the Emperor, and in general, if politics are mixed up in an objectionable way with the action of the drama, the play will be forbidden.  Above all the Emperor will not tolerate indecency, nor the mere suggestion of it, in the plays given at the royal theatres.  An anecdote about Herr Josef Lauff’s Court drama ’Frederick of the Iron Tooth,’ dealing with an ancestor, an Elector of Brandenburg, and on which Leoncavallo, at the Emperor’s request, wrote the opera ‘Der Roland von Berlin,’ shows the Emperor’s strictness in this respect.  Frederick of the Iron Tooth is a burgher of Berlin who leads a revolt against the Elector.  In order to heighten Frederick’s hate, Lauff wove in a love theme into the drama.  The wife of Ryke, burgomaster of Berlin, figured as Frederick’s mistress and egged on her lover against the Elector, because the latter had hanged her brothers, the Quitzows, notorious outlaws of the Mark Brandenburg.  The Emperor cut out the whole episode when the play was submitted to him in manuscript.  The marginal note in his big, bold handwriting ran:  ’Eine Courtisane kommt in einem Hohenzollerstueck nicht vor’ (A courtesan has no place in a Hohenzollern drama).”

The Emperor’s constant change of uniform is often said to be a sign of his liking for the theatrical, and writers have compared him on this account with lightning-change artists like the great Fregoli.  Rather his respect for and reliance on the army, a sense of fitness with the occasion to be celebrated, a feeling of personal courtesy to the person to be received, are the motives for such changes.  The Paris Temps published the following incident apropos of the Emperor’s visit to England in November, 1902.  When, on arriving at Port Victoria, the royal yacht Hohenzollern came in view, the members of the English Court sent to welcome the Emperor saw him through their glasses walking up and down the captain’s bridge wearing a long cavalry cloak over a German military uniform.  When they stepped on board they found him in the undress uniform of an English admiral.  They lunched with him, and in the afternoon, when he left for London, he was wearing the uniform of an English colonel of dragoons.  Arrived in London, he left for Sandringham, and must have changed his dress en route, for he left the train in a frock-coat and tall hat.

Perhaps the most notable theatrical event of the reign hitherto was the production at the Royal Opera in 1908 of the historic pantomime “Sardanapalus.”  The Emperor’s idea, as he said himself, was to “make the Museums speak,” to which a Berlin critic replied, “You can’t dramatize a museum.”  The ballet, for it was that as well as a pantomime, engrossed the Emperor’s time and attention for several weeks.  He spent hours with the great authority on Assyriology, Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, going over reliefs and plans taken from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum or borrowed from museums in Paris, London, and Vienna, decided on the