1. The few surveys of seventeenth-century culture in a political and sociological context have hitherto primarily been written by German scholars and are sorely in need of revision. See, for example, Flemming, W., Deutsche, kultur im Zeitalter des Barocks, Hand-buch der Kulturgeschichte, Abteilung I (Potsdam, 1937).Google Scholar

2. The religious and social upheaval of the Thirty Years' War has long been thought to have retarded the emergence of a German culture on the European scene. This out-dated view, which had been favored by late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century historians, generally referred solely to political rather than literary developments. For an example of this thesis, see Wedgwood, C. V., The Thirty Years War (London, 1938).Google Scholar Literary scholars have long held that the poets of the seventeenth century created a German Renaissance literature equal to the poetic achievements of Italy, France, and Spain. See, for example, the essays of Trunz, E., “Der deutsche Späthumanismus um 1600 als Standeskultur”Google Scholar, and Müller, G., “Höfische Kultur,” in Deutsche Barockforschung: Dokumentation einer Epoche ed. Alewyn, R., Neue wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, 7 (Cologne & Berlin, 1966), 147–81; 182–204.Google Scholar

3. For a brief survey of the seventeenth-century language societies, see Otto, Karl F. Jr., Die Sprachgesellschaften des 17. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. On the relationship between seventeenth-century Latin and German literature, see most recently Forster, L., “Die Bedeutung des Neulateinischen in der deutschen Barock-literatur,” in Deutsche Barockliteratur und europäische Kultur(Zweites Jahrestreffen des Internationalen Arbeitskreises für deutsche Barockliteratur [Dokumente des Internationalen Arbeitskreises für Deutsche Barockliteratur]) (Hamburg, 1977), 53–71Google Scholar; and Hess, G., “Deutsche Literaturgeschichte und neulateinische Literatur: Aspekte einer gestörten Rezeption,” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Amstelodamensis, ed. Tuynman, P., Kuiper, G. C., and Kessler, E. (Munich, 1979). 493–538.Google Scholar

5. On the theatrum mundi metaphor in German Baroqueliterature, see Barner, Wilfried, Barockrhetorik: Untersuchungen Zu ihren geschichtlichen Grundlagen (Tübingen, 1970), 86–131.Google Scholar

6. The interest of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in the theater of the Jesuit school in Munich—an enterprise which sixteenth-century Bavarian dukes financed to enforce the Counter-Reformation in their lands—was so great that he attended a six-hour performance of a martyr play on St. Catherine of Alexandria (written ca. 1576) even though he was sick with fever. Reinhardstöttner, Karl von, “Zur Geschichte des Jesuitendramas in München,” Jahrbuch für Münchener Geschichte 3 (1889): 76–77.Google Scholar

7. The most famous incident in Jesuit theater history was alleged to have occurred after the 1609 Munich performance of Jacob Bidermann's Cenodoxus Having witnessed the damnation of the learned but vain scholar Cenodoxus, several audience members were believed to have immediately pledged themselves to the order. See the introduction to Bidermann, Jacob, Ludi theatrales, ed. Tarot, Rolf, vol. 1, Deutsche Neudrucke: Reihe Barock 6 (Tübingen, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sig. †8^v. On the propaganda value to be gained by the Jesuits' invention of this reaction, see Hess, G., “Spektator-Lector-Actor: Zum Publikum von Jacob Bidermanns Cenodoxus,” Internationales Archiv für Sozilageschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1 (1976): 30–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. This view was grounded in Jacob Burkhardt's nineteenth-century interpretation of the Renaissance as the end of the age of faith and the beginning of man's artistic development; it led many critics to emphasize unjustly the secular (and therefore “literary”) rather than the clear religious aspects of seventeenth-century drama. See, for example, Herbert Heckmann's argument that the dramas of the fervently pious Andreas Gryphius reflected a gradual secularization of Baroque theater which then culminated in the works of D. C. von Lohenstein. See Heckmann, H., Elemente des barocken Trauerspiels (Munich, 1959), 51–71.Google Scholar Heckmann built his argument in part on the conclusions of Walter Benjamin who had likewise located the origins of an artistic, secular drama in the seventeenth century: Benjamin, W., Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928; revised Frankfurt, 1963).Google Scholar Cf. the criticisms of Hans-Jügen Schings who quite rightly condemned the secularization theory as subjective and ahistorical: Schings, H.-J., Die Patristische und stoische Tradition bei Andreas Gryphius (Cologne & Graz, 1966), 277–95.Google Scholar

