SOURCE: “Grillparzer's Ottokar,” in Germanic Review, Vol. 39, 1964, pp. 243-61.

In the following essay, Silz provides a character study of the protagonist in König Ottokars Glück und Ende, King Ottokar, challenging the critical interpretation of the character as a brutal, swaggering tyrant.

King Ottokar of Bohemia, the hero of Grillparzer's tragedy König Ottokars Glück und Ende, is a person of many aspects and qualities, more perhaps than Grillparzer himself realized; more, certainly, then interpreters of the play have recognized. In the extensive Grillparzer literature, Ottokar is regularly typed as the brutal, blustering tyrant whose many misdeeds culminate in his divorce from his wife Margareta, in consequence of which he comes deservedly to a bad end. This view of him persists, with minor modifications, from Grillparzer's time to ours. Wilhelm Scherer (whom it is somewhat surprising to think of as a Niederösterreicher and acquaintance of...