Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/101

RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 89 dred and seventy-seven representations. c Hamlet ' heads the list with three hundred and fourteen performances. Wilhelm Kosch, in his 'Theater und Drama des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,' treats of German dramas from Iffland to Gerhart Hauptmann. He draws a very interesting and necessary distinction between realism, taking Hebbel as its exponent, and naturalism, of which Hauptmann is in Ger- many the greatest living exponent. But the author comes to the conclusion, as indeed do all these writers on the stage, that progress in the theatre depends upon the plays composed and represented. For the first time there is appearing, under the competent editorship of Ludwig Schiedermair, a complete and accurate edition of Mozart's letters, and those of his family addressed to or relating to him. Only passages from them, often mutilated and inexaft, have before been published. Schieder- mair has gathered his material from far and wide. Volumes i and ii, now available, contain Mozart's letters from boyhood to his last days in chrono- logical order ; volumes iii and iv, to appear shortly, will contain the letters of the family. The whole will make a perfedt biography of the great com- poser. A fifth volume will be a * Mozart-Icono- graphie.' Mozart's letters as here set forth are peculiarly interesting. He discusses problems of life, thought and aftion, in their most intimate relations as they affe<5ted him and his life. He expresses his views of things without restraint, as the letters were only intended for the small circle