The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Iv Part 87

[_The_ ELECTOR _gives the wreath, from which the chain is hanging, to the_ PRINCESS, _takes her hand and leads her down from the terrace.

Ladies and gentlemen follow. Surrounded by torches, the_ PRINCESS _approaches the_ PRINCE, _who looks up in amazement; sets the wreath on his head, the chain about his neck and presses his hand to her breast. The_ PRINCE _tumbles in a faint_.]

NATALIE. Heaven! The joy has killed him!

HOHENZOLLERN (_raising him_). Help, bring help!

ELECTOR. Let him be wakened by the cannons' thunder!

[_Artillery fire. A march. The Castle is illuminated._]

KOTTWITZ. Hail, hail, the Prince of Homburg!

OFFICERS. Hail, hail, hail!

ALL. The victor of the field of Fehrbellin!

[_Momentary silence._]

THE PRINCE. No! Say! Is it a dream?

KOTTWITZ. A dream, what else?

SEVERAL OFFICERS. To arms! to arms!

TRUCHSZ. To war!

DoRFLING. To victory!

ALL. In dust with all the foes of Brandenburg!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Permission Porter & Coates, Philadelphia.]

[Footnote 2: Permission Porter & Coates, Philadelphia.]

[Footnote 3: Ten o'clock.]

[Footnote 4: Of Jupiter Tonans.]

[Footnote 5: The body in the Pantheon, the head in Saint Luke's church.]

[Footnote 6: Stra.s.sburg.]

[Footnote 7: The hall of the Pantheon seems too low, because a part of its steps is hidden by the rubbish.]

[Footnote 8: This opening in the roof is twenty-seven feet in diameter.]

[Footnote 9: The Pole-star, as well as other northern constellations, stands lower in the south.]

[Footnote 10: The German texts read: _Reben_, vines. But the conjecture _Raben_ as the correct reading may be permitted.--ED.]

[Footnote 11: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York, and G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., London.]

[Footnote 12: This appropriate expression was, if we mistake not, first used by M. Adam Muller in his _Lectures on German Science and Literature_. If, however, he gives himself out as the inventor of the thing itself, he is, to use the softest word, in error. Long before him other Germans had endeavored to reconcile the contrarieties of taste of different ages and nations, and to pay due homage to all genuine poetry and art. Between good and bad, it is true, no reconciliation is possible.]

[Footnote 13: This difficulty extends also to France; for it must not be supposed that a literal translation can ever be a faithful one.

Mrs. Montague has done enough to prove how wretchedly even Voltaire, in his rhymeless Alexandrines, has translated a few pa.s.sages from _Hamlet_ and the first act of _Julius Caesar_.]

[Footnote 14: It begins with the words: _A mind reflecting ages past_, and is subscribed I.M.S.]

[Footnote 15: Lessing was the first to speak of Shakespeare in a becoming tone; but he said, unfortunately, a great deal too little of him, as in the time when he wrote the _Dramaturgie_ this poet had not yet appeared on our stage. Since that time he has been more particularly noticed by Herder in the _Blatter von deutscher Art und Kunst_; Goethe, in _Wilhelm Meister_; and Tieck, in "Letters on Shakespeare" (_Poetisches Journal_, 1800), which break off, however, almost at the commencement.]

[Footnote 16: The English work with which foreigners of every country are perhaps best acquainted is Hume's _History_; and there we have a most unjustifiable account both of Shakespeare and his age. "Born in a _rude age_, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either _from the world_ or from books." How could a man of Hume's acuteness suppose for a moment that a poet, whose characters display such an intimate acquaintance with life, who, as an actor and manager of a theatre, must have come in contact with all descriptions of individuals, had no instruction from the world? But this is not the worst; he goes even so far as to say, "a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold." This is nearly as offensive as Voltaire's "drunken savage."--TRANS.]

[Footnote 17: In my lectures on _The Spirit of the Age_.]

[Footnote 18: In one of his sonnets he says:

O, for my sake do you with fortune chide The guilty G.o.ddess of my harmless deeds, That did not better for my life provide _Than public means which public manners breeds_.

And in the following:

Your love and pity doth the impression fill, which _vulgar scandal_ stamp'd upon my brow.]

[Footnote 19:

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James!]

[Footnote 20: This is perhaps not uncommon still in some countries.

The Venetian Director Medebach, for whose company many of Goldoni's Comedies were composed, claimed an exclusive right to them.--TRANS.]

[Footnote 21: _Twelfth Night, or What You Will_--Act iii., scene 2.]

[Footnote 22: _As You Like It_.]

[Footnote 23: In one of the commendatory poems in the first folio edition:

And on the stage at _half sword parley_ were Brutus and Ca.s.sius.]

[Footnote 24: In the first volume of _Charakteristiken und Kritiken_, published by my brother and myself.]

[Footnote 25: A contemporary of the poet, the author of the already-noticed poem, (subscribed I.M.S.), tenderly felt this when he said:

Yet so to temper pa.s.sion that our ears Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears Both smile and weep.]