Andreas Gryphius

• Born: October 2, 1616
• Birthplace: Glogau, Silesia (now Głogów, Poland)
• Died: July 16, 1664
• Place of death: Glogau, Silesia (now Głogów, Poland)

Other Literary Forms

Andreas Gryphius was one of the most important European poets of the Baroque period, comparable in power and complexity to the English Metaphysical poets. This is all the more astonishing as there was little vernacular German poetry to serve as a model other than the theoretical exhortations of Martin Opitz in his Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (1624) and the samples given there. Like many of his contemporaries, Gryphius cut his poetic teeth on Latin verse composition in school; as early as 1632, he wrote Herodis furiae et Rachelis lacrymae (1634), an epic in Latin on the story of Herod, which he followed with another one in 1635 and Olivetum libri tres (1646), a verse epic on the sorrows of Christ on Mount Olive. His claim to fame, however, rests on his mastery of the sonnet form, which he began to display with his first German publication, the Lissaer Sonette (1637), a collection that also earned for him the title of poeta laureatus. His command of the ode, epigram, and other poetic forms is evident in his subsequent publications of 1639 and 1657, where he not only domesticates the classical models but also manages to bend them to a powerful expression of his own worldview.

The themes of his poems are those familiar throughout Western Europe at this time, ranging from the vanity of all things, the fleeting and problematic nature of time, and the dubious nature of worldly reality all the way to an expectation of permanence, peace, and constancy in another existence constituted by love, human and divine. What makes Gryphius special is his ability to convey within the traditional tropes and topoi the genuine anguish and personal feeling about human suffering and about the destruction which the Thirty Years’ War brought to Germany generally and his family in particular. His use of paradox, caesura, juxtaposition of thought, and metaphor is again commonplace. What sets him apart from others is the power of his language, the vivid metaphors, and above all the creativity he demonstrates in inventing a vocabulary quite his own, his famous Zentnerworte, words heavy with meaning and sound, frequently neologisms. Both scholars and general readers found Gryphius particularly congenial after the two world wars, when his worldview and theirs seemed to be most congruent.

Achievements

Experts in the field of German Baroque literature have called Andreas Gryphius the most outstanding author of the seventeenth century next to Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. This assessment not only reflects the important role of Gryphius’s work in the development of German literature, where he established both the sonnet and a new kind of drama in the vernacular but also indicates that, like Grimmelshausen, he is still readable today—a judgment more appropriate to his poetry than his drama, for modern expectations of drama have changed significantly more than those applied to poetry.

Gryphius has been called the first German high-culture dramatist whose plays, especially his tragedies, were highly regarded in his own time, as many editions and performances attest. His comedies proved to be no less popular over the ages, and today his mixed-form plays attract the greatest interest. In Cardenio und Celinde, often regarded as his most complex and fascinating drama, he broke with several norms and expectations of his age. Most notably, he used nonroyal personages to act out the juxtaposition of chaste and nonchaste love, establishing in the process ambiguous and richly complex interpersonal relations. Even in his first published play, Leo Armenius, he speculates (in a manner very evocative of twentieth century literary theory) on the ways in which language constitutes reality. In his late work Verliebtes Gespenste und die gelibte Dornrose, he not only used dialect for the first time in German drama, anticipating by more than 250 years Gerhart Hauptmann’s use of Silesian in his naturalist play Die Weber (pb. 1892; The Weavers, 1899), but also brought to a close, as it were, the medieval interlude by elevating it to the level of a complete and independent play. The juxtaposition of social and language levels, the broad and witty use of linguistic nuances, the structural contrasts—all combined to create a kind of play that would not be seen again on the German stage until the nineteenth century.

Gryphius is also important as a cultural mediator. Thanks to his knowledge of numerous languages (some claim that he was fluent in as many as thirteen) and his study and travel abroad, he came to know and in some cases translate congenial works from the major cultural centers of his time. In the Netherlands, particularly at the University of Leiden, where he studied and lectured from 1638 through 1644, Gryphius encountered the works of the great Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, whose De Gebroeders (pb. 1640) he translated and later adapted into a play of his own, Die Sieben Brueder. During his travels through France and Italy between 1644 and 1646, Gryphius seems to have perfected his French and Italian to the point where he could render into German Girolamo Razzi’s La Balia (pr. 1560), probably around 1645, and later Thomas Corneille’s Le Berger extravagant (pb. 1653). A translation of Nicolas Caussin’s Tragoediae sacrae (pb. 1620) from the Latin probably goes back to Gryphius’s early days, between 1634 and 1644. These translations served several purposes for the busy student and later administrator: They provided five-finger exercises for his own dramatic productions, introduced his countrymen to contemporary theater, and sometimes became raw material for all or parts of his own plays.

