That play of Hebbel’s in which the dualism of all being is most conspicuously tragic is Agnes Bernauer.  Agnes is the daughter of a barber and surgeon, and is so beautiful that she is commonly known as the angel of Augsburg.  Albrecht, the son and sole heir of the reigning duke Ernst, comes to Augsburg, falls in love with her, and, in spite of friendly warning, marries her; for she has loved him at first sight, too.  As persons, they do what is right for them to do; their marriage has been performed by a priest of the church; and they feel that it has divine sanction.  But Albrecht is not an ordinary person; he is the heir to the throne, and public exigencies require that the succession shall be guaranteed.  This marriage, however, is illegal—­a board of incorruptible judges so finds it; it causes sedition and threatens interminable strife.  Duke Ernst is deliberate and patient in dealing with the unprecedented case.  He waits until he can wait no longer.  Albrecht will not give up Agnes, nor Agnes give up him; Ernst respects the sacrament of wedlock by which they are united, and only after two and a half years does he sign the warrant by which Agnes was duly condemned to death.  Agnes dies in perfect innocence and constancy, a victim of social convention.  But Albrecht, whose disregard of this convention was rebellion, and whose vengeance for his wife’s death brings him to the point of parricide, is made to see, not merely because excommunication accompanies the ban of the empire on him as a rebel, but also because of the instructive words and actions of his father, that the social organization he has defied has itself a divine sanction, and that a prince, standing by common consent at the head of that organization, cannot with impunity undermine the basis of his sovereignty.  Devotion to him is like loyalty to the national ensign.  The ensign is nothing in itself, but it symbolizes the idea of the State; and the prince is also the representative of an idea, which he must continue to represent in its entirety, or he ceases to be the prince.  This lesson Albrecht learns when, like Kleist’s Prince of Homburg, he is made judge in his own case, and when he perceives at the cost of what personal sacrifice his father has done his duty.  The State prevails over Albrecht as it prevails over Agnes, whose only fault was that she did not immure her beauty in a nunnery.

The sanction of tradition and custom which Albrecht and Agnes could not break in Agnes Bernauer Hebbel most impressively demonstrated in Gyges and his Ring.  Kandaules, King of Lydia, is a rash innovator in both public and private life.  He despises rusty swords and uncomfortable crowns, he means to do away with silly prejudices, and, like Herod, regarding his wife as a precious possession only, he procures for his friend Gyges an opportunity to see her unveiled.  But she, an Indian princess, is, in Christine Hebbel’s words, a convolution of veils; her veil is inseparable from herself; and