THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Thomas Berger and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE DRAMATIC WORKS
OF
GERHART HAUPTMANN
(Authorized Edition)
Edited By LUDWIG LEWISOHN
Assistant Professor in The Ohio State University
VOLUME TWO: SOCIAL DRAMAS
1913
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION _By the Editor_.
DRAYMAN HENSCHEL (Fuhrmann Henschel) _Translated by the Editor_.
ROSE BERND (Rose Bernd) _Translated by the Editor_.
THE RATS (Die Ratten) _Translated by the Editor_.
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 substituted 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, passages 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 passions 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 Schael 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 succumbed. 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 coarse 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 document 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 Hassenreuter group. Nor can the actions be said to be firmly interwoven: they appear, at first sight, merely juxtaposed. Hauptmann would undoubtedly assert that, in modern society, the various social classes 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 illustrated 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 Hassenreuter--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.
