Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/379

Rh Gryphius' plays show the influence of the tragedies of Seneca and Vondel, and of the English plays which had already affected the ruder work of Jacob Ayrer (1595-1605), who "grafted the English dramatic style" (with its abundance of action and striking situations) "on to the style of Hans Sachs." Gryphius' tragedies—Leo Arminius, Catharina von Georgien, Ermordete Majestät oder Carolus Stuardus, &c., Cardenio und Celinde, Gross-muttiger Rechts-Gelehrter—breathe the same Christian spirit as Vondel's (three are, like so many of the Dutch poet's, martyr-plays), but Gryphius' are in the more melodramatic Senecan style, which Vondel outgrew as he became familiar with Greek tragedy. They are full of ghost scenes, atrocities, and bombast. The Cardenio und Celinde an Italian novella tragedy, is written in a simpler and more effective style.

But Gryphius' best plays are his two comedies, Peter Squenz and Horribilicribrifax. The first deals with the comic episodes, the acting of Bottom and his friends, in A Midsummer Night's Dream; the second is more a comedy of humours—the bragging soldier, the pedant, and the Jew. Both are written in prose.

In Friedrich von Logau (1605-1655) the early seventeenth century produced a satirical epigrammatist who was scantly appreciated in his lifetime. In 1638 he published Erstes Hundert Teutscher Reimen-Sprüche, and, in 1654, Salomons von Golaw Deutscher Sinn-Gedichte Drey Tausend. They were little noticed till republished in 1759. Logau was a patriot, and was not a great