.

"How do you like the piece?" asked the king of Gunther.

"Your Majesty, it is one of our classics."

"You're not always so orthodox."

"Nor am I in this case," replied Gunther; "I can safely say that I
honor Lessing with all my heart and perhaps, indeed, with undue
partiality. But in this play, Lessing had not yet arrived at the repose
of freedom. It is the result of noblest melancholy, and might be termed
fragmentary and incomplete; for the account is not closed, and at the
end there still remains an unfilled breach. This, however, arises from
the fact that a great historical subject taken from the age of the
Romans has been transferred to the cabinet and country-seat of a petty
Italian prince."

"How do you mean?" enquired the king. Gunther went on to explain:

"In this play, there is a pathos of despair which reaches its climax in
the final question: 'Is it not enough that princes are men? Must they
also learn that their friends are demons in disguise?' One might assume
that this discovery was a punishment that would cling to the prince for
life. Henceforth, he must become a changed man. But this epigrammatic
confession of his own weakness and of the baseness of those who environ
him, does not seem to me a full expiation. A question, and such as
this, at the close of a drama whose aim should be to leave us
reconciled with eternal and unchanging law, can only be explained by
the fact that the keynote of the whole play is sarcastic. He whom
certain things will not deprive of his reason, has none to lose. The
fault of the play--Lessing's love of truth would court the boldest
investigation--the gap, as it were, lay in the fact that Lessing has
transferred the act of Virginius from the Roman forum to the modern
stage and has given us, instead of the infuriated citizen with knife in
hand, the malcontent Colonel Galotti. The act of Virginius was the
turning point that led to a great political catastrophe, after which
came revolution and expiation. But in Lessing's play, the deed takes
place at the end, and leads to no results. It closes with a question,
as it were, or rather with an unresolved dissonance."

Although this explanation had, at first, been given in a somewhat
acrimonious tone, it gave great satisfaction. It elevated the subject,
and the painful impressions awakened by it, into the cool, serene
atmosphere of criticism.

"What struck me as peculiar, in the play," said Irma, unable to remain
silent, "