WITH THESE WORDS the penniless actor Giglio in E. T. A. Hoffmann's capriccio Prinzessin Brambilla (1821) evokes the fantastic topography of the two theatrical, fairy-tale kingdoms where Giglio and his lady Giacinta will respectively reign as prince and princess. As Giacinta's appearance in her princess's attire at the beginning of this fairy-tale novella has already implied, and as the novella's end eventually confirms, both kingdoms flout all petty reason. They do not simply border one another, but actually converge within a shared theatrical frame. Thus the stage comes to represent the world of the imagination, where the symbiotic realms of interior and exterior are as one. This magical world of the theater, which brings together music, poetry, and visual images, reaches a similar poetic apotheosis in many other works of Hoffmann, especially in his final narrative tableaux reminiscent of actual stage sets.

Many of Hoffmann's tales take their subjects from drama and opera, and their often histrionic character is emphasized by the use of dramatic devices such as dialogue or tableau vivant. In Don Juan (1813), one of the Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier (Fantasies in the Manner of Callot, 1814/15), music's demonic power to open up the spirit-realm for those in the real world is manifested in the characters of Donna Anna and the traveling enthusiast.