Chapter VII: Part 7

The impulse which led to the establishment of the Theatre Libre was, in the first instance, entirely French. If any foreign influence helped to shape its course, it was that of the great Russian novelists. Tolstoi's _Puissance des tenebres_ was the only "exotic" play announced in Antoine's opening manifesto. But the whole movement was soon to receive a potent stimulus from the Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen.

Ibsen's early romantic plays had been known in Germany since 1875. In 1878 _Pillars of Society_ and in 1880 _A Doll's House_ achieved wide popularity, and held the German stage side by side with _A Bankruptcy_, by Bjurnstjerne Bjurnson. But these plays had little influence on the German drama. Their methods were, indeed, not essentially different from those of the French school of the Second Empire, which were then dominant in Germany as well as everywhere else. It was _Ghosts_ (acted in Augsburg and Meiningen 1886, in Berlin 1887) that gave the impulse which, coalescing with the kindred impulse from the French Theatre Libre, was destined in the course of a few years to create a new dramatic literature in Germany. During the middle decades of the century Germany had produced some dramatists of solid and even remarkable talent, such as Friedrich Hebbel, Heinrich Laube, Karl Gutzkow and Gustav Freytag. Even the generation which held the stage after 1870, and included Paul Heyse, Paul Lindau and Adolf Wilbrandt, with numerous writers of light comedy and farce, such as E. Wichert, O. Blumenthal, G. von Moser, A. L'Arronge and F. von Schunthan, had produced a good many works of some merit. But, in the main, French artificiality and frivolity predominated on the German stage. In point of native talent and originality, the Austrian popular playwright Ludwig Anzengruber was well ahead of his North German contemporaries. It was in 1889, with the establishment of the Berlin Freie Buhne, that the reaction definitely set in. In Berlin, as afterwards in London, _Ghosts_ was the first play produced on the outpost stage, but it was followed in Berlin by a very rapid development of native talent. Less than a month after the performance of Ibsen's play, Gerhart Hauptmann came to the front with _Vor Sonnenaufgang_, an immature piece of almost unrelieved Zolaism, which he soon followed up, however, with much more important works. In _Das Friedensfest_ (1890) and _Einsame Menschen_ (1891) he transferred his allegiance from Zola to Ibsen. His true originality first manifested itself in _Die Weber_ (1892); and subsequently he produced plays in several different styles, all bearing the stamp of a potent individuality. His most popular productions have been the dramatic poems _Hannele_ and _Die versunkene Glocke_, the low-life comedy _Der Biberpelz_, and the low-life tragedy _Fuhrmann Henschel_. Other remarkable playwrights belonging to the Freie Buhne group are Max Halbe (b. 1865), author of _Jugend_ and _Mutter Erde_, and Otto Erich Hartleben (b. 1864), author of _Hanna Jagert_ and _Rosenmontag_. These young men, however, so quickly gained the ear of the general public, that the need for a special "free stage" was no longer felt, and the Freie Buhne, having done its work, ceased to exist. Unlike the French Theatre Libre and the English Independent theatre, it had been supported from the outset by the most influential critics, and had won the day almost without a battle. The productions of the new school soon made their way even into some of the subventioned theatres; but it was the unsubventioned Deutsches Theater of Berlin that most vigorously continued the tradition of the Freie Buhne. One or two playwrights of the new generation, however, did not actually belong to the Freie Buhne group. Hermann Sudermann produced his first play, _Die Ehre_, in 1888, and his most famous work, _Heimat_, in 1892. In him the influence of Ibsen is very clearly perceptible; while Arthur Schnitzler of Vienna, author of _Liebelei_, may rather be said to derive his inspiration from the Parisian "new comedy." Originality, verging sometimes on abnormality, distinguishes the work of Frank Wedekind (b. 1864), author of _Erdgeist_ and _Fruhlingserwachen_. Hugo von Hofmannsthal (b. 1874), in his _Elektra_ and _Odipus_, rehandles classic themes in the light of modern anthropology and psychology.

The promoters of the Theatre Libre had probably never heard of Ibsen when they established that institution, but three years later his fame had reached France, and _Les Revenants_ was produced by the Theatre Libre (29th May 1890). Within the next two or three years almost all his modern plays were acted in Paris, most of them either by the Theatre Libre or by L'OEuvre. Close upon the heels of the Ibsen influence followed another, less potent, but by no means negligible. The exquisite tragic symbolism of Maurice Maeterlinck began to find numerous admirers about 1890. In 1891 his one-act play _L'Intruse_ was acted; in 1893, _Pelleas et Melisande_. By this time, too, the reverberation of the impulse which the Theatre Libre had given to the Freie Buhne began to be felt in France. In 1893 Hauptmann's _Die Weber_ was acted in Paris, and, being frequently repeated, made a deep and lasting impression.

