The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07

Karl Gutzkow's life-work was a struggle for freedom and truth. We recognize in the web of his serious argument familiarity with the best thought of the poets, theologians, and philosophers of his own day and of the eighteenth century. In religion a pantheist, he believed in the immortality of the soul, had unshaken confidence in the tendency of the world that "makes for righteousness," and recommends the ideal of "truth and justice" as the best central thought to guide each man's whole life. He shares in an eminent degree, with other members of the group known as Young Germany, a significance for the subsequent development of German literature, far transcending the artistic value of his works. People are just beginning to perceive his genetic importance for the student of Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the recent naturalistic movement in European letters.

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KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW

SWORD AND QUEUE (1843)TRANSLATED BY GRACE ISABEL COLBRONPREFACE OF THE AUTHOR

The essence of the comic is self-contradiction, contrast. Even professional estheticians must acknowledge that by the very nature of its origin the following comedy answers this definition.

A king lacking the customary attributes of his station; a royal court governed by the rules that regulate any simple middle-class household—surely here is a contradiction sufficient in itself to attract the Comic Muse. And it was indeed only when the author was well along in his work that he felt any inclination to introduce a few political allusions with what is called a "definite purpose," into a work inspired by the principles of pure comedy.

Ever since the example set by those great Greeks, Æschylus and Aristophanes, the stage has claimed the right to deal with extremes. He who, sinning and laden with the burden of human guilt, has once fallen a victim to the Eumenides, cannot, as a figure in a drama, go off on pleasure trips, nor can he go about the usual business of daily life. Fate seizes him red-handed, causes him to see blood in every glass of champagne and to read his warrant of arrest on every chance scrap of paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the public by their declining fortunes, he at once turns the tragedian into a rag-picker.

Comedy may, tragedy must, exaggerate. The exaggerations in Sword and Queue brought forth many a contemptuous grimace from the higher-priced seats in the Court Theatres. But it needs only a perusal of the Memoirs of the Markgravine of Baireuth, Princess of Prussia, to give the grotesque picture a certificate of historical veracity. Not only the character-drawing, but the very plot, is founded on those Memoirs, written in a less sophisticated age than our own, and the authenticity of which is undisputed.

In the case of Seckendorf, the technical, or, I might say, the symphonic composition of the play, which allots the parts as arbitrarily as in the Midsummer Night's Dream does Peter Quince, who says to highly respectable people: "You play the Lion, and you play the Ass," necessitates making a victim of a man who was a mediocre diplomat, but for a time, at least, a fairly good soldier. The author feels no compunction on this score. Stupidity, as Comus artlessly thinks, is not wickedness; the Lion or the Ass—each is necessary to different moments in the play. A Brandenburg-Prussian comedy of 1733 can, a priori, hardly fail to be "unjust" to an Imperial Ambassador of that epoch. Such injustice belongs to the native wantonness of the Comic Muse. In plays of a specifically Austrian character, Prussia, and especially the people of Berlin, have suffered the same necessary injustice of comedy. Fortunately, according to Chevalier Lang and other more reliable authorities, this particular Seckendorf was both vain and tyrannous. His hatred for Frederick II. and his eternal "combinations" went to such lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian Court a detailed plan by which the "Land-hungry conqueror" might be personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, Maria Theresa, Vol. I).

However, Puck's manner of writing history may be softened a little. It is not necessary for the actor to present Seckendorf as an imbecile. Actors have the unfortunate habit of taking the whole hand when a finger is offered. In truth I have seen but a very few performances of my play in which Frederick William I. still retained, beneath his attitude of stern father, some share of royal dignity; in which Eversmann, despite his confident impudence, still held his tongue like a trembling lackey; in which the Hereditary Prince, despite his desire to find everything in the Castle ridiculous, still maintained a reserve sufficient to save him from being expelled from Berlin for his impertinent criticisms—or where the Princess was still proud and witty beneath her girlish simplicity. And still rarer is it to see a Seckendorf who, in spite of his clumsy "combinations," did not quite sink to the level of the Marshal von Kalb. At this point a dramaturgic hint might not come amiss. In cases where there is danger of degrading the part, the stage manager should take care to intrust such rôles to the very actors who at first thought might seem least suited for them—those whose personalities will compel them to raise the part to a higher level. The buffoon and sometimes even the finer comedian cannot free Shakespeare from the reproach of having given two kings of Denmark a clown as Prime Minister. It is very much less necessary that the audience should laugh at Polonius' quips than that the quips should in no wise impair his position as courtier, as royal adviser, as father of two excellent children, and, at the last, as a man who met death with tragic dignity. In such a case a wise manager intrusts the comic part to an actor who—is not comic.

