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The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. by Various

V >> Various >> The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII.




It would take us too far afield to trace in detail the nature and
sources of Gutzkow's writings, by which he accomplished this important
result. A few suggestions, together with a reminder of his great
indebtedness to the simultaneous efforts of other Young Germans, notably
those of Laube and Wienbarg, must suffice. Practically all of his
earlier writings, like the short story, _The Sadducee of Amsterdam_
(1833), as well as the essays entitled _Public Characters_ (1835), _On
the Philosophy of History_ (1836), and _Contemporaries_ (1837), are
evidence of the intense interest of the author in the social,
philosophical, and political leaders of the time. They are preliminary
studies, to be used by him presently in his work as a dramatist.

In his two powerful novels, _Spiritual Knighthood_ (1850-51) and _The
Magician of Rome_ (1858-61), he states and discusses with great boldness
and skill those problems of the relation between Church and
State--between religion and citizenship--that confronted the thoughtful
men of the day.

The backbone of each of his numerous serious plays is some conflict,
reflecting directly or indirectly the prejudices, antagonisms,
shortcomings, and struggles of modern German social, religious, and
civic life. _King Saul_ (1839) embodies, for instance, the conflict
between ecclesiastical and temporal authority--between the authority of
the church and the claims of the thinker and the poet; _Richard Savage_
(1839) that between the pride of noble birth and the promptings of the
mother's heart; _Werner_ (1840), _A White Leaf_ (1842), and _Ottfried_
(1848), variations of the conflict between a man's duty and his
vacillating, simultaneous love of two women; _Patkul_ (1840), the
conflict between the hero's championship of truth and justice and the
triumphant inertia of authority in the hands of a weak prince; _Uriel
Acosta_ (1846), the best of the author's serious plays, embodies the
tragic conflict between the hero's conviction of truth and his love for
his mother and for his intended wife.

Gutzkow wrote three comedies which in point of continued popularity have
outlived all his other numerous contributions to the German stage:
_Sword and Queue_ (1843), _The Prototype of Tartuffe_ (1844), and _The
Royal Lieutenant_ (1849). The second of the three has the best motivated
plot; the first and third have, by virtue of their national substance,
their witty dialogue, and their droll humor, proved dearer to the heart
of the German people. In _The Prototype of Tartuffe_ we are shown
President La Roquette at the court of Louis XIV., obliged at last, in
spite of his long continued successful efforts to suppress the play, to
witness his own public unmasking in the person of Moliere's _Tartuffe_,
of whom he is the sneaking, hypocritical original. We hear him in anger
declare his readiness to join the Jesuits and we join in the laugh at
his discomfiture. The scene of _The Royal Lieutenant_, written to
celebrate the hundredth recurrence of Goethe's birthday, is laid in the
Seven Years' War in the house of Goethe's father in Frankfurt. The
Riccaut-like figure of the Royal Lieutenant himself, Count Thorane, and
his outlandish attempts to speak German, the clever portraits of the
dignified father and the cheerful mother, and the unhistorical sketch of
little Wolfgang, with his pleased and precocious anticipation of his
future laurels, are woven by means of witty dialogue into an amusing,
though not very coherent or logical whole. In Gutzkow's _Sword and
Queue_ an entertaining situation at the court of Frederick William I. of
Prussia is developed by a very free use of the facts of history, after
the manner of the comedy of Scribe. With rare skill the different
characters of the play are sketched and shown upon a background, which
corresponds closely enough to historic fact to produce the illusion of
reality. The comedy pilots the Crown Prince's friend, the Prince of
Baireuth, through a maze of intrigue, including Prussian ambition to
secure an alliance with England by the marriage of the Princess
Wilhelmine to the Prince of Wales; a diplomatic blocking of this plan,
with the help of the English Ambassador Hotham; the changed front of the
old King, who prefers a union of his daughter with an Austrian Archduke
to the hard terms of the proposed English treaty; Hotham's proposal to
the King to bring him a promising recruit for the corps of Royal
Grenadiers; the evening of the Tobacco Parliament, in which the Prince
of Baireuth feigns tipsiness and in a mocking funeral oration, in honor
of the old King, tells the pseudo-deceased some bitter truths,--to a
final scene, in which, as Hotham's proposed grenadier recruit with Queue
and Sword, he wins not only the cordial approval of the King but also
the heart and hand of Wilhelmine.

