prieties; the Pulcinelli are the obsequious idlers, triflers, and gossip-mongers; the Parasites are described by their name. If we are asked to give them a broader significance, the Wood-Cutters are the rude, unrefined masses, upon whose labor rests the finer fabric of Society; the Pulcinelli are the loafers who manage to live without any visible means of support, and are never idler than when they seem to be most busy; and the Parasites remain the same, only with a broader field of action. Some lines in the address of the latter suggest a passage in the Third Satire of Juvenal:—
23. Drunken Man
Goethe’s object, here, is to represent sensual indulgence, of which intemperance is but one form. This being the last of the masks which symbolize social classes, there is all the more reason for restricting the explanation to Society alone; since, if the author had meant to typify political classes, he must have necessarily closed the group with criminals instead of sensualists. Düntzer, nevertheless, insists that this and the three preceding masks represent “the slavish dependence of men upon external possessions”! But Leutbecher surpasses all other commentators in asserting that the Wood-Cutters, the Pulcinelli and Parasites typify “intellectual manifestations and their relation to each other,” while in the Drunken Man he finds “the struggle of the Real as a counterpoise to the Ideal”!!
24. The Herald announces various Poets.
From this point to the appearance of the Graces, we have the skeleton of an unwritten scene, the character of which
