romantic or the French classical model. Vondel and Hooft put some of their best poetry into dramatic form, but neither of them ever clearly grasped the fact that the essence of drama is neither the incident of the popular plays nor the sentiment, style, and morality of the scholarly, but the vivid presentation of the agitations and conflicts of the human soul, revealed in a motived and naturally evolved action. The history of the experiment is, however, not without interest and significance, and in comedy some humorous and realistic work was produced not unworthy of the countrymen of Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade.
The oldest Mediæval plays in Dutch which have survived are of a purely secular character, four Mediæval Plays. serious, so-called abele Spelen, and six farces—kluchten or sotternien—belonging to the later fourteenth century.[1] Of the serious plays, three—Esmoreit, Gloriant, Lanseloet van Denemarken—are romances dramatised in simple and naïve manner, but by no means ineffectively. In Esmoreit a prince is sold by his ambitious cousin to the Turks, but returns at the right moment to rescue his mother,
- ↑ They were edited for the first time by Hoffmann von Fallersleben from the single manuscript in which they are all preserved (the Hulthemsche MS. of the early fifteenth century, the répertoire of some guild or company) in that scholar's Horæ Belgicæ, and were later included by Professor H. E. Moltzer in his Bibliotheek van Middelnederlandsche Letterkunde (Groningen, 1868-75), of which a new edition is in course of publication. For the questions raised see Jonckbloet's Geschicdenis, ii. 6. 1, and works cited there; also Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, Fünftes Buch (Halle, 1901).