9. Readers' reactions to the manneristic style of the leading Baroque dramatists, Gryphius and Lohenstein, has varied according to the artistic standards of a given age. The eighteenth-century theorist Johann Christoph Gottsched condemned the verbal excesses of Lohenstein in his Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1751), 369–70.Google Scholar In contrast, the German Expressionists who favored a heightened emotional style were especially drawn to Baroque literature: see Windfuhr, M., Die barocke Bildlichkeit und ihre Kritiker: Stilhaltungen in der deutschen Literatur des 17. und 18 Jahrhunderts Germanistische Abhandlungen, 15 (Stuttgart, 1966), 202ff.Google Scholar In recent years, German Baroque scholars have avoided formulating any aesthetic judgments about Baroque language and have focused on explicating the historical reasons for its ornateness by studying its connection to seventeenth-century rhetorical theory and emblematics. See especially Schöne, AlbrechtEmblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock (1964; 2d ed.Munich, 1968)Google Scholar; Fischer, Ludwig, Gebundene Rede: Dichtung und Rhetorik in der literarischen Theorie des Barock in Deutschland (Tübingen, 1968)Google Scholar, and W. Barner (see n. 5 above). For an analytical survey of the varied interpretations of German Baroque literature in the last 300 years, see Jaumann, Herbert, Die deutsche Barockliteratur: Wertung, Umwertung: eine wertgeschichtliche Studie in systematischer Absicht Abhandlungen zur Kunst-, Musik- und Literaturwissen-schaft, 181 (Bonn, 1975).Google Scholar

10. For a recent explanation of the static nature of Gryphius's plays as a reflection of his pessimistic conception of the world, see Steinhagen, Harald, Wirklichkeit und Handeln im barocken Drama: Historisch-ästhetische Studien zum Trauerspiel des Andreas Gryphius (Tübingen, 1977), 33–126.Google Scholar

11. In some instances, the double title recalled the relationship between image and words in Renaissance emblem books, for it frequently served as an explanation of the engraving on the facing title page. On this phenomenon in a dramatic text, see the interpretation of the title page and engraving to Gryphius's Carolus Stuardus in the essay by Schöne, Albrecht, “Ermordete Majestät: Oder Carolus Stuardus König von Groß Brittanien,” in Die Dramen des Andreas Gryphius ed. Kaiser, Gerhard (Stuttgart, 1968), 117–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Zahn, Zacharias, Tragoedia lapidati Stephani: Wie der heilige Martirer S. Stephanus vmb der Warheit und Bekentnis reiner Lehre von den Jüden zu Todte gesteiniget worden (Mühl-hausen, 1589).Google Scholar Zahn also prefaced and concluded this German tragedy with Latin poems in which he reminded his readers that God's preservation of the protomartyr should serve to console them about the injustices of the world.

13. Ermordete Majestät: Oder Carolus Stuardus König von Groβ brittanien: Trauer-Spil. For a thorough analysis of the two versions of the tragedy and their relationship to Gryphius's political thought, see the introduction to Powell, Hugh, ed., Carolus Stuardus (Leicester, 1955), lxxxiii–cxxxvii.Google Scholar

14. Gryphius, Andreas, Leo Armenius, Oder Fürsten-Mord in Trauerspiele II, ed. Powell, Hugh (Tübingen, 1965), 4.Google Scholar Despite Gryphius's moral scruples, he did not hesitate to incorporate the amatory language of Petrarchian lyric into his characterization of the passionate wooer of the heroine, the tyrant Chach Abas. A modern edition of Catharina von Georgien: Oder Bewehrete Beständigkeit is contained in Trauerspiele III, ed. Powell, Hugh (Tübingen, 1966).Google Scholar

