Committed to the classical ideals of aesthetic beauty and morality, his plots shy away from the realism which developed during his time, preferring instead to use the theater to address spiritual values, which in the words of the dying queen of his Libussa, would only come after the period of Materialism had passed.

His father, the unsuccessful lawyer E. J. Grillparzer, whose fortunes were ruined by Napoleon's invasion, was a severe pedant and a staunch upholder of the liberal traditions of the reign of Joseph II.

After obtaining his degree from the university in 1811, Franz became a private tutor for a noble family; then in 1813, he entered the civil service as a clerk at the Imperial Hofkammer (Exchequer) in Austria.

Among his posthumous writings are many fragments of literary, philosophic, and political criticism, all of them indicating a strong and independent spirit, not invariably just, but distinct, penetrating, and suggestive.

Of modern literary critics, Gervinus was most repugnant to him, mainly because of the tendency of this writer to attribute moral aims to authors who created solely for art's sake.

He could seem cold and distant to strangers, but in conversation with people he liked, his real disposition revealed itself; his manner became animated, his eyes brightened, and a sarcastic but not ill-natured smile would play upon his lips.

[4] When Grillparzer began to write, the German stage was dominated by the wild plays of Zacharias Werner, Adolf Müllner, and other authors of so-called "fate-tragedies."

[4] The ghost of a lady who was killed by her husband for infidelity is doomed to walk the earth until her family line dies out, and this happens in the play amid scenes of violence and horror.

Similar to Goethe's Torquato Tasso, Grillparzer dramatized the tragedy of poetic genius, showing how a poet must renounce earthly happiness to fulfill a higher mission.

[5] Grillparzer's conceptions are not so clearly defined as Goethe's, nor is his diction so varied and harmonious; but the play has the stamp of genius, and ranks as one of the best works that attempt to combine the passion and sentiment of modern life with the simplicity and grace of ancient masterpieces.

[5] At the end, Medea bears the fatal Fleece back to Delphi, while Jason is left to realize the futility of human striving and earthly happiness.

[4] It cannot be said that the materials of the play are welded into a compact whole, but the characters are vigorously conceived, and there is a fine dramatic contrast between the brilliant, restless, and unscrupulous Ottokar and the calm, upright, and ultimately triumphant Rudolph.

[5] Because Ottokar is defeated, critics argue that this play represents another work in which Grillparzer preaches the futility of endeavour and the vanity of worldly greatness.

Nevertheless, he was plunged into an abyss of misery and despair to which his diary bears heart-rending witness; his sufferings found poetic expression in the cycle of poems called Tristia ex Ponto (1835).

Waves of the Sea and of Love dramatizes the story of Hero and Leander, as a poetic love-tragedy with an insight into character motivation that predates the psychological dramas of Ibsen.

[4] The work again is formed on classic models, but in this instance his feeling is so distinctly modern that it does not find adequate expression in Grillparzer's carefully measured verse.

Ultimately Rustan awakens from his nightmare to realize the truth of Grillparzer's own pessimistic belief that all earthly ambitions and aspirations are vanity; the only true happiness is contentment with one's lot and inner peace.

[4] With the exception of a beautiful fragment, Esther (1861), Grillparzer published no more dramatic poetry after the fiasco of Weh dem, der lügt, but at his death three completed tragedies were found among his papers.

His language and characters reflect the earlier sensibilities of neo-classicism, exhibited in plays like Sappho and Das goldene Vlies which treats the subject matter of Jason bringing Medea back to Greece.

In his historical plays like König Ottokars Glück und Ende, he expresses the Enlightenment optimism that humankind can put its affairs in order and realize an age of peace an harmony.

Although Grillparzer was essentially a dramatist, his lyric poetry is in the intensity of its personal note hardly inferior to Lenau's; and the bitterness of his later years found vent in biting and stinging epigrams that spared few of his greater contemporaries.

Grillparzer's brooding, unbalanced temperament, his lack of will-power, his pessimistic renunciation and the bitterness which his self-imposed martyrdom produced in him, made him peculiarly adapted to express the mood of Austria in the epoch of intellectual thraldom that lay between the Napoleonic wars and the Revolution of 1848.