Volume V of the plays edited by Mr. Lewisohn.

Among interesting, intensive studies of Hauptmann as dramatist, is the thesis by Walter H. P. Trumbaeur, on _Gerhart Hauptmann and John Galsworthy; a Parallel_ (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1917).[83] The parallelism is traced, with occasional excess of effort, between their careers, their themes, and certain plays like _Hannele_ and _The Little Dream_, _Michael Kramer_ and _A Bit o’ Love_, and _The Weavers_ and _Strife_. Both dramatists, says the critic, seek to escape social bondage; both are vitally concerned in social problems; both are realists temperamentally; both have a purpose to enlighten rather than to delight; both see moral values and, also, _the irony of things_. Hauptmann is more interested in characters while Galsworthy’s main interest lies in the _relations_ between characters. In both writers, there is a strain of idealism, seeking _truth_, material and spiritual. Another interesting thesis is by Mary Ayres Quimby, on _Nature Background in the Dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann_ (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1918). Among later plays _A Winter Ballad_ and _The Festival Play_ register the fearless assault of this dramatist upon vices and the exaltation of an idealism which is “union with Nature.”

The best work of Hauptmann in fiction has been attracting attention and becoming familiar to English readers. _The Fool in Christ: Emanuel Quint_ has been translated by Thomas Seltzer (Huebsch, 1911); _Atlantis_, translated by Adele and Thomas Seltzer (1912), and _Phantom_ and _The Heretic of Soana_, both translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan (1922-1923). The characterizations are forceful, with humor that is sometimes broad and, again, subtle. Daring satire and exposition of modern social problems are qualities that arrest the interest of the reader and attest the brilliant mind of the writer, in the recent, neo-romantic novel, _The Island of the Great Mother_, translated this year by Willa and Edwin Muir (Huebsch). The leaders in this “Women’s State” are delineated with shrewd, ironical skill. Phaon, the solitary “masculine” on the island, passes through strange adventures before he reaches maturity and finds his “ideal woman.” In his keen, illumining analysis of Hauptmann’s poetic plays, _Hannele_ and _The Sunken Bell_, in _A Study of the Modern Drama_ (New York, 1925), Barrett H. Clark accepts the statement of other critics that these are not “well-made plays,” but he finds in them the qualities which are high lights in this writer’s masterpieces--“psychological interest, dramatic as distinguished from purely lyrical poetry, a fairly well constructed plot and an atmosphere of beauty.”[84]

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1910.

[73] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New York, 1924.

[74] _Gesammelte Werke_: Vol. III, p. 300, translated in _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ (by Georg Brandes) by Rasmus B. Anderson, New York, 1924. By permission of Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[75] Introduction by Mary A. Frost to edition of _L’Arrabiata_, published by Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1896.

[76] An excellent study of Heyse is by Professor von Klenze in _German Classics_ edited by Kuno Francke, German Publication Society.

[77] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New York, 1924, Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[78] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1912.

[79] D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1925.

[80] _The Sunken Bell_: a Fairy Play in Five Acts by Gerhart Hauptmann, freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, 1913, Foreword. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[81] _The Sunken Bell_ by Gerhart Hauptmann, freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, 1913, Act III. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[82] _Parsival_, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann, translated by Oakley Williams, New York, 1915. By permission of The Macmillan Co.

[83] By permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

[84] P. 82. By permission of D. Appleton & Co.