Finally, Gryphius is often described as a polyhistor, a universal Renaissance man. Given the list of his lectures at Leiden, this appellation seems justified, for they ranged from mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy to a more expected collegium on poetry. Nor was he by any means a dabbler or amateur: Many of the greatest specialists of his day continued their close contacts with him, and he received invitations to become professor at Frankfurt an der Oder (for mathematics), Heidelberg, and even Uppsala in Sweden.

What makes this prodigious learning and literary output all the more impressive is the fact that it occurred against the background of the Thirty Years’ War and its devastations, achieved by a boy who lost his father when he was four and his mother at the age of twelve, carried through by a man who was often sick, close to death at times, and lived to be only forty-seven years old, all the while writing in addition to his jobs as tutor, lecturer, and administrator.

Biography

Information about authors living through the upheavals of the seventeenth century is notoriously incomplete, but the main outlines of Andreas Gryphius’s life are quite well established, even if some dates are under debate. Two years before the official outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, Gryphius was born on October 2, 1616, almost at midnight, a fact that seemed symbolically significant to him throughout his life. It is hard to argue with his perception that—from a superficial point of view—darkness seemed to dominate his era, that “brown night” he so often invokes. His hometown, Glogau, in the most northeasterly province of the Holy Roman Empire, had just been destroyed by one of the many great fires endemic to the period, and the Lutheran burghers quarreled with their Catholic imperial local official. His father was a local Lutheran pastor who died—many believe—because of the stresses of the war in 1621, and his young mother, remarried in 1622, died in 1628, leaving the boy to be reared by his stepfather, Michael Eder, and his family. Gryphius and his hometown experienced plundering soldiers, occupation, and exile, which interrupted his schooling several times but without lasting negative effect. In fact, he did very well in school, where he played lead roles in the Latin school dramas favored by progressive schools and excelled in mathematics and Latin. Indeed, in 1634, he had his first Latin verse epic published in Glogau, displaying his familiarity with the classical tradition more than his poetic talents. Still, this work and its sequel one year later anticipate some of Gryphius’s stylistic peculiarities. A flair for dramatic, dialectical juxtapositions, repeated questions and imperatives, and powerful rhythms is notable, as are the descriptions of bloody scenes of cruelty that recurred in his later German tragedies.

Time and again, Gryphius had to finance his studies by tutoring the children of the well-to-do—in Danzig for the admiral of the Polish fleet, Alexander von Seton, for example, and near Freystadt on the estate of George Schönborner von Schönborn, a high imperial official then retired. Gryphius showed a remarkable ability for attracting patronage and maintaining contacts and friendships over the years. After Schönborner’s death, he departed for the Netherlands with the two sons of his patron to study at Leiden (1638-1644), where he impressed many as one of the most learned men of his age. There he published another volume of his Sonette (1643), in which he included revised versions of his Lissaer Sonette (1637), while he had already brought out his Sonn-und Feiertags-Sonette in 1639 with the renowned publishing house of Elzevir. Although many of the poems obviously had been written earlier, the time at Leiden inspired revision on the basis of the latest theoretical requirements, revisions that did not always result in improvements in the power or liveliness of image or rhythm. The odes and epigrams included in the 1643 edition of poems show Gryphius experimenting in both Latin and German. On the whole, the shorter forms are the more successful, especially the simple strophic odes and satiric epigrams. In Leiden, as noted above, Gryphius also was exposed to Dutch dramatists such as Joost van den Vondel and Pieter C. Hooft, as well as to influential thinkers such as David Heinsius, Justus Lipsius, and Claudius Salmasius. The latter two are especially significant for an understanding of Gryphius’s tragedies, which treat the Lipsian neo-Stoic theme of constantia as well as the conservative divine right theories of Salmasius, which had also been defended by Gryphius’s earlier patron Schönborner.

Selected as companion to a group of young gentlemen on their Grand Tour, Gryphius traveled through France and Italy from 1644 through 1646. The journey included all the major stops from Paris to Rome to Venice and inspired Gryphius to write many poems and another Latin epic, Olivetum libri tres (1646). During this time, he must have seen commedia dell’arte productions, read or heard the story of Cardenio and Celinde (the basis for the tragedy of that title, written later in the decade), and begun to write his first German play, Leo Armenius, which he completed at Strassburg in 1647.

