critics, is a
slight but clever refutation of ignorant presumption. _Agnes Bernauer_
(1851) is a worthy successor of _Herodes and Mariamne_; _Gyges and his
Ring_ (1854) is the most poetic and perhaps the most characteristic of
his dramas. The trilogy on the _Nibelungen_ (1855-1860) was Hebbel's
last great work, ranking with Grillparzer's _Golden Fleece_ and
Schiller's _Wallenstein_; and if he had lived to complete _Demetrius_,
we should have had another remarkable drama, on a subject which Schiller
too was destined to leave unfinished.

In the fifties, Hebbel accompanied Christine on professional trips to
North Germany, and had ample occasion to observe the spread of his
influence. In 1852 he was feted at Munich in connection with the
production there of _Agnes Bernauer_. In 1858 he attended a performance
of _Genoveva_ in Weimar, and was decorated with an order by the Grand
Duke. In 1861 the Nibelungen trilogy was performed for the first time in
Weimar, with Christine as Brunhild and Kriemhild; and in the following
year Hebbel, who had even thought of going to live at Weimar, was the
guest of the Grand Duke at his castle in Wilhelmsthal. Though in Vienna
honors came later, Hebbel felt himself to be during these years at the
summit of his existence. In 1855 he bought a country home at Orth near
Gmunden in the Salzkammergut, and to the idyllic atmosphere of that
retreat he owed the inspiration for the epic poem _Mother and Child_
(1857), his gentlest treatment of a tragic theme. In 1857 he issued a
definitive edition of his _Poems_, dedicated to Uhland, "the first poet
of the present time." In 1854 _Genoveva_, in modified form, was
successfully presented as _Magellone_ at the _Burgtheater_, with
Christine as the heroine. But Hebbel's first Viennese triumph did not
come until February 19, 1863, when Christine played Brunhild in the
first and second parts of the _Nibelungen_. On his deathbed he received
the news that the Berlin Schiller Prize had been awarded to him for the
_Nibelungen_. Hebbel died on the thirteenth of December, 1863. Christine
out-lived him by nearly half a century, until the twenty-ninth of June,
1910.

Rightly or wrongly, Hebbel regarded himself as the creator of a new form
of drama, setting in at a step beyond Shakespeare and Schiller, and
attacking problems in the manner suggested, but not fully developed, by
Goethe. Shakespeare and Schiller, he said, locate the conflict in the
breast of the hero: s