CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMEISTER

BY MICHAEL BUTLER

In his seminal study of Lenz’s Der Hofmeister Albrecht Schone remarks that despite Die Sofdaten being generally recognised as ‘ein stilreineres und uber- zeugenderes Werk’, it is oddly Der Hofmeister which has attracted the greatest critical attention. Schone surmises, somewhat wrily , that though this fascination with the play has led to largely negative conclusions, the phenomenon is evidence of a vague feeling that justice has not been done to Der Hofmeister and the problems it poses. Schone’s cogent analysis establishes the work’s basic structure in terms of interlocking variations on the theme of the Prodigal Son and reveals the subtle unity of a play which initially appears episodic and formless. At the same time he rejects attempts to approach the play through character: ‘Jeder Versuch [ . . . 1, das Ereignis und die Handlung aus den Charakteren abzuleiten, bleibt an den entscheidenden Stellen ergebnislos [ . . . ] Aus der Charakteranalyse wird das Geschehen im ‘Hofmeister’ weder begriindbar noch funktional einsichtig’ @. 80). Recent criticism has tended, perhaps too readily, to accept Schone’s verdict, concentrating primarily on further refinement of structural problems, on typological questions raised by Lenz’s dramaturgy3 or on the intellectual and moral background of the ‘Aufklarung’ and the ‘Sturm und Drang’ and Lenz’s relationship to them.* Justification for the comparative neglect of character is drawn, of course, from Lenz’s own Anmerhungen iibers Theater composed at roughly the same time as Der Hofmeister. In a well-known polemical passage on the nature of comedy and tragedy Lent declared: ‘Die Hauptempfindung in der Komodie ist immer die Begebenheit, die Hauptempfindung in der Tragodie ist die Person, die Schopfer ihrer Begebenheiten’ (I, 3595, and later: ‘Meiner Meinung nach wiire immer der Hauptgedanke einer Komodie eine Sacbe, einer Tragodie eine Person’ (I, 361). However, even if it is accepted that Der Hofmeister represents Lenz’s attempt to translate theory into practice, the fact that he himself remained uncertain about the proper description of his play-‘Trauerspiel’ , ‘Lust- und Trauerspiel’ or ‘Komodie’-should put the critic on his guard.6 Although it is obviously true that a thorough grasp of the play’s novel structure and its complex socio-historical background is essential for a full understanding, a fresh look at the characters themselves might nevertheless reveal facets of the play which have been hitherto obscured or neglected.

95

96 CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMEISTER

If one approaches Der Hofmeister from the perspective of characterisation, the principal source of its comic effect becomes apparent: it lies in the constant presentation of paradox, deeply rooted in the characters’ identities and persistently reflected in their words and actions, that is, in the discrepancy between what they say and what they do, or more often between what they wish to do and what they actually achieve. In this respect Lenz’s affinity is less with the didactic theatre of Diderot or Mercier than with Moliere. For each of the central characters in Der Hofmeister reveals an inherent dislocation of personality which directly recalls such ambivalent figures as the Don in Dom Juan and Alceste in Le Misanthrope or comic monomaniacs like Arnolphe in L’Ecole des Femmes.

That paradox is the main factor determining Lenz’s characterisation can be demonstrated in the opening scene of Der Hofmeister. Lauffer’s soliloquy points up his individual dilemma with extraordinary economy: his father’s lack of money and the Geheime Rat’s refusal to procure h m a public position in the ‘Stadtschule’ effectively condemn the recent graduate to a life of frustration and humiliation- a schizophrenic existence which is immediately translated into concrete form by the stage direction that ends his muttered protest: ‘Geht dem Geheimen Rat und dem Major mit vielfieundlichen SchanjGssen vorbei’ (11, 11). At the same time, Lauffer’s words and actions do far more than introduce the social question: the conceited preening of ‘Zum Pfaffen bin ich auch zu jung, zu gut gewachsen, habe zu vie1 Welt gesehn’ is offset by his admitted insecurity in the Geheime Rat’s presence: ‘Er nimmt mich vermutlich nicht fur voll an’. What Lenz has done is paradigmatic for the characterisation throughout the play: a character consciously projects a view of himself which is simultaneously undermined by the words and gestures he employs to express himself. The text offers the audience an immediate and telling contradiction. Lauffer’s self-flattery is ironised by his craven attitude, but more importantly what may be charitably construed as a necessary strategem is placed side by side with the existential possibility that Lauffer is indeed ‘nicht voll’ (cf. Guthke, p. 62). This crucially ironic presentation of self-awareness and blindness to self has immediate implications not only for the role of Lauffer, but also for the whole tenor, and therefore interpretation, of the play. But before Guffer is more closely considered, it will be useful to look at some other central characters to see if they, too, reveal a similar personal dissonance.

