as royal
adviser, as father of two excellent children, and, at the last, as a man
who met death with tragic dignity. In such a case a wise manager
intrusts the comic part to an actor who--is not comic.

The following play was written in the spring of 1843. Some of our
readers may chance to know the little garden of the Hotel Reichmann in
Milan. In a room which opens out into the oleander bushes, the trickling
fountains, and the sandstone cupids of that garden, the first four acts
ripened during four weeks of work. The fifth act followed on the shores
of Lake Como.

Amid surroundings which, by their beauty, bring to mind only the laws
of the ideal, to hold fast to those burlesque memories from the
history of the sandy Mark Brandenburg was, one may feel sure, possible
only to a mind which turned in love to its Prussian home, however
"treasonable" its other opinions. And yet the romanticism of San
Souci, as well as the estheticism of the Berlin Board of Censors, has
at all times persecuted the play, now forbidding it, again permitting
an occasional performance, and again prohibiting it even after 1848.
When the aged and revered Genast from Weimar had played the king a
dozen times in the Friedrich-Wilhelmstaedtisches Theater, Hinckeldey's
messengers brought the announcement that the presentation of the piece
met with disfavor in high places. Frederick William IV. did everything
possible to hamper and curtail the author's ambitions. But to give
truth its due, I will not neglect to mention that this last prohibition
was softened by assigning as its motion the allusion made in the play to
that legend of the Berlin Castle, "The White Lady," who is supposed to
bring a presage of death to the Prussian royal family.

The Dresden Court Theatre was formerly a model of impartiality. And
above all, Emil Devrient's energetic partisanship for the newer dramatic
literature was a great assistance to authors in cases of this kind. This
play, like many another, owes to his artistic zeal its introduction to
those high-class theatres where alone a German dramatist finds his best
encouragement and advance. Unfortunately, the war of 1866 again banished
_Sword and Queue_ from the Vienna Burgtheater, where it had won a place
for itself.

* * * * *

SWORD AND QUEUE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

FREDERICK WILLIAM I., _King Of
Prussia, father of Frederick the
Great._

THE QUEEN, _his wife._

PRIN