15. For an excellent overview of the competitive imitation (aemulatio) between a Renaissance writer and his model, see Pigman, G. W. III, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. For a survey of Baroque martyr drama, see Szarota, E. M., Künstler, Grübler und Rebellen: Studien zum europäischen Märtyrerdrama des 17. Jahrhunderts (Munich & Bern, 1967).Google Scholar For a study of the origins of Renaissance martyr drama in humanist school theater, see Parente, J. A. Jr., “Counter-Reformation Polemic and Senecan Tragedy: The Dramas of Gregorius Holonius (1532?–1594),” Humanistica Lovaniensia 30 (1981): 156–80.Google Scholar

17. Parente, 174–75.

18. A modern edition and German translation of this play (first printed 1666) was made by Wehrli, Max, ed., Philemon Martyr (Cologne, 1960).Google Scholar For an exhaustive structural analysis of the work, see Morsbach, Charlotte, Jacob Bidermanns “Philemon Martyr” nach Bau und Gehalt, diss. Münster 1935 (Bottrop: Wilhelm Postberg, 1936).Google Scholar

19. For a historical account of this hagiographical legend, see von der Lage, Bertha, Studien zur Genesiuslegende (Berlin, 1898/1899).Google Scholar

20. de Vega, Lope, Lo fingido verdadero (ca. 1618)Google Scholar; Rotrou, Jean, Le Véritable Saint-Genest (1647)Google Scholar; Desfontaines, Nicolas-Marc, L'lllustre Comédien (1645).Google Scholar For a discussion of each of these plays in light of the St. Genesius legend, see Szarota, 7–71.

21. On the intentionally broad appeal of Jesuit theater, see Szarota, E. M., “Das Jesui-tendrama als Vorläufer der modernen Massenmedien,” Daphnis 2 (1975): 129–43.Google Scholar

22. Surius, Laurentius, Historiae seu Vitae Sanctorum iuxta optimam Coloniensem editionem, vol. 3 (1570–81; Turin, 1879), 204–05.Google Scholar

23. Trinummus was one of the five Plautine comedies approved by most sixteenth-century schoolmen (the others were: Aulularia; Menaechmi; Captivi; and Miles gloriosus); they appeared together with the less popular Amphitruo in Johannes Sturm's 1566 edition of Plautus for school performance use: Jundt, August, Die dramatischen Aufführungen im Gymnasium zu Straβburg (Strasbourg, 1888), 18.Google Scholar In the 1604 Ratio studiorum for Jesuit schools, Trinummus and Captivi were recommended. See ms. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm. 1550, fol. 53^V; and Rädle, Fidel, “Das Jesuitentheater in der Pflicht der Gegenreformation,” Daphnis 8 (1979): 178.Google Scholar

24. Consider, for example, the religious dramas of the prolific Zittau schoolmaster, Christian Weise (1642–1708), who used biblical characters to train his schoolboy audience in the manners of the worldly courtier. The virtue and wit of this homo politicus would subsequently be used to assist in the administration of the late seventeenth-century town or state.

25. Besides his knowledge of Corneille (see p. 52), Gryphius adapted Quinault's, PhilippeLe fantôme amoureux for his comedy Verlibtes Gespenste-Gesang-Spil (printed 1660)Google Scholar and translated Corneille's, ThomasLe berger extravagant as Schwermender Schäffer, Lust-Spil (printed 1663)Google Scholar. There is evidence that Lohenstein was equally well-read in French theater: traces of Jean Mairet's Sophonisbe drama appeared in his Sophonisbe (1669), and l'Hermite's, TristanLa Mort de Sénèque influenced his Epicharis (1666)Google Scholar.

