slow to develop on professional lines, owed a great impetus to the invasions. Germans attached themselves to the English companies, and in course of time imitated the English methods in companies of their own. The English plays served as models for German dramatists, of whom Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick and Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg were the best known.[1] On the other hand, the invaders themselves became denizened, at any rate to the extent of learning to give their performances in the German tongue. Moryson found Browne's company handicapped by their use of English at Frankfort in 1592. A Münster chronicler tells us that an anonymous company which visited his town in 1601 still played 'in ihrer engelschen Sprache', but that between the acts the clown amused the audience with 'bôtze und geckerie' in German.[2] In 1605 actors who petition for leave to appear at the Frankfort fair advertise their intention to give their comedies and tragedies 'in hochteutscher sprache', and there can be little doubt that, whatever may have been the case in Anglomaniac courts, theirs was the practice which ultimately prevailed in the cities.[3] Such portions of the repertories of the English actors as have been preserved are without exception in German. They are of singularly little literary value, fully bearing out Moryson's description of them as no more than 'peeces and patches' of English plays. But occasionally one of them possesses a critical interest as representing a play now lost or some earlier version of its model than that extant
- [Footnote: tempus relictis ad exteras nationes excurrere, artemque suam illis praesertim
Principum aulis demonstrare ostentareque consueverunt. Paucis ab hinc annis in Germaniam nostram Anglicani musici dictum ob finem expaciati, et in magnorum Principum aulis aliquandiu versati, tantum ex arte musica, histrionicaque sibi favorem conciliarunt, ut largiter remunerati domum inde auro et argento onusti sunt reversi'; Johannes Rhenanus, in dedication of Streit der Sinne (a translation of the English play of Lingua) to Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, '. . . die Engländischen Comoedianten (ich rede von geübten) anderen vorgehn und den Vorzug haben'; Daniel von Wensin, Oratio contra Britanniam, in Fr. Achillis Ducis Würtemberg, Consultatio de principatu inter provincias Europae habita Tubingae in illustri collegio (1613), 'Nec diu est cum plerique artifices in Anglia peregrini et exteri et aurifabri Londini pene omnes fuerunt Germani: Anglis interea gulae voluptatibus . . . et rebus nihili, atque adeo histrioniae iugiter operam dantibus; in qua sic profecerunt, ut iam apud nos Angli histriones omnium maxime delectent'.]
- ↑ Another example is Ioannes Valentinus Andreae, who writes in his Vita (ed. 1849), 10 'Iam a secundo et tertio post millesimum sexcentesimum coeperam aliquid exercendi ingenii ergo pangere, cuius facile prima fuere Esther et Hyacinthus comoediae ad aemulationem Anglicorum histrionum iuvenili ausu factae'.
- ↑ M. Röchell, Chronik, in Die Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster, iii. 174.
- ↑ E. Mentzel, Geschichte der Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt, 52.
