The Stranger

The Stranger, by August von
Kotzebue, et al,

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Stranger, by August von Kotzebue,
et al, Translated by Benjamin Thompson
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Stranger A Drama, in Five Acts
Author: August von Kotzebue

Release Date: December 29, 2006 [eBook #20217]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
STRANGER***
E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which
includes the original illustration. See 20217-h.htm or 20217-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/2/1/20217/20217-h/20217-h.htm) or
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/2/1/20217/20217-h.zip)
Transcriber's note:
Typographical errors from the original 1806 edition have been
preserved.

THE STRANGER;
A Drama, in Five Acts;
As Performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
Translated from the German of Kotzebue. by Benjamin Thompson,
Esq.
Printed Under the Authority of the Managers from the Prompt Book.
With Remarks by Mrs. Inchbald.

[Illustration: STRANGER CHILDREN.--DEAR FATHER! DEAR
MOTHER! (Act V, Scene II.) PAINTED BY HOWARD A.
PUBLISH'D BY LONGMAN AND CO. ENGRAVED BY NEAGLE
1806]

London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster
Row. Savage and Easingwood, Printers, London.

REMARKS.

There seems to be required by a number of well meaning persons of the
present day a degree of moral perfection in a play, which few literary
works attain; and in which sermons, and other holy productions, are at
times deficient, though written with the purest intention.
To criticise any book, besides the present drama, was certainly not a
premeditated design in writing this little essay; but in support of the
position--that every literary work, however guided by truth, may
occasionally swerve into error, it may here be stated that the meek spirit
of christianity can seldom be traced in any of those pious writings
where our ancient religion, the church of Rome, and its clergy, are the
subjects: and that political writers, in the time of war, laudably
impelled, will slander public enemies into brutes, that the nation may
hate them without offence to brotherly love.
Articles of sacred faith are often so piously, yet so ignorantly
expounded in what are termed systems of education and
instruction--that doubts are created, where all was before secure, and
infidelity sown, where it was meant to be extirpated.
In this general failure of human perfection, the German author of this
play has compassionated--and with a high, a sublime, example before
him--an adultress. But Kotzebue's pity, vitiated by his imperfect nature,
has, it is said, deviated into vice; by restoring this woman to her former
rank in life, under the roof of her injured husband.
To reconcile to the virtuous spectator this indecorum, most calamitous
woes are first depicted as the consequence of illicit love. The deserted
husband and the guilty wife are both presented to the audience as
voluntary exiles from society: the one through poignant sense of sorrow
for the connubial happiness he has lost--the other, from deep contrition
for the guilt she has incurred.
The language, as well as the plot and incidents, of this play, describe,
with effect, those multiplied miseries which the dishonour of a wife
spreads around; but draws more especially upon herself, her husband,
and her children.

Kemble's emaciated frame, sunken eye, drooping head, and death-like
paleness; his heart-piercing lamentation, that--"he trusted a friend who
repaid his hospitality, by alluring from him all that his soul held
dear,"--are potent warnings to the modern husband.
Mrs. Siddons, in Mrs. Haller (the just martyr to her own crimes) speaks
in her turn to every married woman; and, in pathetic bursts of grief--in
looks of overwhelming shame--in words of deep reproach against
herself and her seducer--"conjures each wife to revere the marriage
bond."
Notwithstanding all these distressful and repentant testimonies,
preparatory to the reunion of this husband and wife, a delicate spectator
feels a certain shudder when the catastrophe takes place,--but there is
another spectator more delicate still, who never conceives, that from an
agonizing, though an affectionate embrace, (the only proof of
reconciliation given, for the play ends here), any farther endearments
will ensue, than those of participated sadness, mutual care of their joint
offspring, and to smooth each other's passage to the grave.
But should the worst suspicion of the scrupulous critic be true, and this
man should actually have taken his wife "for better or for worse," as on
the bridal day--can this be holding out temptation, as alleged, for
women to be false to their husbands? Sure it would rather act as a
preservative. What woman of common understanding and common
cowardice,