Like The Ancestress, A Dream is Life is written in short trochaic verses of irregular length and with occasional rhyme.  The idea was conceived early, the first act was written at the time of The Ancestress, and the title, though chosen late, being a reversal of Calderon’s Life is a Dream, suggests the connection with that Spanish drama.  Grillparzer’s principal source for the plot, was, however, Voltaire’s narrative entitled White and Black.  In the psychology of dreams he had long been interested, and life in the dream state formed a large part of the opera text Melusina which, in 1821-23, he wrote for Beethoven.  A particular flavor was doubtless given to the plot by the death of Napoleon on May fifth, 1821, and the beginning of Grillparzer’s friendship with Katharina Froehlich shortly before; for A Dream is Life represents in the dream of a harmless but ambitious young man such a career of conquest as Napoleon was thought to have exemplified, and the hero, waking after a nightmare of deceits and crimes that were the stepping stones to success, is warned of the dangers that beset enterprise and taught to prefer the simple life in union with a rustic maiden.  There are two actions, corresponding to the waking and sleeping states, the actors in the latter being those of real life fantastically transformed; but there is no magic or anything else super-natural, and the most fascinating quality in the drama is the skill with which the transformation is made in accordance with the irrational logic of dreams.  Accompanied by the weird music of Gyrowetz and exquisitely staged, this is the most popular of Grillparzer’s plays in Vienna.  But it is by no means merely theatrical.  There is profound truth in the theory upon which it is constructed:  a dream is the awakening of the soul; dreams do not create wishes, they reveal them, and the actions of a dreamer are the potentialities of his character.  Moreover, the quietistic note of renunciation for the sake of peace to the soul and integrity of personality is the final note of The Golden Fleece no less than of this fantasmagoria. Waves of the Sea and of Love is a far-fetched and sentimental title for a dramatization of the story of Hero and Leander.  Grillparzer chose the title, he said, because he wished to suggest a romantic treatment that should humanize the matter.  The play really centres in the character of Hero and might much better be called by her name.  In it Grillparzer’s experiences with Charlotte von Paumgarten and Marie Daeffinger are poetically fructified, and his capacity for tracing the incalculable course of feminine instincts attains to the utmost of refinement and delicacy.  The theme is the conflict between duty to a solemn vow of sacerdotal chastity and the disposition to satisfy the natural desire for love.  But Grillparzer has represented no such conflict in the breast of Hero.  Her antagonist is not her own conscience but the representative of