The time at Strassburg was fruitful despite its relatively short duration. While maintaining many friendships and participating in disputations there, he also worked on Catharina von Georgien and prepared a volume of his works, Teutsche Reim-Gedichte (1650), which included Leo Armenius, two books of odes, four books of sonnets, and two containing epigrams. Unfortunately, the publisher went out of business and an unauthorized version of these works appeared in Frankfurt am Main in 1650, including several poems not by Gryphius—the ultimate accolade. Returning to Silesia via the Netherlands, he arrived back at Fraustadt, in November, 1647.

That Gryphius refused calls to various European universities during the next year seems to indicate that he had already been promised a position back home. This is all the more likely because he became engaged on November 28, 1648, to Rosina Deutschländer, the daughter of an important merchant and city councillor at Fraustadt. The wedding took place on January 12, 1649. Of the seven children from this union, four died in their infancy, and one daughter—Anna Rosina—contracted what seems to have been polio and was incapacitated for the rest of her short life. Only two boys grew up to attain majority: Daniel, who died in Naples at the age of twenty-four, and Christian, the eldest, who followed in his father’s footsteps as writer, lawyer, and administrator. Christian Gryphius also edited his father’s works in 1698, including some previously unpublished materials.

In May of 1649 or 1650, Andreas Gryphius became syndic of Glogau, his hometown, a position he held until his death in 1664. His tasks included the legal defense of the interests and privileges of the Lutheran Silesian Estates against the encroachments of Catholic Habsburgs’ absolutist centralism and led, among other things, to his compilation and publication in 1653 of a collection of legal documents concerning his clients and the territory of Glogau. That he also continued his many other interests is shown by the publication of a report on his investigation of two Egyptian mummies in Breslau, entitled Mumiae Wratislavienses (1662). His obligations clearly did not leave much time for new creative work. This period of his life was thus dominated by revisions of earlier work, new editions of collections in 1657 and 1663, occasional pieces such as Majuma and Piastus, Lustund Gesang-Spiel, written for local potentates, and a translation or two. Of his original works, only Grossmüttiger Rechts-Gelehrter falls into this final period of his life; also during this period, he undertook a delightful partial adaption of The Beloved Hedgerose. Both of these are among Gryphius’s best and most polished dramatic works.

On July 16, 1664, Gryphius, not quite forty-eight years old, died of a stroke suffered in the middle of a stormy session of the Estates. His contemporaries, with many of whom he had maintained continuous contact, were unanimous in praise of his achievements, and his position in the annals of German literature has remained secure. Not all of his writings are readily accessible to the modern, post-Romantic consciousness because they require a knowledge of the traditions of rhetoric, emblems, and biblical references and an ability to think and read allegorically. Yet many of his poems and some of his comedies have remained popular no matter what the shift in taste of a particular period might seem to dictate.

Analysis

Although not widely known outside Germany, Andreas Gryphius is among the exemplary figures of his age. His drama, like his poetry, contributes greatly to an understanding of that complex period of European culture known as the Baroque.

There is a natural division to Gryphius’s dramatic production and a remarkable consistency of themes. There are, first, his translations and adaptations from other languages; second, his tragedies; and third, his comedies and occasional pieces. They all center on the vanity of all earthly things and the need to maintain constancy of faith in the face of adversity. This central concern may be expressed either in the form of a great personage enduring hardships with magnanimity, as it appears in the tragedies, or it may manifest itself as an investigation into the nature of love and its complexities, as it often does in the comedies. Unfortunately, the available information does not allow precise dating of certain works, but there is a rough chronology that indicates that most of Gryphius’s translations and adaptations were written at the beginning and toward the end of his career. The early translations and adaptations were followed in time, more or less, by the tragedies, which in turn were followed by the comedies. It is worthy of note that Gryphius’s actual dramatic production was concentrated in the relatively short time span between 1645-1646 and 1650-1652, and then again between 1659 and 1661.