To show that this is indeed the case, one only needs to turn to the fathers (or surrogate fathers) in the play. For it is a paradox in itself that a work which is structured on the Prodigal Son pattern should in fact turn the Biblical model on its head and concern itself primarily and critically with fathers and their would-be regulation of the world, and only secondarily with chddren, prodigal or otherwise.s Of the four major figures who come into this category-the Geheime Rat, Major von Berg, Pastor Lauffer and Wenzeslaus-it is the Geheime Rat who has been most consistently misread and misinterpreted. The confusion began, in fact, with the play’s initial reception when the Geheime Rat was promptly taken to be the mouthpiece of the author. In his Briefe ziber d e Moralitat der Leiden desjungen Werthers Lenz hmself endeavoured to correct such a simplistic assumption:

~

CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMEISIER 97

Man hat mir allerlei moralische Endzwecke und philosophische Satze bei einigen meiner Komodien angedichtet, man hat sich den Kopf zerbrochen, ob ich wirklich den Hofmeisterstand fiir so gef2hrlich in der Republik halte, man hat nicht bedacht, dass ich nur ein bedingtes Gemalde geben wollte von Sachen wie sie da sind und die Philosophie des geheimen Rats nur in seiner Individualitat ihren Grund hatte. (I, 385)

Despite this clear reservation, however, the Geheime Rat is still regularly accepted, if not always as a straightforward reflection of Lenz’s ‘enlightened’ position, then- despite minor criticisms-= an ‘Idealfigur’, ‘ein Prediger in der Wiiste’, an objective ‘unimplicated bystander’, ‘das sympathische Vorbild der Grundvernunft selbst’ . 9

Elisabeth Genton is one of the few commentators to take up Lenz’s remark and argue that, far from being superficial blemishes, the Geheime Rat’s imperfections are central to his role. lo For it is he who precipitates Gustchen’s misfortune by so insensitively brushing aside the lovers’ feelings (however immature they may be); it is the Geheime Rat who abruptly abandons rationality when he listens so readily to SeifYenblase’s calumny or when in the face of familial disaster he utters the fatalistic, anti-‘Aufklhng’ view: ‘Es ist ein Gericht Gottes iiber g e w k Familien; bei einigen sind gewisse Krankheiten erblich, bei andern arten die Kinder aus, die Vater mogen tun, was sie wollen’ (11, 56). It is an extraordinary fact that at the critical junctures of the play this apparently self-possessed figure is portrayed as a passenger swept along on a tide of events which he can neither control nor properly understand. At the level of conscious behaviour, however, the Geheime Rat presents himselfas a stable personality, as a man of integrity clearly superior to those around him. For example, in the scene in which he surprises Fritz and Gustchen together (Act I, sc. vi) his language illustrates how much he relishes his omniscient authority: ‘Was habt ihr, nbische Kinder? Was zittert ihr?-Gleich, gesteht mir alles. Was habt ihr hier gemacht?’ (11, 22)-questions which are revealed as purely rhetorical flourishes when the next moment he admits to having overheard everything! In the face of comic pomposity at full flood, Fritz and Gustchen are reduced first to monosyllables and then to silence as the Geheime Rat disposes of them and their problems with a display of magisterial confidence. Correctives are decreed which are quite out of proportion to the ‘offence’-Fritz is sent back to school for a year instead of to the university, visits and letters afe severely curtailed-and thus the Geheime Rat, in endeavouring to fuif i his self-imposed role of controller of others’ lives, unwittingly sets in train a series of disastrous errors.

