THE
VIRGIN OF THE SUN.
A PLAY,
IN FIVE ACTS:
By AUGUSTUS VON KOTZEBUE.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GENUINE GERMAN EDITION
BY ANNE PLUMPTRE,
TRANSLATOR OF KOTZEBUE’S NATURAL SON (LOVER’S VOWS),
AND OF HIS COUNT OF BURGUNDY.
Second Edition.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR R. PHILLIPS, NO. 71, ST. PAUL’S CHURCH-YARD.
SOLD BY H. D. SYMONDS, AND T. HURST, PATERNOSTER-ROW;
CARPENTER AND CO. OLD BOND-STREET;
AND BY ALL OTHER BOOKSELLERS.
[Price Half-a-Crown.]
1799.
Entered at Stationers’ Hall.
It has frequently been said, that poetry, likelove, cannot be commanded. This, my veryamiable Friend must now acknowledge to bean error, since, if her memory be accurate withregard to trifles, she will recollect, that thisDrama owes its origin solely and entirely to hercommands.
One evening at Pyrmont, the weather beingtoo wet and melancholy to permit of her enjoyingthe charms of nature, to which her puresoul is so closely allied, she had recourse to the[4]Temple of Thalia, where Naumann’s Opera ofCora happened to be represented. The performerswere of a very inferior kind, and theonly thing that pleased me during the evening,was that I had the good fortune to sit behindmy Friend, who sometimes condescended tofavour her humble servant with a little conversation.Among other remarks which the occasioncalled forth, she observed once, when theconclusion of an act gave us a short respite frombeing merely auditors, that the Opera at whichwe were present, contained excellent groundwork for a Drama.
I felt that this idea ought rather to have originatedwith me, but I easily found an excusefor my apparent negligence, in the circumstanceof my being in company with one whose powersof pleasing were so great and so various, as topreclude, wherever she was present, the interventionof any other thoughts but what her ownperfections inspired. Yet I caught eagerly at theidea when once suggested, and declared to myfriend that her commands only were requisitefor the immediate employment of my pen upon[5]the subject. For a long time she evaded honouringme with such a command, preferring,in all that she said to encourage me to theundertaking, the politer language of exhortation,to which her gentle nature is more accustomed.I however insisted upon a positive command.
“Well then, I command it,” she said, at last,with the naïveté so peculiarly her own.—I madea low bow, and now have the honour of presentingto her my Virgin of the Sun. At hercommand the trembling maiden appears withdowncast eyes in the anti-chamber, and hopesfor permission humbly to wait there, till a friendlyinvitation shall call her to the toilette of herPatroness.
“Come nearer, gentle creature!—thou shaltbe welcome to me for the sake of thy father,with whom I have long lived on terms offriendship, and whom I should now be themore scrupulous of depriving of what does remainto him