The following play was written in the spring of 1843. Some of our readers may chance to know the little garden of the Hôtel Reichmann in Milan. In a room which opens out into the oleander bushes, the trickling fountains, and the sandstone cupids of that garden, the first four acts ripened during four weeks of work. The fifth act followed on the shores of Lake Como.

Amid surroundings which, by their beauty, bring to mind only the laws of the ideal, to hold fast to those burlesque memories from the history of the sandy Mark Brandenburg was, one may feel sure, possible only to a mind which turned in love to its Prussian home, however "treasonable" its other opinions. And yet the romanticism of San Souci, as well as the estheticism of the Berlin Board of Censors, has at all times persecuted the play, now forbidding it, again permitting an occasional performance, and again prohibiting it even after 1848. When the aged and revered Genast from Weimar had played the king a dozen times in the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, Hinckeldey's messengers brought the announcement that the presentation of the piece met with disfavor in high places. Frederick William IV. did everything possible to hamper and curtail the author's ambitions. But to give truth its due, I will not neglect to mention that this last prohibition was softened by assigning as its motion the allusion made in the play to that legend of the Berlin Castle, "The White Lady," who is supposed to bring a presage of death to the Prussian royal family.

The Dresden Court Theatre was formerly a model of impartiality. And above all, Emil Devrient's energetic partisanship for the newer dramatic literature was a great assistance to authors in cases of this kind. This play, like many another, owes to his artistic zeal its introduction to those high-class theatres where alone a German dramatist finds his best encouragement and advance. Unfortunately, the war of 1866 again banished Sword and Queue from the Vienna Burgtheater, where it had won a place for itself.

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SWORD AND QUEUE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

FREDERICK WILLIAM I., King Of

Prussia, father of Frederick the

Great.

THE QUEEN, his wife.

PRINCESS WILHELMINE, their daughter.

THE PRINCE HEREDITARY OF BAIREUTH

GENERAL VON GRUMBKOW }

COUNT SCHWERIN } Councilors and Confidants of the King.

COUNT WARTENSLEBEN }

COUNT SECKENDORF, Imperial Ambassador

BARONET HOTHAM, Envoy of Great Britain

FRAU VON VIERECK

FRAU VON HOLZENDORF

The Queen's Ladies.

FRAÜLEIN VON SONNSFELD, Lady-in-waiting to the Princess.

EVERSMANN, the King's valet.

KAMKE, in the Queen's service.

ECKHOF, a grenadier.

A Lackey in the King's service. Generals, Officers, Court Ladies. Members of the Smoking-Circle. Grenadiers, Lackeys.

Scene of action: The Royal Castle of Berlin.

First performance, January 1st, 1844, in the Court Theatre in Dresden.

SWORD AND QUEUE

ACT I

SCENE I

A room in the Palace. One window and four doors. A table and two armchairs on the left of the room.

EVERSMANN, taking snuff comfortably. Two Drummers of the Guard.

Later FRAÜLEIN VON SONNSFELD.

The drummers take up a position near the door to the left, leading to the apartments of the PRINCESS, and execute a roll of the drums.

FRAÜLEIN VON SONNSFELD (opens the door and looks in).

That will do.

[The drummers play a second roll.]

SONNSFELD (looks in again).

Yes, yes. We heard it.

[EVERSMANN gives the sign again and the drummers play a third long roll.]

SONNSFELD (comes out angrily, speaks when the noise has subsided).

This is unendurable! It is enough to ruin one's nerves—left wheel—march—out with you to the parade ground where you be long! [The drummers march out still playing. When the noise can no longer be heard she continues.] Eversmann, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You should remind the King of the respect due to ladies.