The English analogue to the Theatre Libre, the Independent theatre, opened its first season (March 13, 1891) with a performance of _Ghosts_. This was not, however, the first introduction of Ibsen to the English stage. On the 7th of June 1889 (six weeks after the production of _The Profligate_) _A Doll's House_ was acted at the Novelty theatre, and ran for three weeks, amid a storm of critical controversy. In the same year _Pillars of Society_ was presented in London. In 1891 and 1892 _A Doll's House_ was frequently acted; _Rosmersholm_ was produced in 1891, and again in 1893; in May and June 1891 _Hedda Gabler_ had a run of several weeks; and early in 1893 _The Master Builder_ enjoyed a similar passing vogue. During these years, then, Ibsen was very much "in the air" in England, as well as in France and Germany. The Independent theatre, in the meantime, under the management of J. T. Grein, found but scanty material to deal with. It presented translations of Zola's _Therese Raquin_, and of _A Visit_, by the Danish dramatist Edward Brandes; but it brought to the front only one English author of any note, in the person of George Bernard Shaw, whose "didactic realistic play," _Widowers' Houses_, it produced in December 1892.

None the less is it true that the ferment of fresh energy, which between 1887 and 1893 had created a new dramatic literature both in France and in Germany, was distinctly felt in England as well. England did not take at all kindly to it. The productions of Ibsen's plays, in particular, were received with an outcry of reprobation. A great part of this clamour was due to sheer misunderstanding; but some of it, no doubt, arose from genuine and deep-seated distaste. As for the dramatists of recognized standing, they one and all, both from policy and from conviction, adopted a hostile attitude towards Ibsen, expressing at most a theoretical respect overborne by practical dislike. Yet his influence permeated the atmosphere. He had revealed possibilities of technical stagecraft and psychological delineation that, once realized, were not to be banished from the mind of the thoughtful playwright. They haunted him in spite of himself. Still subtler was the influence exerted over the critics and the more intelligent public. Deeply and genuinely as many of them disliked Ibsen's works, they found, when they returned to the old-fashioned play, the adapted frivolity or the homegrown sentimentalism, that they disliked this still more. On every side, then, there was an instinctive or deliberate reaching forward towards something new; and once again it was Pinero who ventured the decisive step.

On the 27th of May 1893 _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_ was produced at the St James's theatre. With _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_ the English acted drama ceased to be a merely insular product, and took rank in the literature of Europe. Here was a play which, whatever its faults, was obviously comparable with the plays of Dumas, of Sudermann, of Bjurnson, of Echegaray. It might be better than some of these plays, worse than others; but it stood on the same artistic level. The fact that such a play could not only be produced, but could brilliantly succeed, on the London stage gave a potent stimulus to progress. It encouraged ambition in authors, enterprise in managers. What _Hernani_ was to the romantic movement of the 'thirties, and _La Dame aux camelias_ to the realistic movement of the 'fifties, _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_ was to the movement of the 'nineties towards the serious stage-portraiture of English social life. All the forces which we have been tracing--Robertsonian realism of externals, the leisure for thought and experiment involved in vastly improved financial conditions, the substitution in France of a simpler, subtler technique for the outworn artifices of the Scribe school, and the electric thrill communicated to the whole theatrical life of Europe by contact with the genius of Ibsen--all these slowly converging forces coalesced to produce, in _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_, an epoch-marking play.

Pinero followed up _Mrs Tanqueray_ with a remarkable series of plays--_The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith_, _The Benefit of the Doubt_, _The Princess and the Butterfly_, _Trelawny of the "Wells_," _The Gay Lord Quex_, _Iris_, _Letty_, _His House in Order_ and _The Thunderbolt_--all of which show marked originality of conception and intellectual force. In January 1893 Charles Wyndham initiated a new policy at the Criterion theatre, and produced an original play, _The Bauble-Shop_, by Henry Arthur Jones. It belonged very distinctly to the pre-Tanqueray order of things; but the same author's _The Case of Rebellious Susan_, in the following year, showed an almost startlingly sudden access of talent, which was well maintained in such later works as _Michael and his Lost Angel_ (1896), that admirable comedy _The Liars_ (1897), and _Mrs Dane's Defence_ (1900). Sydney Grundy produced after 1893 by far his most important original works, _The Greatest of These_ (1896) and _The Debt of Honour_ (1900). R. C. Carton, breaking away from the somewhat laboured sentimentalism of his earlier manner, produced several light comedies of thoroughly original humour and of excellent literary workmanship--_Lord and Lady Algy_, _Wheels within Wheels_, _Lady Huntworth's Experiment_, _Mr Hopkinson_ and _Mr Preedy and the Countess_. Haddon Chambers, in _The Tyranny of Tears_ (1899) and _The Awakening_ (1901), produced two plays of a merit scarcely foreshadowed in his earlier efforts.

What was of more importance, a new generation of playwrights came to the front. Its most notable representatives were J. M. Barrie, who displayed his inexhaustible gift of humorous observation and invention in _Quality Street_ (1902), _The Admirable Crichton_ (1903), _Little Mary_ (1903), _Peter Pan_ (1904), _Alice Sit-by-the-Fire_ (1905) and _What Every Woman Knows_ (1908); Mrs Craigie ("John Oliver Hobbes"), who produced in _The Ambassador_ (1898) a comedy of fine accomplishment; and H. V. Esmond, Alfred Sutro, Hubert Henry Davies, W. S. Maugham, Rudolf Besier, Roy Horniman and J. B. Fagan.

