When Grillparzer began to write, the German stage was dominated by the wild plays of Zacharias Werner, Adolf Müllner, and other authors of so-called "fate-tragedies." Grillparzer's play "The Ancestress" (), published in 1816, reflected this trend. It is a gruesome fate-tragedy in the trochaic measure of the Spanish drama, already made popular by Müllner's "Schuld". The ghost of a lady who was killed by her husband for infidelity is doomed to walk the earth until her family line dies out, and this happens in the play amid scenes of violence and horror. Its general character is similar to that of Werner's dramas; it only differs from them in containing individual passages of much force and beauty. It reveals an instinct for dramatic as opposed to merely theatrical effect, which distinguishes it from other fate-dramas of the day. Its success led to the poet being classed for the best part of his life with playwrights like Müllner and Christoph Ernst von Houwald. In 1817, the first performances of "The Ancestress" made Grillparzer famous.