Beständige Mutter

The earliest translation, to start with that group, seems to have been Beständige Mutter, by Nicholaus Causinus, which Gryphius translated from the Latin, possibly between 1634 and 1644-1646. This translation of Tragoediae sacrae (1621) of Causinus, who was the Jesuit father confessor to Louis XIII of France, exemplifies the standard martyr tragedy of the Baroque and provides the basic scheme of many of Gryphius’s later tragedies in the same genre. The action is set in Rome during the reign of Marcus Aurelius: The emperor tries to force Felicitas to renounce her Christian faith, only to be firmly rebuked by the steadfast paradigmatic believer. With great constancy, Felicitas endures the execution of her seven sons and rejects the advances, religious and amorous, of the tyrannical pagans, dying in prison still faithful to her Christian faith. Recalling the psychomachia of medieval theater, the basic pattern of such martyr tragedies, as employed by Gryphius and others, is a triangle consisting of the suffering but steadfast martyr and his or her family; evil counselors and Machiavellian tyrants, here including the lustful Apollonius, who is inflamed by the physical and spiritual beauty of Felicitas; and finally, a ruler torn between human impulses and evil counsel, who finally gives in and condemns the martyr to a gruesome death. This pattern is followed closely in Catharina von Georgien, written around 1647.

Die Sieben Brueder

Another early translation is Die Sieben Brueder, based on Joost van den Vondel’s De Gebroeders and probably undertaken around the time of Gryphius’s stay in Leiden. The sources for this piece are the second book of Samuel in the Old Testament and Flavius Josephus’s Antiquitates Judaicae (93 c.e.; Jewish Antiquities, 1737), book 7. The issue is the obedience of David to God’s will despite the appearance of inhumanity, juxtaposed to the embittered people and priests, who demand the execution of Saul’s sons to lift the curse from their land. (Of interest to scholars is the comment by Christian Gryphius that his father had composed all but the fifth and last act of an independent play concerning the same theme which, however, has been lost.)

Seugamme

Seugamme, probably completed around 1645, is a translation from the Italian Girolamo Razzi’s La Balia first published in 1560. A typical commedia with several interlocking plots and intrigues, it displays the corruption of several families, households, and generations by lust and love, which is, however, resolved in the end despite lingering implausibilities. The attraction for Gryphius, who translates rather literally, seems to have lain in the power of lust and deception and the disruptions they can wreak in human affairs, a topic to which he returned in his Cardenio und Celinde, albeit in tragic garb.

The early translations not only indicate Gryphius’s mastery of languages and his familiarity with contemporary and earlier European drama but also left notable traces in his own works. By contrast, the later translations and adaptations, such as Der Schwermende Schäffer, do not appear to have provided the playwright with a genuine learning experience.

Leo Armenius

Leo Armenius was Gryphius’s first independent drama. First published in 1650 and reprinted at least five times in the course of the seventeenth century, it was probably written before 1647. This historial tragedy, an exemplification of the workings of fickle fortune in human affairs, shows how easily the mighty are humbled. Based on the Greek historians Cedrenus and Zonaras, Leo Armenius is the story of the fall of the Byzantine emperor at the hands of his general Michael Balbus. Leo admonishes Michael to desist from his plottings against the throne and finally condemns him to die at the stake. At the intercession of his wife, the Empress Theodosia, however, he stays the execution; Michael’s coconspirators use the delay to enter the palace and kill the emperor on the night before Christmas. Gryphius had probably known of the Jesuit drama Leo Armenius (1646) by Joseph Simon, dealing with the very topical issue of tyrannicide. Yet where the Counter-Reformation Jesuit sees divine justice done in the fall of the heretic Leo, Gryphius condemns the killing of a prince, both as a Lutheran and as a lawyer believing in the divine right of princes and God’s prerogative to judge them. This conservative tendency also informs his later depiction of the death of Charles I in England, as well as that of his jurist hero Papinian. In the highly stylized, declamatory Leo Armenius, little emphasis is given to establishing causal connections or psychological motivations. The interest focuses instead on the moral and spiritual significance of acts and symbols, such as the emperor’s apotheosis and transformation into a Christ figure when he dies at the altar, on the eve of Christ’s birth, clutching the Cross on which Christ supposedly died.

