hands that will not, nay, what is more, that cannot, do him much harm. One brief, shy glance into this huge bivouac of Playwrights, all sawing and planing with such tumult; and we leave it, probably for many years. nuisance enough; and many persons who love | Constitutional History of a Rookery? Let the their life, and therefore "take care of their courteous reader take heart, then; for he is in time, which is the stuff life is made of," regularly lose several columns of their weekly newspaper in that way: but our case is pure luxury, compared with that of the Germans, who, instead of a measurable and sufferable spicing of theatric matter, are obliged, metaphorically speaking, to breakfast and dine on it, have in fact nothing else to live on but that highly unnutritive victual. We ourselves are occasionally readers of German newspapers, and have often, in the spirit of Christian humanity, meditated presenting to the whole body of German editors a project, which, however, must certainly have ere now occurred to themselves, and for some reason been found inapplicable; it was, to address these correspondents of theirs, all and sundry, in plain language, and put the question: whether, on studiously surveying the Universe from their several stations, there was nothing in the Heavens above, on the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, nothing visible but this one business, or rather shadow of business, that had an interest for the minds of men? If the correspondents still answered that nothing was visible, then of course they must be left to continue in this strange state: prayers, at the same time, being put up for them in all churches. The German Parnassus, as one of its own denizens remarks, has a rather broad summit: yet only two Dramatists are reckoned, within the last half century, to have mounted thither; -Schiller and Goethe; if we are not, on the strength of his Minna von Barnhelm and Emilie Galeotti, to account Lessing of the number. On the slope of the Mountain may be found a few stragglers of the same brotherhood; among these, Tieck and Maler Müller, firmly enough stationed at considerable elevations; while, far below, appear various honest persons climbing vehemently, but against precipices of loose sand, to whom we wish all speed. But the reader will understand that the bivouac we speak of, and are about to enter, lies not on the declivity of the Hill at all; but on the level ground close to the foot of it; the essence of a Playwright being that he works not in Poetry, but in Prose, which more or less cunningly resembles it. And here, pausing for a moment, the reader observes that he is in a civilized country; for there, on the very boundary line of Parnassus, rises a gallows with the figure of a man hung in chains! It is the figure of August von Kotzebue, and has swung there for many years, as a warning to all too audacious Playwrights, who nevertheless, as we However, leaving every able Editor to fight his own battle, we address ourselves to the task in hand: meaning here to inquire a very little into the actual state of the dramatic trade in Germany, and exhibit some detached fea-see, pay little heed to it. Ill-fated Kotzebue, tures of it to the consideration of our readers. For, seriously speaking, low as this province may be, it is a real, active, and ever-enduring province of the literary republic; nor can the pursuit of many men, even though it be a profitless and foolish pursuit, ever be without claim to some attention from us, either in the way of furtherance or of censure and correction. Our avowed object is to promote the sound study of foreign literature; which study, like all other earthly undertakings, has its negative as well as its positive side. We have already, as occasion served, borne testimony to the merits of various German poets, and must now say a word on certain German poetasters; hoping that it may be chiefly a regard to the former which has made us take even this slight notice of the latter: for the bad is in itself of no value, and only worth describing lest it be mistaken for the good. At the same time, let no reader tremble, as if we meant to overwhelm him, on this occasion, with a whole mountain of dramatic lumber, poured forth in torrents, like shot-rubbish, from the play-house-garrets, where it is mouldering and evaporating into nothing, silently and without harm to any one. Far be this from us! Nay, our own knowledge of this subject is in the highest degree limited; and, indeed, to exhaust it, or attempt discussing it with scientific precision, would be an impossible enterprise. What man is there that could assort the whole furniture of Milton's Limbo of Vanity; or where is the Hallam that would think it worth his while to write us the once the darling of theatrical Europe! This was the prince of all Playwrights, and could manufacture Plays with a speed and felicity surpassing even Edinburgh novels. For his muse, like other