If in this scene the Geheime Rat’s character and behaviour contain the common ingredients of classical comedy-in particular the incongruity between intention and effect-his position as a benign ‘raisonneur’ is even further relativised in the more frequently quoted confrontation with Pastor Liiuffer (Act 11, sc. i). Unquestionably, the views the Geheime Rat puts forward are those of an ‘enlightened’ aristocrat, but it is equally m e that in part they sound so well precisely because they are so abstract. It is indeed by no m e m obvious that the course of the

,

98 CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMEISTER

argument is to the discredit of the Pastor. For the Geheime Rat who urges the bourgeois to be independent and reject the ignominy of aristocratic patronage is the man who condemns Euffer to this very fate by refusing him a public position. It is Pastor Euffer’s realistic assessment of the situation which emphasises the fact that the Geheime Rat’s panegyric on ‘freedom’ makes sense only to the socially privileged. Such fine beliefs exist in an idealist vacuum; there is little danger of their being put into practice in a concrete social reality. Thus because the Geheime Rat preaches a new social order but does surprisingly little to bring it about, his words have a hollow ring and consequently share richly in that irony of tone which is the hallmark of the play. l1

If the Geheime Rat’s role as a ‘raisonneur’ on the French classical model is progressively undermined by implicating him directly in the play’s pattern of paradoxical behaviour-a phenomenon not to be observed in Molitre-a similar procedure, but in reverse, can be detected in the two fathers whose function at first sight appears to be the solely negative one of providing a target for social criticism and satire: Pastor Euffer and Major von Berg. But in both cases there is a paradoxical aspect of their characters which complicates the picture. Pastor Euffer, for example, is by no means the servile cypher, ‘die Jammergestalt’ (Guthke, p. 61), he is sometimes made out to be.I2 Not only does he share the choleric temper of the Geheime Rat himself (which the latter comments on, see 11, 28), but he is shown in the confrontation discussed above to have a sharper analysis of the realities of the situation which does not prevent him from expressing himself with equal forthrightness. Furthermore, there is a telling remark made by the Frau Majorin to Graf Wermuth which is often overlooked: ‘Denn das ( = Pastor Euffer) ist ein rechter Bar, wenigstens hat er mich ein fiir allemal aus der Kirche gebriillt’ (11, 16). Clearly a man who himself has been forced to serve his time as a ‘Hofmeister’ (‘Man muss eine Warte haben, von der man sich nach einem offentlichen Amt umsehen kann, wenn man von Universitaten kommt’, 11, 27) has not compromised his principles if he can keep well-connected hypocrites out of his church by his preaching.

Major von Berg, on the other hand, is initially presented within a well-defined comic tradition as an hilarious compound of the ‘miles gloriosus’ , the hen-pecked husband and cuckold, the irascible but impotent father. Yet such is Lenz’s skill in handling dialogue and gesture that he manages to convey through the bluster and crassness the very deep affection the Major has for his daughter. That he passes from extreme to extreme with such rapidity (indeed, he is still doing so at the end of the play!) is a uaditional source of laughter, but Lenz has been careful to give him a wife whose vapid rapacity and snobbish arrogance offer some clue to the peculiar intensity of his personal disorientation. Thus the Major arouses a certain sympathy which would have been out of place if the character had been left at the level of a colourful marionette.

If the Major and Pastor Euffer can be seen to balance each other in their roles of quid-tempered, but fundamentally nonplussed fathers of erring children,

CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMISTER 99

Wenzeslaus, the village schoolmaster, takes his place as the true pendant to the Geheime Rat. For although he is celibate and hermit-like, given the chance he exhibits exactly the same desire to shape and control the destiny of his ‘geistlicher Sohn’ (11, 80), Lauffer, as does the Geheime Rat that of Fritz and Gustchen. But whereas the Geheime Rat’s behaviour is sharply relativised within the context of the tenets of the Enlightenment, Wenteslaus is presented as a comic (at times sinister) parody of the Pietist tradition, as the upholder of eschatological beliefs which are quite inimical to the spirit of the Enlightenment: ‘Wir leben in seelen- verderblichen Zeiten: es ist die lettte bijse Zeit’ (11, 91). To see him without qualification as ‘der Vertreter eines selbstandigen und selbstbewussten ‘ ‘auf- geklarten” Menschentypus’ (Rudolf, p. 168) is clearly erroneous, but to dismiss him simply as a grotesque pedant (Guthke, p. 61) is equally inadequate. For Wenzeslaus is an intriguing combination of a number of conflicting identities. For example, the scene in which he throws Graf Wermuth unceremoniously out of his cottage (Act III, sc. ii) is a graphic illustration of sturdy individualism and admirable refusal to bow to the dictates of an ignorant but powerful aristocracy. Similarly Wenzeslaus stands up unflinchingly to the combined pressure of a violent Major and the Geheime Rat and his men (Act IV, sc. iii). At these points his language reverberates splendidly and matches his actions. Yet in these very scenes such positive traits are attenuated by a self-centredness which constantly verges on the maniacal. Living in self-imposed and self-satisfied isolation Wenzeslaus’ imbalance seems a mixture of the repressed uuelty of Amolphe in L’Ecole des Femmes and the more complex eccentricity of Alceste in Le Misanthrope. For like Molizre’s egoists, in their very different ways, Wenzeslaus, too, wishes to mould human beings to his own distorted image-a grotesque mockery of that favourite symbol of the ‘ S t u n und Drang’, Prometheus.

