Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/87

Rh griefs, not equally so when delivered in the midst of the scene itself, while the roar of flames and fighting and the crash of falling buildings are audible in the background. But Vondel's conception of a dramatic action was neither Shakespeare's nor Corneille's. His exercise in satirical and lyrical-descriptive poetry had matured his style, and the narrations are glowing, the Alexandrines stately and musical, while two of the choruses—in which another note, the Catholic, that was soon to become dominant in his poetry, appears for the first time—are among the finest of Vondel's lyrics,—the beautiful Christmas song—


 * "O kerstnacht schooner dan de dagen,"

and the noble ode to married love—

"Waer werd oprechter trouw                             Dan tusschen man en vrouw                               Ter wereld oit gevonden."

The Catholic atmosphere of the Gysbrecht—its glorification of Christmas and of martyrdom—excited the suspicions of the Amsterdam clergy, and in fact Vondel three years later became a Catholic, and that with all the zeal and devotion of his South Netherland and poetic temperament. The change affected all his subsequent work, colouring even his political sentiments, for the Catholics of Holland were in much closer sympathy than the Protestants with the inhabitants of the southern provinces.

The Gysbrecht was followed by thirty years of strenuous activity as a dramatist on Vondel's part,