GERMAN PLAY TODAY

Director Heinrich Conried, manager of the Irving Place Theatre Company of New York, will present today, under the auspices of the Deutscher Verein, Grillparzer's "Medea," for the benefit of the Germanic Museum. The performance will be held at the Colonial Theatre, Boston at 2.30 o'clock. Tickets are still on sale at Thurston's, and may be obtained at the theatre.

Franz Grillparzer, the author of the play, has been called the "German Racine." He was born in Vienna in 1791 and died in the same city in 1872, acclaimed the national poet of Austria. In addition to his plays he wrote much lyric and epigrammatic poetry, and some prose tales Grillparzer's plays are nearly all tragedies, and the one comedy which he produced was signally unsuccessful.

The "Medea," a five-act play, is the third member of the trilogy, "The Golden Fleece," published in 1822. It is considered by some his greatest achievement, and is certainly the best of the three plays in the trilogy. None is perhaps better suited to give an idea of Grillparzer's peculiar distinction as a dramatist than "Medea." The first two members of the trilogy, "The Guest-Friend" and "The Argonauts," are the necessary supplements of the "Medea" in order to understand fully the development of the heroine's character.

The incompatibility of Greek and barbarian nature is the theme of the play and the source of all the sorrows of Jason and Medea. Jason has married Medea, but the Greeks ostracize him because of his barbarian wife. Medea affects in vain the Grecian dress and Grecian accomplishments: she remains hopelessly barbarian. Finally Medea, despised by her husband, repudiated by her children, and exiled by the country, becomes possessed with jealousy and fury, sets the palace aflame, kills her children and departs. The fifth act is an epilogue. The cast of the play is as follows: Kreon,  Mr. Adolph Winds Kreusa,  Miss Marianne Bratt Jason,  Mr. Carl Machold Medea,  Miss Marie Drummisch Herald,  Mr. Friedrich Holthaus