He was apt to forget that there can be an intensity of quiet and tragic significance, not always in broken utterances, but in a commonplace. It is often the same with his psychology. The non-success of _Herod and Mariamne_ at its initial performance is quite intelligible. Though Hebbel wished here to reduce an “almost fantastic story to the hardest reality” (understanding “reality” in his own sense), he has succeeded only by burrowing his way there. The motives are not at first sight evident, but when grasped they carry the conviction that the situation has been revolved in every possible light and only that one chosen which seemed tragically necessary. These true and appealing characters are thus built up from within, and partake of the solidity of their creator’s mind. The effect is more abiding than a patchwork of subtleties and suggestions, being organic and unshakable. This can be the only “realism”; for carried to a logical conclusion it would have to combine the patience of the Chinese play with the verisimilitude of the cinematograph. Of the first two plays here translated something may be said. They have been rendered because they appealed most to the translator, a subjective reason, but a true ground for zest in the work. At the same time more complete specimens of Hebbel’s dramatic art could not be found. _Gyges and his Ring_, adapted from Herodotus, Plato, and perhaps Gautier, is a convincing example of Hebbel’s Teutonism. The most prominent impression it leaves is that it is no Greek tale and no Greek form. Kandaules is too reflective a philosopher to have lived in the land of Lydian airs, Gyges has not the easy freedom of Greek youth; and Rhodope leaps at a bound from a cloistered negation into the terrible energy of an avenging goddess. Though she has the feminine pliancy and pard-like ferocity of the Oriental, yet the blend of reasoned motive in her conduct makes her a modern. Hebbel could not graecise, but he could create from the weft of his own nature strong beings resolute in the face of necessity for all their human error. If tragedy be the fatal misdirection of virtues rather than the collision of virtue and vice, this story is truly tragic; for three natures, all noble, by a single error are swept to one drastic atonement. Here, too, Hebbel, who had pondered so deeply on the meaning of the personality, shows what an irrevocable thunderblast meets the ignorant tamperer therewith.