SOURCE: “‘Der arme Spielmann’ and the Role of Compromise in Grillparzer's Work,” in The Germanic Review, Vol. LVI, No. 4, Fall, 1981, pp. 134-39.

In the following essay, Roe likens the character of Jacob with similar protagonists in Grillparzer's mature plays.

Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann has in recent years attracted considerable critical attention, and the debate concerning Jakob's negative or positive qualities shows no sign of ending. Nevertheless, as the titles of the two most recent full studies of Grillparzer's work indicate,¹ there is still a tendency to treat his one major prose-work in isolation from the dramas or, at best, to consider its relevance in an understanding of the author himself. Such biographical links are certainly of considerable interest: the echoes of the Selbstbiographie are only too obvious, whilst the ambivalent attitude of the narrator to the masses and their festival reflects Grillparzer's own equivocal approach to the emergence...