She often thought back to the court theater in Whitehall. What was a poet supposed to do with this language? She had given German literature a try, first that Opitz and then someone else, whose name she had forgotten she could not commit to memory these people who were always named Krautbacher or Engelkrämer or Kargholz-steingrömpl, and when you had grown up with Chaucer, and John Donne had dedicated verses to you-“fair phoenix bride,” he had called her, “and from thine eye all lesser birds will take their jollity”-then even with the utmost politeness you could not bring yourself to find any merit in all this German bleating.
It was no language for theater, it was a brew of groans and harsh grunts, it was a language that sounded like someone struggling not to choke, like a cow having a coughing fit, like a man with beer coming out his nose. This was probably due to the cumbersome language.
In German lands real theater was unknown there, pitiful players roamed through the rain and screamed and hopped and farted and brawled. She had missed good theater more than anything else, from the beginning, even more than palatable food. Twenty German years, a whirl of events and faces and noise and bad weather and even worse food and completely wretched theater. It was almost twenty years ago that she had instead married her poor Friedrich. He was the one she should have married long ago, according to Papa’s plans, but he hadn’t wanted her. It would take men of a different caliber to defeat Wallenstein, someone like the Swedish king, say, who had recently come down on the Empire like a storm and had so far won all the battles he had fought.
This prince had few soldiers and no money, nor was he particularly clever. Naturally, he would not accomplish it, neither for God nor for her. She had given him a royal blessing, and, deeply stirred, he had gone on his way. Friedrich had patted him reassuringly on the shoulder, and she had given him her handkerchief, but then he had burst into tears once again, so overwhelmed was he by the thought of possessing a handkerchief of hers. He was an excited hero, so moved by himself that tears came to his eyes. Recently, one of them had been here in The Hague, Christian von Braunschweig, and had promised her to have pour dieu et pour elle embroidered on his standard, and afterward, he had sworn fervently, he would win or die for her. The state of affairs was not good, yet there were still princes who would die for Liz. Since they could no longer afford candles, the whole court went to bed in the evening with the sun. The wine supply was exhausted, and because the well in the garden was filthy, they drank nothing but milk.
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