Meanwhile, the efforts to relieve the drama from the pressure of the long-run system had not been confined to the Independent theatre. Several other enterprises of a like nature had proved more or less short-lived; but the Stage Society, founded in 1900, was conducted with more energy and perseverance, and became a real force in the dramatic world. After two seasons devoted mainly to Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, Maeterlinck and Hauptmann, it produced in its third season _The Marrying of Ann Leete_, by Granville Barker (b. 1877), who had developed in its service his remarkable gifts as a producer of plays. A year or two later, Barker staged for another organization, the New Century theatre, Professor Gilbert Murray's rendering of the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides; and it was partly the success of this production that suggested the Vedrenne-Barker partnership at the Court theatre, which, between 1904 and 1907, gave an extraordinary impulse to the intellectual life of the theatre. Adopting the "short-run" system, as a compromise between the long-run and the repertory systems, the Vedrenne-Barker management made the plays of Bernard Shaw (both old and new) for the first time really popular. Of the plays already published _You Never Can Tell_ and _Man and Superman_ were the most successful; of the new plays, _John Bull's Other Island_, _Major Barbara_ and _The Doctor's Dilemma_. But though Shaw was the mainstay of the enterprise, it gave opportunities to several other writers, the most notable being John Galsworthy (b. 1867), author of _The Silver Box_ and _Strife_, St John Hankin (1869-1909), author of _The Return of the Prodigal_ and _The Charity that began at Home_, and Granville Barker himself, whose plays _The Voysey Inheritance_ and _Waste_ (1907) were among the most important products of this movement. It should also be noted that the production of the _Hippolytus_ was followed up by the production of the _Trojan Women_, the _Electra_ and the _Medea_ of Euripides, all translated by Gilbert Murray.

The impulse to which were due the Independent theatre, the Stage Society and the Vedrenne-Barker management, combined with local influences to bring about the foundation in Dublin of the Irish National theatre. Its moving spirit was the poet W. B. Yeats (b. 1865), who wrote for it _Cathleen-ni-Hoolihan_, _The Hour-Glass_, _The King's Threshold_ and one or two other plays. Lady Gregory, Padraic Collum, Boyle and other authors also contributed to the repertory of this admirable little theatre; but its most notable products were the plays of J. M. Synge (1871-1909), whose _Riders to the Sea_, _Well of the Saints_ and _Playboy of the Western World_ showed a fine and original dramatic faculty combined with extraordinary beauty of style.

Both in Manchester and in Glasgow endeavours have been made, with considerable success, to counteract the evils of the touring system, by the establishment of resident companies acting the better class of modern plays on a "short-run" plan, similar to that of the Vedrenne-Barker management. The Manchester enterprise was to some extent subsidized by Miss E. Horniman, and may therefore claim to be the first endowed theatre in England. The need for endowment on a much larger scale was, however, strongly advocated in the early years of the 20th century by the more progressive supporters of English drama, and in 1908 found a place in the scheme for a Shakespeare National theatre, which was then superimposed on the earlier proposal for a memorial commemorating the Shakespeare tercentenary, organized by an influential committee under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor of London. The scheme involved the raising of L500,000, half to be devoted to the requisite site and building, while the remainder would be invested so as to furnish an annual subvention.

It remains to say a few words of the English literary drama, as opposed to the acted drama. The two classes are not nearly so distinct as they once were; but plays continue to be produced from time to time which are wholly unfitted for the theatre, and others which, though they may be experimentally placed on the stage, make their appeal rather to the reading public. Tennyson had essayed in his old age an art which is scarcely to be mastered after the energy of youth has passed. He continued to the last to occupy himself more or less with drama, and all his plays, except _Harold_, found their way to the stage. _The Cup_ and _Becket_, as we have seen, met with a certain success, but _The Promise of May_ (1882), an essay in contemporary drama, was a disastrous failure, while _The Falcon_ (1879) and _The Foresters_ (acted by an American company in 1893) made little impression. Lord Tennyson was certainly not lacking in dramatic faculty, but he worked in an outworn form which he had no longer the strength to renovate. Swinburne continued now and then to cast his creations in the dramatic mould, but it cannot be said that his dramas attained either the vitality or the popularity of his lyrical poems. _Mary Stuart_ (1881) brought his Marian trilogy to a close. In _Locrine_ he produced a tragedy in heroic couplets--a thing probably unattempted since the age of Dryden. _The Sisters_ is a tragedy of modern date with a medieval drama inserted by way of interlude. _Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards_ (1899), perhaps approached more nearly than any of his former works to the concentration essential to drama. It may be doubted, however, whether his copious and ebullient style could ever really subject itself to the trammels of dramatic form. Of other dramas on the Elizabethan model, the most notable, perhaps, were the works of two ladies who adopt the pseudonym of "Michael Field"; _Callirrhoe_ (1884), _Brutus Ultor_ (1887), and many other dramas, show considerable power of imagination and expression, but are burdened by a deliberate artificiality both of technique and style. Alfred Austin put forth several volumes in dramatic form, such as _Savonarola_ (1881), _Prince Lucifer_ (1887), _England's Darling_ (1896), _Flodden Field_ (1905). They are laudable in intention and fluent in utterance. Notable additions to the purely literary drama were made by Robert Bridges in his _Prometheus_ (1883), _Nero_ (1885), _The Feast of Bacchus_ (1889), and other solid plays in verse, full of science and skill, but less charming than his lyrical poems. Sir Lewis Morris made a dramatic experiment in _Gycia_, but was not encouraged to repeat it.

