Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 131 
which is to me the merest formal stoprgap, quite analogous to 
the indefinite subjects and objects which occur in “Gro it” 
(though I fancy “it” has here a meaning which I merely can¬ 
not find), “It rains,” “Per me se va nella citta dolente” 
(Through me is passage, etc.;hardly, “Into-the-city goes itself”), 
“II s^agit (There is action) de ma vie,” “Se me olvido” (There 
was forgetting for me), “Wie hiibsch spielt’s sick den Vater!” 
In all these illustrations the indefinites, including the reflex¬ 
ives, as it seems to me, afford a merely formal satisfaction of a 
vaguely conscious need of actor and actee in the assertion of 
an action. That indeed their use is formal only, is particu¬ 
larly indicated in the final illustration (from “Der Eeffe als 
Onkel”—Act I, Sc. 7) by the “sich,” which tabes indeed the 
object-place. ..ostensibly, but cannot actually close 
it to the bona fide object “Vater.” That the subject “es” is 
quite as spurious, is implied in its presumable meaning-identity 
with “sich.” Perhaps accordingly I do not modify essentially 
the mentally conscious total by reducing “Es wurde gespielt” 
to “Wurde gespielt” or, in the present tense, to “Wird gespielt” 
—a sentence with no indicated actor or actee, no subject and 
no object. 
As my most effective illustration is distinctly out of sympathy 
with the conceptions prevalent in class-room parsing, though I 
have some confidence that Schiller (its distinguished author) 
rather well knew what he was about—and think he showed his 
purpose very clearly-—I add a brief endorsement of his method. 
Reducing his expression, which I also rid of its embarrassing 
exclamatory aspect, I obtain, as the essential of the moment, 
this: “Es spielt sich den Vater.” In this expression “Es” 
and “sich” to me are virtually mere inflections—-isolated, sup¬ 
ernumerary. An imaginary need of both a subject and an ob¬ 
ject—legible and audible—has reached imaginary satisfaction. 
The formal superfoetations “Es” and “sich” have added noth¬ 
ing to the total of ideas. As well then “Spielt” without them— 
the assertion of a playing—-quite analogous to “Pluit.” 
and implausible abuse of cognates, or, by a counterbalancing reduction, 
further making “wurde gespielt” “gesungen” and “getanzt” each one 
in turn mean “was effected,” brings about a verbal repetition almost 
equally offensive and implausible. 
