ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEATRE. 167 



Englifli and German plays are frequently fplit into a much 

 greater number. And I thought it a very juft, as well as na- 

 tural anfwer, which a countryman in the pit gave to a friend 

 of mine, v^ho entered in the middle of one of Shakespeare's 

 tragedies, and afked him to what adt they had got, " 1 be- 

 " lieve, Sir, faid he, they are juft going to begin the ninth." 



The morals of thefe German plays are in general unex- 

 ceptionable. There is no approach towards indelicacy, except 

 in one er two inftances in the more ferious fcenes, to a kind of 

 indelicacy, arifing from a want of that nice fenfe of dignity 

 and decorum which the family of the mufe requires. There 

 is, however, a licence of thinking on fome fubjedls, that 

 tindlures pretty ftrongly of feveral of the performances in que- 

 ftion ; and by a combination not unfrequent among fenti- 

 mentalifts, the language is highly virtuous, while the adion is 

 libertine and immoral. From the author of the Sorrows of 

 Werter, this does not furprife ; but in a play, written by a. 

 perfon of a grave charadler, Profeflbr Unzer oi Ahona, one: 

 would hardly expect to have found a prayer to the virgin con- 

 cluded by a folemn refolution of fuicide, and the ftrength of" 

 mind with which the heroine looks on the poifoned beverage 

 before her, afcribed, in the very language of devotion, to the- 

 power and efficacy of prayer. 



Besides the delicacy of decorum, and propriety in the man- 

 ners and the language of a play, there is a fort of delicacy in its. 

 very paflions and diftrefs, which highly poliflied theatres re- 

 quire, the negledl of which is difagreeable to the feelings and; 

 the tafte of a very refined people. The forrow that melts, not 

 the anguilh that tears ; the fear that agitates, not the terror- 

 that overwhelms the foul, are the paffions which fuch an au^ 

 dience relifhes in a tragedy. The German theatre does not 

 allow for this delicacy of feeling. Its horrors and its diftrefs 

 affault the imagination and the heart of the reader with un- 

 fparing force ; it loves to trace thofe horrors and that diftrefs 



through 