doves, hatched twins in the month; and the world gazed on them with an admiration too deep for mere words. What is all past or present popularity to this? Were not these Plays translated into almost every language of articulate-speaking men; acted, at least, we may literally say, in every theatre from Kamtschatka to Cadiz? Nay, did they not melt the most obdurate hearts in all countries; and, like the music of Orpheus, draw tears down iron cheeks? We ourselves have known the flintiest men, who professed to have wept over them, for the first time in their lives. So was it twenty years ago; how stands it today? Kotzebue, lifted up on the hollow balloon of popular applause, thought wings had been given him that he might ascend to the Immortals: gay he rose, soaring, sailing, as with supreme dominion; but in the rarer azure deep, his windbag burst asunder, or the arrows of keen archers pierced it; and so at last we find him a compound-pendulum, vibrating in the character of scarecrow, to guard from forbidden fruit! O ye Playwrights, and literary quacks of every feather, weep over Kotzebue, and over yourselves! Know that the loudest roar of the million is not fame; that the windbag, are ye mad enough to mount it, will burst, or be shot through with arrows, and your bones too shall act as scarecrows. But, quitting this idle allegorical vein, let us at length proceed in plain English, and as be- [ to which he belongs in the genus Playwright. seems mere prose Reviewers, to the work laid out for us. Among the hundreds of German dramatists, as they are called, three individuals, already known to some British readers, and prominent from all the rest in Germany, may fitly enough stand here as representatives of the whole Playwright class; whose various craft and produce the procedure of these three may in some small degree serve to illustrate. Of Grillparzer, therefore, and Klingemann, and Mülner, in their order. But it is a universal feature of him that he attempts, by prosaic, and as it were mechanical means, to accomplish an end which, except by poetical genius, is absolutely not to be accomplished. For the most part, he has some knack, or trick of the trade, which by close inspection can be detected, and so the heart of his mystery be seen into. He may have one trick, or many; and the more cunningly he can disguise these, the more perfect is he as a craftsman; for were the public once to Franz Grillparzer seems to be an Austrian; penetrate into this his slight of hand, it were which country is reckoned nowise fertile in all over with him,-Othello's occupation were poets; a circumstance that may perhaps have gone. No conjuror, when we once understand contributed a little to his own rather rapid his method of fire-eating, can any longer pass celebrity. Our more special acquaintance for a true thaumaturgist, or even entertain us with Grillparzer is of very recent date; in his proper character of quack, though he though his name and samples of his ware have should eat Mount Vesuvius itself. But hapfor some time been hung out, in many British pily for Playwrights and others, the Public is and foreign Magazines, often with testimonials a dim-eyed animal; gullible to almost all which might have beguiled less timeworn cus-lengths,—nay, which often seems to prefer tomers. Neither, after all, have we found being gulled. there testimonials falser than other such are, Of Grillparzer's peculiar knack, and recipe but rather not so false; for, indeed, Grillparzer for play-making, there is not very much to be is a most inoffensive man, nay positively said. He seems to have tried various kinds rather meritorious; nor is it without reluctance of recipes, in his time; and, to his credit be it that we name him under this head of Play-spoken, seems little contented with any of wrights, and not under that of Dramatists, them. By much the worst Play of his, that we which he aspires to. Had the law with regard to mediocre poets relaxed itself since Horace's time, all had been well with Grillparzer; for undoubtedly there is a small vein of tenderness and grace running through him, a seeming modesty also, and real love of his art, which gives promise of better things. But gods and men and columns are still equally rigid in that unhappy particular of mediocrity,-even pleasing mediocrity; and no scene or line is yet known to us of Grillparzer's which exhibits any thing more. Non concessere, therefore, is his sentence for the present; and the louder his well-meaning admirers extol him, the more emphatically should it be pronounced and repeated. Nevertheless Grillparzer's claim to the title of Playwright is perhaps more his misfortune than his crime. Living in a country where the Drama engrosses so much attention, he has been led into attempting it, without any decisive qualification for such an enterprise; and so his allotment of talent, which might have done good service in some prose department, or even in the sonnet, elegy, song, or