26. Henri Plard, for example, demonstrated how Gryphius's expansion of Nicholas Caussin's Felicitas—a play which in its original form Plard claimed “strömt penetrante Langeweile aus”—not only resulted from the translator's need to complete an alexandrine, but also from his personal effort to express his “strotzendes leidenschaftliches Temperament.” Plard, H., “Beständige Mutter: Oder Die Heilige Felicitas,” in Die Dramen des Andreas Gryphius, ed. Kaiser, Gerhard, 327–29.Google Scholar

27. Consider, for example, the title hero's uninspired confession of his incestuous lust for his sister in Lummenaeus à Marca's biblical tragedy Amnon (Ghent, 1617)Google Scholar:

Heu caeca rabies! heu mihi! perii miser,

Et restat aliquid semper in manes meos

Ut vidi, ut aeger occidi, ut malus furor

Abstulit amantem! perdidit fratrem Soror,

Nutuque ocelli, cuspide et iaculo magis

Strictim et potenter cordis effodis sinum

Vitamque penitus, sanguinemque hausit meum. o Dea! o sidus meum!

Thamara! quid obstas? Thamara! o fatum meum

Crudele! morior! morior! et nunquam, tuis

Si non ab oculis, ulla me adspiciet salus. (sig. A 4^v–A 5).

28. For a recent general study of the gradual turn from Cicero to later Roman writers as stylistic models, see Lange, Hans Joachim, Aemulatio veterum sive de optimo genere scribendi (Frankfurt & Bern, 1974).Google Scholar A more specific analysis of the development of German poetic style through the imitation of late antique and Renaissance Latin language is contained in Conrady, Karl Otto, Lateinische Dichtungstradition und deutsche Lyrik des 17. Jahrhunderts, Bonner Arbeiten zu deutscher Literatur, 4 (Bonn, 1962), esp. 189–263.Google Scholar

29. The adaptation of the Ciceronian injunction that ideal orators should be trained “ut probet, ut delectet, ut flectet” (Orator 21.69) became a commonplace in seventeenth-century German poetics. See Dyck, Joachim, Tichtkunst: Deutsche Barockpoetik und rheto–rische Tradition (Bad Homburg v.d. Höhe, 1969), 29–35.Google Scholar

30. Although both the orator and poet attempted to persuade the audience of the truth of a particular argument, they differed radically in the manner in which they achieved this end. The former arranged the facts so that they could best support his main point; in contrast, the poet, who was believed to be divinely inspired, used his metaphorical language not so much to convince as to arouse the emotions of his readers. See Dyck, 34ff for the numerous references in seventeenth-century poetics to this distinction.

31. Opitz, Martin, Buck von der deutschen Poeterey, ed. Sommer, Cornelius (Stuttgart, 1970), 34.Google Scholar

32. Opitz, 38–43.

33. Many of Hofmannswaldau's poems, such as “Die Wollust” and “Die Tugend,” were written solely as rhetorical exercises on two contrastive topics. On the representation of this “dualistisches Lebensgefühl” here and in other aspects of Baroque German literature, see Wiedemann, Conrad, “Barocksprache, Systemdenken, Staatsmentalität,” in Intemationaler Arbeitskreis für deutsche Barockliteratur, 1. Jahrestreffen in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, ed. Raabe, Paul and Strutz, Barbara (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1973), 21–51.Google Scholar For a study of Hofmannswaldau's manneristic style, see Rotermund, Erwin, Affekt und Artistik: Studien zur Leidenschaftsdarstellung und zum Argumentationsverfahren bei Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau (Munich, 1972).Google Scholar

34. From Sonette: Das zweite Buck (1650) as reprinted in Gryphius, Andreas, Sonette, ed. Szyrocki, Marian, in Gesamtausgabe der deutschsprachigen Werke, 1 (Tübingen, 1963): 91.Google Scholar

35. Consider, for example, the use of interrogatio at the beginning of Philipp von Zesen's “Klüng–getichte auf das Härz seiner Träuen”:

O trautes härts! was härts? vihl härter noch als hart/

o! stahl? mit nichten stahl; es lässt sich bässer zühen.

wi dan magneht? o nein; ihm ist vihl mehr verlihen.

ist's dan ein deamant? auch nicht; dan diser ward

im schäzzen nahch-gesäzt däs härzens wunder-ahrt.

wi! ist es dan kristal? durch dehn die strahlen sprühen/

wan izt di sonne stäht in follem glanz' und glühen.

o nein. wo/durch würd dan sein währt rächt offenbahrt?

