Ruge, Hettner, and Theodor Vischer, perceived what he was aiming at, and
his own public discussions were so abstruse and repellent that it is no
wonder they were misunderstood. Grillparzer declared that he was groping
in esthetic fog. Julian Schmidt recognized his power and the poetic
charm of many of his passages, but thought him in danger of crossing the
line which separates sense from nonsense, genius from insanity. Hebbel
was restive under criticism, and the method of his polemics tended
rather to exasperate than to conciliate his adversaries. Meanwhile
_Maria Magdalena_ and _Judith_ were performed at the _Hofburgtheater_,
with Christine as the heroine. But in 1850 Heinrich Laube became
director of this theatre, and he not only rejected one play of Hebbel's
after another, but also withdrew from Christine the leading parts which
she had heretofore taken in the regular repertory.

The new epoch in Hebbel's dramatic activity really began in 1848. The
fruits of his sojourn in Italy, _A Tragedy in Sicily_ (1846), _Julia_
(1847), and _New Poems_ (published in 1847) were mediocre stragglers in
the train of his first successes. But _Herodes and Mariamne_, begun in
1847 and completed in November, 1848, is the first of a new series of
masterpieces. Mariamne, Hebbel said, was not simply written for
Christine, she _was_ Christine. _The Ruby_, which followed in the spring
of 1849, is a graceful dramatization of a fairy-tale written ten years
before in Munich; _Michel Angelo_ (1850), a satire on his critics, is a
slight but clever refutation of ignorant presumption. _Agnes Bernauer_
(1851) is a worthy successor of _Herodes and Mariamne_; _Gyges and his
Ring_ (1854) is the most poetic and perhaps the most characteristic of
his dramas. The trilogy on the _Nibelungen_ (1855-1860) was Hebbel's
last great work, ranking with Grillparzer's _Golden Fleece_ and
Schiller's _Wallenstein_; and if he had lived to complete _Demetrius_,
we should have had another remarkable drama, on a subject which Schiller