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But it is exceedingly dangerous to baffle the carefully fostered anticipation of an important scene. In the days of the five-act dogma, each act was supposed to have its special and pre-ordained function. Freytag assigns to the second act, as a rule, the Steigerung or heightening the working-up, one might call it of the interest.
But to punctual Freytag's mind, here is now a new considerable item of sundries: insult to his Majesty, to wit; breaking his Majesty's arrest, in such insolent loud manner: and Freytag finds that he must write anew.
For help to himself, Freytag is to take counsel with one Hofrath Schmidt; a substantial experienced Burgher of Frankfurt, whose rathship is Prussian. Freytag is in no respect a shining Diplomatist; probably some EMERITUS Lieutenant, doing his function for 30 pounds a year: but does it in a practical solid manner.
Goethe, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Heyse, Gottfried Keller, Freytag, my unread favorite "Fritz" Reuter, deal not with the life of cities. There is as yet no drama, no novel, no art, no politics born of the city. There is no domineering Paris or London or New York as yet.
"We would have risked our lives rather than let him get away," said Freytag; "and if I, holding a council of war with myself, had not found him at the barrier, but in the open country, and he had refused to jog back, I don't know that I shouldn't have lodged a bullet in his head. To such a degree had I at heart the letters and writings of the king."
He thereupon repaired to Geneva, and thereafter, freed from the patronage of princes and the injustice of the powerful, spent his life in a land where full freedom of thought and action was possible. As for the worthy Freytag, he felicitated himself highly on the way he had handled that dabbler in poeshy.
In the course of two weeks or more the OEUVRE DE POESIE did come. Voltaire was impatient to go. And he might perhaps have at once gone, had Freytag been clearly instructed, so as to know the essential from the unessential here.
Herr Freytag then points out that these articles are private property, and that the officers and soldiers had no right to appropriate them to their own use. "We are proud and happy," he concludes, addressing them, "at your warlike deeds; behave worthily and honourably also as men. CALAIS, February 10th.
The beginner, however, is far more likely to put too little than too much into his first act: he is more likely to leave our interest insufficiently stimulated than to carry us too far in the development of his theme. My own feeling is that, as a general rule, what Freytag calls the erregende Moment ought by all means to fall within the first act. What is the erregende Moment?
"There was at Frankfort one Freytag, who had been banished from Dresden and had become an agent for the King of Prussia....He notified me, on behalf of his Majesty, that I was not to leave Frankfort till I had restored the valuable effects I was carrying away from his Majesty. "'Alack, sir, I am carrying away nothing from that country, if you please, not even the smallest regret.
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