ABSTRACT
From the different temper of the nations, the merits and faults of their national theatres became diametrically opposed to each other. Lessing had attacked the whole French theatrical system in his Dramaturgie, with the most bitter raillery. Schiller brought forward his splendid Dramas of Romance and of History. Goethe crowded the stage with the heroes of ancient German chivalry. Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, became at once the fathers and the masters of the German theatre; and it must be objected to these great men, that, in the abundance of their dramatic talent, they sometimes forgot that their pieces, in order to be acted, must be adapted to the capabilities of a theatre; and thus wrote plays altogether incapable of being represented.
