he friends agreed, on a wager, to put into
literary form the story suggested by an engraving that hung in
Zschokke's room. By common consent the prize was awarded to Kleist's
production, his one comedy, _The Broken Jug_.

In April, 1802, Kleist realized his romantic dream by taking up his
abode, in rural seclusion, on a little island at the outlet of the
Lake of Thun, amid the majestic scenery of the Bernese Oberland. In
this retreat, encouraged by the applause of his first confidants, he
labored with joyous energy, recasting his _Schroffenstein Family_,
working out the _Broken Jug_, meditating historical dramas on Leopold
of Austria and Peter the Hermit, and expending the best of his
untrained genius on the plan of a tragedy, _Robert Guiscard_, in which
he strove to create a drama of a new type, combining the beauties of
Greek classical art and of Shakespeare; with his _Guiscard_ the young
poet even dared hope to "snatch the laurel wreath from Goethe's brow."

Two months of intense mental exertion in the seclusion of his island
left Kleist exhausted, and he fell seriously ill; whereupon Ulrica, on
receiving belated news of his plight, hastened to Bern to care for
him. When a political revolution drove Ludwig Wieland from Bern, they
followed the latter to Weimar, where the poet Wieland, the dean of the
remarkable group of great authors gathered at Weimar, received Kleist
kindly, and made him his guest at his country estate. With great
difficulty Wieland succeeded in persuading his secretive visitor to
reveal his literary plans; and when Kleist recited from memory some of
the scenes of his unfinished _Guiscard_, the old poet was transported
with enthusiasm; these fragments seemed to him worthy of the united
genius of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, and he was convinced
that Kleist had the power to "fill the void in the history of the
German drama that even Goethe and Schiller had not filled." But in
spite of Wieland's generous encouragement, Kleist found it impossible
to complete this masterpiece, and his hopeless pursuit of the perfect
ideal became an intolerable obsession to his ambitious and sensitive
soul. He could not remain in Weimar. In Dresden old friends sought to
cheer him in his desperate attempts to seize the elusive ideal; to
more than one of them, in his despair, he proposed a joint suicide.
Again he was driven to seek solace and inspiration in travel, a friend
accompanying him to Switzerland. Arriv