Frank Wedekind

“ SCHÖN. The toilet isn't going so quickly, is it?
DR. GOLL. It's going like lightning! Woman has got to be a virtuoso in her job. So must we all, each in his job, if life isn't to turn to beggary. (Calls.) Hop, Nellie!
LULU. (Inside.) Just a second!
DR. GOLL. (To Schön.) I can't get onto these blockheads. (Referring to Schwarz.)
SCHÖN. I can't help envying them. These blockheads know nothing holier than an altar-cloth, and feel richer than you and me with 30,000-mark incomes. Besides, you can't be judge of a man who from childhood has lived from palette to mouth. ”

“ In the turn of a head you will stand heaven high above yourself.——Your life is a sin of omission——
Melchior.
Can you forget?
Moritz.
We can do everything. Give me your hand! We can pity the young, who take their timidity for idealism, and the old, who break their hearts from stoical deliberation. We see the Kaiser tremble at a scurrilous ballad and the lazzaroni before the youngest policeman. We ignore the masks of comedians and see the poet in the shadow of the mask. We see happiness in beggars' rags and the capitalist in misery and toil. ”

“ THE KING.
But you know my imperturbable nature. And now you come in, the only thing to make my happiness complete. It is only to reward you richly and splendidly that I would become a king again.
ALMA.
I hear the jailer! Tell me how I can lighten your sufferings!
THE KING.
(Sinks down on the stool exhausted, half to himself:) What do I lack? How frightful this prison would become if the pleasures of life were admitted here! How can I desire here a beautiful woman, where I cannot even conjure up a recollection of beauty! My couch there is shut during the day. ”

“ GESCHWITZ. She is more glorious to look at than I have ever seen her!
RODRIGO. God preserve me from founding my life-happiness on your taste and judgment! If the sickness has hit her as it has you, I'm smashed and thru! You're leaving the contagious ward like an acrobat-lady who's had an accident after giving herself up to art. You can scarcely blow your nose any more. First you need a quarter-hour to sort your fingers, and then you have to be mighty careful not to break off the tip. ”

“ LULU. He believes everything. He's as mistrustful as a thief, and lets himself be lied to, till one loses all respect! When we first knew each other I informed him I had never yet loved— (Schön falls into an easy-chair.) Otherwise he would really have taken me for a fallen woman!
SCHÖN. You make God knows what exorbitant demands on legitimate relations!
LULU. I make no exorbitant demands. Often I even dream still of Goll.
SCHÖN. He was, at any rate, not banal!
LULU. He is there, as if he had never been away. Only he walks as tho in his socks. He isn't angry with me; he's awfully sad. ”

“ But I will suspend sentence of death if in legal document you will relinquish in my favor, and in favor of my heirs, your claim and that of your kin to the throne, and acknowledge me as your lord, your rightful successor and as the ruler of Umbria.
THE KING.
(Laughs boisterously.) Ha, ha, ha! Ask of a carp lying in the pan to cease to be a fish! That this worm has our life in his power proves indeed that princes are not gods, because, like other men, they are mortal. The lightning, too, can kill; but he who is born a king does not die like an ordinary mortal! ”

“ SCHIGOLCH. That was sensible.—If anyone asks for me, I'm sitting downstairs in the pub.
GESCHWITZ. (After he has gone.) I will sit behind the door. I will look on at everything and not quiver an eye-lash. (Sits on the broken chair.) Men and women don't know themselves—they know not what they are. Only one who is neither man nor woman knows them. Every word they say is untrue, a lie. And they do not know it, for they are to-day so and to-morrow so, according as they have eaten, drunk, and loved, or not. Only the body remains for a time what it is, and only the children have reason. ”

“ The aim of these lines is not to hail Wedekind as the Messiah of the drama, nor as the John of a coming Messiah. For all I care, he might be the devil himself. Only one thing is certain: he is a power without his like among us, and where such a power has worked once it produces after results. Power releases power. With this drink in their bodies the public will not long continue to support either lyrical lemonade on the stage nor the dregs of dramatic penury. ”