Catharina von Georgien

A slightly different emphasis underlies the first of the martyr tragedies, Catharina von Georgien, also written about 1647. Like Leo Armenius, this play was based on historical sources, although from contemporary history. Gryphius’s subtitle, speaking of “proven constancy,” indicates his theme. Reprinted four times before 1698 and frequently performed, this was one of Gryphius’s most popular dramas. Catherine, queen of Georgia, has been captured by the Persian Shah Abbas after fighting him successfully in defense of her dynastic interests and her Christian faith. Now in his power, she steadfastly rejects his advances; he is torn between his lust and his love for her—between his tyrannical impulses and his human inclinations. Having given the order to have Catherine tortured and then executed, he relents too late to save her; she has demonstrated exemplary constancy and greatness to the end. The entire action takes place in the imperial palace and consists of Catherine’s last day. The prologue sets the tone: It is delivered by Eternity, the ultimate measure of all acts and the source of the heroic queen’s stoic fortitude. When judged sub specie aeternitatis, all human, changing affairs take on an aspect of relative insignificance and fleetingness. Despite such heroic dimensions, however, the play also shows considerable complexity. Catherine is by no means fearless; she fears suffering but decides to endure. Similarly, not all the play’s power rests in eternity: There are also dynastic reasons for Catherine’s action.

Ermordete Majestät

Drawing again on contemporary history, but much closer to home, is the tragedy of Ermordete Majestät: This play exists in two quite different versions; the first was probably written as early as 1649 and published in 1657, while the second was published in 1663, in the last edition of his works supervised by the author himself. Spurred on by personal acquaintance with relatives of England’s King Charles I, Gryphius once more took up the question of the killing of a sovereign. After Leo Armenius, it comes as no surprise that Gryphius’s play condemns the murder of a king, yet it also uses the death of the monarch to transform him into a witness to greatness, a martyr whose fall from temporal power is the occasion for attaining spiritual stature. The earthly crown is replaced by that of the martyr only to be transformed into the eternal crown of immortality (a triple structure that is reflected in the title-page print of one of Gryphius’s sources). Gryphius’s equation of the king with Christ has both religious and political implications, and the later version underscores this equation even more firmly: There, Charles rejects a rescue attempt in order to fulfill his destiny and role, both of which require a figural exegesis for their full understanding.

Cardenio und Celinde

The other tragedy written around 1649 is Cardenio und Celinde. In many ways, this is an oddity among Gryphius’s plays and those of his time. It presents a tragic subject through personages not of the highest rank; also, it draws heavily on stage machinery and complexities of plot and motivation that made it less than popular in its own time but which are appealing to modern interpreters. Cardenio falls in love with Olympia, who will eventually marry Lysander, who thus incurs the hate of Cardenio, while Celinde, who loves Cardenio, wants to bind him to herself with the help of magic. As Cardenio plots Lysander’s death and Celinde yearns for Cardenio’s enthrallment, they both have a vision of the vanity of all earthly lust that will transform them and their plans, thus assuring the victory of eternity and death over temporality and lust. Put differently, in the words of the author’s introduction, the play deals with the juxtaposition of two kinds of love: one chaste and virtuous, the married love of Olympia and Lysander; the other insane, lustful, and desperate, the desires of Cardenio and Celinde. The bitter experience of temporality and the vanity of life is the pathway to moral self-awareness.

Grossmüttiger Rechts-Gelehrter

The last major tragedy, Grossmüttiger Rechts-Gelehrter, dealing with the death of Papinian, the magnanimous lawyer and imperial councillor, was published in 1659 and performed the following year. Although there is no external evidence about its time of composition, internal indications are that it is a late work, showing Gryphius in full command of his creative abilities as a dramatist. Once again Gryphius turns to history and a martyr but this time with a difference. It is not Christianity that is at stake but virtue, remaining true to one’s values, in a general sense. Historically, Papinian, one of Rome’s greatest jurists, refused to justify the murder of Geta by his half brother, the emperor Caracalla, and was thus executed in 212 c.e. In the play, Papinian is an imperial councillor, related to the imperial family, and subject to many calumnies. When the emperor attempts to bribe and threaten Papinian into defending the killing of Geta by Bassianus Caracalla, Papinian refuses and is forced to witness the death of his son and then suffer execution himself, having rejected the army’s offer to kill the emperor and elevate him to the throne as well as the Empress Julia’s hand. A subplot, centering on the courtier Laetus, highlights Papinian’s integrity by contrasting his resolve with Laetus’s opportunistic Machiavellianism. In the end, Gryphius’s themes are the same as they were in the beginning, but they have gained depth and complexity. Not a specific moral system, that of Christianity, is at stake but the free moral decision of humankind, in the face of eternity, to adopt and maintain certain moral and political standards, no matter what the blandishments or threats. Remaining true to one’s own self is as central an issue as Christian salvation. Both are by no means private but are deeply embedded in politics and history and have public dimensions. The conservative acceptance of divine kingship is predicated on the assumption that order must be opposed to the chaos of the world and that its ultimate sanction is divine, as will be the punishment for its transgression.