As reprinted in Epochen der deutschen Lyrik 1600–1700, ed. Wagenknecht, Christian (Munich, 1969), 158.Google Scholar

36. On the verbal games of the Nuremberg poets, see Kayser, Wolfgang, Die Klangmalerei bei Harsdörffer (Leipzig, 1932)Google Scholar, and Wiedemann, Conrad, Johann Klaj und seine Redeoratorien: Untersuchungen zur Dichtung eines deutschen Barockmanieristen (Nuremberg, 1966).Google Scholar

37. For a discussion of the mystics' use of language see Hankamer, Paul, Die Sprache:Ihre Bedeutung im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1927; reprint Hildesheim, 1965).Google Scholar Recently there have been attempts to explore the language of some mystics from an exclusively linguistic perspective. See, for example, Konopacki, Steven A., The Descent into Words:Jakob Böhme's Transcendental Linguistics (Ann Arbor, 1979).Google Scholar

38. Plard, 331–36.

39. Gryphius, Trauerspiele II, 24–25. On Gryphius's use of language in Leo Armenius, see Barner, W., “Gryphius und die Macht der Rede: Zum ersten Reyen des Trauerspiels Leo Armenius,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literatur und Geistesgeschichte 42 (1968): 325–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Beetz, Manfred, “Disputatorik und Argumentation in Andreas Gryphius' Trauerspiel Leo Armenius,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 38–39 (1980): 178–203.Google Scholar

40. Note the failure of the Byzantine patriarch to console the empress Theodora after the murder of her husband. She rebuked the patriarch for counseling her to endure her suffering patiently and succumbed to despair:

Sprecht so! vnd lehrt das Volck vom Throne Prinzten schleiffen!

Halt inn mit deinem trost. Die schmertzen sind zu schwer/

Die wunden sind zu frisch/das klingende gewehr

Erzittert vor der Thür: Auff Geist/die Mörder kommen!

Gryphius, Trauerspiele II, Act V, lines 212–15, P. 83.

41. On the problem of language and communication in Horribilicribrifax, see the brief comments in Böckmann, Paul, Formgeschichte der deutschen Dichtung (Hamburg, 1949), 447Google Scholar, and Kaiser, Gerhard, “Horribilicribrifax: Teutsch,” in his collection Die Dramen des Andreas Gryphius, 243.Google Scholar

42. Consider, for example, the antics of the servant, Davus, in Terence's Andria who contributed to the confusion between the Athenian adolescens Pamphilus and his father to such a degree that only the intervention of Crito, a stranger from Andros, could resolve their differences and insure a happy denouement.

43. Note the cynical attitude of the Statthalter Cleander who doubted that any woman could be virtuous in such uncertain times: “Die Jungfern sind alle keusch/weil niemand mit Geschenken oder Fragen auffwartet.” Gryphius, Lustspiele I, ed. Powell, Hugh, in Gesamtausgabe der deutschsprachigen Werke, 7 (Töbingen, 1968): 90.Google Scholar

44. Only when Sophia threatened to stab herself to prove her virtue could she convince the skeptical Cleander of her integrity. Gryphius, Lustspiele I, 113–14.

45. The enraptured Cardenio was seduced by the ghost of his beloved Olympia into believing that he was about to possess her. Just as he reached out to embrace the figure, the specter was transformed into a skeleton: “Der Schaw-platz verändert sich plötzlich in eine abscheuliche Einöde/Olympie selbst in ein Todten-Gerippe/welches mit Pfeil und Bogen auff den Cardenio zielet.” Gryphius, Trauerspiele II, 148.