From the outset of his career, John Davidson (1857-1909) was haunted by the conviction that he was a born dramatist; but his earlier plays, such as _Smith: a Tragedy_ (1886), _Bruce: a Chronicle Play_ (1884) and _Scaramouch in Naxos_ (1888), contained more poetry than drama; and his later pieces, such as _Self's the Man_ (1901), _The Theatrocrat_ (1905) and the _Triumph of Mammon_ (1907), showed a species of turbulent imagination, but became more and more fantastic and impracticable. Stephen Phillips (b. 1867), on the other hand, having had some experience as an actor, wrote always with the stage in view. In his first play, _Paolo and Francesca_ (1899; produced in 1902), he succeeded in combining great beauty of diction with intense dramatic power and vitality. The same may be said of _Herod_ (1900); but in _Ulysses_ (1902) and _Nero_ (1906) a great falling-off in constructive power was only partially redeemed by the fine inspiration of individual passages.

The collaboration of Robert Louis Stevenson with William Ernest Henley produced a short series of interesting experiments in drama, two of which, _Beau Austin_ (1883) and _Admiral Guinea_ (1884), had more than a merely experimental value. The former was an emotional comedy, treating with rare distinction of touch a difficult, almost an impossible, subject; the latter was a nautical melodrama, raised by force of imagination and diction into the region of literature. Incomparably the most important of recent additions to the literary drama is Thomas Hardy's vast panorama of the Napoleonic wars, entitled _The Dynasts_ (1904-1908). It is rather an epic in dialogue than a play; but however we may classify it we cannot but recognize its extraordinary intellectual and imaginative powers.

_United States._--American dramatists have shown on their own account a progressive tendency, quite as marked as that which we have been tracing in England. Down to about 1890 the influence of France had been even more predominant in America than in England. The only American dramatist of eminence, Bronson Howard (1842-1908), was a disciple, though a very able one, of the French school. A certain stirring of native originality manifested itself during the 'eighties, when a series of semi-improvised farces, associated with the names of two actor-managers, Harrigan and Hart, depicted low life in New York with real observation, though in a crude and formless manner. About the same time a native style of popular melodrama began to make its appearance--a play of conventional and negligible plot, which attracted by reason of one or more faithfully observed character-types, generally taken from country life. _The Old Homestead_, written by Denman Thompson, who himself acted in it, was the most popular play of this class. Rude as it was, it distinctly foreshadowed that faithfulness to the external aspects, at any rate, of everyday life, in which lies the strength of the native American drama. It was at a sort of free theatre in Boston that James A. Herne (1840-1901) produced in 1891 his realistic drama of modern life, _Margaret Fleming_, which did a great deal to awaken the interest of literary America in the theatrical movement. Herne, an actor and a most accomplished stage-manager, next produced a drama of rural life in New England, _Shore Acres_ (1892), which made an immense popular success. It was a play of the _Old Homestead_ type, but very much more coherent and artistic. His next play, _Griffith Davenport_ (1898), founded on a novel, was a drama of life in Virginia during the Civil War, admirable in its strength and quiet sincerity; while in his last work, _Sag Harbour_ (1900), Herne returned to the study of rustic character, this time in Long Island. Herne showed human nature in its more obvious and straightforward aspects, making no attempt at psychological subtlety; but within his own limits he was an admirable craftsman. The same preoccupation with local colour is manifest in the plays of Augustus M. Thomas, a writer of genuine humour and originality. His localism announces itself in the very titles of his most popular plays--_Alabama_, _In Mizzoura_, _Arizona_. He also made a striking success in _The Witching Hour_, a play dealing with the phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion. Clyde Fitch (1865-1909), an immensely prolific playwright of indubitable ability, after becoming known by some experiments in quasi-historic drama (notably _Nathan Hale_, 1898; _Barbara Frietchie_, 1899), devoted himself mainly to social drama on the French model, in which his most notable efforts have been _The Climbers_ (1900), _The Truth_ (1906), and _The Girl with the Green Eyes_ (1902). In popular drama, with elaborate scenic illustration, William Gillette (b. 1856), David Belasco (b. 1859) and Charles Klein (b. 1867) have done notable work. William Vaughn Moody (b. 1869) produced in _The Great Divide_ (1907) a play of somewhat higher artistic pretensions; Eugene Walter in _Paid in Full_ (1908) and _The Easiest Way_ (1909) dealt vigorously with characteristic themes of modern life; and Edward Sheldon produced in _Salvation Nell_ a slum drama of very striking realism. The poetic side of drama was mainly represented by Percy Mackaye (b. 1875), whose _Jeanne d'Arc_ (1906) and _Sappho and Phaon_ showed a high ambition and no small literary power. On the whole it may be said that, though the financial conditions of the American stage are even more unfortunate than those which prevail in England, they have failed to check a very strong movement towards nationalism in drama. Season by season, America writes more of her own plays, good or bad, and becomes less dependent on imported work, whether French or English. (W. A.)

