Andreas Gryphius

Gryphius, Andreas (1616–64), German baroque dramatist, author of a number of tragedies written in lofty poetic prose with scenes of horror and bloodshed. His heroes included Charles I of England, who had just been beheaded (1649), viewed with strong royalist sympathies. Gryphius was sufficiently in advance of his time to write what deserves to rank as the first domestic drama, Cardenio und Celinde (1647), which centres on the passions of ordinary men and women and the final miraculous transformation of the repentant sinners. He was also the author of a number of comedies, the most successful being Horribilicribrifax (1663), which gives a lively picture of contemporary follies—bombastic conceit, pedantry, self-seeking—as seen by a naturally austere mind with a sense of humour. Although a staunch Protestant, Gryphius owed much to the Jesuit drama, as well as to the contemporary secular plays in France; a comedy of intrigue with farcical scenes in Low German also shows that he was acquainted with the work of the English Comedians. He was the first German dramatist to handle his material with conscious artistry; but there was no permanent theatre in which his plays could be given, and only sporadic performances, mostly by schoolboys, are recorded.

Andreas Gryphius , 1616-64, German poet-dramatist, originally named Andreas Greif. He wrote in Latin, new High German, and Silesian dialect. Among his many sonnets, odes, epigrams, and religious lyrics is the famous "Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!" His tragedies include Leo Armenius (1646) and Carolus Stuardus (1649); more noteworthy are his lively satiric comedies, such as Horribilicribrifax (1663) and Peter Squenz (1663).