EVERSMANN

I obey my royal master's orders, ma'am. And inasmuch as late rising is a favorite vice of the youth of today, it has been ordered that the reveille be played at six o'clock every morning before the doors of the royal Princes and Princesses.

SONNSFELD

Princess Wilhelmine is no longer a child.

EVERSMANN

Her morning dreams are all the sweeter for that reason.

SONNSFELD

Dreams of our final release—of despair—of death—

EVERSMANN

Or possibly dreams of marriage—and the like—

SONNSFELD

Have a care, Eversmann! The Crown Prince has won his freedom at last; he is keeping a most exact record of all that happens in Berlin and in the immediate environment of his severe father. It is well known that you influence the King more than do his ministers.

EVERSMANN

If the poetic fancy of our Crown Prince, who, by the way, is my devoted young friend Fritz, cannot see the truth more clearly than that, then I have little respect for the imaginative power of poets. I—and influence? I twist His Majesty's stately pigtail every morning, clip his fine manly beard, fill his cozy little Dutch pipe for him each evening—and if in the course of these innocent employments His Most Sacred Majesty lets fall a hint, a remark—a little command possibly—why—naturally—

SONNSFELD

You pick them up and weave them into a "nice innocent little influence" for yourself. Eh? An influence that has already earned you three city houses, five estates, and a carriage-and-four. Have a care that the Crown Prince does not auction off all these objects under the gallows-tree some fine day.

EVERSMANN

Oh, but your Ladyship must have slept badly. Pray spare me these—predictions and prophesyings, which are made up of whole cloth. His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is far too much, of a philosopher to take such revenge on a man who has no more dealings with His Majesty than to fill his pipe each evening, to braid his pigtail each morning, and to shave him in the good old German fashion every second day. Have I made my meaning clear?

[He goes out.]

SONNSFELD

Go your way, you old sinner! You may pretend to be ever so honest and simple—we know you and your like. Oh, what a life we lead here in this Court! Cannons thunder in the garden under our windows every morning or else they send up a company of soldiers to accustom us to early rising. After the morning prayer the Princess knits, sews, presses her linen, studies her catechism, and, alas! is forced to listen to a stupid sermon every day. At dinner, we get very little to eat; then the King takes his afternoon nap. He's forever quarreling with the Queen, they have scarcely a good word to say to each other, and yet the entire family are expected to look on at His Majesty's melodious snore-concert, and even to brush away the flies from the face of the sleeping Father of his country. If my Princess did not possess so much natural wit and spirit, the sweet creature would be quite crushed by such a life. If the King only knew that she is learning French secretly, and can almost write a polite little note already—! I hear her coming.

SCENE II

PRINCESS WILHELMINE comes in, carrying a letter.

WILHELMINE (timidly).

Can any one hear us?

SONNSFELD

Not unless the walls have ears. Is the letter written?

WILHELMINE

I hardly dare send it, dear Sonnsfeld. I know there are a hundred mistakes in it.

SONNSFELD

A hundred? Then the letter must be much longer than Your Highness first planned it.

WILHELMINE

I wrote that I fully appreciate the value of the services offered me, but that my position forces me to refuse any aid to my education which cannot be attained at least by the help of my mother, the Queen.

SONNSFELD

Is that what you have written? And made a hundred mistakes? In that case we are just where we were before. I appreciate that an eighteen-year-old Princess has to consider history, posterity and so forth—but this conscientiousness will be your ruin. The King will continue to make a slave of you, the Queen to treat you as a child. You are the victim of the conflict between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom or which one to please. The Crown Prince has made himself free—and how did he do it? Only by courage and independence. He tore himself loose from the oppressive bondage imposed on him by the caprice of others, and won the means to complete his education. And now he sends to you from Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a support and protection to you and to the Queen—so that here in this Court where they drum, trumpet, and parade all day long, you may not finally, in your despair, seize a musket yourself and join the Potsdam Guards!

