The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume Ii Part 103

When something got lost in my mother's shop in Schneidemuhl, it was always said that the rats had eaten it. And really, when you consider the number of rats and mice in this house--I very nearly stepped on one on the stairs a while ago--why shouldn't we suppose that the cases of costumes were devoured in the same way. Silk is said to be sweet.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Very excellent! Very good! You're relieved from the necessity of indulging in any more notion-shopkeepers' fancies, my good Kaferstein!

Ha, ha, ha! It only remains for you to dish up for us the story of the cavalry man Sorgenfrei, who, according to your a.s.sertion, when this house was still a cavalry barracks, hanged himself--spurred and armed--in my loft. And then the last straw would be for you to direct our suspicions toward him.

KaFERSTEIN

You can still see the very nail he used.

QUAQUARO

There ain't a soul in the house what don't know the story of the soldier Sorgenfrei who put an end to hisself with a rope somewhere under the rooftree.

KaFERSTEIN

The carpenter's wife downstairs and a seamstress in the second story have repeatedly seen him by broad daylight nodding out of the attic window and bowing down with military demeanour.

QUAQUARO

A corporal, they says, called the soldier Sorgenfrei a windbag an' gave him a blow outa spite. An' the idjit took that to heart.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Ha, ha, ha! Military brutalities and ghost stories! That mixture is original, but hardly to our purpose. I a.s.sume that the theft, or whatever it was, took place during those eleven or twelve days that I spent on business in Alsace. So look the matter over and have the goodness, later, to report to me.

_Ha.s.sENREUTER turns to his pupils. QUAQUARO mounts the stairs to the loft and disappears behind the trap-door._

Ha.s.sENREUTER

All right, my good Spitta: Fire away!

_SPITTA recites simply according to the sense and without any tragic bombast._

"Ireful my heart in my bosom burneth, My hand is ready for sword or lance, For unto me the Gorgon turneth My foeman's hateful countenance.

Scarce I master the rage that a.s.sails me.

Shall I salute him with fair speech?

Better, perchance, my ire avails me?

Only the Fury me affrighteth, Protectress of all within her reach, And G.o.d's truce which all foes uniteth."

Ha.s.sENREUTER

[_Who has sat down, supports his head on his hand and listens resignedly.

Not until SPITTA has ceased speaking for some moments does he look up, as if coming to himself._] Are you quite through, Spitta? If so, I'm much obliged!--You see, my dear fellow, I've really gotten into a deuce of a situation as far as you are concerned: either I tell you impudently to your face that I consider your method of elocution excellent--and in that case I'd be guilty of a lie of the most contemptible kind: or else I tell you that I consider it abominable and then we'd get into another beastly row.

SPITTA

[_Turning pale._] Yes, all this stilted, rhetorical stuff is quite foreign to my nature. That's the very reason why I abandoned theology.

The preacher's tone is repulsive to me.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

And so you would like to reel off these tragic choruses as a clerk of court mumbles a doc.u.ment or a waiter a bill of fare?

SPITTA

I don't care for the whole sonorous bombast of the "Bride of Messina."

Ha.s.sENREUTER

I wish you'd repeat that charming opinion.

SPITTA

There's nothing to be done about it, sir. Our conceptions of dramatic art diverge utterly, in some respects.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Man alive, at this particular moment your face is a veritable monogram of megalomania and impudence! I beg your pardon, but you're my pupil now and no longer the tutor of my children. Your views and mine! You ridiculous tyro! You and Schiller! Friedrich Schiller! I've told you a hundred times that your puerile little views of art are nothing but an innate striving toward imbecility!

SPITTA

You would have to prove that to me, after all.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

You prove it yourself every time you open your mouth! You deny the whole art of elocution, the value of the voice in acting! You want to subst.i.tute for both the art of toneless squeaking! Further you deny the importance of action in the drama and a.s.sert it to be a worthless accident, a sop for the groundlings! You deny the validity of poetic justice, of guilt and its necessary expiation. You call all that a vulgar invention--an a.s.sertion by means of which the whole moral order of the world is abrogated by the learned and crooked understanding of your single magnificent self! Of the heights of humanity you know nothing! You a.s.serted the other day that, in certain circ.u.mstances, a barber or a scrubwoman might as fittingly be the protagonist of a tragedy as Lady Macbeth or King Lear!

SPITTA

[_Still pale, polishing his spectacles._] Before art as before the law all men are equal, sir.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

Aha? Is that so? Where did you pick up that ba.n.a.lity?

SPITTA

[_Without permitting himself to be disconcerted._] The truth of that saying has become my second nature. In believing it I probably find myself at variance with Schiller and Gustav Freytag, but not at all with Lessing and Diderot. I have spent the past two semesters in the study of these two great dramaturgic critics, and the whole stilted French pseudo-cla.s.sicism is, as far as I'm concerned, utterly destroyed--not only in creative art itself but in such manifestations as the boundless folly of the directions for acting which Goethe prescribed in his old age. These are mere superannuated nonsense.

Ha.s.sENREUTER

You don't mean it?

SPITTA

And if the German stage is ever to recuperate it must go back to the young Schiller, the young Goethe--the author of "Gotz"--and ever again to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing! There you will find set down principles of dramatic art which are adapted to the rich complexity of life in all its fullness, and which are potent to cope with Nature itself!