“ LULU. You deceive yourself if you make yourself out worse than you are.
ALVA. Why do you flatter me so? It is true that perhaps there is no man living, so bad as I—who has brought about so much good.
LULU. In any case you're the only man in the world who's protected me without lowering me in my own eyes!
ALVA. Do you think that so easy? (Schön appears in the gallery cautiously parting the hangings between the middle pillars. He starts, and whispers, "My own son!") With gifts from God like yours, one turns those around one to criminals without ever dreaming of it. ”

“ Moritz.
Priapia?
Ilse.
With Nohl, with Fehrendorf, with Padinsky, with Lenz, Rank, Spühler—with all of them possible! Kling, kling——things were lively!
Moritz.
Do they paint you?
Ilse.
Fehrendorf painted me as a pillar saint. I am standing on a Corinthian capital. Fehrendorf, I tell you, is a gibbering idiot. The last time, I trod on one of his tubes. He wiped his brush on my hair. I fetched him a box on the ear. He threw his palette at my head. I upset the easel. He chased me all about the studio, over divans, tables and chairs, with his mahlstick. ”

“ The majesty of God suffers as little from human curses as the majesty of the king. Can the majesty of God be dimmed by vulgar humanity saying, "We believe in you no longer"? Can the majesty of the king be dimmed by people saying, "We will obey no longer"? Who would assert that as possible?——God wandered in lowly form upon this earth, and the rabble believed it had put him to death. And so the rabble may believe it has banished the king; he remains where he was. If they call to him, "Let your head fall under the headsman's axe," it does him no harm. ”

“ Have there ever once been men and women to whom love brought happiness? And what is their happiness, save that they sleep better and can forget it all? My God, I thank thee that thou hast not made me as these. I am not man nor woman. My body has nothing common with their bodies. Have I a human soul? Tortured humanity has a little narrow heart; but I know I deserve nothing when I resign all, sacrifice all.... (Lulu opens the door, and Dr. Hilti enters. Geschwitz, unnoticed, remains motionless by the door.) ”

“ How proud I am that you should humble me by every means in your power! You debase me as deep—as deep as a woman can be debased, for you hope you can then jump over me easier. But you have suffered unspeakably yourself from everything you just said to me. I see it in you. Already you are near the end of your self-command. Go! For your innocent fiancée's sake, leave me alone! One minute more, your mood will change around and you'll make a scene with me of another kind, that you can't answer for now.
SCHÖN. I fear you no longer.
LULU. Me? Fear yourself! I do not need you. ”

“ King Pietro is the worthiest prince who ever had a throne, and I am the last person in his realm who would want to change places with him. That is my last word each evening, a word which does not make me dream of the thick prison air, but of the dripping, stormbent, rustling trees, of the gloomy heaths, of the virgin dew on the thick grass, of my journeys from place to place on the stroller's vans, on the tailboards of which I made all hearts waver between pity and respect.——I have noticed an unusual cramp in my left arm for the last few days. It is not gout, it is not the weakness of old age. ”

“ Behind all this swarm of jumping, dancing, tumbling, contending, inflamed, agitated discourse; behind all this pushing, roaring, foaming, gargling, flood of action, stands intuition of the world, stands the sense of life, as made manifest in the thoughts of Wedekind. It is no tearer, no eradicator, no falterer, who in this frightfully beautiful bustle of passion and inevitableness has given a picture of his own dissoluteness. He is a poet-animal trainer, who knows and rules his beasts. ”

“ LULU. Be silent! I'll kick you, if you speak ill of him. He loves me with an uprightness against which your most venturous self-sacrifices are poor as beggary! He gives me such proofs of self-denial as reveal you for the first time in all your loathsomeness! You didn't get finished in your mother's womb, neither as woman nor as man. You have no human nature like the rest of us. The stuff didn't go far enough for a man, and for a woman you got too much brain into your skull. That's the reason you're crazy! Turn to Miss Bianetta! She can be had for everything for pay! ”

“ SCHÖN. From your depravity!
LULU. With a thousand pleasures I take the blame on myself! You must feel clean now; you must think yourself a model of austerity now, a paragon of unflinching principle! Otherwise you could never marry the child in her boundless inexperience—
SCHÖN. Do you want me to grab you and—
LULU. Yes! What must I say to make you? Not for the world would I change with the innocent kid now! Tho the girl loves you as no woman has ever loved you yet! ”