In Wenzeslaus Lenz portrays in a decidedly ambiguous light the freedom and independence the Geheime Rat urges so eloquently on Pastor Euffer. For it is not often remarked that Wenzeslaus is holding precisely the sort of ‘useful’ ‘offentliches Amt’ that the Geheime Rat praises but denies the Pastor’s son. There is a further link between the two men in that Wenzeslaus’ statements, like the Geheime Rat’s, are not at times without their obscurantist, reactionary side. For example, to EuEer’s open amazement, he defends superstition as the key-stone of Christian Faith and as a convenient means of keeping the peasantry under control: ‘Reutet mir den Aberglauben aus; ja wahrhaftig, der rechte Glaub wird mit draufgehn und ein nacktes Feld da bleiben [ . . ] Aberglauben-nehmt dem Pobel seinen Aberglauben, er wird freigeistern wie ihr und euch vor den Kopf schlagen’ (II, 91). Thus the quasi-idyllic life-style Wenzeslaus appears to enjoy is seen to be purchased at the cost of a fully integrated existence. Perhaps the richest source of high comedy in the play, Wenzeslaus has also the serious function of underlining the contemporary unreality of the Geheime Rat’s ‘advanced’ philosophy. Both men indeed reveal a similar comic discrepancy: the more they articulate their convictions and take steps to regulate the world around them for their own advantage, the

100 CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ‘S DER HOFMEISTER

more they are shown to be victims of their own inadequacies, the more their sentiments and the context in which they express them are exposed as fundamentally incongruous, and hence the more chaos they cause in other people’s lives.

Nowhere, of course, is this better illustrated than in the fate of the principal victim, Hofmeister Euffer. And yet, despite the programmatic irony of the play’s subtitle, ‘Vorteile der Privaterziehung’ , Lenz has not created a character who can embody his socio-critical message unambiguously. For the shameless exploitation of the Hofmeister by the aristocrats is aesthetically relativised by making the aptly named Euffer himself inherently comic. l3 His unwitting self- revelation in the opening scene has already been touched on; in practically every other scene in which he appears Euffer is depicted not solely as a victim (whether of social forces or his own appetites) but also as afool. Thus whilst Gustchen and her parents manipulate him for their own selfish ends, the Geheime Rat and Wenzeslaus treat him as someone who is not fully responsible. It could, of course, be argued that this treatment is the cause and not the result of lluffer’s behaviour, but all the textual evidence points to Guffer sharing the same paradoxical features revealed by the other characters discussed. Nowhere is this clearer than in his self- castration. The only independent attempt Euffer makes to assert himself-the question of who seduced whom in the Major’s household is left typically vague- leads in fact to that severe denial of selfhood which the Geheime Rat unknowingly forecasts in his disputation with Pastor Lauffer: ‘Ohne Freiheit geht das Leben bergab riickwiirts, Freiheit ist das Element des Menschen wie das Wasser des Fisches, und ein Mensch der sich der Freiheit begibt, vergiftet die edelsten Geister seines Bluts, erstickt seine sui3esten Freuden des Lebens in der Blute und ermordet sich selbst’ (11, 2 5 ) .

