which 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’s Brutus, 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 the Sturm und Drang had 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 significance than for their individual achievements, was derived from a drama by one of The Sturm
und Drang.the most prolific of their number, M. F. von Klinger;[1] other members of the fraternity were J. A. Leisewitz[2] (1752–1806), M. R. Lenz[3] and F. Müller[4] the “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’s Götz 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. The Ritterdramen (plays of chivalry) had their day like similar fashions in drama or romance; but the permanent effect of Götz was, 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 and character, and connect themselves so intimately with the different phases of the Goethe.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. His Clavigo and Stella, which succeeded Götz, 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 his Faust, he had indeed sought the suggestion of his theme partly in popular legend, partly in a domestic motive familiar to the authors of the Sturm 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 to Götz, 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. In Iphigenia and Tasso, 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 from Schiller.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 the Wallenstein trilogy to Tell—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 his Don Carlos had met with a cold welcome. For a long time, however, its favourites were authors of a very different order, who suited themselves to the demands The popular stage.of a public tolerably indifferent to the literary progress of the drama. After popular tastes had oscillated between the imitators of Gotz and those of Emilia 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.[5] But 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.[6] Nor should it be forgotten that German literature had so far failed to furnish the comic stage with any successors to Minna von Barnhelm; for Goethe’s efforts to dramatize characteristic events or figures of the Revolutionary age[7] must 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 sufficient
- ↑ Die Zwillinge (The Twins); Die Soldaten, &c.
- ↑ Julius von Tarent.
- ↑ Der Hofmeister (The Governor), &c.
- ↑ Genoveva, &c.
- ↑ Iffland’s best play is Die Jäger (1785), which recently still held the stage. From Mannheim he in 1796 passed to Berlin by desire of King Frederick William II., who thus atoned for the hardships which he had allowed the pietistic tyranny of his minister Wöllner to inflict upon the Prussian stage as a whole.
- ↑ Die deutschen Kleinstädter is his most celebrated comedy and Menschenhass und Reue one of the most successful of his sentimental dramas. According to one classification he wrote 163 plays with a moral tendency, 5 with an immoral, and 48 doubtful.
- ↑ Der Groosskophta (Cagliostro); Der Bürgergeneral.
