Andreas Gryphius was the greatest lyric poet, as well as the greatest dramatist, of seventeenth-century Germany. In lyric poetry his voice is the voice of the century. He gives unforgettable utterance to the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, during which he grew up; to the fears of the plague, which raged throughout Germany during his lifetime; and to the personal uncertainty of a tortured soul held fast by the fetters of a strict Protestant faith while witnessing the miracles of the new scientific discoveries in which he participated. On the other hand, his dramas are not dramatic but are based on the rhetorical principles that dominated the form of the baroque drama. At the same time, he is a trailblazer, one of the first in his country to compose stage productions in the vernacular that are playable and can still be appreciated today in spite of their...