Franz Grillparzer and the Austrian Drama (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907. Excerpt: ... VI DAS GOLDENE VLIESS "sappho," like "Die Ahnfrau," was triumphantly produced on many German stages, but the pecuniary results which the play yielded to the author were insignificant. One court theatre sent him about six dollars as his royalty. Nor was the income from the sale of his printed works worth mentioning. From a sentiment of patriotism, he refused the offers of German publishers and clung to his unenterprising Vienna bookseller. His growing fame resulted, however, in an improvement in his official position, through the favor of Cchint Stadion, the Minister of Finance, one of the few enlightened bureaucrats then in high office. He caused him to be appointed dramatic writer to the Burgtheater, with an annual salary of 2,000 paper florins, equivalent to about 400 dollars. Prince Metternich also became interested in him and promised to smooth his official path. "I might have been the idol of the mighty in the state," is Grillparzer's remark, "had I never written a line about anything else but the fortunes of simple-minded lovers. But scarcely did I overstep these bounds when I was persecuted by everybody." Through the mistaken good-will of Count Stadion he was transferred to another department in the Ministry of Finance, where he was brought into contact with insolent superiors. He became ill, and while recuperating in the country, in the Bummer of 1818, accident threw in his way a dictionary of mythology, in which the legend of Medea' arrested his attention. The subject seemed to him eminently adapted to fuller dramatic treatment than Euripides and his modern imitators, with some of whom he was familiar, had given it, and he conceived the plan of. a trilogy based on the quest forthe golden fleece. He was then unaware that Schiller, in a letter to G...