VONDEL. Oredel. .TOOST VAN nEN (I587 1679). An eminent. Dutch dramatist, born in Cologne. his life was mainly spent quietly in Amsterdam. It was devoted to letters, its chief outward events being Vondel's conversion to Catholicism (1610), He a as bookkeeper in the Public- Loan Office, a post from which he retired in 1668. His literary work be gins with a drama, 7'hr Pasha (1612), and some lyrics. aided by sludy of the classical drama and the Po'tjes5• of Ark! otle. Thereafter Vondel's dramas were classic in form; they observed the unities. employed the ehorns, and tended gen erally to lyricism, though often didactic and some times controversial. His classical imitations or adaptations (Hecuba, 1625; Hippolytus, 1628; Electra, 1638; King Wdipus, 1660; Hercules in Trachis, 1663; 1phigenia in Tauris, 1666; The Tln•nician 1phigenia, 1668), and others were ac companied by a parallel series of original tragedies (Jerusalem Laid Waste, 1620; Pula inedes, 1625; Gijsbreeht van Amide!, 1637; Maria Stuart, 1646; Lucifer, 1054; Jephtha, 1659; Adam in Banishment, 1664; Zungehin, 1606; Noah in the Dojuge, 1667, and others). Of these
Lucifer is famous as presenting parallels with Paradise Lost, supposed by some critics to be the result, of imitation, but hardly more strik ing than the resemblance between Milton's work and the poem attributed to the Anglo-Saxon Cfedmon. Vondel wrote also many lyrics, some perfunctory, others very elmracteristic of Dutch national and political ideals and the joy of life, with a plentiful lack of taste and strange limi tations of genius. He also translated the Met amorphoses of Ovid. Vonders Works were edited by Lennep (12 vols., Amsterdam, 1S50-69; re printed 1888). There are Lives by Baumgart ner (Freiburg. 1882) and Haek (Hamburg, 1890), and studies by Looter, Etude littc'raire sac Ion .del (Brussels, 1889). and Milner, Ucber Mi/tons .1bhiingigkeit von (Leipzig, 1891). See also the Bibliography by Unger (Amsterdam, 1888).