of the drama. As bearing upon the
progress of the German theatre, his services to its literature, both
critical and creative, can only be described as inestimable. The
_Hamburgische Dramaturgie_, a series of criticisms of plays and (in its
earlier numbers) of actors, was undertaken in furtherance of the attempt
to establish at Hamburg the first national German theatre (1767-1769).
This fact alone would invest these papers with a high significance; for,
though the theatrical enterprise proved abortive, it established the
principle upon which the progress of the theatre in all countries
depends--that for the dramatic art the immediate theatrical public is no
sufficient court of appeal. But the direct effect of the _Dramaturgie_
was to complete the task which Lessing had in previous writings begun,
and to overthrow the dominion of the arbitrary French rules and the
French models established by Gottsched. Lessing vindicated its real laws
to the drama, made clear the difference between the Greeks and their
would-be representatives, and established the claims of Shakespeare as
the modern master of both tragedy and comedy. His own dramatic
productivity was cautious, tentative, progressive. His first step was,
by his _Miss Sara Sampson_ (1755), to oppose the realism of the English
domestic drama to the artificiality of the accepted French models, in
the forms of which Chr. F. Weisse (1726-1804) was seeking to treat the
subjects of Shakespearian plays.[283] Then, in his _Minna von Barnhelm_
(1767), which owed something to Farquhar, he essayed a national comedy
drawn from real life, and appealing to patriotic sentiments as well as
to broad human sympathies. It was written in prose (like _Miss Sara
Sampson_), but in form held a judicious mean between French and English
examples.

Efforts of the theatre and of literature.

The note sounded by the criticisms of Lessing met with a ready response,
and the productivity displayed by the nascent dramatic literature of
Germany is astonishing, both in the efforts inspired by his teachings
and in those which continued to controvert or which aspired to transcend
them. On the stage, Harlequin and his surroundings proved by no means
easy to suppress, more especially at Vienna, the favourite home of
frivolous amusement; but even here a reform was gradually effected, and,
under the intelligent rule of the emperor Joseph II., a national stage
grew into being. The mantle of Ekhof fell upon t