theatre. The Germans have often laughed at the confidants of French tragedy, because they are nothing else but mere confidants. But is not so consummate a lover, who neither hears nor sees any thing else, and who exhibits no other character, and no peculiarity, just as ridiculous? Norris dreads that the giddy, thoughtless conduct of the queen will be her ruin. He entreats for an audience, and this to tell her a thing that he might have easily communicated at the first assembly. The queen, without any regard for decorum, appoints him, quite innocently, to meet her late in the evening in private, as the king is at the chase. But the king happens to overhear their discourse, and their fate is decided. The queen is sent to the Tower, where she thinks she is merely lodged previous to her coronation, and amuses herself playing with the crown jewels; and the poet indulges himself in a few trespasses against truth and history. Catharine of Arragon is still alive. In the prelude she promises an honest and faithful servant and friend, as she foresees evil days coming. on, to request, as a last favour from Henry, some post for this worthy man, in which his mildness and gentleness may be of some advantage. And, what post does the reader suppose is selected? The lieutenancy of the Tower!! We must acknowledge that, for a soft-hearted gentleman, he had rather a curious fancy. 'Catharine opens the third act sitting among a set of children, whom she is benevolently instructing in female works. The haughty Catharine of Arragon! In Shakspeare, indeed, she is embroidering among her maids, but that is different from teaching children. This piece of little life (kleinleben), says Mr. Tieck, so sentimentally presented, and which has so often tormented us in Iffland's pieces, is here most certainly out of place. The lieutenant of the Tower now appears, and brings various articles of news. First, Catharine may see her daughter Mary, from whom she has been long separated: she is overjoyed at this. But Anne Boleyn is in prison, in despair, and no one takes any concern about her. Catharine at once feels that it is her duty to go and comfort her, though by so doing she must give up seeing her daughter, as the permission was only for a few hours!! Here again is generosity upon generosity; false heraldry. Anne might have suspected that her former mistress would rejoice at her fall, and this consideration would, we might suppose, have withheld a person of delicate feelings from visiting her. But a trifle of this kind gives our young poet no concern. The good lieutenant's budget is not yet exhausted: the last and most important piece of news comes now. The king has carried off a beautiful maid, intending to make her his mistress, and the mother of the young lady had been Catharine's friend. The tragedy at this point actually gets into a comic situation, for the good-hearted queen is determined to save this innocent maiden from the rude power of Henry. The sentimental Henry had, it seems, lost his way in the chase, and in a retreat embosomed in trees he gets. acquainted with this maiden. Instantly he falls in love, but he is excessively agitated when he hears that her name is Catharine. The real Henry, observes our critic, afterwards married Catharine Howard and Catharine Parr. In a few words, she of Arragon annihilates him: he surrenders to her his prey, and moreover gives her permission to visit the prisoners in the Tower. There must be here something perfectly unnatural in the play, and I am afraid that a certain suspicion that immediately entered my mind is not without foundation. The king is in other respects a free agent; but this circumstance, his surrendering so cheerfully to the first Catharine the second of the name, almost without being asked, must have been his punishment and his fate. A very pretty tale might beyond doubt be written on the fates of Fate, from the time when Schiller first mentioned it in his Wallenstein and his Epigrams, how from that period it was forced to wind through the destinies of the Jungfrau, and to appear like a spectre in the Braut von Messina, was tortured in the Schuld, scarce survived the Februarfieber, was taken up exhausted and lifeless by the Ahnfrau and the Bilde, and in the present feeble composition will finally expire totally nerveless.'-Vol. i. pp. 30-39. The queen now hastens to the Tower, quite convinced of Anne's innocence. She consoles the sufferer, and learns from Dudley, that Cromwell, who is related to Norris, has given him permission to visit the friend of his youth once more. Catharine also consents to this, and they take their last farewell of each other before her eyes, and the piece concludes. The story of Anne Boleyn is not new to the stage, it had already been brought on both the German and English theatre, and Calderon has a piece on this subject, called La Cisma d'Inglaterra, which contains the divorce, Wolsey's fall, and the execution of Anne, treated in his usual manner, allegorically, adorned with prophecies, and with all the ardour of a zealous Catholic. His main object is the justification of the church from the charges brought against her. 'It may be asked,' says our author, what a historical drama properly is, and if it should never be permitted to depart from the real truth?