Karl Gutzkow's life-work was a struggle for freedom and truth. We
recognize in the web of his serious argument familiarity with the best
thought of the poets, theologians, and philosophers of his own day and
of the eighteenth century. In religion a pantheist, he believed in the
immortality of the soul, had unshaken confidence in the tendency of the
world that "makes for righteousness," and recommends the ideal of "truth
and justice" as the best central thought to guide each man's whole life.
He shares in an eminent degree, with other members of the group known as
Young Germany, a significance for the subsequent development of German
literature, far transcending the artistic value of his works. People are
just beginning to perceive his genetic importance for the student of
Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the recent naturalistic movement in European
letters.

* * * * *



KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW

SWORD AND QUEUE (1843)

TRANSLATED BY GRACE ISABEL COLBRON

PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR


The essence of the comic is self-contradiction, contrast. Even
professional estheticians must acknowledge that by the very nature of
its origin the following comedy answers this definition.

A king lacking the customary attributes of his station; a royal court
governed by the rules that regulate any simple middle-class
household--surely here is a contradiction sufficient in itself to
attract the Comic Muse. And it was indeed only when the author was well
along in his work that he felt any inclination to introduce a few
political allusions with what is called a "definite purpose," into a
work inspired by the principles of pure comedy.

Ever since the example set by those great Greeks, AEschylus and
Aristophanes, the stage has claimed the right to deal with extremes. He
who, sinning and laden with the burden of human guilt, has once fallen a
victim to the Eumenides, cannot, as a figure in a drama, go off on
pleasure trips, nor can he go about the usual business of daily life.
Fate seizes him red-handed, causes him to see blood in every glass of
champagne and to read his warrant of arrest on every chance scrap of
paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes
would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the
public by their declining fortunes, he at once turns the tragedian into
a rag-picker.

Comedy may, tragedy must, exaggerate. The exaggerations in _Sword and
Queue_ brought forth many a contemptuous grimace from the higher-priced
seats in the Court Theatres. But it needs only a perusal of the _Memoirs
of the Markgravine of Baireuth, Princess of Prussia_, to give the
grotesque picture a certificate of historical veracity. Not only the
character-drawing, but the very plot, is founded on those Memoirs,
written in a less sophisticated age than our own, and the authenticity
of which is undisputed.

In the case of Seckendorf, the technical, or, I might say, the symphonic
composition of the play, which allots the parts as arbitrarily as in the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ does Peter Quince, who says to highly
respectable people: "You play the Lion, and you play the Ass,"
necessitates making a victim of a man who was a mediocre diplomat, but
for a time, at least, a fairly good soldier. The author feels no
compunction on this score. Stupidity, as Comus artlessly thinks, is not
wickedness; the Lion or the Ass--each is necessary to different moments
in the play. A Brandenburg-Prussian comedy of 1733 can, _a priori_,
hardly fail to be "unjust" to an Imperial Ambassador of that epoch. Such
injustice belongs to the native wantonness of the Comic Muse. In plays
of a specifically Austrian character, Prussia, and especially the people
of Berlin, have suffered the same necessary injustice of comedy.
Fortunately, according to Chevalier Lang and other more reliable
authorities, this particular Seckendorf was both vain and tyrannous. His
hatred for Frederick II. and his eternal "combinations" went to such
lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian
Court a detailed plan by which the "Land-hungry conqueror" might be
personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, _Maria Theresa_, Vol. I).

However, Puck's manner of writing history may be softened a little. It
is not necessary for the actor to present Seckendorf as an imbecile.
Actors have the unfortunate habit of taking the whole hand when a finger
is offered. In truth I have seen but a very few performances of my play
in which Frederick William I. still retained, beneath his attitude of
stern father, some share of royal dignity; in which Eversmann, despite
his confident impudence, still held his tongue like a trembling lackey;
in which the Hereditary Prince, despite his desire to find everything in
the Castle ridiculous, still maintained a reserve sufficient to save him
from being expelled from Berlin for his impertinent criticisms--or where
the Princess was still proud and witty beneath her girlish simplicity.
And still rarer is it to see a Seckendorf who, in spite of his clumsy
"combinations," did not quite sink to the level of the Marshal von Kalb.
At this point a dramaturgic hint might not come amiss. In cases where
there is danger of degrading the part, the stage manager should take
care to intrust such roles to the very actors who at first thought might
seem least suited for them--those whose personalities will compel them
to raise the part to a higher level. The buffoon and sometimes even the
finer comedian cannot free Shakespeare from the reproach of having given
two kings of Denmark a clown as Prime Minister. It is very much less
necessary that the audience should laugh at Polonius' quips than that
the quips should in no wise impair his position as courtier, as royal
adviser, as father of two excellent children, and, at the last, as a man
who met death with tragic dignity. In such a case a wise manager
intrusts the comic part to an actor who--is not comic.