The comic nature of this particular paradox is underscored by the introduction of Lise. The character of the young peasant girl who achieves such a rare marital catch is, however, often misread. She has been described, for example, as ‘riihrend naiv’ (Schone, p. 80), ‘die hubsche riihrend naive Lise’ (Burger, p. 65), ‘the naive, angelic Lise’ (Harris, p. 85), and Rudolfgoes so far as to declare: ‘An der Natiirlichkeit und reinen Liebe von Lise wird lluffer wieder zum Menschen’ (p. 169). l4 But an examination of Lise’s words in context must surely point to a mockery of the Rousseauist ideal these critics seem to see in her. For the only scene in which she appears (Act V, sc. x) is built on the by now familiar principle of comic incongruity: Guffer’s fervid exclamations (‘Du hast eine Seele dem Himmel gestohlen’, ‘Ach!-Seht diese Wangen, ihr Engel! wo sie in unschuldigem Feuer brennen’, ‘Giittliche Lise!’ etc.) are set against a coarse realism which is a token more of a mixture of blank stupidity, precocity and primitive snobbery than of ‘touching naiveti? :

.

0 lassen Sie, meine Hand ist ja so schwarz-0 pfui doch! Was machen Sie? Sehen Sie, einen geistlichen Herm hatt ich allewege gern: von meiner ersten Jugend an hab ich die studierte Herren immer gern gehabt; sie sind alleweil

CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMEISTER 101

so artig, so manierlich, nicht so puff paff wie die Soldaten, obschon ich einigewege die auch gern habe, das leugne ich nicht, wegen ihrer bunten Rocke, ganz gewiss, wenn die geistlichen Herren in so bunten Rocken gingen wie die Soldaten, das d r e zum Sterben. (II,94)

The innocent child in its Sunday finery, prayer book in hand, is the projected image; language and gesture reveal a more discordant truth. l5 The basically comic nature of this exchange is promptly underlined when Wenzeslaus rushes in to separate the pair in an obvious parodic repetition of the Geheime Rat’s inter- vention in the love scene between Fritz and Gustchen-a further example of p d e l i s m between these two figures who hide their authorimtian attitudes behind a mask of protective paternalism.

The bitter, sardonic nature of Lenz’s comedy is at its clearest in this mock eighteenth-century idyll in which ‘happiness’ and ‘harmony’ are achieved at the cost of creativity and genuine human relationships. The resolution of Uuffer’s problems is made dependent on the devastation of human potentiality; marriage as the basis of social stability is presented, it is true, as a ‘triumph’ over stultified bachelordom, but its creative rhythm is painfully short-circuited. The cessation of the Family cycle is decreed for the play’s eponymous ‘hero’ at the same moment that its indispensability is proclaimed for the rest of the characters. Inevitably, therefore, the Lise-Lauffer ‘union’ casts its bizarre light on the nature of the conventional ‘happy end’ Lenz provides for his play as a whole. With a tour & f i n e that can only be animated by satiric intent, if not by cynicism, k n z brings together all the clichis of classical comedy: a lottery won, lovers reunited, long lost relatives rediscovered, family unity restored, justice ultimately done. To assert that in these last two scenes ‘we have entered a different kind of world, in which a different kind of causality operates’ (Osbome, p. 116) is, however, to confuse comic reality with real life. For the dizzy ending of Der Hofmeister can be seen as the radical intensification of paradoxes which are present from the very beginning of the play. The world is the same: superficially ordered and rational, but basically unpredictable and absurd-its lack of real coherence ironically highlighted by the improbable tabfeau of the final scene. Paradox indeed is at the centre of Lenz’s dramatic method; it should not be surprising, therefore, to discover the same dominant principle at work in the playwright’s creation of character.

NOTES

I Albrccht Schonc, S&kuhkatian ais sprrrc8bddmd.e Krafi. Sttrdien zur Dichtung deutscher P&mr-

* For example, Edward P. Harris, ‘Suuctural Unity in J. M. R. Lcnz’s Der Hofineirtcr: A Rduauon’, siibne (Gijttingcn 1958), p. 76.

CHARACTER AND PARADOX IN LENZ’S DER HOFMEISm 102

Seminar 8 (1972). 77-87, and Ford Briton Parkes, Epische Elemente in Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenzens Drama ‘Der Hofineisfer’ (Glippingen 1973).

For example, Reni Guard, Lenz 1751-1792. Genzse d’une dramaturgic du tragi-comique (Paris 1968). and Bruce Duncan, ‘A “Cool Medium” as Social Corrective: J. M. R. Lenz’s Concept of Comedy‘. Colloquia Germanica 314 (1975). 232-45.

