 In his Lectures on Dramatic Art Schlegel was very critical towards the present state of German theatre (LDA: 438). However, apart from Shakespeare, Calderón with their ironic way of mixing the tragic with the comic (LDA: 175), and the ancient Greek, Schlegel also praised Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe for having “redeemed the German theatre from its long continued mediocrity” (LDA: 424).