(g) _German Drama._

The history of the German drama differs widely from that of the English, though a close contact is observable between them at an early point, and again at relatively recent points, in their annals. The dramatic literature of Germany, though in its beginnings intimately connected with the great national movement of the Reformation, soon devoted its efforts to a sterile imitation of foreign models; while the popular stage, persistently suiting itself to a robust but gross taste, likewise largely due to the influence of foreign examples, seemed destined to a hopeless decay. The literary and the acted drama were thus estranged from one another during a period of extraordinary length; nor was it till the middle of the 18th century that, with the opening of a more hopeful era for the life and literature of the nation, the reunion of dramatic literature and the stage began to accomplish itself. Before the end of the same century the progress of the German drama in its turn began to influence that of other nations, and by the widely comprehensive character of its literature, as well as by the activity of its stage, to invite a steadily increasing interest.

The Latin drama in Germany.

The Jesuit drama.

It should be premised that in its beginnings the modern German drama might have seemed likely to be influenced even more largely than the English or the French by the copious imitation of classical models which marked the periods of the Renaissance and the Reformation; but here the impulse of originality was wanting to bring about a speedy and gradually a complete emancipation, and imitative reproduction continued in an all but endless series. The first German (and indeed the earliest transalpine) writer to follow in the footsteps of the modern Latin drama of the Italians was the famous Strassburg humanist Jacob Wimpheling (1450-1528), whose comedy of _Stylpho_ (1480), an attack upon the ignorance of the pluralist beneficed clergy, marks a kind of epoch in the history of German dramatic effort. It was succeeded by many other Latin plays of various kinds, among which may be mentioned J. Kerckmeister's _Codrus_ (1485), satirizing pedantic schoolmasters; a series of historical dramas in a moralizing vein, partly on the Turkish peril, as well as of comedies, by Jacob Locher (1471-1528); two plays by the great Johann Reuchlin, of which the so-called _Henno_ went through more than thirty editions; and the _Ludus Dianae_, with another play likewise in honour of the emperor Maximilian I., by the celebrated Viennese scholar Conrad Celtes (1459-1508). Sebastian Brant's _Hercules in Bivio_ (1512) is lost; but Wilibald Pirckheimer's _Eckius dedolatus_ (1520) survives as a dramatic contribution to Luther's controversy with one of his most active opponents. The _Acolastus_ (1525) of W. Gnaphaeus (_alias_ Fullonius, his native name was de Volder) should also be mentioned in the present connexion, as, though a Dutchman by birth, he spent most of his literary life in Germany. This Terentian version of the parable of the Prodigal Son was printed in an almost endless number of editions, as well as in various versions in modern tongues, among which reference has already been made to the English, for the use of schools, by J. Palsgrave (1540). Macropedius (Langhveldt) belongs wholly to the Low Countries. In Germany the stream of these compositions continued to flow almost without abatement throughout the earlier half of the 16th century; but in the days of the Reformation it takes a turn to scriptural subjects, and during the latter part of the century remains on the whole faithful to this preference.[273] These Latin plays may be called school-dramas in the most precise sense; for they were both performed in the schools and read in class with commentaries specially composed for them; nor was it except very reluctantly that in this age the vernacular drama was allowed to intrude into scholastic circles. It should be noticed that the Jesuit order, which afterwards proved so keenly alive to the influence which dramatic performances exercise over the youthful mind, only very gradually abandoned the principle, formally sanctioned in their _Ratio studiorum_, that the acting of plays (these being always in the Latin tongue) should only rarely be permitted in their seminaries. The flourishing period of the Jesuit drama begins with the spread of the order in the west and south-west of the Empire in the last decade of the 16th century, and then continues, through the vicissitudes of good and evil, with a curious intermixture of Latin and German plays, during the whole of the 17th and the better part of the 18th. These productions, which ranged in their subjects from biblical and classical story to themes of contemporary history (such as the relief of Vienna by Sobiesky and the peace of Ryswick), seem generally to bear the mark of their authorship--that of teachers appointed by their superiors to execute this among other tasks allotted to them; but, as it seems unnecessary to return to this special growth, it may be added that the extraordinary productiveness of the Jesuit dramatists, and the steadiness of self-repetition which is equally characteristic of them, should warn us against underrating its influence upon a considerable proportion of the nation's educational life during a long succession of generations.

