"Drum ist es nicht so Andacht, die mich treibt,
Wie inn'ge Liebe zu den alten Zeiten,
Die Rührung, die mich fesselt, dass wir jetzt
So wenig jenen grossen Gläub'gen gleichen."[1]
The principal masculine character in the play, the whimpering, whining villain Golo, is William Lovell over again, and William not in the least improved by being dressed up as a dramatic figure in a medieval tragedy.
Octavianus, the allegorical style of which has been strongly influenced by Heinrich von Ofterdingen, is, if possible, still more shapeless and incoherent than Genoveva. It strikes one as resembling nothing so much as a splendid collection of samples of all kinds of metres, those of Southern as well as of Northern Europe, and is in reality simply a fatiguing succession of carefully elaborated descriptions of impressions produced, moods inspired, by nature.
In the introduction to Phantasus, Tieck has himself described how all definite impressions of the surrounding world blend in his mind into a sort of mystic pantheism:—
"Was ich für Grott' und Berg gehalten,
Für Wald und Flur und Felsgestalten,
Das war ein einzigs grosses Haupt,
Statt Haar und Bart mit Wald umlaubt.
Still lächelt er, dass seine Kind'
In Spielen glücklich vor ihm sind
Er winkt und ahndungsvolles Brausen
Wogt her in Waldes heil'gem Sausen.
Da fiel ich auf die Kniee nieder
Mir zitterten in Angst die Glieder.
Ich sprach zum Kleinen nur das Wort:
Sag an, was ist das Grosse dort?
Der Kleine sprach: Dich fasst sein Graun,
Weil Du ihn darfst so plötzlich schaun,
Das ist der Vater, unser Alter,
Heisst Pan, von Allem der Erhalter."[2]
And Tieck looked at and apprehended human nature exactly as he looked at and apprehended forest and mountain. In describing it, too, he drowns all definiteness and character in the flood of mystic pantheism. And this mystic pantheism in his plays paves the way for the Christian mysticism distinguishing the Romantic drama.
Arnim and Brentano are hardly to be taken into account as dramatists. The latter, in his mad comedy, Ponce de Leon, the dialogue of which is loaded with wearisome play upon words, is the would-be disciple of Shakespeare, who has only succeeded in imitating the affectations of the master's youthful style. In his great Romantic drama, Die Gründung Prags ("The Founding of Prague"), he gives us sorcery and miracles, visions and prophecies, magic rings and curses, instead of real human beings and real action; the course of events is indicated by strange forebodings and unerring second-sight.
There is some resemblance between the manner in which Brentano has dramatised Slavonic legend in this play, and the Polish Romanticist Slowacki's treatment (in Lilla Weneda, for instance) of similar themes. Both, out of crude myths and traditions, have produced pictures of Slavonic heathendom which display a certain gift of intuition. The fact is that the Romantic authors of all lands had a keener sense for religious mysticism than for dramatic truth and effect. This play of Brentano's is actually declared to have influenced the mythological theories of his contemporaries, the brothers Grimm.
Arnim's Halle und Jerusalem, the "tragedy in two comedies," as he himself styled it, in which the legend of the Wandering Jew is interwoven with the story of Cardenio and Celinde, is one of the most intolerable productions of German Romanticism. It is a reading-drama of four hundred large octavo pages, which begins as a wild student's comedy in Halle, and develops into a pilgrim-mystery in Jerusalem. It turns upon the medieval idea of the Holy Sepulchre being the centre of the world; and it ends with an apparition of three crosses of fire above the graves of the three principal characters.
In one of the scenes Celinde attempts in the dead of night to cut the heart out of her dead lover's breast, that with its assistance she may perform certain magic rites which will ensure her possession of the heart of her living lover. The dead man, the blood pouring from his breast, rises out of his coffin, and complains of her treatment in such verse as:—