Absurda Comica

If Gryphius’s tragedies were mainly cherished in their own time, the comedies have enjoyed continued popularity and success among amateurs and schools to this day. Absurda Comica, probably written between 1647 and 1649 and first published in 1657, treats the well-known Piramus and Thisbe story from Ovid. Despite its obvious affinity to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (pr. c. 1595-1596), no connection has been established. This little satire is a parody of all those dilettantes and amateurs who became the butt of many jokes, not only from the aristocracy for their social pretensions but also from literary reformers for their artistic failures. Here Gryphius uses the time-honored tricks of commedia dell’arte and traveling troupes—slapstick and situation comedy. The play also is a ready vehicle for wordplay and topical humor. Gryphius intended Absurda Comica to be performed in connection with an unnamed tragedy, possibly Cardenio und Celinde, which would give it an entirely different interpretive context. Without it, the death of the lovers is merely a silly consequence of a silly passion, a negative example or inversion of the positive overcoming of false love shown in Cardenio und Celinde. In any case, Absurda Comica is a brilliant example of the courtly Baroque parody of bourgeois pretensions.

Horribilicribrifax Teutsch

In his Horribilicribrifax Teutsch, Gryphius indulges his linguistic abilities, plays with the traditional figure of the miles gloriosus, satirizes the blowhards of the Thirty Years’ War, and generally amuses himself. Two loudmouthed captains, the titular hero and his rival Daradiridatumtaridas, who woo and leave the same maiden, and a schoolmaster pedant Sepronius, who reminds one of Shakespeare’s Polonius, are key comic elements in a farce that never does quite get off the ground despite all the standard ingredients. The best part remains the brilliantly presented mixture of languages, the linguistic equivalent of the moral confusion caused by the Thirty Years’ War. Once again, Gryphius is concerned with forms of love and moral corruption but chooses to present them in a lighthearted fashion, as a warning and an entertainment.

The Beloved Hedgerose

Modern readers have shown more interest in the mixed-form dual play The Beloved Hedgerose, written, performed, and published in 1660. The first part is a typical high-culture comedy, based on Philippe Quinault, where—once again—Cornelia loves Sulpicius who loves Chloris, Cornelia’s daughter, while Levin loves Cornelia. After much confusion, showing the power of love as much as that of intrigue, a positive resolution is achieved demonstrating that humanity’s best-laid plans are but delusion. The main plot is interspersed with a low-life playlet, loosely based on Joost van den Vondel’s Leeuwendalers (pb. 1647), in which peasants speak Silesian dialect. The simple and slow-witted peasants are shown with their daily problems; their love, as in the case of Dornrose (Thorny Rose) and Kornblume (Blue Flower of the Fields) is that of kind, natural hearts, almost anticipating Romantic attitudes. Again, Gryphius shows a fine ear for the varieties of language, from the Glogau dialect to High German, from common talk to the parody of pseudo-German, laden with misused foreign words. Not until Heinrich von Kleist and Gerhart Hauptmann would such language be heard and such simple life be seen again on the German stage.

Majuma

Finally, in Majuma, an allegory in which love overcomes war, Gryphius shows himself to be a master of the standard Baroque opera. This typical occasional piece was written on the announcement of the elevation of Ferdinand III to the title of Roman king in May, 1653, and thus as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Like Piastus, Lustund Gesang-Spiel, it shows what Gryphius can do with traditional forms.

Bibliography

Becker, Hugo. Andreas Gryphius: Poet Between Epochs. Berne, Switzerland: Herbert Lang, 1973. A critical analysis of the literary work of Gryphius, with emphasis on his poetry. Bibliography.

Metzger, Erika A., and Michael M. Metzger. Reading Andreas Gryphius: Critical Trends, 1664-1993. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1994. A look at the literary criticism pertaining to Gryphius over the years. Bibliography and index.

Schindler, Marvin S. The Sonnets of Andreas Gryphius: Use of the Poetic World in the Seventeenth Century. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1971. Although this critical analysis of Gryphius centers on his poetry, it also sheds light on his dramatic works.

Spahr, Blake Lee. Andreas Gryphius: A Modern Perspective. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993. An examination of the life and works of Gryphius. Bibliography and index.