This is a baseless and indefensible critical assertion. It is
evidently to be ascribed to the fact that the metre of the ancient
ballads is employed in both plays. But my tone is quite different
from Hertz's; the language of my play has a different ring; a
light summer breeze plays over the rhythm of my verse: over that
or Hertz's brood the storms of autumn.
Nor, as regards the characters, the action, and the contents of
the plays generally, is there any other or any greater resemblance
between them than that which is a natural consequence of the
derivation of the subjects of both from the narrow circle of
ideas in which the ancient ballads move.
It might be maintained with quite as much, or even more, reason
that Hertz in his _Svend Dyring's House_ had borrowed, and that
to no inconsiderable extent, from Heinrich von Kleist's _Kathchen
von Heilbronn_, a play written at the beginning of this century.
Kathchen's relation to Count Wetterstrahl is in all essentials
the same as Tagnhild's to the knight, Stig Hvide. Like Ragnhild,
Kathchen is compelled by a mysterious, inexplicable power to follow
the man she loves wherever he goes, to steal secretly after him,
to lay herself down to sleep near him, to come back to him, as by
some innate compulsion, however often she may be driven away. And
other instances of supernatural interference are to be met with
both in Kleist's and in Hertz's play.
But does any one doubt that it would be possible, with a little
good--or a little ill-will, to discover among still older dramatic
literature a play from which it could be maintained that Kleist had
borrowed here and there in his _Kathchen von Heilbronn_? I, for
my part, do not doubt it.


Pages:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25