other outlying province of Poetry, is driven, as it were, in spite of fate, to write Plays, which, though regularly divided into scenes and separate speeches, are essentially monological; and though swarming with characters, too often express only one character, and that no very extraordinary one, the character of Franz Grillparzer himself. What is an increase of misfortune, too, he has met with applause in this career, which therefore have seen, is the Ahnfrau (Ancestress); a deep tragedy of the Castle Spectre sort; the whole mechanism of which was discernible and condemnable at a single glance. It is nothing but the old Story of Fate; an invisible Nemesis visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation; a method almost as common and sovereign in German Art, at this day, as the method of steam is in British mechanics; and of which we shall anon have more occasion to speak. In his Preface, Grillparzer endeavours to palliate or deny the fact of his being a Schicksal-Dichter (Fate-Tragedian); but to no purpose; for it is a fact grounded on the testimony of the seven senses: however, we are glad to observe that, with this one trial, he seems to have abandoned the Fate-line, and taken into better, at least into different ones. With regard to the Ahnfrau itself, we may remark that few things struck us so much as this little observation of Count Borotins, occurring, in the middle of the dismalest night-thoughts, so unexpectedly as follows: BERTHA. Und der Himmel, sternelos, GRAF. he is likely to follow farther and farther, let BERTHA (is just condoling with him, in these words) : nature and his stars say to it what they will. The characteristic of a Playwright is that he writes in Prose, which Prose he palms, probably, first on himself, and then on the simpler part of the public, for Poetry: and the manner, in which he effects this legerdemain, constitutes his specific distinction, fixes the species And the welkin, starless, Glares from empty eye-holes, COUNT. How the hours do linger! A more delicate turn, we venture to say, is | shrewish queens; the whole set off by a prorarely to be met with in tragic dialogue. As per intermixture of coronation ceremonies, to the story of the Ahnfrau, it is, naturally Hungarian dresses, whiskered halberdiers, enough, of the most heart-rending description. alarms of battle, and the pomp and circumThis Ancestress is a lady, or rather the ghost stance of glorious war. There is even some of a lady, for she has been defunct some cen- attempt at delineating character in this play; turies, who in life had committed what we call certain of the dramatis persona are evidently an "indiscretion;" which indiscretion the un- meant to differ from certain others, not in dress polite husband punished, one would have and name only, but in nature and mode of being; thought sufficiently, by running her through so much indeed they repeatedly assert, or hint, the body. However, the Schicksal of Grill- and do their best to make good,-unfortunately, parzer does not think it sufficient; but farther however, with very indifferent success. In dooms the fair penitent to walk as goblin, till fact these dramatis persona are rubrics and the last branch of her family be extinct. Ac- titles rather than persons; for most part, mere cordingly she is heard, from time to time, theatrical automata, with only a mechanical slamming doors and the like, and now and existence. The truth of the matter is, Grillthen seen with dreadful goggle-eyes and other parzer cannot communicate a poetic life to any ghost appurtenances, to the terror not only of character or object; and in this, were it in no servant people, but of old Count Borotin, her other way, he evinces the intrinsically prosaic now sole male descendant, whose afternoon nature of his talent. These personages of his nap she, on one occasion, cruelly disturbs. have, in some instances, a certain degree of This Count Borotin is really a worthy, prosing metaphysical truth; that is to say, one portion old gentleman; only he had a son long ago of their structure, psychologically viewed, cordrowned in a fish-pond (body not found); and responds with the other;-so far all is well has still a highly accomplished daughter, enough: but to unite these merely scientific whom there is none offering to wed, except one and inanimate qualities into a living man is Jaromir, a person of unknown extraction, and work not for a Playwright, but for a Dramatist. to all appearance, of the lightest purse; nay, Nevertheless, König Ottokar is comparatively as it turns out afterwards, actually the head a harmless tragedy. It is full of action, strikof a Banditti establishment, which had long ing enough, though without any discernible infested the neighbouring forests. However, coherence; and with so much both of flirting, a Captain of foot arrives, at this juncture, and fighting, with so many weddings, funerals, utterly to root out these Robbers; and now