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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.
The Seventeenth Century: Opitz, Leibnitz, Puffendorf, Kepler, Wolf, Thomasius, Gerhard; Silesian Schools; Hoffmannswaldau, Lohenstein. The Swiss and Saxon Schools: Gottsched, Bodmer, Rabener, Gellert, Kaestner, and others. 2. Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland, and Herder. 3. Goethe and Schiller. 4. The Goettingen School: Voss, Stolberg, Claudius, Buerger, and others. 5.
Among the more distinguished contemporary poets, Hamerling is remarkable for the boldness of his conceptions, and the passionate vehemence of his expression. THE DRAMA. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Gottsched and his followers had rendered good service to the stage, not so much by their own productions as by driving from it the bombast of Lohenstein.
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.
None of the German dramas and operas which the seventeenth century produced, though they never failed to draw large audiences, could be compared, in poetical value, to Marlowe's tragedy. The German stage of that period was of very low standing, and the few poets who wrote for it, as, for instance, Lohenstein, preferred foreign subjects, the more remote in space and time, the better.
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.
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