HISTORICAL BENEFIT-COMEDY OF THE TRANSFER OF THE PRINCESS. IN FIVE ACTS. The half-word Benefit signifies merely the profit which I myself gain from it. Act First.--Of three chambers, the middle one is the scene of the play, the trading-mart where they exhibit, the hall of _correlation_ (Ratisbonically speaking) where all matters of importance are referred and matured. On the other hand, in the first adjoining chamber is stowed the Italian, and in the second the Flachsenfingen court, each calmly awaiting the beginning of a part for which Nature has formed it. These two apartments I regard only as the sacristies of the central one. The middle chamber, i. e. its curtain, which consists of two folding-doors, at last rises and shows to partner Sebastian, who is peeping out from his shop beside the catarrhal half of the firm, a great deal. There appears at the door of coulisse No. 1 a red-velvet chair; again, at the door of coulisse No. 2, another, a brother and relative of the first; these duplicates are the seats whereon the Princess sits in the course of the action, not because weariness, but because her rank, expressly desires it. One discovers now (caught in the Act it may be said to be) a long fringed table, dividing the middle chamber (which is itself a hyphen to the two coulisses) into two halves. One would not expect that this session-table, in its turn, would be again halved by something which a stupid person hardly sees. But let a man step into Victor's shop; then will he have a view of a strip of silk-cord, which, beginning under the pier-table, streaming across the agate floor and under the partition-table, ends in front on the threshold; and thus a mere silk-band easily divides the dividing-table and thereby the dividing-chamber, and finally the divided company of performers, into two of the most equal halves,--whence let us learn that at court everything is cut up, and even the prorector, in his time and turn, is stretched out on the dissecting-table. Of this silk-lace, wherewith the grand seignior divides his favorites from above downwards, but into fractions, we cannot and must not say any more in the First Act, because--it is over.... I found it uncommonly easy to draw up this scene in a serious manner; for as, according to Plattner, the ridiculous attaches only to man, the sublime, which in my performance assumes the place of the comic, was easy to be had in an act where nothing living played, not even cattle. Act Second.--The stage grows now more alive, and upon it enters now the Princess, handed in by the Italian Minister from coulisse No. 1; both act at first, like nature, silently on this parade-ground, which on paper is already two pages long....