s published, as one of three
(_Leopold the Glorious, Frederick the Warlike_, and _Ottocar_) planned
as a cycle on the house of Babenberg. Collin's _Frederick_ interested
Grillparzer; Ottocar, who married Frederick's sister and whose fate
closely resembled Frederick's, appealed to him as a promising character
for dramatic treatment; a performance of Kleist's _Prince Frederick of
Homburg,_ which Grillparzer witnessed in 1821, may well have stimulated
him to do for the first of the Habsburgs, Ottocar's successful rival,
what Kleist had done for the greatest of the early Hohenzollerns; and
particularly the likeness of Ottocar's career to that of Napoleon gave
him the point of view for _King Ottocar's Fortune and Fall,_ composed in
1823.

_Ottocar_ is remarkable for the amount of matter included in the space
of a single drama, and it gives an impressive picture of the dawn of the
Habsburg monarchy; but only in the first two acts can it be said to be
dramatic. The middle and end, though spectacular, are rather epic than
dramatic, and our interest centres more in Rudolf the triumphant than in
Ottocar the defeated and penitent. The play is essentially the tragedy
of a personality. Ottocar is a _parvenu,_ a strong man whom success
makes too sure of the adequacy of his individual strength, ruthless when
he should be politic, indulgent when stern measures are requisite, an
egotist even when he acts for the public weal. Grillparzer treated his
case with great fulness of sensuous detail, but without superabundance
of antiquarian minutiae, in spite of careful study of historical sources
of information. "Pride goeth before destruction," is the theme, but
Grillparzer was far from wishing either to demonstrate or illustrate
that truth. _Ottocar_ is the tragedy of an individual unequal to
superhuman tasks; it does not represent an idea, but a man.

After having been retained by the censors for two years, lest Bohemian
sensibilities should be offended, _Ottocar_ was finally freed by order
of the emperor himself, and was performed amid great enthusiasm on
February nineteenth, 1825. In September of that year the empress was to
be crowned as queen of Hungary, and the imperial court suggested to
Grillparzer that he write a play on a Hungarian subject in celebration
of this event. He did not immediately find a suitable subject; but his
attention was attracted to the story of the palatin Bancbanus, a
national hero who had found his way to the