the processions, encampments, it must be, we strangest things come to light. For who should think, if the tailor and decorationist do should this Jaromir prove to be but poor old their duty, a very comfortable piece to see Borotin's drowned son, not drowned, but stolen acted, especially on the Vienna boards, where and bred up by these Outlaws; the brother, it has a national interest, Rodolph of Hapsburg therefore, of his intended; a most truculent being a main personage in it. fellow, who fighting for his life unwittingly The model of this Ottokar we imagine to kills his own father, and drives his bride to have been Schiller's Piccolomini; a poem of poison herself; in which wise, as was also similar materials and object; but differing Giles Scroggins' case, he "cannot get married." from it as a living rose from a mass of dead The reader sees all this is not to be accom-rose-leaves, or even of broken Italian gumplished without some jarring and tumult. In fact, there is a frightful uproar everywhere throughout that night; robbers dying, musquetry discharging, women shrieking, men swearing, and the Ahnfrau herself emerging at intervals, as the genius of the whole discord. But time and hours bring relief, as they always do. Jaromir, in the long run, likewise, succeeds in dying; whereupon the Borotin lineage having gone to the Devil, the Ancestress also retires thither, at least makes the upper world rid of her presence, and the piece ends in deep stillness. Of this poor Ancestress we shall only say farther: wherever she be, requiescat! requiescat! As we mentioned above, the Fate method of manufacturing tragic emotion seems to have yielded Grillparzer himself little contentment; for after this Ahnfrau, we hear no more of it. His König Ottokars Glück und Ende (King Ottokar's Fortune and End) is a much more innocent piece, and proceeds in quite a different strain; aiming to subdue us not by old women's fables of Destiny, but by the accumulated splendour of thrones and principalities, the cruel or magnanimous pride of Austrian Emperors and Bohemian conquerors, the wit of chivalrous courtiers, and beautiful but flowers. It seems as though Grillparzer had hoped to subdue us by a sufficient multitude of wonderful scenes and circumstances, without inquiring, with any painful solicitude, whether the soul and meaning of them were presented to us or not. Herein truly, we believe, lies the peculiar knack or playwrightmystery of Ottokar; that its effect is calculated to depend chiefly on its quantity on the mere number of astonishments, and joyful or deplorable adventures there brought to light; abundance in superficial contents compensating the absence of callida junctura. Which second method of tragic manufacture we hold to be better than the first, but still far from good. At the same time, it is a very common method, both in Tragedy and elsewhere; nay, we hear persons whose trade it is to write metre, or be otherwise "imaginative," professing it openly as the best they know. Do not these men go about collecting "features;" ferreting out strange incidents, murders, duels, ghost-apparitions, over the habitable globe; of which features and incidents, when they have gathered a sufficient stock, nothing more is needed than that they be ample enough, highcoloured enough, though huddled into any case (Novel, Tragedy, or Metrical Romance) that will hold it all! Nevertheless this is agglomeration, not creation; and avails little in Literature. Quantity, it is a certain fact, will not make up for defect of quality; nor are the gayest hues of any service, unless there be a likeness painted from them. Better were it for König Ottokar had the story been twice as short, and twice as expressive. For it is still true, as in Cervantes' time, nunca lo bueno fue mucho. What avails the dram of brandy while it swims chemically united with its barrel of wort? Let the distiller pass it and repass it through his limbecs; for it is the drops of pure alcohol that we want, not the gallons of water, which may be had in every ditch. On the whole, however, we remember König Ottokar without animosity; and to prove that Grillparzer, if he could not make it poetical, might have made it less prosaic, and has in fact something better in him than is here manifested, we shall quote one passage, which strikes us as really rather sweet and natural. King Ottokar is in the last of his fields, no prospect before him but death or captivity: and soliloquizing on his past misdeeds : I have not borne me wisely in thy World, Thou great, all judging God! Like storm and tempest, 'T is thine to waste, for thou alone canst heal. My fellow man, sent thither for his joy, And I have cast them from me by thousands, And none of all these slain but had a Mother There would they run, with anxious look, to bind it, König Ottokar, 180-1. Passages of this sort, scattered here and there over Grillparzer's Plays, and evincing at least an amiable tenderness of