GRYPHIUS, ANDREAS. - Protestant dramatist, b. at Glogau on 11 Oct. 1616, d. there on 16 July 1664, author of five tragedies, among them Papinianus, Carolus Stuardus, and Cardenio und Celinde, and of several comedies, including Peter Squentz and Horribilicribrifax, both tragedies and comedies composed almost exclusively on foreign models and marked by an inflated style and an exaggerated predilection for the horrid.
With a profound religious sense, against a rigidly Lutheran background, he nevertheless brought to his work an austere and virile, though overly pessimistic, conception of life, at times also succeeding in giving order and coherence to events and character to his personages: too little to be called, as he was by his contemporaries, the German Shakespeare; enough for him to be, even for us, the best of his time.