This play, a glorification of patriotic devotion and, in spite of the self-repressive character of the hero, as full of stirring action as any German historical play whatever, was presented on the twenty-eighth of February, 1828, and was received with applause by high and low. The emperor caused a special word of appreciation to be conveyed to the poet. How great was Grillparzer's astonishment, therefore, when, on the following day, the president of police summoned him and informed him that the emperor was so well pleased with the play that he wished to have it all to himself; wherefore the dramatist would please hand over the manuscript, at his own price! Dynastic considerations probably moved the emperor to this preposterous demand. The very futility of it--since a number of copies of the manuscript had already been made, and one or the other was sure to escape seizure--is a good example of the trials to which the patience of Austrian poets was subjected during the old régime. Grillparzer was at this time depressed enough on his own account, as his poems _Tristia ex Ponto_ bear witness. This new attempt at interference almost made him despair of his fatherland. "An Austrian poet," he said, "ought to be esteemed above all others. The man who does not lose heart under such circumstances is really a kind of hero." Grillparzer was not a real hero. But in the midst of public frictions, personal tribulations, apprehension that his powers of imagination were declining, and petulant surrenders to discouragement, he kept pottering along with compositions long since started, and by 1831 he had completed two more plays, _A Dream is Life_ and _Waves of the Sea and of Love_.