SOURCE: “The Greek Tragedies,” in The Plays of Grillparzer, Pergamon Press, 1969, pp. 33-82.

In the following excerpt, Wells discusses Grillparzer's three Greek tragedies—Sappho, Das goldene Vliess, and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen—noting that they all share the theme of love and that in each Grillparzer concentrated on preserving unity of time, place, and action.

1. Sappho (1818)

In the draft of a letter to Müllner of 1818, Grillparzer confessed to being somewhat ashamed of what he called the “tolles Treiben” in Die Ahnfrau, and was anxious to show that he could write a play without bangs and ghosts. He added that when he came across the story of Sappho, he realized at once that he had found the material he needed for a calm play with a simple plot (III, 1. 97).

The simplicity of the material enabled him to keep the three unities. This is in fact the...