nds of scholars who were often pedants, and whose language was a
jargon of learned affectations. Thus things continued, till the awful
visitation of the Thirty Years' War cast a general blight upon the
national life, and the traditions of the popular theatre were left to
the guardianship of the marionettes (_Puppenspiele_)!

The literary drama of the 17th century.

When, in the midst of that war, German poets once more began to essay
the dramatic form, the national drama was left outside their range of
vision. M. Opitz, who holds an honoured place in the history of the
German language and literature, in this branch of his labours contented
himself with translations of classical dramas and of Italian
pastorals--among the latter one of Rinuccini's _Daphne_, with which the
history of the opera in Germany begins. A. Gryphius, though as a comic
dramatist lacking neither vigour nor variety, and acquainted with
Shakespearian[279] as well as Latin and Italian examples, chiefly
devoted himself to the imitation of Latin, earlier French, and Dutch
tragedy, the rhetorical dialogue of which he effectively reproduced in
the Alexandrine metre.[280] Neither the turgid dramas of D. C. von
Lohenstein (1665-1684), for whose _Cleopatra_ the honour of having been
the first German tragedy has been claimed, nor even the much healthier
comedies of Chr. Weise (1642-1708) were brought upon the stage; while
the religious plays of J. Klay (1616-1656) are mere recitations
connected with the Italian growth of the _oratorio_. The frigid
allegories commemorative of contemporary events, with which the learned
from time to time supplied the theatre, and the pastoral dramas with
which the idyllic poets of Nuremberg--"the shepherds of the
Pegnitz"--after the close of the war gratified the peaceful longings of
their fellow-citizens, were alike mere scholastic efforts. These indeed
continued in the universities and _gymnasia_ to keep alive the love of
both dramatic composition and dramatic representation, and to encourage
the theatrical taste which led so many students into the professional
companies. But neither these dramatic exercises nor the _ludi Caesarei_
in which the Jesuits at Vienna revived the pomp and pageantry, and the
mixture of classical and Christian symbolism, of the Italian
Renaissance, had any influence upon the progress of the popular drama.

The stage before its reform.

The history of the German stage remains to about the sec