the most important problems, its own as well as those of humanity in
general. Comedy paints it in its natural aberrations and abnormalities,
in its tendencies and endeavors which are directed earthward. Both must
subsist together, in common development, and on an equal elevation, if
we are to sum up the entire life of a nation, and give a true, eternal
picture of its will-power and capacity, of its vacillations and defeats.
This is the object which dramatic literature must always keep in view if
it would be effectual. To be sure, it is possible to conceive a still
higher species of drama, a tragedy which deals with man only in the
abstract, with man in himself, in his mysterious relation to God and
Nature; a comedy which lays nationalities themselves in their coffin and
gaudily dresses up the corpse. But it is still an open question whether,
under such a general domination of the idea of humanity as is
presupposed in that case, art can continue to exist at all; and at any
rate the time of this spirit-like domination is still far off, although
literature has witnessed the production of many dramatic poems which
seem to be designed for it.

It was many years ago that Tieck, on the subject of some wretched stuff
by Clauren, made the remark that we had at last reached the cellar and
must begin to ascend again. He was right in his remark, but, unhappily,
not in the hope with which he accompanied it. Very far from hastening to
leave the cellar, we have found it very comfortable down there; we have
made ourselves at home as well as we could, and are hideously satisfied!
Instead of the heroic spirit of our past ages, Jack Pudding now staggers
out of the wings in a torn jacket and shows us what kind of humor is
engendered by stupidity and brandy, when they have a rendezvous in the
head of a porter. If Schiller and Goethe dare once to come out of their
exile, then Nestroy's plum-pudding jinnee steps in their path, and they
of course modestly give way to him. The magic worlds of Shakespeare and
Calderon are already suffocated in their birth by the head-shaking of
the stage-manager who must keep his machinery together for Raimund's
bedlam hocus-pocus. Let us be just, however, let us remember that our
theatre, in spite of the great talents which have been dedicated to it,
was not what it should have been, even in its most brilliant period, and
this perhaps not quite through its own fault. We have never had a real
comedy; farces and