Except for the half humorous and not wholly successful interlude of _Schluck and Jau_, Hauptmann neglected the poetic drama until 1902, when he presented on the boards of the famous _Burgtheater_ at Vienna, _Henry of Aue_. There is little doubt but that this play will ultimately rank as the most satisfying poetic drama of its time. Less derivative and uncertain in quality than the plays of Stephen Phillips, less fantastic and externally brilliant than those of Rostand, it has a soundness of subject matter, a serene nobility of mood, a solidity of verse technique above the reach of either the French or the English poet. Hauptmann chose as his subject the legend known for nearly seven hundred years through the beautiful Middle High German poem of Hartmann von der Aue--the legend of that great knight and lord who was smitten with leprosy, and whom, according to the mediaeval belief, a pure maiden desired to heal through the shedding of her blood. But God, before the sacrifice could be consummated, cleansed the knight's body and permitted to him and the maiden a united temporal happiness. This story Hauptmann takes exactly as he finds it. But the characters are made to live with a new life. The stark mediaeval conventions are broken and the old legend becomes living truth. The maiden is changed from an infant saint fleeing a vale of tears into a girl in whom the first sweet passions of life blend into an exaltation half sexual and half religious, but pure with the purity of a great flame. The miracle too remains, but it is the miracle of love that subdues the despairing heart, that reconciles man to his universe, and that slays the imperiousness of self. Thus Henry, firmly individualised as he is, becomes in some sense, like all the greater protagonists of the drama, the spirit of man confronting eternal and recurrent problems. The minor figures--Gottfried, Brigitte, Ottacker--have the homely and delightful truth that is the gift of naturalism to modern, literature. Hauptman's next play was a naturalistic tragedy, one of the best in that order, _Rose Bernd._ Then followed, from 1905 to 1910, a series of plays in which he let the creative imagination range over time and space. In _Elga_ he tells the story of an old sorrow by means of the dream-technique of _Hannele;_ in _And Pippa Dances,_ he lets the flame of life and love flicker its iridescent glory before man and super-man, savage and artist; in _The Maidens of the Mount_ he celebrates the dream of life which is life's dearest part; in _Charlemagne's Hostage_ and in _Griselda_ he returns to the interpretation and humanising of history and legend.