work first among all his dramatic compositions. But the musician and
the philosopher will always turn to _Tristan_.

There are four principal epochs in which the drama has been a
flourishing reality in Europe. They are: 1. In Athens in the fifth
century B.C. 2. In Elizabethan England. 3. In Spain in the seventeenth
century. 4. In France under Louis XIV.

Of the influence of the Elizabethan drama upon the Wagnerian drama it
is difficult to speak to any good purpose. Shakespeare is the common
heritage of all German dramatists, Wagner as well as others, and it is
not too much to say that the enthusiasm for Shakespeare which began
towards the end of the eighteenth century was the stimulus which
roused the German nation to create a drama of its own. It is enough
for the present if we note that the Elizabethan drama is
characteristically human and popular. True, the Elizabethans revel in
courts and high society, as do the populace; they represent kings and
rulers as they are beheld from outside, and there is always a
"Sampson" or "Gregory," or "Citizen" or "Merchant" ready as a chorus
to express with great shrewdness his opinion of the doings of his
betters.

For an opposite reason we may pass over very shortly the French
classical drama, namely, because it does not seem to have weighed with
Wagner at all. Corneille, Racine, and their contemporaries are little
mentioned in his writings; certainly he shows no enthusiasm for their
art. Yet the influence of the French stage was by no means a
negligible quantity in the development of the German drama.

It was Lessing who in the trenchant prose of his _Hamburger