ler's ascendancy began with writers
who could not reconcile themselves with the cosmopolitan and
non-national elements in his genius, and is still represented by eminent
critics; but the future must be left to settle the contention.

The popular stage.

Schiller's later dramas had gradually conquered the stage, over which
his juvenile works had in this time triumphantly passed, but on which
his _Don Carlos_ had met with a cold welcome. For a long time, however,
its favourites were authors of a very different order, who suited
themselves to the demands of a public tolerably indifferent to the
literary progress of the drama. After popular tastes had oscillated
between the imitators of _Gotz_ and those of _Emilia Galotti_, they
entered into a more settled phase, as the establishment of standing
theatres at the courts and in the large towns increased the demand for
good "acting" plays. Famous actors, such as Schruder and A. W. Iffland,
sought by translations or compositions of their own to meet the popular
likings, which largely took the direction of that irrepressible
favourite of theatrical audiences, the sentimental domestic drama.[288]
But the most successful purveyor of such wares was an author who, though
not himself an actor, understood the theatre with a professional
instinct--August von Kotzebue. His productivity ranged from the domestic
drama and comedy of all kinds to attempts to rival Schiller and
Shakespeare in verse; and though his popularity (which ultimately proved
his doom) brought upon him the bitterest attacks of the romantic school
and other literary authorities, his self-conceit is not astonishing, and
the time has come for saying that there is some exaggeration in the
contempt which has been lavished upon him by posterity.[289] Nor should
it be forgotten that German literature had so far failed to furnish the
comic stage with any successors to _Minna von Barnhelm_; for Goethe's
efforts to dramatize characteristic events or figures of the
Revolutionary age[290] must be dismissed as failures, not from a
theatrical point of view only. The joint efforts of Goethe and Schiller
for the Weimar stage, important in many respects for the history of the
German drama, at the same time reveal the want of a national dramatic
literature sufficient to supply the needs of a theatre endeavouring to
satisfy the demands of art.

The romantic school.

Meanwhile the so-called romantic school of German literature