46. Messengers narrated the martyrdom of the heroine in Catharina von Georgien; in Carolus Stuardus, the spectators of the execution provided a commentary to the action on stage.

47. This practice was especially important in Leo Armenius, for the messenger's narrative provided Gryphius with the opportunity to establish the parallel between Leo's assassination and Christ's death. Kaiser, “Leo Armenius: Oder Fürsten-Mord,” in his Die Dramen des Andreas Gryphius, 27.

48. On this practice in seventeenth-century drama, see Schöne, Emblematik, 67–135.

49. Flemming, W., Andreas Gryphius und die Bühne (Halle a.d. Saale, 1921)Google Scholar, was the first critic to emphasize the theatricality of Gryphius's plays. Evidence for contemporary performances of the dramas is contained in Hippe, Max, “Aus dem Tagebuch eines Breslauer Schulmannes im 17. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Geschichte und Altertum Schle-siens 36 (1902): 159–92.Google Scholar

50. Opitz, 27. Opitz borrowed his definition of tragedy from Scaliger, J. C., Poeticeslibri septem, ed. Buck, August, Faksimile-Neudruck der Ausgabe von Lyon 1561 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1964), 11Google Scholar (Book I, chapter 6).

51. On Simons's relationship to this tradition, see Parente, J. A. Jr., “Tyranny and Revolution on the Baroque Stage: The Dramas of Joseph Simons,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 32 (1983): 309–24.Google Scholar

52. For the dates of the original performances of Simons's plays, see McCabe, William H., “The Play–List of the English College of St. Omers 1592–1762,” Revue de littérature comparée 17 (1937): 355–75.Google Scholar The Italian stagings are cited in Gossett, Suzanne, “Drama in the English College, Rome, 1591–1660,” English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973): 92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For performances elsewhere, see Parente, Joseph Simons, 311, n. 5.

53. The formal similarities between Gryphius's tragedies and the Jesuit work were first noted by Zeidler, Jakob, Studien und Beiträge zur Geschichte der Jesuitenkomödie und des Klosterdramas, Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen, 4 (Hamburg & Leipzig, 1891), 118.Google Scholar The relationship was further analyzed in Harring, Willi, Andreas Gryphius und das Drama der Jesuiten, Hermaea, 5 (Halle, 1907), 68–74.Google Scholar For a reassessment of the connection between Simons and Gryphius and its effect on the concept of tragedy in Leo Armenius, see my article, “Andreas Gryphius and Jesuit Theater,” Daphnis 13 (1984).Google Scholar

54. Kaiser, “Leo Armenius,” 7–8; Szarota, E. M., Geschichte, Politik und Gesellschaft im Drama des 17. Jahrhunderts (Bern & Munich, 1976), 63–64.Google Scholar

55. Consider, for example, Balbus's call on the Furies rather than God to bless his plot against the emperor:

Quacumque Averni parte, Furiarum satrix,

Nox atra sedem figis, aspira meis

Secunda coeptis: vimque, mucrones, necem

Mecum auspicare. Molior vastum scelus,

Regem peremptum.

From Leo Armenus in Simons, Joseph, Tragoediae quinque (Liége, 1656), 464Google Scholar. Balbus's revolution clearly deviated from St. Paul's warning about man's assumption of God's avenging role: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Romans 12:19).

56. Parente, Joseph Simons, 321–24.

57. For Gryphius's relationship to the Byzantine chronicles of Cedrenus and Zonaras, see Heisenberg, August, “Die byzantinischen Quellen von Gryphius' Leo Armenius,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, n.s., 8 (1895): 439–48.Google Scholar

58. Steiahagen, 49.

59. Laocoon, Erster Teil, XVIII: “Die Zeitfolge ist das Gebiet des Dichters so wie der Raum das Gebiet des Malers.” As quoted in Lessing, G. E., Werke, 6 (Munich, 1974): 116.Google Scholar