“ In their king the common people recognize the likeness of their own fortune, and who smirches this likeness robs them of the courage to work and of peace by night. I am far more guilty of this crime than human justice fathoms. It is impossible for the punishment hanging over me to approach the weight of my crime. Even should it cost my life, let it be what you will, I shall accept it from the hands of you judges as a grace of God. ”

“ One must be a man to be able to talk that way! One must be a man to be able to blind oneself so with the dead letter! One must be a man to be so blind that one can't see what stares him in the eyes. I have conscientiously and thoughtfully managed Melchior from his first day, because I found him impressionable to his surroundings. Are we answerable for what has happened? A tile might fall off the roof upon your head to-morrow, and then comes your friend—your father, and, instead of taking care of you, tramples upon you!——I will not let my child be destroyed before my eyes. ”

“ ALVA. I've provided your part with all the impossibilities imaginable, though.
LULU. With hocus-pocus like that no dog is lured from the stove in the real world.
ALVA. It's enough for me that the public finds itself most tremendously stirred up.
LULU. But I'd like to find myself most tremendously stirred up. (Drinks.)
ALVA. You don't seem to be in need of much more for that.
LULU. No one of them realizes anything about the others. Each thinks that he alone is the unhappy victim.
ALVA. But how can you feel that?
LULU. There runs up one's body such an icy shudder.
ALVA. You are incredible. ”

“ LULU. You needn't complain. When you are happy you're a hundred thousand times happier than one of us ordinary mortals ever is!
GESCHWITZ. I know that too! I envy no one! But I am still waiting. You have deceived me so often already.
LULU. I am yours, my darling, if you quiet Mr. Acrobat till to-morrow. He only wants his vanity placated. You must beseech him to take pity on you.
GESCHWITZ. And to-morrow?
LULU. I await you, my heart. I shall not open my eyes till you come: see no chambermaid, receive no hair-dresser, not open my eyes before you are with me. ”

“ KING PIETRO.
From the wounds above your eyes, I see that you did not shun death yesterday or today! I name you commander of our war forces. Post our loyal soldiers at the ten gates of the city, and order the drum to beat in the market place for recruits. Perugia must be armed for an expedition to its frontiers in the shortest possible time. You will be answerable to me for the life of every citizen and responsible for the inviolate safety of all property. Now bring the former king of Umbria forth from his prison. It is proper that none save I announce to him his sentence. ”

“ LULU. As a flower-girl.
SCHÖN. (To Alva.) In tights?
ALVA. No. In a skirt to the ankles.
SCHÖN. It would have been better if you hadn't ventured on symbolism.
ALVA. I look at a dancer's feet.
SCHÖN. The point is, what the public looks at. An apparition like her has no need, thank heaven, of your symbolic mummery.
ALVA. The public doesn't look as if it was bored!
SCHÖN. Of course not; because I have been working for her success in the press for six months. Has the prince been here?
ALVA. Nobody's been here.
SCHÖN. Who lets a dancer come on thru two acts in raincoats? ”

“ LULU. (In a fairy-story tone.) I used to dream every other night that I'd fallen into the hands of a sadic.... Come, give me a kiss!
ALVA. It's shining in your eyes like the water in a deep well one has just thrown a stone into.
LULU. Come!
ALVA. (Kisses her.) Your lips have got pretty thin, anyway.
LULU. Come! (Pushes him into a chair and seats herself on his knee.) Do you shudder at me?—In Hotel Ox-butter we all got a luke-warm bath every four weeks. The wardresses took that opportunity to search our pockets as soon as we were in the water. (She kisses him passionately.) ”

“ In order to have a child——one must love—the man—to whom one is married—love him, I tell you—as one can only love a man! One must love him so much with one's whole heart, so—so that one can't describe it! One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love——Now you know it! ”

“ THE KING.
Go snick up, you and your gold!—— (To Alma.) That fool woman, in her stupidity, really takes you for a girl in boy's clothes! Why aren't you? If you were a girl, there would be no better opportunity than this to rid yourself of the bristly ballad singer! There is nothing worse than passing 'round the hat for pennies. Perhaps you have already gathered pennies thrown you by the compassionate foster-daughters of this worthy dame?! They always have a chance of being forced again into the exalted ranks of burghers' society as worthy members. Our star is not in the ascendant. ”