The following play was written in the spring of 1843. Some of our
readers may chance to know the little garden of the Hotel Reichmann in
Milan. In a room which opens out into the oleander bushes, the trickling
fountains, and the sandstone cupids of that garden, the first four acts
ripened during four weeks of work. The fifth act followed on the shores
of Lake Como.

Amid surroundings which, by their beauty, bring to mind only the laws
of the ideal, to hold fast to those burlesque memories from the
history of the sandy Mark Brandenburg was, one may feel sure, possible
only to a mind which turned in love to its Prussian home, however
"treasonable" its other opinions. And yet the romanticism of San
Souci, as well as the estheticism of the Berlin Board of Censors, has
at all times persecuted the play, now forbidding it, again permitting
an occasional performance, and again prohibiting it even after 1848.
When the aged and revered Genast from Weimar had played the king a
dozen times in the Friedrich-Wilhelmstaedtisches Theater, Hinckeldey's
messengers brought the announcement that the presentation of the piece
met with disfavor in high places. Frederick William IV. did everything
possible to hamper and curtail the author's ambitions. But to give
truth its due, I will not neglect to mention that this last prohibition
was softened by assigning as its motion the allusion made in the play to
that legend of the Berlin Castle, "The White Lady," who is supposed to
bring a presage of death to the Prussian royal family.

The Dresden Court Theatre was formerly a model of impartiality. And
above all, Emil Devrient's energetic partisanship for the newer dramatic
literature was a great assistance to authors in cases of this kind. This
play, like many another, owes to his artistic zeal its introduction to
those high-class theatres where alone a German dramatist finds his best
encouragement and advance. Unfortunately, the war of 1866 again banished
_Sword and Queue_ from the Vienna Burgtheater, where it had won a place
for itself.

* * * * *


SWORD AND QUEUE


DRAMATIS PERSONAE

FREDERICK WILLIAM I., _King Of
Prussia, father of Frederick the
Great._

THE QUEEN, _his wife._

PRINCESS WILHELMINE, _their daughter_.

THE PRINCE HEREDITARY OF BAIREUTH

GENERAL VON GRUMBKOW }
COUNT SCHWERIN } _Councilors and Confidants of the King._
COUNT WARTENSLEBEN }

COUNT SECKENDORF, _Imperial Ambassador_

BARONET HOTHAM, _Envoy of Great Britain_

FRAU VON VIERECK

FRAU VON HOLZENDORF

_The Queen's Ladies_.

FRAUeLEIN VON SONNSFELD, _Lady-in-waiting to the Princess._

EVERSMANN, _the King's valet_.

KAMKE, _in the Queen's service_.

ECKHOF, _a grenadier_.

_A Lackey in the King's service. Generals, Officers, Court Ladies.
Members of the Smoking-Circle. Grenadiers, Lackeys_.

_Scene of action: The Royal Castle of Berlin_.

_First performance, January 1st, 1844, in the Court Theatre in Dresden_.

[Illustration: THE POTSDAM GUARD ADOLPH VON MENZEL]



SWORD AND QUEUE



ACT I



SCENE I


_A room in the Palace. One window and four doors. A table and two
armchairs on the left of the room._

EVERSMANN, _taking snuff comfortably. Two Drummers of the Guard._

_Later_ FRAUeLEIN VON SONNSFELD.

_The drummers take up a position near the door to the left, leading to
the apartments of the_ PRINCESS, _and execute a roll of the drums_.

FRAUeLEIN VON SONNSFELD (_opens the door and looks in_).

That will do.

[_The drummers play a second roll_.]

SONNSFELD (_looks in again_).

Yes, yes. We heard it.

[EVERSMANN _gives the sign again and the drummers play a third long
roll_.]

SONNSFELD (_comes out angrily, speaks when the noise has subsided_).

This is unendurable! It is enough to ruin one's nerves--left
wheel--march--out with you to the parade ground where you be long! [_The
drummers march out still playing. When the noise can no longer be heard
she continues_.] Eversmann, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You
should remind the King of the respect due to ladies.

EVERSMANN.

