ABSTRACT
ZACHARIAS WERNER was the only born dramatist among all the romantics : but that was because he had a sense of form that was more classicist than romantic. Heinrich von Kleist, with immeasurably more powerful dramatic gifts than Werner, shares many traits with the romantics ; but equally he has many qualities which were abhorrent to them ; he was an extreme individualist, remorselessly imprisoned within the peculiarities of his lonely destiny, and he owed complete allegiance to no movement— classicist, romantic, or any other. Certainly neither of these two men can be called wholly romantic then, yet even so their plays come nearest to being truly dramatic romantic drama in the age of the book-dramas of Tieck, Arnim and Brentano.
