erring--prototypes of the totally German character Hanswurst, who found his way into all the improvised comedies of the day. As the proportion of German actors in the English companies increased, a more indigenous drama developed known as Haupt-und-Staatsaktionen. As this term implies, such plays dealt with the intrigues of high characters in high places and abounded with blustering rhetoric and gory sensationalism. The last English troupes left Germany in 1659, by which time the Italian style of staging, with its perspective scenery, had become the fashion in spectacular court operas and the elaborate productions of Jesuit school plays (see above). Dutch strolling players also visited Germany, performing vertoonige ("living tableaux") and contemporary plays, Spanish drama being much favoured. Italian traveling players presented puppet theatre in Austria and southern Germany as an offshoot of the commedia dell'arte, which itself was widely imitated, particularly in Austria. While the strolling players did little to elevate German theatre to the level of the highest art, they did at least establish vital links with neighbouring European cultures, helping to inject new ideas into backward traditions and precipitating the emergence of the professional actor....