I obey my royal master's orders, ma'am. And inasmuch as late rising is a
favorite vice of the youth of today, it has been ordered that the
reveille be played at six o'clock every morning before the doors of the
royal Princes and Princesses.

SONNSFELD.

Princess Wilhelmine is no longer a child.

EVERSMANN.

Her morning dreams are all the sweeter for that reason.

SONNSFELD.

Dreams of our final release--of despair--of death--

EVERSMANN.

Or possibly dreams of marriage--and the like--

SONNSFELD.

Have a care, Eversmann! The Crown Prince has won his freedom at last; he
is keeping a most exact record of all that happens in Berlin and in the
immediate environment of his severe father. It is well known that you
influence the King more than do his ministers.

EVERSMANN.

If the poetic fancy of our Crown Prince, who, by the way, is my devoted
young friend Fritz, cannot see the truth more clearly than that, then I
have little respect for the imaginative power of poets. I--and
influence? I twist His Majesty's stately pigtail every morning, clip his
fine manly beard, fill his cozy little Dutch pipe for him each
evening--and if in the course of these innocent employments His Most
Sacred Majesty lets fall a hint, a remark--a little command
possibly--why--naturally--

SONNSFELD.

You pick them up and weave them into a "nice innocent little influence"
for yourself. Eh? An influence that has already earned you three city
houses, five estates, and a carriage-and-four. Have a care that the
Crown Prince does not auction off all these objects under the
gallows-tree some fine day.

EVERSMANN.

Oh, but your Ladyship must have slept badly. Pray spare me
these--predictions and prophesyings, which are made up of whole cloth.
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is far too much, of a philosopher to
take such revenge on a man who has no more dealings with His Majesty
than to fill his pipe each evening, to braid his pigtail each morning,
and to shave him in the good old German fashion every second day. Have I
made my meaning clear?

[_He goes out._]

SONNSFELD.

Go your way, you old sinner! You may pretend to be ever so honest and
simple--we know you and your like. Oh, what a life we lead here in this
Court! Cannons thunder in the garden under our windows every morning or
else they send up a company of soldiers to accustom us to early rising.
After the morning prayer the Princess knits, sews, presses her linen,
studies her catechism, and, alas! is forced to listen to a stupid sermon
every day. At dinner, we get very little to eat; then the King takes his
afternoon nap. He's forever quarreling with the Queen, they have
scarcely a good word to say to each other, and yet the entire family are
expected to look on at His Majesty's melodious snore-concert, and even
to brush away the flies from the face of the sleeping Father of his
country. If my Princess did not possess so much natural wit and spirit,
the sweet creature would be quite crushed by such a life. If the King
only knew that she is learning French secretly, and can almost write a
polite little note already--! I hear her coming.


SCENE II


PRINCESS WILHELMINE _comes in, carrying a letter_.

WILHELMINE (_timidly_).

Can any one hear us?

SONNSFELD.

Not unless the walls have ears. Is the letter written?

WILHELMINE.

I hardly dare send it, dear Sonnsfeld. I know there are a hundred
mistakes in it.

SONNSFELD.

A hundred? Then the letter must be much longer than Your Highness first
planned it.

WILHELMINE.

I wrote that I fully appreciate the value of the services offered me,
but that my position forces me to refuse any aid to my education which
cannot be attained at least by the help of my mother, the Queen.

SONNSFELD.

Is that what you have written? And made a hundred mistakes? In that case
we are just where we were before. I appreciate that an eighteen-year-old
Princess has to consider history, posterity and so forth--but this
conscientiousness will be your ruin. The King will continue to make a
slave of you, the Queen to treat you as a child. You are the victim of
the conflict between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best
for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom
or which one to please. The Crown Prince has made himself free--and how
did he do it? Only by courage and independence. He tore himself loose
from the oppressive bondage imposed on him by the caprice of others, and
won the means to complete his education. And now he sends to you from
Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a
support and protection to you and to the Queen--so that here in this
Court where they drum, trumpet, and parade all day long, you may not
finally, in your despair, seize a musket yourself and join the Potsdam
Guards!

WILHELMINE.

