Mention has already been made of Grillparzer's pride in the history of Austria. In 1809 he wrote in his diary, "I am going to write an historical drama on Frederick the Warlike, Duke of Austria." A few stanzas of a ballad on this hero were written, probably at this time; dramatic fragments have survived from 1818 and 1821. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century vigorous efforts were made, especially by Baron von Hormayr and his collaborators, to stir up Austrian poets to emulate their North-German colleagues in the treatment of Austrian subjects. With these efforts Grillparzer was in hearty sympathy. The Hanoverian A.W. Schlegel declared in a lecture delivered at Vienna in 1808 that the worthiest form of the romantic drama was the historical; and made special mention of the house of Habsburg. In 1817 Matthäus von Collin's play _Frederick the Warlike_ was published, as one of three (_Leopold the Glorious, Frederick the Warlike_, and _Ottocar_) planned as a cycle on the house of Babenberg. Collin's _Frederick_ interested Grillparzer; Ottocar, who married Frederick's sister and whose fate closely resembled Frederick's, appealed to him as a promising character for dramatic treatment; a performance of Kleist's _Prince Frederick of Homburg,_ which Grillparzer witnessed in 1821, may well have stimulated him to do for the first of the Habsburgs, Ottocar's successful rival, what Kleist had done for the greatest of the early Hohenzollerns; and particularly the likeness of Ottocar's career to that of Napoleon gave him the point of view for _King Ottocar's Fortune and Fall,_ composed in 1823. _Ottocar_ is remarkable for the amount of matter included in the space of a single drama, and it gives an impressive picture of the dawn of the Habsburg monarchy; but only in the first two acts can it be said to be dramatic. The middle and end, though spectacular, are rather epic than dramatic, and our interest centres more in Rudolf the triumphant than in Ottocar the defeated and penitent. The play is essentially the tragedy of a personality. Ottocar is a _parvenu,_ a strong man whom success makes too sure of the adequacy of his individual strength, ruthless when he should be politic, indulgent when stern measures are requisite, an egotist even when he acts for the public weal. Grillparzer treated his case with great fulness of sensuous detail, but without superabundance of antiquarian minutiæ, in spite of careful study of historical sources of information. "Pride goeth before destruction," is the theme, but Grillparzer was far from wishing either to demonstrate or illustrate that truth. _Ottocar_ is the tragedy of an individual unequal to superhuman tasks; it does not represent an idea, but a man.