— I shall have an opportunity to return to this subject, and to throw light on it from various sides. The French, who have made of tragedy a rhetorical piece of art, reject every subject near in time and place, as well as all reality: distant periods must supply their materials, and their critics, with great naiveté, determine, that a very remote, still better a tolerably unknown, country, such as China, Tartary, and the like, may, to a certain extent, supply the place of antiquity, and that, consequently, one may venture to bring on the stage even the modern history of these countries. To dwell on the subject of their native land, to invoke what is most elevated in the state, and in their own history, is for them not merely a matter of indifference, but directly confuses them. In this manner they have got their ideal, as they term it, of tragedy. When Shakspeare first became popular in Germany, several writers pursued quite a contrary course. They could not get casualties enough, which they newly stuck into their dramas, together with all the anecdotes and speeches just as they found them, and this crude beginning they termed nature. But if we look closer at the matter, we shall find, in these pieces, much common-place, unsuitable morality, cold reflection, and the like, which spring any where but from the tenour of their works. And again, every French tragedy reflects to us at least the life of the nation, what its wish is, and what it strains after; and the perfectly modern sentiments contrast pleasingly enough with the pomp of the stilted language it employs. Shakspeare, the greatest dramatic poet, shows himself in his historical compositions to be the greatest of historic painters. As he is continually creating new forms, he does the same in his histories; each of his national plays is treated in a new manner, his Roman pieces again in another mode, and his King John is different from all his other plays.'-Vol. i. pp. 42, 43. We now proceed to Wallenstein, the noblest production of the German theatre, and the finest drama that has appeared since the days of Shakspeare. Mr. Tieck's critique on this wonderful piece is extremely valuable, and it is greatly to be regretted, that, like his countrymen in general, he has the knack of enveloping the simplest and plainest notions in a mist of words, raised by the aid of the sorcerer Metaphor, which must, to common readers, and to those who are not expert in dispelling the cloud, and viewing things in their true form, be quite impenetrable. It is, we repeat it, greatly to be regretted, that the writers of so sincere and truehearted a nation, should have given into a mode of writing so easily acquired, and which must, to the lover of simple truth, have so much the appearance of trick and paltry artifice. The fault certainly lies not in the language, for what writers are easier to be understood than Lessing and Wieland, and yet their sense is fully as profound as that of the Schlegels, or the present writer, or even Jean Paul, or the formidable Kant himself, the character of whose writings is most justly given by Mr. Dugald Stewart, though, fortunately for himself, he never underwent the misery of toiling through the works of the philosopher of Konigsburg. To return to Wallenstein. Nothing can be finer than the opening scene of the first part, the Piccolomini. Equally fine is the scene of the audience in the second act, every word has power, and the events of the preceding war, and its consequences, are set full in the view of the spectator. He feels himself transported back to that very period. The table scene is also deserving of high admiration, though Mr. Tieck thinks the art too manifest, in placing the servants in the foreground. This may be true, but the effect is fine, at least to us. In the second piece, Wallenstein's death, the scene between Wallenstein and Wrongel is most highly praised by our critic. He also commends the last scene, though he thinks it excites in the breast of the spectator too much melancholy weariness of life, contempt of its magnificence, and doubt in all greatness and strength of character; and certainly,' continues he, a tragedy which has selected this great subject, and which has been conducted with such strength, should not conclude with these feelings.' Every reader must have been struck with the extreme beauty of the scene in which Thekla, the daughter of Wallenstein, appears, and, perhaps, few more powerful scenes are to be found than that between her and the Swedish captain, wherein she learns the particulars of the fall of her lover, the younger Piccolomini. Yet Mr. Tieck regrets, and with reason, that Schiller should have mingled love and its tender idyllic scenes with the deep and awful interest of Wallenstein's mighty plans, and of the fate that seemed to impend over the whole of Germany. Thekla, however, is a beautiful creation, and we should fear to lose her, lest we might never meet her again. Perhaps her character is too romantic, but what heart can resist such tender melancholy as is expressed in 'Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken zeihn, &c.' 