



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Thomas Berger
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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.

The group of characters in _The R