In the case of Seckendorf, the technical, or, I might say, the symphonic composition of the play, which allots the parts as arbitrarily as in the Midsummer Night’s Dream does Peter Quince, who says to highly respectable people:  “You play the Lion, and you play the Ass,” necessitates making a victim of a man who was a mediocre diplomat, but for a time, at least, a fairly good soldier.  The author feels no compunction on this score.  Stupidity, as Comus artlessly thinks, is not wickedness; the Lion or the Ass—­each is necessary to different moments in the play.  A Brandenburg-Prussian comedy of 1733 can, a priori, hardly fail to be “unjust” to an Imperial Ambassador of that epoch.  Such injustice belongs to the native wantonness of the Comic Muse.  In plays of a specifically Austrian character, Prussia, and especially the people of Berlin, have suffered the same necessary injustice of comedy.  Fortunately, according to Chevalier Lang and other more reliable authorities, this particular Seckendorf was both vain and tyrannous.  His hatred for Frederick II. and his eternal “combinations” went to such lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian Court a detailed plan by which the “Land-hungry conqueror” might be personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, Maria Theresa, Vol.  I).

However, Puck’s manner of writing history may be softened a little.  It is not necessary for the actor to present Seckendorf as an imbecile.  Actors have the unfortunate habit of taking the whole hand when a finger is offered.  In truth I have seen but a very few performances of my play in which Frederick William I. still retained, beneath his attitude of stern father, some share of royal dignity; in which Eversmann, despite his confident impudence, still held his tongue like a trembling lackey; in which the Hereditary Prince, despite his desire to find everything in the Castle ridiculous, still maintained a reserve sufficient to save him from being expelled from Berlin for his impertinent criticisms—­or where the Princess was still proud and witty beneath her girlish simplicity.  And still rarer is it to see a Seckendorf who, in spite of his clumsy “combinations,” did not quite sink to the level of the Marshal von Kalb.  At this point a dramaturgic hint might not come amiss.  In cases where there is danger of degrading the part, the stage manager should take care to intrust such roles to the very actors who at first thought might seem least suited for them—­those whose personalities will compel them to raise the part to a higher level.  The buffoon and sometimes even the finer comedian cannot free Shakespeare from the reproach of having given two kings of Denmark a clown as Prime Minister.  It is very much less necessary that the audience should laugh at Polonius’ quips than that the quips should in no wise impair his position as courtier, as royal adviser, as father of two excellent children, and, at the last, as a man who met death with tragic dignity.  In such a case a wise manager intrusts the comic part to an actor who—­is not comic.