Faksimile

Text

goers or idle readers. It has now been trans¬
lated into English by Miss Hetty Landstone
(Faber and Gwyer, 68.). There was a previous
translation into American by Mrs. Emil Polhi,
who compressed it very crudely and other¬
wise altered it. I looked with a certain
amount of euriosity to discover what the
various authors, English and American, who
have discoursed upon Modern European
Drama“ have said abeut it, but so far as my
own library is a testimony their silence is
unanimous. There is a solitary exception.
That cosmopolitan critic of drama, music and
art, the late James Huneker, of New York,
had an account of it in his Ivory, Apes, and
Peacocks, in which he said that“ not for
one act would this capitally written work be
tolerated upon the American or the English
stage.'' In spite of this, I recommended the
Jewish Arts Society of Birmingham some
thrce years agoto have.a reading of it, but they
could not find a translation, and it was not
until the February of the present year that it
received anything resembling a performance,
whenit was given at the Little Theatre,
London, as a character reading?' by the
Jewish Drama League.
Arthur Sehnitzler is a Viennese of Jewish
extraction, a physician, and the son of a
physician. It is rather startling to find
that che author of Anntol'’ and“ Leibelei??
collaborated with his father, a Professor in the
medical faculty of the University of Vienna,
in a treatise called“ The Clinical Atlas of
Laryngology.“ But it docs account for the
convincing veracity of the medical types which
are represented in Professor Bernhardi.?
To one who has never belieged for a moment in
Ghosts,? and has always been puzzied about
the medical aspect of An Enemy of the
People, Schnitzler’s play seenis, unlike these
of Ibsen, to be true to life. It may be that
Schnitzler was inspired by the example of
Shaw in The Doctor’s Dilemma, but the
relation between their plays is no closer than
that rach of them presents a gallery of portraits
of medical men. Moreover Schnitzter’s play
deals not ouly with a problem of medical
conduct, but with such a problem in its
relationsto religion.
Bernhardi, a Jewish doctor, a specialist in
internal diseases, is the Principal or Director
of the Elizabeth Institute in Vienna, A
patient, a girl, is dying in one of the wards, a
victim of surgical malpractice. But she is in
a state which the doctor calls“ euphoria.
She is not merely unaware of her nearness to
death: indeed, she is under the happy illusion
that within the next hour somebody who is
dear to her will take her away from the
hospital, back to life. She is a Catholic, and
the nursing sister, unknown to her and to the
Professor, has sent for a priest to administer
the last unction. On the arrival of Father
Reder, the doctor refuses politely but firmly
to permit the priest to see the dying girl.
At the sight of him she would die in terror
instend of in peace. The priest urges that,
as asinner, she is in greater need of absolution
than many ancther Meanwhile, by a scarcely
noticeable flicker of an evelid, Father Reder
has sent the nurse into the ward and. while
he and Dr. Bernhardi are still arquing, the
sister returns to say that she told the
patient of the presence of the priest, and
reluctantly admits that this terrified her into
the knowiedge that death was at hand.
Scarcely has she spoken wlien another doctor
comes to say the patient is dead. Mr Huneker,
curiously enough, saw nothing dramatic in
this scene. or indeed in the whole play till the
middle of che fourth act, when Doctor and
Priest comne face to face again. Yet 1 find it as
tense and as moving a situation as can be
imagined There is no doubt about the
honesty, the strength, and the sincerity of the
two men, though it seemns to me that Mr.
Huncker’s Semitie sympathies determined his
approval of the later scene, where the priest