Goethe's "Iphigenie."

The success which attended the production of Lessing's "Minna von Barnhelm" in Philadelphia, under the patronage of the University of Pennsylvania, suggested to members of the German Department of Harvard the desirability of putting before the University a classic German play. Mr. Heinrich Conried, proprietor and manager of the Irving Place Theatre in New York, has always shown the greatest interest in the maintenance on the stage of the older classic drama, and consequently an appeal was made to him. To this appeal he responded with the utmost readiness and generosity; and, through his enthusiasm for the drama of Germany and his sympathy in our University life, it has been possible to arrange a performance in Cambridge.

The play chosen is Goethe's "Iphigenie auf Tauris," to be presented in Sanders Theatre on March 22. This play was selected because of the fitness in giving precedence to Germany's greatest poet, of the intrinsic beauty of the play, and of the fact that, for students of Greek or of Comparative Literature, the treatment by a modern dramatist of a theme that had been handled by Euripides offers much interest. Furthermore, the simplicity of the stage-setting and the small number of actors are well adapted to the limitations of Sanders Theatre. Mr. Conried's company is excellent, and he has recently engaged one or two actors especially fitted for the "Iphigenie" roles. The conventions of the classic German stage differ in some material respects from our own, and the contrast of dramatic methods will be both interesting and profitable from the point of view of dramatic art.

A book of the play will be provided which will contain the standard Weimar text, the excellent English translation by Miss Swanwick, an introduction by Professor Francke, and a portrait of Goethe at the time of his visit in Rome in 1786, when the "Iphigenie" took its final shape. The play marks the consummation of Goethe's fealty to Greek ideals of art which was to last throughout his life-time. It shows him turning from the license of fancy and the affluence of sentiment that characterize his Storm and Stress Period, to a serener and truer view of life, --a view at once idealistic and realistic in that it blends a lofty faith in the moralities with psychological truth of character. "Iphigenie" is not, however, a realistic play in the sense of the extreme modern school, but it is profoundly realistic in the deeper sense in which Shakspere is realistic, by its faithful reproduction of human passions and of the interplay of human motives.