'Schiller has exhibited no great variety in the creation of his female characters; this is precisely the point in which his weakness is most apparent. His heroines are all so thoroughly imbued with love, that in their lofty and noble passion, they appear invincible. On their very first appearance, they speak out so strong and so full, that there is scarcely any room for farther ascent. Hence with him love is a lofty species of intoxication, or a noble resignation, and in all these characters we rather hear the poet speak than nature. Strange that this very defect seems to be what has won him all hearts. The Amalie of his early piece, the Robbers, is altogether dithyrambic. Louisa in Kabale und Liebe is a perfect likeness of her. Leonora in Fiesco is nothing but a feeble image of the latter, because in this piece the plot and historical complexity prevail. The queen in Carlos is just as great, noble, and devoted; and even the most partial admirers of the poet could not absolutely deny, with respect to Eboli, and similar characters, that they are ill drawn. In Thekla, this idea of the female character, which should rather be called an abstraction than nature, expresses itself in the noblest manner. In Marie Stuart, the poet was compelled, by history, to give her more of truth, weakness and error, and she is, accordingly, his most successful female character. The extraordinary Jungfrau appears in the beginning awkward and strange, but in her incomprehensible love, she is again in the manner of the poet. It is just the same with the Braut von Messina, and the young lady in Tell. If it be said that in our greatest poet also, Clärchen and Margarethe, these wonderful creations have a similar physiognomy, nay even though Marian in Clavigo and in Götz, might in a certain sense be joined with them, as well as Mariane in the Geschwister; yet when we regard the pure Iphigenia, the Princess Leonora, and several excellent portraits, which appear to us in his minor pieces, as well as in his tales and romances, we must admire in them the rich creative gifts of the poet, as well as the truth in his forms, and the genuine female character in such various modifications. Our confused times, and the continually increasing wild anarchy, has made it necessary to bring to mind things like this, which might otherwise appear superfluous.'-Vol. i. pp. 71-73. A great fault in Schiller is, that he frequently gives sentiments and reflections to his personages which do not at all correspond with their characters, and which evidently belong rather to the reflecting poet, than to the acting personage, or may be more pro perly said to express the feelings of an anxious and interested spectator. This fault, like every other of this great poet, is least perceptible in Wallenstein, very much so in Marie Stuart, still more in the Jungfrau, and attains its acmè in the Braut von Messina. And these purpurei panui, which adhereuso loosely to the piece, and, as it were, fall out of it at once, are precisely those that are most admired, best remembered, and most often repeated. Schiller, in fact, if he has been the great raiser of the German drama, and the great assertor of its dignity, is also the man who has first contributed to its corruption, by laying the foundation of the present bewildered and immoral state into which it has fallen in the hands of Müllner and others, when he introduced Destiny (Schieksal) in so prominent a manner, and poured forth those lyrical effusions, so beautiful, but so alien to the genuine drama. In the third act, Thekla thus expresses herself to Max Piccolomini. In deiner Seele lebt Ein hoher Muth, die Liebe giebt ihn ein- Wenn Du sie nicht auf meinem Munde findest? Umschlungen, fest und ewig.'-Vol. i. p. 75. 'Beautiful! exclaims the critic. Juliet, in the moonlight, expresses herself in a similar manner. But she is just come from the ball, intoxicated with love, and has been brought up at home, and that chiefly by a nurse, who was not over scrupulous, and not in a convent (like Thekla). Miranda, too, in the Tempest, says nearly the same words, but here too the circumstances are different, and the speaker herself especially of quite another character. Thekla's song, too, beautiful as it is, removes us too far from the world of war and history, and brings the play too near to the romantic, into which it cannot and should not enter.' This is extremely judicious, and yet there is something inexpressibly charming in the romantic air which pervades the theatre of Schiller. The drama, it is well known, terminates with the death of Wallenstein. Mr. Tieck thus proceeds: 'After the death of the hero, will the emperor miss him? Will the army remain the same? Will not the Swedes now, without opposition, command the country? With respect to all this, or even the fate of Octavio Piccolomini, we learn nothing, can guess nothing; and in this instance, as in so many other modern ones, the whole poem is closely attached to the person of one man; he falls, and all is over, without that being explained which so frequently demanded our attention in the progress of the work. It is concluded, but not finished. It, consequently, resembles many a building of antiquity, which was commenced on a large scale, but owing to hard times, and want of means, has never been completed.'-Vol. i. pp. 79, 80. |