ruary, 1828, and was received with applause by high and low. The
emperor caused a special word of appreciation to be conveyed to the
poet. How great was Grillparzer's astonishment, therefore, when, on the
following day, the president of police summoned him and informed him
that the emperor was so well pleased with the play that he wished to
have it all to himself; wherefore the dramatist would please hand over
the manuscript, at his own price! Dynastic considerations probably moved
the emperor to this preposterous demand. The very futility of it--since
a number of copies of the manuscript had already been made, and one or
the other was sure to escape seizure--is a good example of the trials to
which the patience of Austrian poets was subjected during the old
regime. Grillparzer was at this time depressed enough on his own
account, as his poems _Tristia ex Ponto_ bear witness. This new attempt
at interference almost made him despair of his fatherland. "An Austrian
poet," he said, "ought to be esteemed above all others. The man who does
not lose heart under such circumstances is really a kind of hero."

Grillparzer was not a real hero. But in the midst of public frictions,
personal tribulations, apprehension that his powers of imagination were
declining, and petulant surrenders to discouragement, he kept pottering
along with compositions long since started, and by 1831 he had completed
two more plays, _A Dream is Life_ and _Waves of the Sea and of Love_.

Like _The Ancestress_, _A Dream is Life_ is written in short trochaic
verses of irregular length and with occasional rhyme. The idea was
conceived early, the first act was written at the time of _The
Ancestress,_ and the title, though chosen late, being a reversal of
Calderon's _Life is a Dream_, suggests the connection with that Spanish
drama. Grillparzer's principal source for the plot, was, however,
Voltaire's narrative entitled _White and Black_. In the psychology of
dreams he had long been interested, and life in the dream state formed a
large part of the opera text _Melusina_ which, in 1821-23, he wrote for
Beethoven. A particular flavor was doubtless given to the plot by the
death of Napoleon on May fifth, 1821, and the beginning of Grillparzer's
friendship with Katharina Froehlich shortly before; for _A Dream is Life_
represents in the dream of a harmless but ambitious young man such a
career of conquest as Napoleon was thought to have exemplified, and the
hero,