duce Corneille and Racine. That the people would have had more taste for them, and that Shakspeare would have awakened a very different genius to that excited by these French tragic writers, inasmuch as genius can be kindled only by genius, and most readily by one who seemed to owe all to nature, and was not intimidated by the laborious perfections of art. That even when compared with the ancients, Shakspeare was infinitely superior and more tragic than Corneille, although the latter was intimately acquainted with the ancient writers, and Shakspeare knew next to nothing about them. That it was not in mere mechanical arrangement (like Corneille) that Shakspeare more closely resembled them, but in all essential points. For, that he almost invariably attained the object of tragedy —however strange and peculiar might be the paths he selected-whereas the French writers almost as invariably failed to do so, although they followed the path paved by the ancients, etc.

The last proposition Lessing discussed more fully in his 'Hamburgische Dramaturgie' (1767-68). His object there was to show more especially what a gulf separated the French from the ancient drama, and how in all essential points it differed widely from the rules of Aristotle, whereas Shakspeare's works could generally be made to harmonise with them very well. The last portion of his 'Dramaturgie' closes with the words: I should be vain enough to fancy that I had done something for our stage, could I venture to believe that I had succeeded in finding the only means to check the influence of the present ferment in matters of taste. I can, however, take to myself the credit of having aimed at it, inasmuch as I have allowed nothing to be more pressing than to protest against the folly of the regularity of the French drama. No nation, in fact, has misunderstood the rules of the ancient drama more than the French. A few cursory observations which they found in Aristotle in regard to the appropriate arrangement of the drama they made essential principles, and so weakened what was essential by all kinds of limitations and quibblings, that their works were far from producing that highest effect for which the philosopher had devised his rules.'

The essential, in Lessing's opinion, is that which Aris totle says in regard to the peculiar object of tragedy; and then with his irresistible ingenuity, and his equally irresistible and drastic manner of representing things-in which every word is a fact—he explains the Aristotelian doctrine of pity and of fear, and of the purification of these passions, in which, according to Aristotle, the object of tragedy consists. Lessing's principal idea is that the pity, of which Aristotle speaks, is not mere philanthropy but an emotion, and so directly connected with fear that fear cannot exist with pity, and vice versa; and that the purification which Aristotle wished, does not apply to all passions without distinction, but again only to pity and fear and those πalýμaта connected with or arising from these. He shows, more particularly, that Aristotle's opinion had hitherto been misunderstood by all, especially by Corneille, Dacier, and the French tragic writers, and that therefore their tragedies possessed everything except what they ought to possess, in other words, that they were refined, very instructive plays, but not tragedies. The authors,' he goes on to say, 'could not but have been very clever men, and some of them deserve no small place among poets; but they are no tragic poets, Corneille and Racine, Crébillon and Voltaire have little or nothing of that which made Sophocles a Sophocles, Euripides an Euripides, and Shakspeare a Shakspeare. The latter rarely act in contradiction to the demands of Aristotle, but the former have done so all the more frequently.' In another passage Lessing rejects Wieland's defence of Shakspeare's mixture of tragedy and comedy, but only in order to defend it the more thoroughly. He maintains that nature does not altogether justify the mixture, as in that case every dramatic monster, without either plan, connection or sense, would be justifiable. That it is not every combination of solemn earnestness with farcical merriment which is warrantable; that we ought rather necessarily to feel it repulsive to see that in art which we would wish to be different in nature itself, and adds: 'It is only when the same event, in its progress, assumes all the various shades of interest, and when one event not merely follows upon another, but of necessity proceeds from

it, and again when seriousness directly produces laughter, and sadness joy, or conversely, that the abstraction of the one or the other seems to us impossible, it is then only that we do not desire a like abstraction in art; and art can contrive even to draw advantages from this impossibility.' Lessing here strikingly shows what alone is necessary to constitute the inner spiritual connection between Shakspearian humour and tragic pathos, the close blending of the tragic and the comic in the unity of the action and of the fundamental idea of the whole. Equally striking are his remarks upon the three so-called Aristotelian unities and their meaning. He says: "The unity of the action was the chief dramatic law of the ancients; the unity of time and place were, so to say, but its natural consequences which they would perhaps not have observed more strictly than was necessarily demanded, but for the introduction of the chorus. . . The French, on the other hand, who had no pleasure in the true unity of the action, did not regard the unities of time and of place as consequences of the first unity, but as in themselves indispensable requisites for the representation of an action; these they thought themselves obliged to apply even to their fuller and more intricate plots with the same strictness that the use of the chorus could have demanded; although the chorus was entirely rejected by them.' They had thus tried to come to some arrangement with the tyrannical rules, and, accordingly, had fallen into all the absurdities which Lessing had shortly before lashed in the most amusing manner; yet the French tragic writers continued to make the greatest ado about their regularity, and looked down with contempt upon the English drama. Accordingly, only that unity of time and of place is indispensable which is a consequence of the unity of the action, not that which is external and measurable by hours and yards. Again, if the unity of the action should require a change of the outward locality and of time, then this very change is as much a matter of necessity as the arbitrary stability of the French drama, or that demanded by the Chorus of the Greek drama. Further the unity of the action is not a single deed but the progress of the same event through all the different shades of

interest; in other words, the development of the action out of its fundamental idea, no matter of how many single deeds and events this development may consist.

Lessing thus endeavoured everywhere to determine the rules according to the nature and aim of art, not art according to rules. It was in this way that he censured the French writers and commended Shakspeare, not because of single beauties in his works, in the manner of the English critics of the time, but because of beauty itself, because of the agreement of Shakspeare's works with the true rules of art and with the true nature of art.

CHAPTER II.

WIELAND, HERDER, GOETHE, SCHILLER AND OTHERS IN
RELATION TO SHAKSPEARE.

WHILE Lessing, in taking the nearest way to introduce Shakspeare into Germany, entered upon the path of criticism and the purification of aesthetic taste, Wieland soon entered upon a second path which promised to lead to the same goal.

One year previous to the first appearance of Lessing's 'Hamburgische Dramaturgie,' Wieland had completed his translation of twenty-two of Shakspeare's plays.* This was an event in the history of German literature, the great importance of which again none knew better than Lessing. Wieland, it is true, still judged Shakspeare in the spirit of Pope, Johnson and other English critics of the age; his opinion was that Shakspeare, although possessing many beauties, had as many great defects, that in regard to expression he was not only coarse and incorrect,' but also in thousands of instances hard, stiff, bombastic, and frivolous.' Goethet justly says of some of Wieland's æsthetico-critical remarks on his own translation that if he (Wieland) were wise he would buy them up with his blood.' Moreover the translation itself is by no means perfect; apart from individual defects it does not, as a whole, show Shakspeare's genius in its true form, simply because it is written throughout in prose. Still Lessing is perfectly right in maintaining that its deficiencies should not have called forth the censure they did; for, he adds, 'the undertaking was very arduous; anyone but Wieland would, in the hurry, have made more frequent blunders, and in ignorance, or for the sake of onvenience, have skipped over more; what he has * Published in 8 vols. Zurich, 1762-66. In his Helden, Götter und Wieland.