uropean
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KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW

SWORD AND QUEUE (1843)

TRANSLATED BY GRACE ISABEL COLBRON

PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR

The essence of the comic is self-contradiction, contrast. Even
professional estheticians must acknowledge that by the very nature of
its origin the following comedy answers this definition.

A king lacking the customary attributes of his station; a royal court
governed by the rules that regulate any simple middle-class
household--surely here is a contradiction sufficient in itself to
attract the Comic Muse. And it was indeed only when the author was well
along in his work that he felt any inclination to introduce a few
political allusions with what is called a "definite purpose," into a
work inspired by the principles of pure comedy.

Ever since the example set by those great Greeks, AEschylus and
Aristophanes, the stage has claimed the right to deal with extremes. He
who, sinning and laden with the burden of human guilt, has once fallen a
victim to the Eumenides, cannot, as a figure in a drama, go off on
pleasure trips, nor can he go about the usual business of daily life.
Fate seizes him red-handed, causes him to see blood in every glass of
champagne and to read his warrant of arrest on every chance scrap of
paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes
would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the
public by their declining fortunes, he at once turns the tragedian into
a rag-picker.

Comedy may, tragedy must, exaggerate. The exaggerations in _Sword and
Queue_ brought forth many a contemptuous grimace from the higher-priced
seats in the Court Theatres. But it needs only a perusal of the _Memoirs
of the Markgravine of Baireuth, Princess of Prussia_, to give the
grotesque picture a certificate of historical veracity. Not only the
character-drawing, but the very plot, is founded on those Memoirs,
written in a less sophisticated age than our own, and the authenticity
of which is undisputed.

In the case of Seckendorf, the technical, or, I might say, the symphonic
composition of the play, which allots the parts as arbitrarily as in the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ does Peter Quince, who says to highly
respectable people: "You play the Lion, and you play the Ass,"
necessitates making a victim of a man who was a mediocre diplomat, but
for a time, at least, a fairly good soldier. The author feels no
com