natural disposition, make us regret the more to condemn him. In fact, we have hopes that he is not born to be for ever a Playwright. A true though feeble vein of poetic talent he really seems to possess; and such purity of heart as may yet, with assiduous study, lead him into his proper field. For we do reckon him a conscientious man, and honest lover of Art: nay this incessant fluctuation in his dramatic schemes is itself a good omen. Besides this Ahnfrau and Ottokar, he has written two Dramas, Sappho, and Der Goldene Vliess, (The Golden Fleece,) on quite another principle; aiming apparently at some Classic model, or at least at some French reflect of such a model. Sappho, which we are sorry to learn is not his last piece, but his second, appears to us very considerably the most faultless production of his we are yet acquainted with. There is a degree of grace and simplicity in it, a softness, polish, and general good taste, little to be expected from the Author of the Ahnfrau: if he cannot bring out the full tragic meaning of Sappho's situation, he contrives, with laudable dexterity, to avoid the ridicule that lies within a single step of it; his Drama is weak and thin, but innocent, lovable;-nay, the last scene strikes us as even poetically meritorious. His Goldene Vliess we suspect to be of similar character, but have not yet found time and patience to study it. We repeat our hope of one day meeting Grillparzer in a more honourable calling than this of Playwright, or even fourth-rate Dramatist; which titles, as was said above, we have not given him without regret; and shall be truly glad to cancel for whatever better one he may yet chance to merit. But if we felt a certain reluctance in classing Grillparzer among the Playwrights, no such feeling can have place with regard to the second name on our list, that of Doctor August Klingemann. Dr. Klingemann is one of the most indisputable Playwrights now extant: nay so superlative is his vigour in this department, we might even designate him the Playwright. His manner of proceeding is quite different from Grillparzer's; not a wavering overcharged method, or combination of methods, as the other's was; but a fixed principle of action, which he follows with unflinching courage; his own mind being, to all appearance, highly satisfied with it. If Grillparzer attempted to overpower us now by the method of Fate, now by that of pompous action, and grandiloquent or lachrymose sentiment, heaped on us in too rich abundance, Klingemann, without neglecting any of these resources, seems to place his chief dependence on a surer and readier stay on his magazines of rosin, oilpaper, vizards, scarlet-drapery, and gunpowder. What thunder and lightning, magic-lantern transparencies, death's-heads, fire-showers, and plush cloaks can do,-is here done. Abundance of churchyard and chapel scenes, in most tempestuous weather; to say nothing of battlefields, gleams of scoured arms here and there in the wood, and even occasional shots heard in the distance. Then there are such scowls and malignant side-glances, ashy paleness, stampings, and hysterics, as might, one would think, wring the toughest bosom into drops of pity. For not only are the looks and gestures of these people of the most heart-rending description, but their words and feelings also (for Klingemann is no half-artist) are of a piece with them; gorgeous inflations, the purest innocence, highest magnanimity; godlike sentiment of all sorts; everywhere the finest tragic humour. The moral too is genuine; there is the most anxious re Now, however, we must give a glance at Klingemann's other chief performance in this line, the tragedy of Faust. Dr. Klingemann admits that the subject has been often treated; that Goethe's Faust in particular has "dramatic points,” (dramatische momente:) but the business is to give it an entire dramatic superficies, to make it an ächt dramatische, a "genuinely" dra intention, Dr. Klingemann has produced a Faust, which differs from that of Goethe in more than one particular. The hero of this piece is not the old Faust, doctor in philosophy, driven desperate by the uncertainty of human knowledge: but plain John Faust, the printer, and even the inventor of gunpowder; driven desperate by his ambitious temper, and a total deficiency of cash. He has an excellent wife, gard to virtue; indeed a distinct patronage both | burg looks after him surprised; the rest kneel of Providence and the Devil. In this manner, round the corpse; the Requiem faintly condoes Dr. Klingemann compound his dramatic tinues;" and what is still more surprising, “the electuaries, no less cunningly than Dr. Kitch- curtain falls." Such is the simple action and ener did his "peptic persuaders ;" and truly of stern catastrophe of this Tragedy; concerning the former we must say, that their operation is which it were superfluous for us to speak farnowise unpleasant; nay, to our shame be it ther in the way of criticism. We