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The library had been left to Bouhier's son-in-law, Chartraire de Bourbonne: the grave offspring of Aldus and Gryphius found themselves in company with poets of the talon rouge and muses of the Opéra bouffe. When the gay De Bourbonne died, the ill-assorted crowd passed to his son-in-law in his turn, and was transferred in 1784 to the Abbey of Clairvaux.
Opitz wrote some operas in imitation of the Italian, and Gryphius acquired popularity by his translations from Marini and his introduction of the pastoral drama. The theatrical productions of Lohenstein, characterized by pedantry and bad taste, together with the multitude of others belonging to this age, are curious instances of the folly and degradation to which the stage may be reduced.
This first school was succeeded by a second of surpassing extravagance. Hoffman von Hoffmannswaldau, A.D. 1679, the founder of the second Silesian school, was a caricature of Opitz, Lohenstein of Gryphius, Besser of Flemming, Talander and Ziegler of Zesen, and even Francisci was outdone by that most intolerable of romancers, Happel.
He founded a society of melancholy poets at Koenigsberg, in Prussia, the members of which composed elegies for each other; Tscherning and Andrew Gryphius, the Corneille of Germany, a native of Glogau, whose dramas are worthy of a better age than the insipid century in which they were produced. The life of this dramatist was full of incident.
Opiz, who may be considered as the founder of its modern form, translated several tragedies from the ancients into verse, and composed pastoral operas after the manner of the Italians; but I know not whether he wrote anything expressly for the stage. He was followed by Andreas Gryphius, who may be styled our first dramatic writer.
He seems rather to have had Vondel, the Fleming, before his eyes, a writer still highly celebrated by his countrymen, and universally called by them, the great Vondel, while Gryphius himself has been consigned to oblivion.
Grolier was the personal friend of Gryphius, the printer of Lyons, and of all the members of the House of Aldus at Venice. Erasmus, who was revered by Grolier as his god-father in matters of learning, once paid a compliment to the treasurer, which was not far from the truth.
The tragedies of Lohenstein, who in his day may be styled the Marino of our literature, in their structure resemble those of Gryphius; but, not to mention their other faults, they are of such an immeasurable length as to set all ideas of representation at defiance.
In other respects, Gryphius possessed little theatrical skill, and I do not even know if his pieces were ever actually brought out on the stage.
Origin of the German Theatre Hans Sachs Gryphius The age of Gottsched Wretched Imitation of the French Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller Review of their Works Their influence on Chivalrous Dramas, Affecting Dramas, and Family Pictures Prospect for Futurity.
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