“ SCHWARZ. The light to-day can be borne at least half way.
DR. GOLL. Oh, you must throw on lots of it! Hold your brush a bit longer.
SCHWARZ. Certainly, Dr. Goll.
DR. GOLL. Treat her as a piece of still-life.
SCHWARZ. Certainly, Doctor. (To Lulu.) You used to hold your head a wee mite higher, Mrs. Goll.
LULU. (Raising her head.) Paint my lips a little open.
SCHÖN. Paint snow on ice. If you get warm doing that, then instantly your art gets inartistic!
SCHWARZ. Certainly, Doctor.
DR. GOLL. Art, you know, must so reproduce nature that one can find at least some spiritual enjoyment in it! ”

“ GESCHWITZ. (Sighing.) O Lulu, if an eternal retribution does exist, I hope I may not have to answer then for you. I cannot make myself believe that no God watches over us. Yet you are probably right that there is nothing there, for how can an insignificant worm like me have provoked his wrath so as to experience only horror there where all living creation swoons for bliss? ”

“ If we want to preserve a glimmer of hope, and keep our spotless consciences as the parents of the victim, it is time for us to go to work determinedly in earnest.—Don't let us contend any more, Fanny! I feel how hard it is for you. I know that you idolize him because he expresses so entirely your genial nature. Be stronger than yourself. Show yourself for once devoid of self-interest towards your son. ”

“ Alexandrion! Brother! Let me clasp you in my arms! (He embraces and hisses him.) You pearl of dramatic art! Shall I make you speechless with pride!——His Majesty the King is coming to the performance! His Majesty the King of Umbria and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Filipo! Have you words?! I have had two golden chairs put in front of the first row. The moment their Highnesses seat themselves Punchinello must appear on the stage with a deep bow! So be ready, children!——And you, Alexandrion, apple of my eye, bring to light today all the richest treasures hidden in the depths of your soul! ”

“ SCHÖN. (Bursting out.) Don't look at me so impudently!
LULU. No one is keeping you here.
SCHÖN. I'm going as soon as the bell rings.
LULU. As soon as you have the energy! Where is your energy? You have been engaged three years. Why don't you marry? You recognize no obstacles. Why do you want to put the blame on me? You ordered me to marry Dr. Goll: I forced Dr. Goll to marry me. You ordered me to marry the painter: I made the best of a bad bargain. Artists are your creatures, princes your protegés. Why don't you marry?
SCHÖN. (Raging.) Do you imagine you stand in the way? ”

“ RODRIGO. I lay in the hospital full three months to spy out the ground, after toilfully peddling together the qualities necessary for such a long stay. Now I act the valet here with you, Dr. Schön, so that no strange servants may come into the house. Where is the bridegroom who's ever done so much for his bride? My fortune has also been destroyed.
ALVA. When you succeed in developing her into a respectable artiste you will have put the world in debt to you. ”

“ KING PIETRO.
I cannot appoint a man who has made his living collecting pennies to any office of state. But my royalty shall never prevent me from making a companion of the man whose gifts have moved me to tears. There is a post vacant close to the throne, which I have left unfilled until now, because I did not wish to make a place for folly in a position where even the greatest amount of wisdom is too small. ”

“ SCHÖN. (Desperate.) Leave my thoughts alone! You have two men under the sod. Take the prince, dance him into the earth! I am thru with you. I know when the angel in you stops off and the devil begins. If I take the world as it's made, the Creator must be responsible, not I! To me life is not an amusement!
LULU. And, therefore, you make claims on life greater than anyone can make. Tell me, who of us two is more full of claims and demands, you or I?
SCHÖN. Be silent! ”

“ THE CITIZENS.
Long live our podesta, Pietro Folchi! Long live the Republic of Perugia!
ANDREA VALORI.
Fellow-citizens! Let there be no precipitate haste at this hour! It is necessary to strengthen so the power we have won that they cannot prevail against us as long as we live. Would we succeed if we made Umbria a republic? Under the shelter of republican liberty, the sons of the banished nobles would use the vanity of our daughters to bind us again in chains while we slept unsuspectingly at night! ”

