The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume Ii Part 1

The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann.

by Gerhart Hauptmann.

Volume II

INTRODUCTION

The first volume of the present edition of Hauptmann's Dramatic Works is identical in content with the corresponding volume of the German edition.

In the second volume _The Rats_ has been subst.i.tuted for two early prose tales which lie outside of the scope of our undertaking. Hence these two volumes include that entire group of dramas which Hauptmann himself specifically calls social. This term must not, of course, be pressed too rigidly. Only in _Before Dawn_ and in _The Weavers_ can the dramatic situation be said to arise wholly from social conditions rather than from the fate of the individual. It is true, however, that in the seven plays thus far presented all characters are viewed primarily as, in a large measure, the results of their social environment. This environment is, in all cases, proportionately stressed. To exhibit it fully Hauptmann uses, beyond any other dramatist, pa.s.sages which, though always dramatic in form, are narrative and, above all, descriptive in intention. The silent burden of these plays, the ceaseless implication of their fables, is the injustice and inhumanity of the social order.

Hauptmann, however, has very little of the narrow and acrid temper of the special pleader. He is content to show humanity. It is quite conceivable that the future, forgetful of the special social problems and the humanitarian cult of to-day, may view these plays as simply bodying forth the pa.s.sions and events that are timeless and constant in the inevitable march of human life. The tragedies of _Drayman Henschel_ and of _Rose Bernd_, at all events, stand in no need of the label of any decade. They move us by their breadth and energy and fundamental tenderness.

No plays of Hauptmann produce more surely the impression of having been dipped from the fullness of life. One does not feel that these men and women--Hanne Schal and Siebenhaar, old Bernd and the Flamms--are called into a brief existence as foils or props of the protagonists. They led their lives before the plays began: they continue to live in the imagination long after Henschel and Rose have succ.u.mbed. How does Christopher Flamm, that excellent fellow and most breathing picture of the average man, adjust his affairs? He is fine enough to be permanently stirred by the tragedy he has earned, yet coa.r.s.e enough to fall back into a merely sensuous life of meaningless pleasures. But at his side sits that exquisite monitor--his wife. The stream of their lives must flow on.

And one asks how and whither? To apply such almost inevitable questions to Hauptmann's characters is to be struck at once by the exactness and largeness of his vision of men. Few other dramatists impress one with an equal sense of life's fullness and continuity,

"The flowing, flowing, flowing of the world."

The last play in this volume, _The Rats_, appeared in 1911, thirteen years after _Drayman Henschel_, nine years after _Rose Bernd_. A first reading of the book is apt to provoke disappointment and confusion. Upon a closer view, however, the play is seen to be both powerful in itself and important as a doc.u.ment in criticism and _Kulturgeschichte_. It stands alone among Hauptmann's works in its inclusion of two separate actions or plots--the tragedy of Mrs. John and the comedy of the Ha.s.senreuter group. Nor can the actions be said to be firmly interwoven: they appear, at first sight, merely juxtaposed. Hauptmann would undoubtedly a.s.sert that, in modern society, the various social cla.s.ses live in just such juxtaposition and have contacts of just the kind here chronicled. His real purpose in combining the two fables is more significant. Following the great example, though not the precise method, of Moliere, who produced _La Critique de l'ecole des Femmes_ on the boards of his theater five months after the hostile reception of _L'ecole des Femmes_, Hauptmann gives us a naturalistic tragedy and, at the same time, its criticism and defense. His tenacity to the ideals of his youth is impressively ill.u.s.trated here. In his own work he has created a new idealism. But let it not be thought that his understanding of tragedy and his sense of human values have changed. The charwoman may, in very truth, be a Muse of tragedy, all grief is of an equal sacredness, and even the incomparable Ha.s.senreuter--wind-bag, chauvinist and consistent _Goetheaner_--is forced by the essential soundness of his heart to blurt out an admission of the basic principle of naturalistic dramaturgy.

The group of characters in _The Rats_ is unusually large and varied. The phantastic note is somewhat strained perhaps in Quaquaro and Mrs. k.n.o.bbe.

But the convincingness and earth-rooted humanity of the others is once more beyond cavil or dispute. The Ha.s.senreuter family, Alice Rutterbusch, the Spittas, Paul John and Bruno Mechelke, Mrs. Kielbacke and even the policeman Schierke--all are superbly alive, vigorous and racy in speech and action.

The language of the plays in this volume is again almost wholly dialectic. The linguistic difficulties are especially great in _The Rats_ where the members of the Berlin populace speak an extraordinarily degraded jargon. In the translation I have sought, so far as possible, to differentiate the savour and quaintness of the Silesian dialect from the coa.r.s.eness of that of Berlin. But all such attempts must, from their very nature, achieve only a partial success. The succeeding volumes of this edition, presenting the plays written in normal literary German, will offer a fairer if not more fascinating field of interpretation.

LUDWIG LEWISOHN.

DRAYMAN HENSCHEL

_LIST OF PERSONS_

DRAYMAN HENSCHEL.

MRS. HENSCHEL.

HANNE SCHaL (_later MRS. HENSCHEL_).

BERTHA.

HORSE DEALER WALTHER.

SIEBENHAAR.

KARLCHEN.

WERMELSKIRCH.

MRS. WERMELSKIRCH.

FRANZISKA WERMELSKIRCH.

HAUFFE.

FRANZ.

GEORGE.

FABIG.

HILDEBRANT.

VETERINARIAN GRUNERT.

FIREMAN.

Time: Toward the end of the eighteen sixties.

Scene: The "Gray Swan" hotel in a Silesian watering place.

THE FIRST ACT

_A room, furnished peasant fashion, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the "Grey Swan" hotel. Through two windows set high in the left wall, the gloomy light of a late winter afternoon sickers in. Under the windows there stands a bed of soft wood, varnished yellow, in which MRS.

HENSCHEL is lying ill. She is about thirty-six years of age. Near the bed her little six-months-old daughter lies in her cradle. A second bed stands against the back wall which, like the other walls, is painted blue with a dark, plain border near the ceiling. In front, toward the right, stands a great tile-oven surrounded by a bench. A plentiful supply of small split kindling wood is piled up in the roomy bin. The wall to the right has a door leading to a smaller room. HANNE SCHaL, a vigorous, young maid servant is very busy in the room. She has put her wooden pattens aside and walks about in her thick, blue stockings. She takes from the oven an iron pot in which food is cooking and puts it back again. Cooking spoons, a twirling stick and a strainer lie on the bench; also a large, thick earthenware jug with a thin, firmly corked neck. Beneath the bench stands the water pitcher. HANNE'S skirts are gathered up in a thick pad; her bodice is dark grey; her muscular arms are bare. Around the top of the oven is fastened a square wooden rod, on which long hunting stockings are hung up to dry, as well as swaddling clothes, leathern breeches and a pair of tall, water-tight boots. To the right of the oven stand a clothes press and a chest of drawers--old fashioned, gaily coloured, Silesian pieces of furniture. Through the open door in the rear wall one looks out upon a dark, broad, underground corridor which ends in a gla.s.s door with manicoloured panes. Behind this door wooden steps lead upward. These stairs are always illuminated by a jet of gas so that the panes of the door shine brightly. It is in the middle of February; the weather without is stormy._

_FRANZ, a young fellow in sober coachman's livery, ready to drive out, looks in._

FRANZ

Hanne!

HANNE

Eh?

FRANZ

Is the missis asleep?

HANNE