the only disturber of the conciliating love of Leubald and
Adelaide. The ghost of Roderick also appears, and according to
the method followed by Shakespeare in Richard III., he is joined
by the ghosts of all the other members of Adelaide's family whom
Leubald has slain. From the incessant importunities of these
ghosts Leubald seeks to free himself by means of sorcery, and
calls to his aid a rascal named Flamming. One of Macbeth's
witches is summoned to lay the ghosts; as she is unable to do
this efficiently, the furious Leubald sends her also to the
devil; but with her dying breath she despatches the whole crowd
of spirits who serve her to join the ghosts of those already
pursuing him. Leubald, tormented beyond endurance, and now at
last raving mad, turns against his beloved, who is the apparent
cause of all his misery. He stabs her in his fury; then finding
himself suddenly at peace, he sinks his head into her lap, and
accepts her last caresses as her life-blood streams over his own
dying body.

I had not omitted the smallest detail that could give this plot
its proper colouring, and had drawn on all my knowledge of the
tales of the old knights, and my acquaintance with Lear and
Macbeth, to furnish my drama with the most vivid situations. But
one of the chief characteristics of its poetical form I took from
the pathetic, humorous, and powerful language of Shakespeare. The
boldness of my grandiloquent and bombastic expressions roused my
uncle Adolph's alarm and astonishment. He was unable to
understand how I could have selected and used with inconceivable
exaggeration precisely the most extravagant forms of speech to be
found in Lear and Gotz von Berlichingen. Nevertheless, even after
everybody had deafened me with their laments over my lost time