course, fell the immense labor of translation and
arrangement. The three worked enthusiastically. Neuber kept the accounts
and did the marketing.

But the heart and soul of the new movement to improve the German stage
was Caroline Neuber, keen-sighted, energetic, sympathetic. Caroline
Neuber organized a theatrical troupe upon moral lines hitherto unknown
in the history of the stage. All unmarried actresses of the troupe lived
with her. She watched their conduct closely and insisted upon decorum.
The unmarried actors of the company were obliged to dine at her table.
No tavern temptations were to be put in their way. Madame Neuber began
by presenting only classic tragedies, but public demand forced her to
alternate tragedy with farce. From Hamburg she wrote: "Our tragedies and
comedies are fairly well attended. The trouble we have taken to improve
taste has not been thrown away. I find here various converted hearts.
Persons whom I have least expected to do so have become lovers of
poetry, and there are many who appreciate our orderly, artistic plays."

Of Caroline Neuber, Lessing says: "One must be very prejudiced not to
allow to this famous actress a thorough knowledge of her art. She had
masculine penetration, and in one point only did she betray her sex. She
delighted in stage trifles. All plays of her arrangement are full of
disguises and pageants, wondrous and glittering. But, after all, Neuber
may have known the hearts of the Leipzig burghers, and put these
settings in to please them, as flies are caught with treacle."

For a while, Madame Neuber scored a brilliant success in Saxony. Then
the public, following a corrupt court, grew tired of classical poetry
and virtue on the stage, and clamored for its old diet of buffoonery and
immorality. Neuber refused to lower the standard of her plays. In 1733
her contract with the court theatre expired, and the king refused to
renew it. He placed a Merry Andrew at the head of the court theatre. In
Hamburg and Saint Petersburg, Madame Neuber received similar treatment.
But this true artist would not give up her fight for a pure stage. She
wrote:

"We could earn a great deal of money if we would play only the
tasteless, the obscene, the cheap blood-curdling or the silly,
fashionable plays. But we have undertaken what is good. We will not
forsake the path as long as we have a penny. Good must continue good."

Caroline Neuber and her husband were growing old. They were bitterl