German drama

“ He laid under contribution the rich Renaissance literature with which the humanistic translators had flooded Germany, and he became himself an ardent champion of the “Wittembergisch Nachtigall” Luther. But in the progressive movement of the German drama he played an even smaller rôle than his Swiss and Saxon contemporaries; for his tragedies and comedies are deficient in all dramatic qualities; they are only stories in dialogue. In the Fastnachtsspiele, where dramatic form is less essential than anecdotal point and brevity, he is to be seen at his best. ”

“ The net result of the municipal theatre, especially in German-speaking countries, is that the literary drama, both of the past and present, maintains a grip on the playgoing public which is outside English experience. There is in Germany a very flourishing modern German drama of literary merit. ”

“ German fidelity is the theme of the drama, and we see it here strong as an oak, defying all storms. German love blossoms, scarcely visible, in the far distance, but its violet-perfume appeals the more touchingly to our hearts. This drama, or rather this poem, contains passages which are among the most precious pearls of our literature; notwithstanding which, the theatre-going public received, or rather rejected, the piece with indifference. I will not censure the good people of the pit too severely for that. These people have certain needs, which they demand that the poet shall gratify. ”

“ But the German drama of this epoch is not to be judged solely by the theatres. At the middle of the century Germany could point to two writers who, each in his way, contributed very materially to the development of the modern drama. These were Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863) and Otto Ludwig (1813–1865) . Both of these men, as a later generation discovered, were the pioneers of that dramatic literature which at the close of the century accepted the canons of realism and aimed at superseding outward effects by psychological conflicts and problems of social life. ”

“ The result was the gradual evolution of a type of hero which modified the drama of the country. While the hero of old encountered and conquered obstacles mainly of external circumstance and complication, the hero of the present is the victim of doubts and moods rooted within himself, defeating his purpose and paralyzing his will.
The modern German drama deals with these conditions and characters. The writers whose creative instinct awoke in the seventies stood upon the firm ground of old traditions and were inspired by the optimism of the national renascence. ”

“ 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 The Latin drama in Germany.of originality was wanting to bring about a speedy and gradually a complete emancipation, and imitative reproduction continued in an all but endless series. ”

“ He exerted a powerful influence on the progress of the German drama by unfolding for the first time all the beauty, vigor, and originality of Shakespeare before the German mind, and by the profound and philosophical criticisms in his Dramaturgie. He pronounced a condemnatory judgment upon all foreign models except Shakespeare and the ancients, and demonstrated that the spirit of the age shrank from the mediæval sentimentality of epic poetry, and desired literature to reflect its own stirring energies, as the drama alone can do. ”

“ Since 1889, the drama has occupied the foreground of interest in Germany. The permanent repertory of the German theatre has not, it is true, been much enriched, but it is at least to the credit of contemporary German playwrights that they are unwilling to rest content with their successes and are constantly experimenting with new forms. ”

“ In it appears for the first time the disciplinary effect of naturalism upon literature in its loftiest mood. The blank verse is the best in the German drama, the only German blank verse, in truth, that satisfies an ear trained on the graver and more flexible harmony of English; the lyrical portions are of sufficient if inferior beauty. But there is no trace of the pseudo-heroic psychology of the romantic play. The interpretation of life is thoroughly poetic, but it is based on fact. The characters have tangible reality; they have the idiosyncrasies of men. ”

“ Under the influence of these two classes, German music, poetry, drama and literature came into existence. The German classic art is predominantly aristocratic and ecclesiastic. The early German artists were constrained to gather in the aristocratic salons of the rich patricians. The peasant was rarely a model of early German artists, but a German Freiherr, Bürger or Handwerker has been the subject of many German dramas, operas and musical compositions, and of much painting, sculpture and dancing. ”

“ Naturally enough, his plays are too outspoken in their realism to appeal to all his fellow-countrymen. But, if certain Germans reject this mental pabulum, others become intoxicated by it, and, waxing enthusiastic with a flow of language almost bacchic, hail Wedekind as the forerunner of a new drama—as a power destined to infuse fresh strength into the German stage. “With this drink in its body,” writes one admirer, “the public will never more endure lyrical lemonade, nor the dregs of dramatic penury.” ”

“ Persons familiar with the German tongue and the tetralogy, either from study of the book and music or from attendance on performances in Germany, were justified in being disappointed at the loss of two scenes highly important from a dramatic point of view and profoundly beautiful from a musical; but it was better to achieve success for the representations by adapting the drama to the capacity of the public than to sacrifice it bodily on the altar of integrity. ”

“ The monstrous extravagancies of the German drama would not have been endured at Paris. There they were refined enough to relish wit and sentiment. The obtuse faculties of the German are incapable of tasting the raillery of Molière or ye poetical harmony of Racine. Perhaps something may be imputed to their political situation, for there the limits or gradations are strictly preserved between the difft. classes, and a bourgeois knows nothing of life but the dull diary of his own. ”

“ By FRIEDRICH HEBBEL
TRANSLATED BY FRANCES H. KING It is probable that no German who is able to appreciate the power of the theatre, its silent influence on the people, and the consequent reaction on the development of dramatic talent, has looked on indifferently at the decay and complete ruin of our stage. The drama of a nation, conceived in a worthy sense, represents that nation in its self-consciousness ”

