In the series of dramas thus passed in review there is
a great variety of setting and incident, and an abundance of dramatic
_motifs_ that show Grillparzer to have been one of the most opulent of
playwrights. The range of characters, too, each presented with due
regard for _milieu_, is seen to be considerable, and upon closer
examination would be seen to be more considerable still. The greatest
richness is found in the characters of women. Grillparzer himself lacked
the specifically masculine qualities of courageous enterprise and
tenacity of purpose. His men are rather affected by the world than
active creators of new conditions, and their contact with conditions as
they are leaves them with the scars of battle instead of the joy of
victory. No one, however, could attribute a feministic spirit to
Grillparzer; or, if so, it must be said that the study of reaction is no
less instructive than the study of action and that being is at least as
high an ideal as doing. Being, existence in a definite place amid the
tangible surroundings of personal life, Grillparzer gives us with
extraordinary abundance of sensuous details. The drama was for him what
Goethe said it should always be, a present reality; and for the greater
impressiveness of this reality he is fond of the use of visible
objects--whether they be symbols, like the Golden Fleece in _Medea_, the
lyre in _Sappho_, the medallion in _The Jewess of Toledo_, or
characteristic weapons, accoutrement, and apparel. Everything expressive
is welcome to him, gesture or inarticulate sound reinforces the spoken
word or replaces it. Unusually sensuous language and comparative fulness
of sententious passages go hand in hand with a laconic habit which
indulges in many ellipses and is content to leave to the actor the task
of making a single word convey the meaning of a sentence.

Grillparzer's plays were written for the stage. He abhorred what the
Germans call a book drama, and had, on the other hand, the highest
respect for the judgment of a popular audience as to the fact whether a
play were fit for the stage or not. The popular audience was a jury
from which there was no appeal on this question of fact. A passage in
_The Poor Musician_ gives eloquent expression to Grillparzer's regard
for the sure esthetic instinct of the masses and, indirectly, to his own
poetic _naivete._ But his plays are also poems; they are all in verse;
and like the plays of his French prototype, Racine, the