WILHELMINE

You have a sense of humor, my dear Sonnsfeld. It is all well enough for my brother to make plans and send out emissaries, when he is safe in Rheinsberg. He knows that the path to the freedom he has won led past the very foot of the scaffold. I am of the sex whose duty it is to be patient. My father is so good at heart, gentler possibly, in his true self, than is my mother. She indeed, absorbed in her political ambitions, often turns from me with a harshness that accords ill with mother-love. It is my fate to endure this life. Ask yourself, dear friend, how could I trust to a chance adventurous stranger whom my brother sends to me from out of his wild, artistic circle in Rheinsberg—sends to me to be my knight and paladin? Such a thought could have been conceived only in the brains of that group of poets. I'll confess to you in secret that I should greatly enjoy being in the midst of the Rheinsberg merriment, disguised of course. But I'm in Berlin—not in Rheinsberg, and so I have gathered up my meagre scraps of French and thanked the Prince of Baireuth for his offer in a manner which is far more a refusal than an acceptance.

[Hands SONNSFELD the letter.]

SONNSFELD

And I am to dispatch this letter? [With droll pathos.] No, Your Highness, I cannot have anything to do with this forbidden correspondence.

WILHELMINE

No joking please, Sonnsfeld. It was the only answer I could possibly send to the Prince's tender epistle.

SONNSFELD

Impossible!—To become an accomplice to a forbidden correspondence in this Court might cost one's life.

WILHELMINE

You will make me angry!—here, dispatch this letter, and quickly.

SONNSFELD

No, Princess. But I know a better means, an absolutely sure means of dispatching the letter to its destination, and that is—[She glances toward a door in the background] deliver it yourself.

[She slips out of a side door.]

SCENE III

The PRINCE HEREDITARY OF BAIREUTH, dressed in the French taste of the period, as different as possible from the king's favorite garb, comes in cautiously.

WILHELMINE (aside).

The Prince of Baireuth!

THE PRINCE (aside).

Her very picture! It is the Princess! [Aloud.] I crave Your Highness' pardon that my impatience to deliver the greeting of Your Royal brother the Crown Prince in person—

WILHELMINE

The Prince of Baireuth places me in no slight embarrassment by this early visit.

PRINCE

The visit was not paid to you, Princess, but to this noble and venerable castle, these stairways, these galleries, these winding corridors—it was a visit of recognizance, Your Highness, such as must precede any important undertaking.

WILHELMINE

Then you are preparing to do battle here?

PRINCE

My intentions are not altogether peaceful, and yet, as Princess Wilhelmine doubtless knows, I am compelled to confine myself to a policy of defense solely.

WILHELMINE

And even in this you cannot exercise too much care. [Aside.] The letter is no longer necessary. [Aloud.] How did you leave my brother? In good health? And thoroughly occupied?

PRINCE

The Crown Prince leads a life of the gayest diversity in his exile. He has made of Rheinsberg a veritable little Court of the Muses, devoted now to serious study, now to poetic recreation. We have enjoyed unforgettably beautiful hours there; one would hardly believe that so much imagination could be developed and encouraged on the borders of Mecklenburg! We paint, we build, we model, we write. The regiment which is under the immediate command of our talented Prince serves merely to carry out, by military evolutions, the strategic descriptions of Polybius. In short, I should deeply regret leaving so delightful a spot had it not been for the flattering and important task intrusted to me. Princess, the Crown Prince desires full and true information, obtained at the source, as to the situation of his sister, his mother, here, that he may, if necessary, advise how this situation be improved, how any difficulties may be met.

WILHELMINE

If it became known that I am granting an audience, here in this public hall, to a Prince who has not yet been presented either to my father or to my mother—I could prepare myself for several weeks in Fortress Küstrin.

[She bows and turns as if to go.]

PRINCE

Princess! Then it is really true—that which is whispered, with horror, at every court in Europe? It is true that the King of Prussia tyrannizes not only his court, his entire environment, but his own family as well?

WILHELMINE

Prince, you employ too harsh an expression for what I would rather term merely our own peculiar ceremonial. In Versailles they glide as on butterfly wings over the polished floors. Here we tread the earth with ringing spurs. In Versailles the Royal Family consider themselves but as a merry company, recognizing no ties as sacred save those of congeniality, no bond but that of—unfettered inclination. Here the Court is merely one big middle-class family, where a prayer is said before meat, where the parents must always be the first to speak, where strictest obedience must, if necessary, tolerate even absurdities; where one quarrels, out of one's mutual affection, sometimes—where we even torture one another and make life harder for one another—all out of love—

PRINCE

Princess, I swear to you—this must be changed.

