for Raimund’s bedlam hocus-pocus.  Let us be just, however, let us remember that our theatre, in spite of the great talents which have been dedicated to it, was not what it should have been, even in its most brilliant period, and this perhaps not quite through its own fault.  We have never had a real comedy; farces and absurdities take its place, and the critics themselves, if we except Schlegel, never seemed to divine that tragedy and comedy sprout from one and the same root, and that the former absolutely cannot unfold in all its greatness if the latter remains behind it.  Confining the conception of comedy to the narrow etymological meaning of its name, and inferring the intrinsic impossibility of the poem from the accidental lack of a poet, we have imagined that we could not have a comedy, when on the contrary we, precisely, should and ought to have the very best, for reasons which cannot be developed thus in passing.  Our tragedy, on the other hand, wished to take the second step before the first; it was not satisfied to start out to conquer the world from our own territory; it preferred to wander about as a homeless vagabond among all the peoples of the earth; and only when it had fully persuaded itself that one cannot grow fat off begged bread did it return in shame to its mother’s breast.  But, in Germany, in the meantime, the enthusiasm which can seldom or never be re-awakened had evaporated, and when Wallenstein and William Tell, when Hermann’s Battle and the Prince of Homburg appeared, the fusion of the theatre with life, which might perhaps have still been possible at the time of Iphigenia, was no longer to be thought of.  People had become used to looking upon the stage as a source of amusement, and, as a rule, whatever sinks to the level of a pastime is forever degraded.  This was the cause of all the evil; this was the reason why for a long time dogs and monkeys, prestidigitators and modern athletes, celebrated their triumphs where art should have proclaimed her most profound oracles, and where a people should have found refreshment and elevation in quiet self-enjoyment, in the mild exertion of all their powers, and in the sensation of arousing their most secret sympathies and antipathies.

Wienbarg believes that a turning point has now been reached.  To this belief we owe his present literary contribution “which consists in seeking critically to elucidate, in irregularly appearing pamphlets, modern dramatic literature—­especially book-dramas, which are rarely or not at all seen on the stage.  He is guided in his selection each time by some dramatic-educational purpose for author and public, and continually bears in mind an ideal centre of taste in the historic-poetic consciousness of the nation.”  Such an undertaking, carried out by a man who combines insight into the subject with the gift of presenting it as the times require, deserves full recognition.  Only that criticism which knows how to make itself respected,