Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/461

GE2MAN.J DBA M A 441 recently claimed, nor even the healthier comedies of Chr. Weise (1642-1708) were brought upon the stage; while the religious plays of J. Klay (1616-1656) are mere recita tions connected with the Italian growth of the oratorio. The frigid allegories commemorative of contemporary events, with which the learned from time to time supplied the theatre, and the pastoral dramas with which the idyllic poets of Nuremberg "the shepherds of the Pegnitz" after the close of the war gratified the peaceful longings of their fellow-citizens, were alike mere scholastic efforts. These indeed continued in the universities and gymnasia to keep alive the love of both dramatic composition and dramatic representation, and to encourage the theatrical taste which led so many students into the professional companies. But neither these dramatic exercises nor the ludi Ccesarei in which the Jesuits at Vienna revived the pomp and pageantry, and the mixture of classical and Christian symbolism, of the Italian Renaissance, had any influence upon the progress of the popular drama. The history of the German stage remains to about the second decennium of the 18th century one of the most melancholy, as it is in its way one of the most instructive, chapters of theatrical history. Ignored by the world of letters, the actors in return deliberately sought to emancipate their art from all dependence upon literary material. Improvisation reigned supreme, not only in farce, where Hans Wurst, with the aid of Italian examples, never ceased to charm his public, but in the serious drama likewise (in which, however, he also played his part) in those Haupt- und Staatsactionen (high-matter-of-state- dramas), the plots of which were taken from the old stores of the English comedians, from the religious drama and its sources, and from the profane history of all times, The hero of this period is "Magister " J. Velthen, who at the head of a company of players for a time entered the service of the Saxon court, and by producing comedies of Moliere and other writers sought to restrain the licence which he had himself carried beyond all earlier precedent, but who had to fall back into the old ways and the old life. His career exhibits the climax of the efforts of the art of acting to stand alone; after his death (c. 1693) chaos ensues. The strolling companies, which now included actresses, con tinued to foster the popular love of the stage, and even under its most degraded form to uphold its national character against the rivalry of the opera, and that of the Italian corn-media delVarte. From the latter was borrowed Harlequin, with whom Hans Wurst was blended, and who became a standing figure in every kind of popular play. He established his rule more especially at Vienna, where from about 1712 the first permanent German theatre was maintained But for the actors in general there was little permanence , and amidst miseries of all sorts, and under the growing ban of clerical intolerance, the popular stage seemed destined to hopeless decay. The first endeavours to reform what had thus apparently passed beyond all reach of recovery wyre neither wholly nor generally successful ; but this does not diminish the honour due to two names which should never be mentioned without respect in connection with the history of the drama. Friderica Caroline Neuber s (1690-1760) bio graphy is the story of a long-continued effort which, not withstanding errors and weaknesses, and though, so far as her personal fortunes were concerned, it ended in failure, may almost be described as heroic. As directress of a company of actors which from 1727 had its headquarters at Leipsic (hence the new school of acting is called the Leipsic school), she resolved to put an end to the form lessness of the existing stage, to separate tragedy and comedy, and to extinguish Harlequin. In this endeavour she was supported by the Leipsic professor J. Chr. Gottsched (1672-1766), who induced her to establish French tragedy and comedy as the sole models of the regular drama. Literature and the stage thus for the first time joined hands, and no temporary mischance or personal misunderstanding can obscure the enduring significance of the union. Not only were the abuses of a century swept away from a representative theatre, but a large number of literary works, designed for the stage, were produced on it. It is true that they were but versions or imitations from the French (or in the case of Gottsched s Dying Cato from the French and English), 1 and that at the moment of the regeneration of the German drama new fetters were thus imposed upon it, and upon the art of acting at the same time. But the impulse had been given, and the beginning made. On the one hand men of letters began to subject their dramatic compositions to the test of performance ; the tragedies and comedies of J. E. Schlegel (1718-1749), the artificial and sentimental comedies of Chr. F. Gellert (1715-1769) and others, together with the vigorous popular comedies of the Danish dramatist Holberg, were brought into competition with translations from the French. On the other hand, the Leipsic school exercised a con tinuous effect upon .the progress of the art of acting, and before long the Garrick of Germany, C. Eckhof (1720- Eckhoi 1778), began a career, outwardly far humbler than that of the great English actor, but which made his art a fit subject for the critical study of scholars, and his profession one for the equal esteem of honourable men. Among the authors contributing to Mme. Neuber s Le Leipsic enterprise had been a young student destined to complete, after a very different fashion and with very different aims, the work which she and Gottsched had begun. The critical genius of G. E. Lessing (1729-1781) is peerless in its comprehensiveness, as in its keenness and depth; but if there was any branch of literature and art which by study and practice he made pre-eminently his own, it was that of the drama. As bearing upon the progress of the German theatre, his services to its literature, both critical and creative, can only be described as inestimable. The Hamlmrgische Dramaturgic, a series of criticisms of plays and (in its earlier numbers) of actors, was undertaken in furtherance of the attempt to establish at Hamburg the first national German theatre (1767-9). This alone would invest these papers with a high significance ; for though the theatrical enterprise proved abortive, yet it established the principle upon which the future of the theatre in all countries depends, that for the dramatic art the immediate theatrical public is no sufficient court of appeal. But the direct effect of the Dramaturgic was to complete the task Lessing had in previous writings begun, and to overthrow the dominion of the arbitrary French rules and the French models established by Gottsched. Lessing vindicated its real laws to the drama, made clear the difference between the Greeks and their would-be representatives, and established the claims of Shakespeare as the modern master of both tragedy and comedy. His own dramatic productivity was cautious, tentative, progressive. His first step was, by his Miss Sara Sampson (1755), to oppose the realism of the English domestic drama to the artificiality of the accepted French models, in the forms of which Chr. F. Weisse (1726-1804) was seeking to treat the subjects of Shakespearian plays. 2 Then, in his Minna von Barnhelm (1767) he essayed a national comedy drawn from real life, and appealing to patriotic sentiments as well as to broad human sympathies, written in prose (like M iss Sara Sampson), but in form holding a judicious mean between French and English examples. The note sounded by the criticisms of Lessing nut with a 1 Desckarmis and Addison. 2 Richard III.; Roine^ and Juliet

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