Prologue1

Seventeenth-century image of a mounted Croat, armed with a pike A Mounted Croatian PikemanHow many stranger troops one doesn’t see todayIn many a German town, and mostly with dismay.Their curious outfits are cause for wide alarm;We wish them home again, not in our house and barn. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zeitgenössische_Abbildung_eines_Kroatischen_Reiters.JPG Image in the public domain. Spoken at the reopening of the Weimar Playhouse, October 1798 The play of smiling and of we.