Beginnings of the vernacular German drama.

Hans Sachs.

The English comedians.

Separation between the stage and literature.

While the scholars of the German Renaissance, who became so largely the agents of the Reformation, eagerly dramatized scriptural subjects in the Latin, and sometimes (as in the case of Luther's protege P. Rebhun[274]) in the native tongue, the same influence made itself felt in another sphere of dramatic activity. Towards the close of the middle ages, as has been seen, dramatic performances had in Germany, as in England, largely fallen into the hands of the civic gilds, and the composition of plays was more especially cultivated by the master-singers of Nuremberg and other towns. It was thus that, under the influence of the Reformation, and of the impulse given by Luther and others to the use of High German as the popular literary tongue, Hans Sachs, the immortal shoemaker of Nuremberg, seemed destined to become the father of the popular German drama. In his plays, "spiritual," "secular," and _Fastnachtsspiele_ alike, the interest indeed lies in the dialogue rather than in the action, nor do they display any attempt at development of character. In their subjects, whether derived from Scripture or from popular legend and fiction,[275] there is no novelty, and in their treatment no originality. But the healthy vigour and fresh humour of this marvellously fertile author, and his innate sympathy with the views and sentiments of the burgher class to which he belonged, were elements of genuine promise--a promise which the event was signally to disappoint. Though the manner of Hans Sachs found a few followers, and is recognizable in the German popular drama even of the beginning of the 17th century, the literature of the Reformation, of which his works may claim to form part, was soon absorbed in labours of a very different kind. The stage, after admitting novelties introduced from Italy or (under Jesuit supervision) from Spain, was subjected to another and enduring influence. Among the foreign actors of various nations who flitted through the innumerable courts of the empire, or found a temporary home there, special prominence was acquired, towards the close of the 16th and in the early years of the 17th century, by the "English comedians," who appeared at Cassel, Wolfenbuttel, Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, &c. Through these players a number of early English dramas found their way into Germany, where they were performed in more or less imperfect versions, and called forth imitations by native authors. Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Luneburg[276] (1564-1613) and Jacob Ayrer (a citizen of Nuremberg, where he died, 1605) represent the endeavours of the early German drama to suit its still uncouth forms to themes suggested by English examples; and in their works, and in those of contemporary playwrights, there reappears no small part of what we may conclude to have been the "English comedians'" _repertoire_.[277] (The converse influence of German themes brought home with them by the English actors, or set in motion by their strolling ubiquity, cannot have been equal in extent, though Shakespeare himself may have derived the idea of one of his plots[278] from such a source). But, though welcome to both princes and people, the exertions of these foreign comedians, and of the native imitators who soon arose in the earliest professional companies of actors known in Germany, instead of bringing about a union between the stage and literature, led to a directly opposite result. The popularity of these strollers was owing partly to the (very real) blood and other horrors with which their plays were deluged, partly to the buffoonery with which they seasoned, and the various tricks and feats with which they diversified, their performances. The representatives of the English clowns had learnt much on their way from their brethren in the Netherlands, where in this period the art of grotesque acting greatly flourished. Nor were the aids of other arts neglected,--to this day in Germany professors of the "equestrian drama" are known by the popular appellation of "English riders." From these true descendants of the mimes, then, the professional actors in Germany inherited a variety of tricks and traditions; and soon the favourite figures of the popular comic stage became conventional, and were stereotyped by the use of masks. Among these an acknowledged supremacy was acquired by the native _Hans Wurst_ (Jack Pudding)--of whose name Luther disavowed the invention, and who is known already to Hans Sachs--the privileged buffoon, and for a long series of generations the real lord and master, of the German stage. If that stage, with its grossness and ribaldry, seemed likely to become permanently estranged from the tastes and sympathies of the educated classes, the fault was by no means entirely its own and that of its patron the populace. The times were evil times for a national effort of any kind; and poetic literature was in all its branches passing into the hands of scholars who were often pedants, and whose language was a jargon of learned affectations. Thus things continued, till the awful visitation of the Thirty Years' War cast a general blight upon the national life, and the traditions of the popular theatre were left to the guardianship of the marionettes (_Puppenspiele_)!

The literary drama of the 17th century.