You have a sense of humor, my dear Sonnsfeld. It is all well enough for
my brother to make plans and send out emissaries, when he is safe in
Rheinsberg. He knows that the path to the freedom he has won led past
the very foot of the scaffold. I am of the sex whose duty it is to be
patient. My father is so good at heart, gentler possibly, in his true
self, than is my mother. She indeed, absorbed in her political
ambitions, often turns from me with a harshness that accords ill with
mother-love. It is my fate to endure this life. Ask yourself, dear
friend, how could I trust to a chance adventurous stranger whom my
brother sends to me from out of his wild, artistic circle in
Rheinsberg--sends to me to be my knight and paladin? Such a thought
could have been conceived only in the brains of that group of poets.
I'll confess to you in secret that I should greatly enjoy being in the
midst of the Rheinsberg merriment, disguised of course. But I'm in
Berlin--not in Rheinsberg, and so I have gathered up my meagre scraps of
French and thanked the Prince of Baireuth for his offer in a manner
which is far more a refusal than an acceptance.

[_Hands_ SONNSFELD _the letter_.]

SONNSFELD.

And I am to dispatch this letter? [_With droll pathos_.] No, Your
Highness, I cannot have anything to do with this forbidden
correspondence.

WILHELMINE.

No joking please, Sonnsfeld. It was the only answer I could possibly
send to the Prince's tender epistle.

SONNSFELD.

Impossible!--To become an accomplice to a forbidden correspondence in
this Court might cost one's life.

WILHELMINE.

You will make me angry!--here, dispatch this letter, and quickly.

SONNSFELD.

No, Princess. But I know a better means, an absolutely sure means of
dispatching the letter to its destination, and that is--[_She glances
toward a door in the background_] deliver it yourself.

[_She slips out of a side door_.]


SCENE III


_The_ PRINCE HEREDITARY OF BAIREUTH, _dressed in the French taste of the
period, as different as possible from the king's favorite garb, comes in
cautiously._

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

The Prince of Baireuth!

THE PRINCE (_aside_).

Her very picture! It is the Princess! [_Aloud_.] I crave Your Highness'
pardon that my impatience to deliver the greeting of Your Royal brother
the Crown Prince in person--

WILHELMINE.

The Prince of Baireuth places me in no slight embarrassment by this
early visit.

PRINCE.

The visit was not paid to you, Princess, but to this noble and venerable
castle, these stairways, these galleries, these winding corridors--it
was a visit of recognizance, Your Highness, such as must precede any
important undertaking.

WILHELMINE.

Then you are preparing to do battle here?

PRINCE.

My intentions are not altogether peaceful, and yet, as Princess
Wilhelmine doubtless knows, I am compelled to confine myself to a policy
of defense solely.

WILHELMINE.

And even in this you cannot exercise too much care. [_Aside_.] The
letter is no longer necessary. [_Aloud_.] How did you leave my brother?
In good health? And thoroughly occupied?

PRINCE.

The Crown Prince leads a life of the gayest diversity in his exile. He
has made of Rheinsberg a veritable little Court of the Muses, devoted
now to serious study, now to poetic recreation. We have enjoyed
unforgettably beautiful hours there; one would hardly believe that so
much imagination could be developed and encouraged on the borders of
Mecklenburg! We paint, we build, we model, we write. The regiment which
is under the immediate command of our talented Prince serves merely to
carry out, by military evolutions, the strategic descriptions of
Polybius. In short, I should deeply regret leaving so delightful a spot
had it not been for the flattering and important task intrusted to me.
Princess, the Crown Prince desires full and true information, obtained
at the source, as to the situation of his sister, his mother, here, that
he may, if necessary, advise how this situation be improved, how any
difficulties may be met.

WILHELMINE.

If it became known that I am granting an audience, here in this public
hall, to a Prince who has not yet been presented either to my father or
to my mother--I could prepare myself for several weeks in Fortress
Kuestrin.

[_She bows and turns as if to go_.]

PRINCE.

Princess! Then it is really true--that which is whispered, with horror,
at every court in Europe? It is true that the King of Prussia tyrannizes
not only his court, his entire environment, but his own family as well?

WILHELMINE.

Prince, you employ too harsh an expression for what I would rather term
merely our own peculiar ceremonial. In Versailles they glide as on
butterfly wings over the polished floors. Here we tread the earth with
ringing spurs. In Versailles the Royal Family consider themselves but as
a merry company, recognizing no ties as sacred save those of
congeniality, no bond but that of--unfettered inclination. Here the
Court is merely one big middle-class family, where a prayer is said
before meat, where the parents must always be the first to speak, where
strictest obedience must, if necessary, tolerate even absurdities; where
one quarrels, out of one's mutual affection, sometimes--where we even
torture one another and make life harder for one another--all out of
love--

PRINCE.

Princess, I swear to you--this must be changed.