WILHELMINE

And how, pray?

PRINCE

The Crown Prince asked me to employ all conceivable means to free you from this barbarism. I am at your service entirely—command me. His first thought was for your mental needs. How is it with your knowledge of French?

WILHELMINE

The King detests all things foreign, and most of all does he detest

France, her literature, her language.

PRINCE

The Crown Prince is aware of that. He sends you therefore, as a beginning, a member of his Rheinsberg circle, a talkative but very learned little man, a Frenchman, Laharpe by name—

WILHELMINE

All instructors of the French language have been banished from Berlin by strictest order.

PRINCE

Laharpe will come to you without his identity becoming known.

WILHELMINE

That is impossible. No one dare approach me who cannot first satisfy the questioning of the Castle Guard.

PRINCE

Cannot Laharpe instruct you in the apartments of your, Lady-in-waiting,

Fraülein von Sonnsfeld? WILHELMINE. Impossible.

PRINCE

In the Queen's rooms, then.

WILHELMINE

Impossible.

THE PRINCE

By Heaven! Do they never leave you alone for one hour?

WILHELMINE

Oh yes, two hours every Sunday—in church.

PRINCE

But this is appalling! Why, in Versailles every Princess has her own establishment when she is but ten years old—and even her very dolls have their ladies-in-waiting!

WILHELMINE

The only place which I may visit occasionally, and remain in unaccompanied, are those rooms over there, in the lower story of the palace.

PRINCE

The King's private library, no doubt?

WILHELMINE

No.

PRINCE

A gallery of family portraits?

WILHELMINE

Do you see the smoke issuing from the open window?

PRINCE

That is—oh, it cannot be—the kitchen?

WILHELMINE

Not exactly—but hardly much better. It is, I have the honor to inform you, the Royal Prussian Laundry. Yes, Prince, the sister of the Prussian Crown Prince is permitted to remain in that room for an hour or two if she will, to look on at the washing, the starching, the ironing, the sorting-out of body and house linen—

PRINCE

This—for a Princess?

WILHELMINE

Do you see the little window with the flower pots and the bird in a tiny cage? The wife of our silver-cleaner lives there, and occasionally, when the poor daughter of a King is supposed to be busied, like any serving-maid, among the steaming pots and boilers, this same poor Princess slips in secretly to the good woman's little room. Ah! there, behind those flower-pots, I can laugh freely and merrily—there I can let the little linnet feed from my hand, and I can say to myself that with all my troubles, with all my sorrows, I am still happier than the poor little singer in his cage. For he will never regain his freedom no matter how sweetly he may sing … in all the tongues of earth.

PRINCE (aside).

She is charming. [Aloud.] And Laharpe?

WILHELMINE

If I must dare it—send the learned gentleman to me down there, Prince. In that little room I will obey my brother's command to perfect my French style. Among many other things I should really like to learn to say, in most elegant and modern French, these words: "Yes I will dare to begin a new life. Remain my brother's friend—and my protector!" But for the moment—goodby.

[She hurries out.]

SCENE IV

PRINCE (alone).

Where am I? Was that a scene from the Arabian Nights? Or am I really on the banks of that homely river Spree which flows into the Havel? Of a truth this Prussian Court with its queer pigtails and gaiters is more romantic than I had thought. Laharpe down there behind the flower-pots! Laharpe tête-à-tête with a Princess who visits the kitchen and with a linnet which—happy bird—is privileged to bite her fingers. How beautiful she is—much fairer than the miniature Frederick wears next his heart! And yet I had fallen in love with this miniature. [Looks about him.] There is a spell that seems to hold me in these rooms, through which she glides like the Genius of the bower. [Goes to the window.] Down there in the square, the bayonets of the parading troops flash in the sunlight—and that door over yonder leads to the apartments of a Princess whose possession would mean the highest bliss earth can afford. And there—whither leads that door through which the kind guardian of this paradise disappeared?