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 to supply the needs of a theatre endeavouring to satisfy the demands of art.

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, and an introduction to the dramatic literatures of so many ages and nations, 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. Körner, whose early promise as a dramatist 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. and F. von Schlegel contented themselves with frigid classicalities; and L. Tieck, in the strange alembic of his Phantasus, melted legend and fairy-tale, novel and drama, 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.

F. de La Motte Fouqué infused a spirit of poetry into the chivalry drama. Klemens Brentano was a fantastic dramatist unsuited to the stage. Here a feeble outgrowth of the romanticists, the “destiny dramatists” Z. Werner —the most original of the group—A. Müllner, and Baron C. E. v. Houwald, achieved a temporary furore; and it was with an attempt in the same direction that the Austrian dramatist F. Grillparzer began his long career. He is assuredly, what he pronounced himself to be, the foremost of the later dramatic poets of Germany, unless that tribute be thought due to the genius of H. von Kleist, who in his short life produced, besides other works, a romantic drama and a rustic comedy of genuine merit, and an historical tragedy of singular originality and power. Grillparzer’s long series of plays includes poetic dramas on classical themes and historical subjects from Austrian history, or treated from an Austrian point of view. The romantic school, which through Tieck had satirized the drama of the bourgeoisie and its offshoots, was in its turn satirized by Count A. von Platen-Hallermund’s admirable imitations of Aristophanic comedy. Among the objects of his banter were the popular playwright E. Raupach, and K. Immermann, a true poet, who is, however, less generally remembered as a dramatist. F. Hebbel is justly ranked high among the foremost later dramatic poets of his country, few of whom equal him in intensity. The eminent lyrical (especially ballad) poet L. Uhland left behind him a large number of dramatic fragments, but little or nothing really complete. Other names of literary mark are those of C. D. Grabbe, J. Mosen, O. Ludwig (1813–1865), a dramatist of great power, and “F. Halm” (Baron von Münch-Bellinghausen) (1806–1871), and, among writers of a more modern school, K. Gutzkow, G. Freytag, and H. Laube. L. Anzengruber, a writer of real genius though restricted range, imparted a new significance to the Austrian popular drama, formerly so commonplace in the hands of F. Raimund and J. Nestroy.

During the long period of transition which may be said to have ended with the establishment of the new German empire, the German stage in some measure anticipated the developments which more spacious times were to witness in the German drama. The traditions of the national theatre contemporary with the great epoch of the national literature were kept alive by a succession of eminent actors—such as the nephews of Ludwig Devrient, himself an artist of the greatest originality, whose most conspicuous success, though nature had fitted him for Shakespeare, was achieved in Schiller’s earliest play. Among the younger generation of Devrients the most striking personality was that of Emil; his elder brother Karl August, husband of Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, the brilliant star of the operatic stage, and their son Friedrich, were also popular actors; yet another brother, Eduard, is more widely remembered as the historian of the German stage. Partly by reason of the number and variety of its centres of intellectual and artistic life, Germany was long enabled both to cherish the few masterpieces of its own drama, and, with the aid of a language well adapted for translation, to give admittance to the dramatic masterpieces of other nations also, and to Shakespeare in particular, without going far in the search for theatrical novelty or effect. But a change came over the spirit of German theatrical management with the endeavours of H. Laube, from about the middle of the century onwards, at Vienna (and Leipzig), which avowedly placed the demands of the theatre as such above those of literary merit or even of national sentiment. In a less combative spirit, F. Dingelstedt, both at Munich, which under King Maximilian he had made a kindly nurse of German culture, and, after his efforts there had come to an untimely end, at Weimar and at Vienna, raised the theatre to a very high level of artistic achievement. The most memorable event in the annals of his managements was the production on the Weimar stage of the series of Shakespeare’s histories. At a rather later period, of which the height extended from 1874 to 1890, the company of actors in the service, and under the personal direction, of Duke George of Saxe-Meiningen, created a great effect by their performances both in and outside Germany—not so much by their artistic improvements in scenery and decoration, as by the extraordinary perfection of their ensemble. But no dramaturgic achievement in the century could compare in grandeur either of conception or of execution with Richard Wagner’s Bayreuth performances, where, for the first time in the history of the modern stage, the artistic instinct ruled supreme in all the conditions of the work and its presentment. Though the Ring of the Nibelungs and its successors belong to opera rather than drama proper, the importance of their production (1876) should be overlooked by no student of the dramatic art. Potent as has been the influence of foreign dramatic literatures—whether French or Scandinavian—and that of a movement which has been common to them all, and from which the German was perhaps the least likely to exclude itself, the most notable feature in the recent history of the German drama has been its quick response to wholly new demands, which, though the attempt was made with some persistence, could no longer be met without an effort to span the widths and sound the depths of a more spacious and more self-conscious era. 