idiosyncrasies of men. The pastor is profoundly true, and so is Magda,
though the interpretative power of poetry raises both into the realm of
the enduringly significant. Similarly Heinrich is himself, but also the
creative worker of all time. Driven by his ideal from the warm
hearthstones of men, he falters upon that frosty height: seeking to
realise impersonal aims and rising to a hardy rapture, he is broken in
strength at last by the "still, sad music of humanity."

Except for the half humorous and not wholly successful interlude of
_Schluck and Jau_, Hauptmann neglected the poetic drama until 1902, when
he presented on the boards of the famous _Burgtheater_ at Vienna, _Henry
of Aue_. There is little doubt but that this play will ultimately rank as
the most satisfying poetic drama of its time. Less derivative and
uncertain in quality than the plays of Stephen Phillips, less fantastic
and externally brilliant than those of Rostand, it has a soundness of
subject matter, a serene nobility of mood, a solidity of verse technique
above the reach of either the French or the English poet. Hauptmann chose
as his subject the legend known for nearly seven hundred years through
the beautiful Middle High German poem of Hartmann von der Aue--the legend
of that great knight and lord who was smitten with leprosy, and whom,
according to the mediaeval belief, a pure maiden desired to heal through
the shedding of her blood. But God, before the sacrifice could be
consummated, cleansed the knight's body and permitted to him and the
maiden a united temporal happiness. This story Hauptmann takes exactly as
he finds it. But the characters are made to live with a new life. The
stark mediaeval conventions are broken and the old legend becomes living
truth. The maiden is changed from an infant saint fleeing a vale of tears
into a girl in whom the first sweet passions of life blend into an
exaltation half sexual and half religious, but pure with the purity of a
great flame. The miracle too remains, but it is the miracle of love that