178 ACCOUNT: of the GERMAN THEATRE. 



dictive of the cataflrophe. This, as it anticipates the conclu- 

 fion, is always faulty. No part of the conduct of a play is 

 more nice and difficult than that degree of information which 

 the author is to give the audience in the courfe of it. In ge- 

 neral, he fhould certainly not foreftal their expectations, by 

 opening his plot too foon. But there is an admirable theatrical 

 effect: which often refults from letting the audience know what 

 the perfons of the drama are ignorant of, which ftretches, if 

 I may ufe the expreffion, the cords of fear, anxiety and hope 

 in the fpectators to the higheft pitch, through fcenes which 

 otherwife would produce thefe feelings in an inferior, as well 

 as in a momentary degree. This knowledge in the audience, of 

 Meropes fon, while fhe, in ignorance of his perfon, is on the 

 point of putting him to death, is one of the moft interefting 

 fituations which dramatic invention has ever produced ; and 

 there is nothing on the French ftage which equals the horror of 

 that fcene of Cre billon's Atree el Thyejle, where the devoted 

 brother attempts to difguife himfelf from Atreus, while the 

 terrified fpectators know him all the while, and tremble at every 

 look and word which they think will difcover him. 



Next to Lessing, in point of name, is Goethe, the au- 

 thor of two tragedies in this collection, Goelz de Berliching and 

 Clavidgo, and of a drame entitled Stella. The firft I have al- 

 ready mentioned as highly irregular in its plan, being a life 

 thrown into dialogue rather than a tragedy. The cojlame of the 

 age in which the events are fuppofed to have happened, is very 

 well preferved. The fimple manners, the fidelity, the valour 

 and the generofity of a German knight, are pourtrayed in a va- 

 riety of natural fcenes. This national quality, I prefume, has 

 been the caufe of its high fame in Germany, to which it feems 

 to me to have otherwife not a perfectly adequate claim. His 

 Clavidgo is founded on an incident which happened to the cele- 

 brated Caron de Beaumarchais in Spain, who is intro- 

 duced as a perfon of the drama, under the name of Ronac, 



an 



