Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/86

66 familiar with classical models whether he should express his religious sentiments in epic or tragic form. It was in part his admiration for Grotius which brought him back to the stage. In 1635 Grotius published his Latin tragedy Sophompaneas. Vondel, with the help of two friends, translated the play, and, to judge from the number of times it was subsequently performed at the new theatre, it must have been received with favour from the beginning. It was possibly the success of this translation, as well as Vondel's reputation as the first poet of the Academy,—now merged in the new Amsterdam Chamber,—which led to his being invited to compose the play with which the new theatre was opened in the following year. The subject he chose—Gysbrecht van Amstel (1637)—was suggested by Hooft's Geeraerdt van Velzen, and has the same patriotic motive,—to sing the praises of Amsterdam, her greatness material and spiritual. The device Vondel adopted is characteristic of the strange blend in Dutch poetry at this period of intense patriotism, national and local, with the devout and pedantic admiration of the classics. In substance the Gysbrecht is a dramatisation of the fall of Troy as narrated in the second book of the Æneid, adapted to Amsterdam, and that the Amsterdam not of the twelfth century, but of the poet's own day. The story is essentially an epic one, and the most striking scenes have to be narrated in detailed picturesque descriptions, appropriate enough in the mouth of Æneas as he sits at Dido's table while the shadows fall, and renews past