“ The development of the tale is not less admirable than the truth of the characters. As in the ancient statues which Goethe so warmly admired, each of the individual parts is in its proper place, and contributes what is demanded of it, and no more, to the idea as a whole. The diction and metre of the drama, always noble and harmonious, accord perfectly with its predominant spirit, and they may be said to have revealed for the first time the high capabilities of the German language as an instrument of dramatic expression. ”

“ Our author may be supposed to be at home in German literature; but his doctrines appear to us to be more questionable there, than upon any other subject. What the German dramatists really excel in, is the production of effect: but this is the very thing which their fastidious countryman most despises and abhors. They really excel all others in mere effect; and there is no nation that can excel all others in more than one thing. ”

“ Speaking generally, no theatres in Germany maintain the drama at a higher level than the municipal theatres in the large towns. The lower forms of the drama will find no home here, for public taste looks for the best that the stage can offer, and as the demand is, so is the supply. ”

“ In the ancient Saturnalia we have probably the germ of the present carnival, which is entirely an Italian invention. The Opera and the Ballet were also the invention of the Italians: two species of theatrical amusement, in which the dramatic interest is entirely subordinate to music and dancing.
If the German mind has not developed itself in the drama with the same fulness and ease as in other departments of literature, this defect is perhaps to be accounted for by the peculiar character of the nation. The Germans are a speculative people ”

“ In this provision the theatre takes an altogether dominant position, and the fact is significant as reflecting the great importance which in Germany is attributed to the drama as an educational and elevating influence in the life of the community. It may be that the practice of subsidizing the theatre is not altogether independent of the fact that the repertory theatre is universal in Germany, except in the smallest of provincial towns, with the result that a far more intimate tie exists between the drama and the community than is possible in the case of travelling companies. ”

“ To the German the theatre is a part of the machinery of culture, and accordingly he is not so easily bored as the Anglo-Saxon playgoer, who demands that drama shall contain that great essential of all good drama, action. To the Anglo-Saxon, the more plentiful and rapid the action is, the better. The German, differing from most Anglo-Saxons, likes historical scenes, great processions, costume festivals, the representation of mediæval events in which his monarchs and generals played conspicuous parts. The Emperor has the same disposition and taste. ”

“ In lighter vein the traveller finds much more to delight him in the operettas of Berlin. As at Vienna, they are better done than classical drama. That is not a slight on the stage. The vulgarity of English musical comedies and imported operettas is lacking on the Berlin and Vienna stage. German pieces of this kind are often extremely charming and diverting, and they impart that light-heartedness which is a first condition of a healthy mind. The audience is in no sense "highbrow," it is the general level of German humanity. ”

“ Our ordinary life gives us every day the most mournful realities, and the modern authors whose pleasure it is to bring these before us upon the stage have accepted an unhealthy mission and accomplish a discouraging work."
In his desire to see the theater aid in developing German ideals and in enriching German life, he has promoted presentations of the great episodes and personages in German history. ”

“ The quiet, dark wooden walls of the theatre, and the comfortable box they showed us into, in which we sat, seeing but unseen in the obscurity; the lack of applause when the curtain fell, and then—the performance. German actors lead the world, in my opinion, and the intensity of those players, the skill with which they played those most unhappy children, the tremulous, inadequate mother, that dark scene with its girl-women shriek, left us breathless and dazed. ”

“ Our theatres have been gradually moving, in a dignified way, towards the same goal, even the elegant German savant is now discovered—and we must now expect everything that does not conform to this law of elegance, our music, tragedy and philosophy, to be thrust aside as un-German. ”

“ I am not sufficiently acquainted with the latest dramatic productions of the English, to enter into a minute account of them. That the dramatic art and the public taste are, however, in a wretched state of decline, may, I think, be safely inferred from the following circumstance. Some years ago, several German plays found their way to the English stage; plays, which, it is true, are with us the favourites of the multitude, but which are not considered by the intelligent as forming a part of our literature, and in which distinguished actors are almost ashamed of earning applause. ”

“ Then at length, with the growing feeling of a general Germanic nationality and a general Germanic spirit and culture, with religious freedom established and controversy worn out, with the ideals of learning homogeneously spread, the time has come when literary genius finds its apt environment, and the thought and feeling of Germany take shape in dramas, ballads, lyrics, novels, and all other wonted forms. And then, for a generation, German literature is the dominant literature of Europe. ”

“ Now the opposite opinion could not be maintained with energy, unless the theatre was declared to be not only harmless, but even useful. To be useful, it must be moral; and in this direction it developed itself in North Germany the more as, by a sort of half-taste, the comic character [2] was banished, and although intelligent persons took his part, was forced to retire, having already gone from the coarseness of the German hanswurst (jack-pudding) into the neatness and delicacy of the Italian and French harlequins. ”

“ But he who knows [509] a little more of art and poetry than is learnt in a Berlin tavern frequented by realists, or in a low newspaper informed by this sort of company; he who contemplates in its entire range the contemporary movement of thought without stopping on the frontiers of his own country, can have no doubt whatever that German realism, as a local phenomenon, may have for Germany itself a melancholy importance, but does not exist at all for universal literature, because all trace of personal or national originality is lacking. ”