Ottocar is remarkable for the amount of matter included in the space of a single drama, and it gives an impressive picture of the dawn of the Habsburg monarchy; but only in the first two acts can it be said to be dramatic.  The middle and end, though spectacular, are rather epic than dramatic, and our interest centres more in Rudolf the triumphant than in Ottocar the defeated and penitent.  The play is essentially the tragedy of a personality.  Ottocar is a parvenu, a strong man whom success makes too sure of the adequacy of his individual strength, ruthless when he should be politic, indulgent when stern measures are requisite, an egotist even when he acts for the public weal.  Grillparzer treated his case with great fulness of sensuous detail, but without superabundance of antiquarian minutiae, in spite of careful study of historical sources of information.  “Pride goeth before destruction,” is the theme, but Grillparzer was far from wishing either to demonstrate or illustrate that truth. Ottocar is the tragedy of an individual unequal to superhuman tasks; it does not represent an idea, but a man.

After having been retained by the censors for two years, lest Bohemian sensibilities should be offended, Ottocar was finally freed by order of the emperor himself, and was performed amid great enthusiasm on February nineteenth, 1825.  In September of that year the empress was to be crowned as queen of Hungary, and the imperial court suggested to Grillparzer that he write a play on a Hungarian subject in celebration of this event.  He did not immediately find a suitable subject; but his attention was attracted to the story of the palatin Bancbanus, a national hero who had found his way to the dramatic workshop of Hans Sachs in Nuremberg, had been recommended to Schiller, and had recently been treated in Hungarian by Joseph Katona.  Grillparzer knew neither of the plays of his predecessors.  In connection with this subject he thought rather of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Othello, of Byron’s Marino Faliero—­he had early experimented with this hero himself—­and this was the time of his first thorough study of Lope de Vega.  In November and December, 1826, he wrote A Faithful Servant of His Master. This is a drama of character triumphant in the severest test to which the sense of duty can be put.  Bancbanus, appointed regent while his sovereign goes to war, promises to preserve peace in the kingdom, and keeps his promise even when his own relatives rise in arms against the queen’s brother who has insulted Bancbanus’ wife and, they think, has killed her.  We have to do, however, not merely with a brilliant example of unselfish loyalty; we have a highly special case of individualized persons.  Bancbanus is a little, pedantic old man, almost ridiculous in his personal appearance and in his over-conscientiousness.  Erny, his wife, is a childlike creature, not displeased by flattery, too innocent to be circumspect, but faithful