11.
Reigen
box 18/1
LIFE, LETTERS,
122
the new régime. Leopold Jessner at the
State Theatre insists upon his actors
giving the classics the same naturalistic
treatment that they accord to plays of
the day. During the latter part of
March Herr Jessner’s theatre was play¬
ing Die Sterne, a play by Hans Müller,
founded on Galileo’s struggle with the
Church. Herr Müller was in high favor
with the Kaiser durig the war on ac¬
count of his patriotic play, Könige, and
Die Sterne must have been equally
acceptable under the Prussian absolut¬
ist régime, showing, as it does, the frec
thinker Galileo broken and forced to
recant his theories in accord with the
demands of the established powers.
An especially interesting scene is the
appearance of John Milton, still
youth and an ardent hero-worshiperz
come to bring a greeting from Oliver
Cromwell to the aged and broken
Galileo.
One of the most recent of Suder¬
mann’s works, Raschhoff, a powerful
drama of modern life and problems
has met with great success, constituting
something of an epoch in recent dra¬
matic history. A translation of some
scenes has just been published by one
of the oldest of the Italian literarz
reviews, Nuova Antologia.
Hasenclever, one of the most bril¬
liant of the younger generation of dra¬
matists, possesses ideas of his own as
to lighting effects, which he has been
able to test in the Kammerspieles
production of his Jenseits (Beyond)
a play reminiscent of Maeterlinck’s
L'’Intruse. Jenseits is practically a duo¬
ogue between a young widow and the
friend of her husband who brings
news of his death. The third character
is thedisembodied spiritofthe husband
who watches his widow fall hysterically
into the arms of his friend. The light¬
ing is of peculiar importance in this
play, since the action takes place on a
bare segment of the stage, so darkened
AND THE ARTS
that the audience sees only half of a
room, a house, and a roof.
The firelight illumines the faces of a
man and woman who crouch before the
hearth. Slowly the moonlight discloses
the figure of a sleep-walker emerging
from an attic window, and a weird
uminous patch presently glows on the
back of a chair. The power of two re¬
markable scenes gives distinction to a
performance which has been justly
condemned for its confusion. In one of
these the emotional wife scatters
flowers on an empty bed, shrouded in
black, and in the other she croons over
her unborn babe, and, in imagination,
rocks it to sleep.
Arthur Schnitzler is not the only
Austrian dramatist of importance in
modern German drama. Anton Wild¬
gans, who won fame with his lyric
dramas during the war, has just be¬
come director of the Burg Theatre, the
nost important playhouse in Vienna.
Franz Werfel, Carl Schönherr, and Max
Brod, among the most talented of the
jewer dramatists, are all Austrians.
Wildgans’s Biblical drama, — or, as he
Cain,
calls it, mythological song, —
has already been produced, although
it still awaits its Berlin première. It
contams only four characters: Adam,
Eve, Cain, and Abel. The action takes
place in a rocky wilderness and in
Adam’s cave. The metre of the verse
is very free, strong, and primitive,
breaking into rhyme only occasionally,
and sabtly modulated to emphasize the
Jifference between Abel, the sunny,
sturdy herdsman, and Cam, with his
snake nature. Though he seeks his
ends only through force, greed, and
envy, Cam is represented as a very hu¬
man creature, hungering for the love
and understanding denied him by the
brutality of his own nature.
This highly poetic drama is charac¬
teristic in two respects of the latest Ger¬
man drama, It shows some traces of
Reigen
box 18/1
LIFE, LETTERS,
122
the new régime. Leopold Jessner at the
State Theatre insists upon his actors
giving the classics the same naturalistic
treatment that they accord to plays of
the day. During the latter part of
March Herr Jessner’s theatre was play¬
ing Die Sterne, a play by Hans Müller,
founded on Galileo’s struggle with the
Church. Herr Müller was in high favor
with the Kaiser durig the war on ac¬
count of his patriotic play, Könige, and
Die Sterne must have been equally
acceptable under the Prussian absolut¬
ist régime, showing, as it does, the frec
thinker Galileo broken and forced to
recant his theories in accord with the
demands of the established powers.
An especially interesting scene is the
appearance of John Milton, still
youth and an ardent hero-worshiperz
come to bring a greeting from Oliver
Cromwell to the aged and broken
Galileo.
One of the most recent of Suder¬
mann’s works, Raschhoff, a powerful
drama of modern life and problems
has met with great success, constituting
something of an epoch in recent dra¬
matic history. A translation of some
scenes has just been published by one
of the oldest of the Italian literarz
reviews, Nuova Antologia.
Hasenclever, one of the most bril¬
liant of the younger generation of dra¬
matists, possesses ideas of his own as
to lighting effects, which he has been
able to test in the Kammerspieles
production of his Jenseits (Beyond)
a play reminiscent of Maeterlinck’s
L'’Intruse. Jenseits is practically a duo¬
ogue between a young widow and the
friend of her husband who brings
news of his death. The third character
is thedisembodied spiritofthe husband
who watches his widow fall hysterically
into the arms of his friend. The light¬
ing is of peculiar importance in this
play, since the action takes place on a
bare segment of the stage, so darkened
AND THE ARTS
that the audience sees only half of a
room, a house, and a roof.
The firelight illumines the faces of a
man and woman who crouch before the
hearth. Slowly the moonlight discloses
the figure of a sleep-walker emerging
from an attic window, and a weird
uminous patch presently glows on the
back of a chair. The power of two re¬
markable scenes gives distinction to a
performance which has been justly
condemned for its confusion. In one of
these the emotional wife scatters
flowers on an empty bed, shrouded in
black, and in the other she croons over
her unborn babe, and, in imagination,
rocks it to sleep.
Arthur Schnitzler is not the only
Austrian dramatist of importance in
modern German drama. Anton Wild¬
gans, who won fame with his lyric
dramas during the war, has just be¬
come director of the Burg Theatre, the
nost important playhouse in Vienna.
Franz Werfel, Carl Schönherr, and Max
Brod, among the most talented of the
jewer dramatists, are all Austrians.
Wildgans’s Biblical drama, — or, as he
Cain,
calls it, mythological song, —
has already been produced, although
it still awaits its Berlin première. It
contams only four characters: Adam,
Eve, Cain, and Abel. The action takes
place in a rocky wilderness and in
Adam’s cave. The metre of the verse
is very free, strong, and primitive,
breaking into rhyme only occasionally,
and sabtly modulated to emphasize the
Jifference between Abel, the sunny,
sturdy herdsman, and Cam, with his
snake nature. Though he seeks his
ends only through force, greed, and
envy, Cam is represented as a very hu¬
man creature, hungering for the love
and understanding denied him by the
brutality of his own nature.
This highly poetic drama is charac¬
teristic in two respects of the latest Ger¬
man drama, It shows some traces of