“ SCHÖN. (Pursuing her.) Down, murderess! Down with you! To your knees, murderess! (Crowding her to the foot of the stairs.) Down, and never dare to stand again! (Raising his hand. Lulu has sunk to her knees.) Pray to God, murderess, that he give you strength. Sue to heaven that strength for it may be lent you! (Hugenberg jumps up from under the table, knocking a chair aside, and screams "Help!" Schön whirls toward him, turning his back to Lulu who instantly fires five shots into him and continues to pull the trigger. Schön, tottering over, is caught by Hugenberg and let down in the chair.) ”

“ LULU. I don't know.
SCHWARZ. Have you ever once loved—?
LULU. I don't know.
SCHWARZ. (Gets up, goes right, to himself.) She doesn't know!
LULU. (Without moving.) I don't know.
SCHWARZ. (Glancing at Goll.) He knows.
LULU. (Nearer him.) What do you want to know?
SCHWARZ. (Angrily.) Go, get dressed! (Lulu goes into the bed-room. To Goll.) Would I could change with you, you dead man! I give her back to you. I give my youth to you, too. I lack the courage and the faith. I've had to wait patiently too long. It's too late for me. I haven't grown up big enough for happiness. ”

“ THE KING.
Imprisonment in darkness.
THE JAILER.
Sixth disciplinary punishment?
THE KING.
Imprisonment in fetters.
THE JAILER.
By that you must understand you are chained all awry, so that after the first hour all the devils you have in your body say good-bye to you! Seventh disciplinary punishment?
THE KING.
Flogging.
THE JAILER.
(Having reached the window.) You shall shed your hide here yet! You, you thief, shall clamber up and down the Jacob's ladder until you fall dead. (He passes in front of the King, leaves the cell and shuts the door from the outside.) ”

“ LULU. Please, stay.
ESCERNY. I need some solitude. (Lulu goes out.) What is to be aristocratic? To be eccentric, like me? Or to be perfect in body and mind, like this girl? (Applause and bravos outside.) He who gives me back my faith in men, gives me back my life. Should not the children of this woman be more princely, body and soul, than the children whose mother has no more vitality in her than I have felt in me until to-day? (Sitting, right; ecstatically.) The dance has ennobled her body.... (Alva enters.) ”

“ THE CITIZENS.
Hurrah for King Pietro!
PIETRO FOLCHI.
(Mounting the throne.) Called to it by your choice, I mount this throne and name myself King of Umbria! The dissatisfied who have separated from our midst with the cry of "freedom" are no less our enemies than the idle nobles who have turned their backs to our walls. ”

“ Do you see your bed with the sacrifice—the victim—on it? The boy is homesick for you. Did you let yourself be divorced? You trod him under your feet, knocked out his brains, caught up his blood in gold-pieces. I let myself be divorced? Can one be divorced when two people have grown into each other and half the man must go, too? (Reaching for the revolver.) Give it here!
LULU. Don't!
SCHÖN. I'll spare you the trouble.
LULU. (Tears herself loose, holding the revolver down; in a determined, self-possessed tone.) If men have killed themselves for my sake, that doesn't lower my value. ”

“ Next week he is going to take me to court with him, in order that I may take down the case instead of him.——O my father, if only the death sentence which, now that we are in Perugia again, places you in greater danger than ever before, could be lifted from your head!——My feminine ignorance of politics prevents me conjecturing whether they will raise you to the throne again. But they should honor you as more than a king. There must be something godlike about you when, in spite of your degradation, you are able to fill one with happiness as you do me! ”

“ That you are secretly pained at the necessity of profaning your art before people of doubtful disinterestedness? (Lulu makes no answer.) That you would gladly exchange at any moment the shimmer of publicity for a quiet, sunny happiness in distinguished seclusion? (Lulu makes no answer.) That you feel in yourself enough dignity and high rank to fetter a man to your feet—in order to enjoy his utter helplessness?... (Lulu makes no answer.) That in a comfortable, richly furnished villa you would feel in a more fitting place than here,—with unlimited means, to live completely as your own mistress? ”

“ LULU. (Quickly.) What are you looking for?
ALVA. I conjure you, let me keep my confession of faith to myself! As an inviolable sanctity you were more to me than with all your gifts you could be to anyone else in your life!
LULU. How do you come to think on that so entirely differently from your father? (Ferdinand enters, rear, changes the plates and serves broiled chicken with salad.)
ALVA. (To him.) Are you sick?
LULU. (To Alva.) Let him be!
ALVA. He's trembling as if he had fever. ”