When, in the midst of that war, German poets once more began to essay the dramatic form, the national drama was left outside their range of vision. M. Opitz, who holds an honoured place in the history of the German language and literature, in this branch of his labours contented himself with translations of classical dramas and of Italian pastorals--among the latter one of Rinuccini's _Daphne_, with which the history of the opera in Germany begins. A. Gryphius, though as a comic dramatist lacking neither vigour nor variety, and acquainted with Shakespearian[279] as well as Latin and Italian examples, chiefly devoted himself to the imitation of Latin, earlier French, and Dutch tragedy, the rhetorical dialogue of which he effectively reproduced in the Alexandrine metre.[280] Neither the turgid dramas of D. C. von Lohenstein (1665-1684), for whose _Cleopatra_ the honour of having been the first German tragedy has been claimed, nor even the much healthier comedies of Chr. Weise (1642-1708) were brought upon the stage; while the religious plays of J. Klay (1616-1656) are mere recitations connected with the Italian growth of the _oratorio_. The frigid allegories commemorative of contemporary events, with which the learned from time to time supplied the theatre, and the pastoral dramas with which the idyllic poets of Nuremberg--"the shepherds of the Pegnitz"--after the close of the war gratified the peaceful longings of their fellow-citizens, were alike mere scholastic efforts. These indeed continued in the universities and _gymnasia_ to keep alive the love of both dramatic composition and dramatic representation, and to encourage the theatrical taste which led so many students into the professional companies. But neither these dramatic exercises nor the _ludi Caesarei_ in which the Jesuits at Vienna revived the pomp and pageantry, and the mixture of classical and Christian symbolism, of the Italian Renaissance, had any influence upon the progress of the popular drama.

The stage before its reform.

The history of the German stage remains to about the second decennium of the 18th century one of the most melancholy, as it is in its way one of the most instructive, chapters of theatrical history. Ignored by the world of letters, the actors in return deliberately sought to emancipate their art from all dependence upon literary material. Improvisation reigned supreme, not only in farce, where _Hans Wurst_, with the aid of Italian examples, never ceased to charm his public, but in the serious drama likewise (in which, however, he also played his part) in those _Haupt- und Staatsactionen_ (high-matter-of-state-dramas), the plots of which were taken from the old stores of the English comedians, from the religious drama and its sources, and from the profane history of all times. The hero of this period is "Magister" J. Velthen (or Veltheim), who at the head of a company of players for a time entered the service of the Saxon court, and, by reproducing comedies of Moliere and other writers, sought to restrain the licence which he had himself carried beyond all earlier precedent, but who had to fall back into the old ways and the old life. His career exhibits the climax of the efforts of the art of acting to stand alone; after his death (c. 1693) chaos ensues. The strolling companies, which now included actresses, continued to foster the popular love of the stage, and even under its most degraded form to uphold its national character against the rivalry of the opera, and that of the Italian _commedia dell' arte_. From the latter was borrowed Harlequin, with whom _Hans Wurst_ was blended, and who became a standing figure in every kind of popular play.[281] He established his sway more especially at Vienna, where from about 1712 the first permanent German theatre was maintained. But for the actors in general there was little permanence, and amidst miseries of all sorts, and under the growing ban of clerical intolerance, the popular stage seemed destined to hopeless decay. A certain vitality of growth seems, under clerical guidance, to have characterized the plays of the people in Bavaria and parts of Austria.

F. K. Neuber, Gottsched, and the Leipzig school.

Ekhof

The first endeavours to reform what had thus apparently passed beyond all reach of recovery were neither wholly nor generally successful; but this does not diminish the honour due to two names which should never be mentioned without respect in connexion with the history of the drama. Friederike Karoline Neuber's (1697-1760) biography is the story of a long-continued effort which, notwithstanding errors and weaknesses, and though, so far as her personal fortunes were concerned, it ended in failure, may almost be described as heroic. As directress of a company of actors which from 1727 had its headquarters at Leipzig (hence the new school of acting is called the Leipzig school), she resolved to put an end to the formlessness of the existing stage, to separate tragedy and comedy, and to extinguish Harlequin. In this endeavour she was supported by the Leipzig professor J. Chr. Gottsched, who induced her to establish French tragedy and comedy as the sole models of the regular drama. Literature and the stage thus for the first time joined hands, and no temporary mischance or personal misunderstanding can obscure the enduring significance of the union. Not only were the abuses of a century swept away from a representative theatre, but a large number of literary works, designed for the stage, were produced on it. It is true that they were but versions or imitations from the French (or in the case of Gottsched's _Dying Cato_ from the French and English),[282] and that at the moment of the regeneration of the German drama new fetters were thus imposed upon it, and upon the art of acting at the same time. But the impulse had been given, and the beginning made. On the one hand, men of letters began to subject their dramatic compositions to the test of performance; the tragedies and comedies of J. E. Schlegel, the artificial and sentimental comedies of Chr. F. Gellert and others, together with the vigorous popular comedies of the Danish dramatist Holberg, were brought into competition with translations from the French. On the other hand, the Leipzig school exercised a continuous effect upon the progress of the art of acting, and before long K. Ekhof began a career which made his art a fit subject for the critical study of scholars, and his profession one to be esteemed by honourable men.

Lessing.