* For example. Ottomar Rudolf, JaRob Michael Rernhold Lenz. Moralist und AufUrer @ad Homburg 1970). and Norman R. Diffcy, ‘Lenz, Rousseau and the Problem of Striving’, Seminar 10 (1974). 165-80. For a more ambitious attempt to get to grips with Lenz’s work as a whole and to set it in the context of the ‘Spataufklarung’, see John Osborne’s well-researched monograph, J. M. R. Lenz: The Renunciation ofHemism (Glittingen 1975).

All quotations from Lenz’s work are taken from WerRe undSchn3en (Stuttgart 1966) in 2 volumes, edited by Britta Titel and Hellmut Haug. Roman numerals refer to volume, Arabic to page.

For a discussion of Lenz’s hesitations, see Karl Guthke, Geschicbte und PoefiR der deutscben TragiRomiidie (Glittingen 1961), pp. 58f. ’ Schone himself speaks of ‘die meisterlichen Zeugnisse dramatischer Menschengestaltung’ @. 80).

but the undifferentiated paking of his example (‘etwa in der grotesken Figur des Dorflehrers Wenzeslaus und der riihrend naiven des Bauernmadchens Lise’) leaves the concession at the level of clichi.

Despite the local colour of the student scenes with their vigour and splendid dialogue, Fritz himself remains at the level of stereotype. Both he and Gustchen are basically figures whose passivity is designed to throw into relief the increasingly frantic gyrations of the older generation.

Respectively, Heinz Otto Burger, ‘J. M. R. Lent: “Der Hofmeister”’ in: Hans Steffen (ed.), Dar deutsche Lustspiel Band I (Giittingen 1968). p. 66; Helmut Arntzen, Die ernste Komodie. Das deutsche Lustspiel iron Lessing bir Kleist (Munich 1968), p. 89; Max Spalter, Brecht’s Tradition (Baltimore 1967), p. 19; Parkes, p. 105. Girard discusses the Geheime Rat as an embodiment ‘d’une vision rationelle d’un monde ordonnt, en dtfinitive, harmonieux’ (p. 233). whilst Guthke (p. 61) describes all the characters as ‘Narren’ except the Geheime Rat, and Gert Mattenklott declares that despite his inadequate attitude to his son, the Geheime Rat is ‘nie jedoch komisch’, Mehncholie in derDramatik des Stunn undDrang (Stuttgart 1968). p. 160, footnote. lo Elisabeth Genton, L.enz-Hinger- Wagner. Studien iiber die ratiodistischen Elemente im DenRen undDicbten des Stunnes undDranges (Phil. Diss. F.U. Berlin [Masch], 19S5), pp. 46f.

’’ See Karl Eibl’s interesting article “‘Realismus” als Widerlegung von Literatur. dargestellt am Beispiel von Lent’ Hofmeisfer’, Poetica 6 (1974). 456-67. It is surely an exaggeration to say of Brecht’s adaptation of Der Hofineister (in which the Geheime Rat is unequivocally involved in the social criticism) that he ‘vollzieht eine t o d e soziologixhe Umfunktionierung’-see Hans Mayer, ‘Lent oder die Alternative’ ( = ‘Nachwort’ to the TiteUHaug edition), 11, 802.

l2 See also M. A. L. Brown, ‘Lenz’s “Hofmeister” and the Drama of the Storm and Stress’ in: J. M. Ritchie (ed.) Periodsin German LiteratureVol. I1 (London 1969), p. 74.

l 3 Cf. Guthke: ‘Das tragische Verhangnis trifft den Hofmeister als eine komische Figur’ @. 62). Guthke remarks @. 61) that Lcnz continually goes against the theories enunciated in his AnmerRungen by creating comedy through character rather than through ‘Begebcnheiten’ . l4 Rudolf‘s discussion of Der Hofmeister is an extreme example of the consequences of ignoring character analysis. Not only does he praise Wenzeslaus as a model of simplicity and ‘Mwigkeit’ (p. 172). but he interprets Lise’s sentiments as the author’s own (p. 173)! Edward Harris is also led to strange conclusions by ignoring character in his attempt to establish new aspects of recurring structural patterns in the play. Arguing that the play’s dynamic lies in the happy restoration of the Berg family unit, he is forced to close his eyes (and ears) to Lenz’s irony. Thus he claims for fiuffer ‘the ideal fulfi ient of love in being loved and accepted for himself; his castration ‘allows him a symbolic re-birth’ etc. @. 86).

- -