the acted drama were thus estranged
from one another during a period of extraordinary length; nor was it
till the middle of the 18th century that, with the opening of a more
hopeful era for the life and literature of the nation, the reunion of
dramatic literature and the stage began to accomplish itself. Before the
end of the same century the progress of the German drama in its turn
began to influence that of other nations, and by the widely
comprehensive character of its literature, as well as by the activity of
its stage, to invite a steadily increasing interest.

The Latin drama in Germany.

The Jesuit drama.

It should be premised that in its beginnings the modern German drama
might have seemed likely to be influenced even more largely than the
English or the French by the copious imitation of classical models which
marked the periods of the Renaissance and the Reformation; but here the
impulse of originality was wanting to bring about a speedy and gradually
a complete emancipation, and imitative reproduction continued in an all
but endless series. The first German (and indeed the earliest
transalpine) writer to follow in the footsteps of the modern Latin drama
of the Italians was the famous Strassburg humanist Jacob Wimpheling
(1450-1528), whose comedy of _Stylpho_ (1480), an attack upon the
ignorance of the pluralist beneficed clergy, marks a kind of epoch in
the history of German dramatic effort. It was succeeded by many other
Latin plays of various kinds, among which may be mentioned J.
Kerckmeister's _Codrus_ (1485), satirizing pedantic schoolmasters; a
series of historical dramas in a moralizing vein, partly on the Turkish
peril, as well as of comedies, by Jacob Locher (1471-1528); two plays by
the great Johann Reuchlin, of which the so-called _Henno_ went through
more than thirty editions; and the _Ludus Dianae_, with another play
likewise in honour of the emperor Maximilian I., by the celebrated
Viennese scholar Conrad Celtes (1459-1508). Sebastian Brant's _Hercules
in Bivio_ (1512) is lost; but Wilibald Pirckheimer's _Eckius dedolatus_
(1520) survives as a dramatic contribution to Luther's controversy with
one of his most active opponents. The _Acolastus_ (1525) of W. Gnaphaeus
(_alias_ Fullonius, his native name was de Volder) should also be
mentioned in the present connexion, as, though a Dutchman by birth, he
spent most of his literary life in Germany. This Terentian version of
the parable of t