A. Brun, Paris, 1860. [Cf. the British Museum Catalogue]. Dutch: [E. M. Post], Amsterdam, 1789. [Cf. the British Mus eum Catalogue]. (?), Amsterdam, 1799. [Cf. Goedekel. Danish: C. Molbech, Copenhagen, 1831. [Cf. Hettler]. Russian: M. Lichonin, Moskau, 1828, 1833, 1857. Polish': Józef Paszkowski, Warsau, 1842. (Extracts from Don Hungarian: E. Kovács Gy, 1875. [Cf. the British Museum Catalogue]. Italian: Pompeo Ferrario, Milan, 1819. Andrea Mafei, Milan, 1842. Spanish: D. C. D., 1881. [Cf. the British Museum Catalogue]. Jose Yxart, Barcelona, 1882. Much remains to be done in making a complete study of the Don Carlos theme in literature. In the list of treatments we find every variety of form-tragedy and comedy, novel, historical sketch, dramatic and dialogue poem, "Heldenbrief," and opera. We find Philip II treated as a judicious monarch by the Spanish dramatists, and as a monster by the Italian Alfieri and 'For help in verifying the Polish titles I am indebted to Professor Leo Wiener of Harvard University. the Frenchman Mercier. Carlos, likewise, appears in the Spanish dramas as a half-demented, sentimental, and irresponsible youth, in Schiller and other dramas as an idealistic lover and a cosmopolitan dreamer. The rôle of Posa has numerous variations, so also the rôles of Alba and Domingo. Finally, the parts played in the love-intrigues by the Princess Eboli and particularly by the Queen, Elizabeth of Valois, give abundant opportunity for studies in the development of characters. A careful study of the Don Carlos theme on the analogy of Karl Kipka's thorough investigation of the Mary Stuart theme would be well worth while. Harvard University. FREDERICK W. C. LIEDER. Karl Kipka, Maria Stuart im Drama der Weltliteratur vornehm· lich des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1907. [Kipka enumer ates more than 200 treatments of the theme]. BRIEF NOTES ON THE INDEBTEDNESS OF SPIELHAGEN TO DICKENS. Few English authors, if we except Walter Scott, have exerted more influence upon German novelists of the last century than Charles Dickens. Traces of this influence are frequent from 1840 on, and such writers as Alexander von Ungern Sternberg, Raabe, Freytag, and Reuter betray evidence of having come under its sway. The English author's interest in the plain man, his marked predilection for original and eccentric types, his hatred of the injustice inherent in all advantages and privileges accorded the nobility, his gentle and sympathetic humor have appealed strongly to the German nature at a period when with the rise. of industrialism and social democracy the eyes of the world gradually became focussed upon the condition and problems of the proletariat. Friedrich Spielhagen was ever an enthusiastic admirer of English writers-Shakespeare, Fielding, Smollet, Byron, Scott, and Thackeray-and admits that he owed a greater debt to them than to the French for his intellectual development. Dickens, too, was a favorite of his. Before any printed translation of David Copperfield had appeared, he even rendered large portions of "das köstliche Buch" into German for the delectation of a friend who was unable to enjoy it in the original. Somewhat later he composed an essay on Dickens which, however, has never been included in his collected works as it did not fully satisfy him. It was nevertheless, with some revisions, brought out in the journal "Europa." Throughout his autobiographical work Finder und Erfinder as well as in his collections of literary essays and criticisms, he frequently expresses his high regard for the English novelist. Dickens, Goethe, and "the author of The Vicar of Wakefield" he names as "die Epiker von Gottes Gnaden"; and David Copperfield is frequently cited as a model of what a novel should be.' 1 Cf. Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans, 226-227; also 228, and 240; Finder und Erfinder I, 377, II, 395. Apart from the question of the choice of the autobiographical form, a number of characters, themes, and certain stylistic devices in Spielhagen's Ich-Roman Hammer und Amboss are touched with the influence of the last named work. A particularly striking resemblance is that of the various girls with whom the young hero came into contact. The sequence as well as the number of real attachments is similar. First the beautiful Emily, whose desire for gaiety and life, whose longing to be a lady, overcame her better judgment and who ran away with the rich, handsome, and brilliant Steerforth only to wreck her life forever. David had loved her in a boyish way and felt her fate deeply. Then Dora, the sweet, little, spoiled child whose pretty ways fascinated the youthful David and whom, after her father's death he married, only to lose her again by death within a short period of time. Finlly the sweetly gentle Agnes, who had been his good angel all along. To her he had confided his little love affairs, had been advised by her and now he came to realize that she had really been in his thoughts all the time. He marries her and finds the happiness that he sought. In Hammer und Amboss Georg is inspired with his first real passion by Constanze, the beautiful, strange daughter of Malte von Zehren. She becomes ensnared in an intrigue with the young prince of Prora, and tired of her life at home, elopes with him, thus sealing her fate. His second love is Hermine, a sweet, pretty, spoiled maiden,' whom he had known when she was yet a child. Georg's marriage to her is soon followed by her father's death and shortly after by her own. Georg finds the affairs of his father-in-law in a tangle. He, like Dora's father in David Copperfield, had posed as being rich, but, as it proves, leaves nothing. Finally Georg turns to the quiet, peaceful, serenely sweet Paula, whom he had made a confidante in his affair with Hermine and who encouraged him in it. He soon 2 Hermine, however, develops into a woman who at least knows what she will, while Dora always remains a child. 3 With Hermine as with Dora, attention is frequently drawn to her straw hat with blue ribbons and to her pet dog. realizes that it is she whom he has loved from the first. He marries her and is happy. We might add that the family likeness between Fräulein Amalie Duff and Miss Julia Mills is unmistakable. Each is a confidante of the spoiled little girl, Hermine or Dora; each favors the suit of the hero, Georg or David; each is sentimental and has a decided inclination for highly extravagant and poetic phrase and quotation to characterize situations that arise in the love affairs of her precious ward. Dickens' liking to protray certain criminal types may have awakened in Spielhagen an interest in such figures as KatzenCaspar. The prison scene, too, in chapter 61 of David Copperfield, though widely divergent in purpose and effect from the series of pictures of prison life in Hammer und Amboss very possibly influenced Spielhagen to treat this subject. In each book it is a sociological study, though in David Copperfield the theme is treated satirically, and the wretched person of Mr. Creakle is not to be compared with the splendid, noble character of the Director von Zehren. Each director, however, had his peneological theory, and a humanitarian one. Creakle, with impractical and misplaced tenderness for men, particularly those "connected with a whole calendar of sins", laid stress on "the supreme comfort of the persons" and "their reduction to a wholesome state of mind, leading to contrition and repentance"; the Director von Zehren, blaming chiefly the constitution of presentday society, particularly its inequality, for the poor derelicts on the ocean of life, endeavored to inspire them with self-respecting manhood by showing confidence in them, though without the weak, sentimental belief of Creakle's system in their moral and religious professions. Another interesting parallel is the depreciation of the lawyer and the legal profession. With Dickens this attitude requires no special proof. In Spielhagen's Hammer und Amboss we recall the absurdly pitiful figure of Justizrat Heckepfennig, an Paula like Agnes, has always watched anxiously over her father with an all-absorbing, self-sacrificing love. |