SOURCE: “The Play within the Play in Grillparzer's Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen,” in Studies in Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Literature: Essays in Honor of Paul K. Whitaker, edited by Norman H. Binger and A. Wayne Wonderley, APRAPress, 1974, pp. 22-8.

In the following essay, Goff offers a structural analysis of Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, particularly the “play-within-a-play” technique.

Grillparzer's mastery of dramatic effect, gesture, imagery, and symbol in Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen has been abundantly and justly praised; he himself attached great importance to the visual aspects of theater.¹ The structure which holds these various elements together was also of paramount importance to him: “Die Poesie ist eine bildende Kunst wie die Malerei.”² Scholarship has been reluctant to take note of one of the basic structural features in Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen: the play within the play. An examination of the...