On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
lightful sketch ) brother Martin , the monk , who pines to be a soldier , &c . &c * We have the classes of society which in that age began to form themselves— -the timid merchant , then first growing into a state of security and respectability ; the prudent corporation-men of the imperial cities ; and the insurgent peasants , a
ferocious mob , brutalized by oppression . The incidents combine the vicissitudes of the guerrilla warfare , which took place in Germany , while the petty nobles asserted the right to make war on one another , ( thefaust recht , ^ and when legitimate warfare was not easily distinguished from highway robbery ; with the horrors of the servile war into which Gotz is driven to take a part by his own rash generosity , —of course he perishes , the victim of the wiles of his adversaries and his own ill-timed heroic virtues .
The events follow each other rapidly , and the style is vigorous . Deeply tragic as is the matter , the author entitled his work merely a play . A certain elevation of style was at that time considered essential to the composition of a tragedy , and this excellence is no where attempted ; in other respects the dialogue is everywhere spirited , impassioned , and highly characteristic * . Graf JSgmont , a tragedy in five acts . As this is the most
excellent of Goethe ' s dramatic works , of which no translation has been even attempted , we will present our readers with an analysis of it ; as it will exhibit a specimen of our author ' s plans in the construction of a tragedy of character , not intrigue ; and furnish an opportunity for remarking on some of the most remarkable qualities of his mind . The subject is announced sufficiently in
the name . The exposition is complete in the first act , which commences with an assembly of the citizens and old soldiers of Brussels at a cross-bow-shooting meeting . They talk politics , of course , and we learn the excited state of public feeling , produced by the prohibition of the new psalms . Their Spanish king , Philip , is compared , to his disadvantage , he being so ' majestical /
* We have read , in a journal of 1805 , an account of the performance of a rifacimento of Goetz on the Weimar theatre , of which Goethe was then , Schiller being recently dead , the all in all . He must have approved , at least , of the work . But we see no account of it in his Jahreshefte , and under the date of 1806 we read , < Gotz kam wieder an die reihe . '—' Gotz had its turn / The new Goetz is partly in verse , and underwent great changes . Our critic especially censures one , which censure we notice , as illustrative of national taste . In the original play is a remarkable passage . —A herald summoning the castle to surrender at discretion , the hero exclaims , 'I at
discretion 1 Am 1 then a robber P Tell your captain that for his imperial majesty I have , as I always had , all due respect ; but as to him , he may ( slamming to the window . ) ' Now , a French critic would certainly feel as much horror at such a dash , as at Othello ' s ' Villain , be sure you prove my wife a whore / And it may be admitted that there requires no imagination to conceive , and mere indifference to the scruples of the delicate , in leaving such a break . . But before we censure it , we should consider whether a cynicism of the kind insinuated , does not more truly give the
very age and body of the time , his form and pressure , * than more decorous language possibly could ; and whether therefore it be not more dramatic—if not more poetic — than the substituted— ' But the devil take your captain . ' An epigram of the day ascribes the change to Goethe himself . 4 Schon htfr ich Krittler-mordgeschrei An Goethen ' s stillem Grabe Ob's Teufel odor H r sey Waa Herden Vorzug habe ?*
Untitled Article
Goethe s Works . 51 $
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 513, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/9/
-