.

If the knight approaches the banks of a river, he hears its waves murmuring the lays which the fairy was accustomed to sing to him; if he invites guests to his table, winged genii place themselves at the board, and spread a general consternation among the prosaic friends and relatives of his wife. Wherever he goes, flowers, dances, and concerts spring up to harass, like phantoms, the life of the faithless lover; and on the other side malignant spirits amuse themselves in tormenting his servant, who, in his way also, desires nothing so much as never more to hear poetry spoken of: at last the fairy is reconciled to the knight, on condition that he shall pass three days with her in every year; and his wife willingly consents. to let her husband derive from the society of the fairy that enthusiasm which seems so well to insure the enjoyment of what we love. The subject of this piece appears to be more ingenious than popular; but the marvellous scenes are mixed and varied in it with so much art, that it equally amuses all classes of spectators.

The new literary school, in Germany, has a system in comedy, as well as in every thing else; the delineation of manners does not suffice to excite its interest, it requires imagination in the conception of the subjects, and in the invention of the characters; the marvellous, allegory, history, no diversity of comic situations appears too much for it. The writers of this school have given the name of the arbitrary comic (comique arbitraire,) to that free range of all ideas without restraint and without determinate end. They rely, in this respect, on the example of Aristophanes, not assuredly because they approve the licentiousness of his pieces, but they are struck with the vein of gayety which they exhibit, and they would willingly introduce among the moderns that daring comedy which makes

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sport of the universe, instead of confining itself to what is ridic ulous in the different classes of society. The efforts of the new school tend, in general, to give more force and indepen. dence to the understanding in every province: and whatever successes they experience in this attempt, would be a victory for literature, and still more for the energy of the German character itself; but it is always difficult to influence, by gen eral ideas, the spontaneous effusions of the imagination; and besides, a comedy calculated to lead the populace, like that of the Greeks, would never agree with the actual state of European society.

Aristophanes lived under a government so republican, that the people had a share in every part of it, and affairs of state were easily transferred from the forum to the theatre. He lived in a country where philosophical speculations were almost as familiar to all men as the chefs-d'œuvre of art, because the schools were held in the open air, and the most abstract ideas were clothed in the brilliant colors which the sky and nature lent to them; but how create anew all this animation of life amid the frosts of our atmosphere, and with our domestic habits of existence? Modern civilization has multiplied the means of observing the human heart; man is better acquainted with man; and the soul, as it were, disseminated, offers to the writer a thousand new shades of variety. Comedy takes advantage of these shades, and when able to give them the relief of dramatic situations, the spectator is delighted to recognize on the stage, characters such as he may easily meet with in the world; but the introduction of the people at large into comedy, of choruses into tragedy, of allegorical personages, of sects of philosophy, in short, of all that presents men en masse, and in an abstract manner, would never please the spectators of our times. They require specific names and individual characters; they seek the interest of romance even in comedy, and society on the stage.

Among the writers of the new school, Tieck possesses, most of all, the true feeling of pleasantry; not that he has composed a single comedy that can be edr that those he has writ

ten are well arranged, but they display brilliant traces of very original humor. At first he seized, in a manner which reminds us of La Fontaine, the handle for pleasantry which animals are calculated to furnish. He has composed a comedy entitled Puss in Boots, which is admirable in this manner. I know not what effect would be produced on the stage by speaking animals; perhaps they are more amusing to be imagined than to be seen; but these animals personified, and acting like men, give, notwithstanding, an idea of the real comedy which nature inspires. All comic, that is, selfish and sensual characters, have a touch of the animal. It matters little, then, whether the comedy is the animal imitating man, or man imitating the animal.

Tieck also interests us by the direction he has known how to give to his talent for ridicule; he bends its whole force against a calculating and plodding spirit; and as most of the pleasantries of society have for their object to cast ridicule. upon enthusiasm, we love the author who ventures himself, foot to foot against prudence, selfishness, all those qualities that pretend to the appellation of reason, behind which the middling sort of people think themselves securely placed to shoot their arrows, against superior characters or abilities. They rely on what they call a just medium to censure every thing distinguished; and while elegance consists in the superfluous abundance of objects of external luxury, it seems as if this same elegance interdicted all luxury in the mind, all exul· tation in sentiments-in short, all that does not immediately Modern tend to improve the prosperity of worldly affairs. selfishness has found out the art of praising reserve and moderation in all things, so as to mask itself under the semblance of wisdom; and it was only at length perceived that such opinions might well annihilate genius, generosity, love, and religion: what would it leave that is worth the pain of living?

Two of Tieck's comedies, Octavian and Prince Zerbino, are, both of them, very ingeniously combined. A son of the Emperor Octavian (an imaginary personage placed by a fairy tale under the reign of King Dagobert) while yet an infant in the

cradle, is lost in a forest. A citizen of Paris finds him, brings him up with his own son, and makes himself pass for his father. At twenty years of age, the heroical inclinations of the young prince betray him under every circumstance, and nothing is more striking than the contrast between his character and that of his pretended brother, whose blood does not belie the education he has received. The efforts of the sage citizen to cram the head of his adopted son with lessons of domestic economy are altogether useless: he sends him to market to purchase some bullocks; the young man, on his return, sees a hawk in the hands of a huntsman, and, enchanted with its beauty, exchanges the bullocks for the hawk, and comes back quite proud of having obtained such a bird at such a price. Another time he meets a horse, and is transported with its warlike air he inquires the price of it, and when he is informed, angry at their asking so little for so noble an animal, he pays twice the value for it.

The pretended father for a long time resists the young man's natural propensities, which animate him with ardor in the pursuit of danger and glory; but when he finds himself at last unable to prevent him from taking arms against the Saracens, who are besieging Paris, and when he hears his exploits made the subject of universal praise, the old citizen, on his side, is seized by a sort of poetical contagion; and nothing is more pleasant than the whimsical mixture of what he was, and of what he wishes to become, of his vulgar language, and the gigantic images with which his discourse is filled. At last the young man is recognized for the emperor's son, and each individual returns to the rank which is suitable to his character. This subject furnishes a number of scenes full of wit and true comic humor; and the contrast between common life and chivalrous sentiments was never better represented.

Prince Zerbino is a very lively painting of the astonishment if a whole court, at witnessing in its sovereign a propensity to enthusiasm, devotion, and all the noble imprudencies of a generous character. All the old courtiers suspect that he is mad, and advise him to travel, to set his ideas right as to things as

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