shall only add spoken, we have even read these Plays with a that there is a dreadful lithographic print in it, certain degree of satisfaction; and shall de- representing "Ludwig Derrient as Ahasuer;" clare that if any man wish to amuse himself in that very act of "stepping solemnly into irrationally, here is the ware for his money. the wood;" and uttering these final words: Klingemann's latest dramatic undertaking is Ich aber wandle weiter-weiter-weiter!" We Ahasuer; a purely original invention, on which have heard of Herr Derrient as of the best he seems to pique himself somewhat; confess- actor in Germany; and can now bear testimoing his opinion that now when the "birth-pains" ny, if there be truth in this plate, that he is one are over, the character of Ahasuer may possi- of the ablest-bodied men. A most truculent, bly do good service in many a future drama. rawboned figure, "with bare legs and red We are not prophets, or sons of prophets; so leather shoes;" huge black beard; eyes turned shall leave this prediction resting on its own inside out; and uttering these extraordinary basis. Ahasuer, the reader will be interested words :-"But I go on-on-on!" to learn, is no other than the Wandering Jew or Shoemaker of Jerusalem, concerning whom there are two things to be remarked. The first is the strange name of this Shoemaker: why do Klingemann and all the Germans call the man Ahasuer, when his authentic Christian name is John; Joannes a Temporibus Christi, or, for brevity's sake, simply Joannes a Temporibus? This should be looked into. Our second re-matic tragedy. Setting out with this laudable mark is of the circumstance that no Historian or Narrator, neither Schiller, Strada, Thuanus, Monroe, nor Dugald Dalgetty, makes any mention of Ahasuer's having been present at the Battle of Lützen. Possibly they thought the fact too notorious to need mention. Here, at all events, he was; nay, as we infer, he must have been at Waterloo also; and probably at Trafalgar, though in which fleet is not so clear; for he takes a hand in all great battles and na-an excellent blind father, both of whom would tional emergencies, at least is witness of them, fain have him be peaceable, and work at his being bound to it by his destiny. Such is the pe- trade; but being an adept in the black art, he culiar occupation of the Wandering Jew, as determines rather to relieve himself in that brought to light in this Tragedy: his other way. Accordingly he proceeds to make a conspecialities,—that he cannot lodge above three tract with the Devil, on what we should consinights in one place; that he is of a melancho-der pretty advantageous terms; the devil being lic temperament; above all, that he cannot die, not by hemp or steel, or Prussic-acid itself, but must travel on till the general consummation, -are familiar to all historical readers. Ahasuer's task at this Battle of Lützen seems to have been a very easy one; simply to see the Lion of the North brought down; not by a Another characteristic distinction of Klingecannon-shot, as is generally believed, but, by mann is his manner of imbodying this same the traitorous pistol-bullet of one Heinyn von Evil Principle, when at last he resolves on inWarth, a bigoted Catholic, who had pretended troducing him to sight; for all these contracts to desert from the Imperialists, that he might and preliminary matters are very properly find some such opportunity. Unfortunately, managed behind the scenes; only the main Heinyn, directly after this feat, falls into a points of the transaction being indicated to the sleepless, half rabid state; comes home to spectator by some thunder-clap, or the like. Castle Warth, frightens his poor wife and Here is no cold mocking Mephistopheles; but a worthy old noodle of a Father; then skulks swaggering, jovial, West-India-looking "Stranabout, for some time, now praying, oftener curs-ger," with a rubicund, indeed quite bricking and swearing; till at length the Swedes lay hold of him and kill him. Ahasuer, as usual, is in at the death: in the interim, however, he has saved Lady Heinyn from drowning, though as good as poisoned her with the look of his strange stony eyes; and now his business to all appearance being over, he signifies in strong language that he must begone; there- For some time, after his grand bargain, upon, he "steps solemnly into the wood; Wasa-Faust's affairs go on triumphantly, on the bound to serve him in the most effectual manner, and Faust at liberty to commit four mortal sins before any hair of his head can be harmed. However, as will be seen, the devil proves Yorkshire; and Faust naturally enough finds himself quite jockeyed in the long run. coloured face, which Faust at first mistakes for the effect of hard drinking. However, it is a remarkable feature of this Stranger, that always on the introduction of any religious topic, or the mention of any sacred name, he strikes his glass down on the table, and generally breaks it. M |