In his _Hereditary Forester_ Ludwig produced one of the best middle-class tragedies of modern literature, combining in it, as indeed he had set out to do, highest literary merit with impelling effectiveness upon the stage. "It is exceedingly easy," he said, "to write a poetic drama if one does not care to keep an eye upon the stage, or one that is a successful stage play, but without poetry. * * * I shall do what I can to help create that really healthy condition of the drama which consists in the intimate union of poetry and the stage." Following in the footsteps of Schiller in his _Intrigue and Love_ and of Hebbel in his _Maria Magdalena_, he has not attained, it is true, the massive solidity of the latter, nor has he breathed into his drama that lofty spirit of social challenge that wings the former. On close inspection, the construction of Ludwig's drama shows undeniable flaws of motivation. The playwright has allowed too free a play to chance and slender probability. The spirit of the revolutionary unrest of 1848 is in the background, especially in the tavern scene of the third act, but it does not in any way organically connect the family tragedy which we witness with the broad movements of contemporary public life. But the play is indeed, as Ludwig desired it to be, "a declaration of war against the unnaturalness and conventionalities of our latter-day stage literature." The life-like characters which it portrays, the convincing language which they speak, the carefully drawn _milieu_ in which they move, the intense struggle of passions in which they are engaged-these are all handled with a skill as rare as it is artistically true to life. And even though the atmosphere enveloping it all seems to combine the realism of Ludwig's maturity with the romantic pre-disposition of his earlier works, it remains in fine keeping with that shadowy forest-world which forms the setting of the play. Ludwig's next drama, _The Maccabæans_, was of a radically different mold. From prose we pass to verse, from humble middle-class life to the traditional grandeur of classical tragedy, from the narrow circle of domestic happenings to a Shakespearean canvas of broad historical associations, from contemporary Germany to those heroic struggles in which, in the second century, B.C., the Jews under the leadership of Judas Maccabæus defended their national and religious freedom against Syrian oppression. In this drama also, certain faults of construction are evident. There is a lack of central unity of interest, in part due, no doubt, to the long processes of development which the play underwent before completion. But again, there is the same masterly technique in all matters of detail, a wonderful strength and beauty of language, subtle and convincing character-portrayal and a splendid realization of that ethnic atmosphere of Jewish life and character in which the drama moves and from which its conflicts spring.