Among the authors contributing to Mme. Neuber's Leipzig enterprise had been a young student destined to complete, after a very different fashion and with very different aims, the work which she and Gottsched had begun. The critical genius of G. E. Lessing is peerless in its comprehensiveness, as in its keenness and depth; but if there was any branch of literature and art which by study and practice he made pre-eminently his own, it was that of the drama. As bearing upon the progress of the German theatre, his services to its literature, both critical and creative, can only be described as inestimable. The _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_, a series of criticisms of plays and (in its earlier numbers) of actors, was undertaken in furtherance of the attempt to establish at Hamburg the first national German theatre (1767-1769). This fact alone would invest these papers with a high significance; for, though the theatrical enterprise proved abortive, it established the principle upon which the progress of the theatre in all countries depends--that for the dramatic art the immediate theatrical public is no sufficient court of appeal. But the direct effect of the _Dramaturgie_ was to complete the task which Lessing had in previous writings begun, and to overthrow the dominion of the arbitrary French rules and the French models established by Gottsched. Lessing vindicated its real laws to the drama, made clear the difference between the Greeks and their would-be representatives, and established the claims of Shakespeare as the modern master of both tragedy and comedy. His own dramatic productivity was cautious, tentative, progressive. His first step was, by his _Miss Sara Sampson_ (1755), to oppose the realism of the English domestic drama to the artificiality of the accepted French models, in the forms of which Chr. F. Weisse (1726-1804) was seeking to treat the subjects of Shakespearian plays.[283] Then, in his _Minna von Barnhelm_ (1767), which owed something to Farquhar, he essayed a national comedy drawn from real life, and appealing to patriotic sentiments as well as to broad human sympathies. It was written in prose (like _Miss Sara Sampson_), but in form held a judicious mean between French and English examples.

Efforts of the theatre and of literature.

The note sounded by the criticisms of Lessing met with a ready response, and the productivity displayed by the nascent dramatic literature of Germany is astonishing, both in the efforts inspired by his teachings and in those which continued to controvert or which aspired to transcend them. On the stage, Harlequin and his surroundings proved by no means easy to suppress, more especially at Vienna, the favourite home of frivolous amusement; but even here a reform was gradually effected, and, under the intelligent rule of the emperor Joseph II., a national stage grew into being. The mantle of Ekhof fell upon the shoulders of his eager younger rival, F. L. Schruder, who was the first to domesticate Shakespeare upon the German stage. In dramatic literature few of Lessing's earlier contemporaries produced any works of permanent value, unless the religious dramas of F. G. Klopstock--a species in which he had been preceded by J. J. Bodmer--and the patriotic _Bardietten_ of the same author be excepted. S. Gessner, J. W. L. Gleim, and G. K. Pfeffel (1736-1809) composed pastoral plays. But a far more potent stimulus prompted the efforts of the younger generation. The translation of Shakespeare, begun in 1762 by C. M. Wieland, whose own plays possess no special significance, and completed in 1775 by Eschenburg, which furnished the text for many of Lessing's criticisms, helps to mark an epoch in German literature. Under the influence of Shakespeare, or of their conceptions of his genius, arose a youthful group of writers who, while worshipping their idol as the representative of nature, displayed but slight anxiety to harmonize their imitations of him with the demands of art. The notorious _Ugolino_ of H. W. von Gerstenberg seemed a premonitory sign that the coming flood might merely rush back to the extravagances and horrors of the old popular stage; and it was with a sense of this danger in prospect that Lessing in his third important drama, the prose tragedy _Emilia Galotti_ (1772), set the example of a work of incomparable nicety in its adaptation of means to end. But successful as it proved, it could not stay the excesses of the _Sturm und Drang_ period 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.

The Sturm und Drang.

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 most prolific of their number, M. F. von Klinger;[284] other members of the fraternity were J. A. Leisewitz[285] (1752-1806), M. R. Lenz[286] and F. Muller[287] 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 _Gutz 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 _Gutz_ 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.

Goethe.

Schiller.

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 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 _Gutz_, 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 _Gutz_, 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 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.

The popular stage.

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 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 Schruder 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.[288] 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.[289] 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[290] 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 to supply the needs of a theatre endeavouring to satisfy the demands of art.

The romantic school.

Meanwhile the so-called romantic school of German literature was likewise beginning to extend its labours to original dramatic composition. From the universality of sympathies proclaimed by this school, to whose leaders Germany owed its classical translation of Shakespeare,[291] and an introduction to the dramatic literatures of so many ages and nations,[292] a variety of new dramatic impulses might be expected; while much might be hoped for the future of the national drama (especially in its mixed and comic species) from the alliance between poetry and real life which they preached, and which some of them sought personally to exemplify. But in practice universality presented itself as peculiarity or even as eccentricity; and in the end the divorce between poetry and real life was announced as authoritatively as their union had been. Outside this school, the youthful talent of Th. Kurner, whose early promise as a dramatist[293] might perhaps have ripened into a fulness enabling him not unworthily to occupy the seat left vacant by his father's friend Schiller, was extinguished by a patriotic death. The efforts of M. von Collin (1779-1824) in the direction of the historical drama remained isolated attempts. But of the leaders of the romantic school, A. W.[294] and F. von Schlegel[295] contented themselves with frigid classicalities; and L. Tieck, in the strange alembic of his _Phantasus_, melted legend and fairy-tale, novel and drama,[296] poetry and satire, into a compound, enjoyable indeed, but hardly so in its entirety, or in many of its parts, to any but the literary mind.

Later dramatists.