This is No. 694 of Everyman’s Library. Alist of authors and their works in this serieswill be found at the end of this volume. Thepublishers will be pleased to send freely to allapplicants a separate, annotated list of theLibrary.
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EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
POETRY & THE DRAMA
THREE PLAYS
BY FREDERIC HEBBEL
INTRODUCTION BY L. H. ALLEN
THREE PLAYS
FREDERIC HEBBEL
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.
All rights reserved
Made in Great Britain
at The Temple Press Letchworth
and decorated by Eric Ravilious
for
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Toronto · Vancouver
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First Published in this Edition 1914
INTRODUCTION
If a stringent quality be noticeable in Hebbel, it can well be tracedto his early environment. The greater ills which strike the manhoodinto human nature are drastic godsends; but the long draw of poverty,the depressing atmosphere of dour faces, the helpless baffle of youngand ignorant art “made tongue-tied with authority”—it is these thingsthat in a sensitive nature are prone to twist strength into rancour.Luckily this was not the effect on Hebbel, but in the caustic, ifhonest, introspection, the rigid or hesitant self-examinings, theloathing of poverty and uncongenial work that was almost a panic,in these things whose excess tends to stunt the energy, the bane ofHebbel’s early years is seen. Nothing more can be said for his greatstature than that through all his miseries he won his way to a matureconfidence and mellow resignation.
He was born in 1813, a Dittmarscher, the son of a mason. There isin that sea-coast blood something of an ancient savagery, a kinshipwith grey skies and seas, yet a power under strong control. To thishe owed his sharp