Frank Wedekind

“ 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? ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. Be a man! Look yourself in the face once:—you have no trace of a conscience; you are frightened at no wickedness; in the most cold-blooded way you mean to make the girl that loves you unhappy; you conquer half the world; you do what you please;—and you know as well as I that—
SCHÖN. (Sunk in the chair, right centre, utterly exhausted.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ DR. GOLL. (As Schön rises.) Do you have 'em dance to-day in full costume?
ALVA. Of course. Come along, too. In five minutes I must be on the stage. (To Lulu.) Unhappy!
DR. GOLL. I've forgotten—what's the name of your ballet?
ALVA. Dalailama.
DR. GOLL. I thought he was in a madhouse.
SCHÖN. You're thinking of Nietzsche, Doctor.
DR. GOLL. You're right; I got 'em mixed up.
ALVA. I have helped Buddhism to its legs.
DR. GOLL. By his legs is the stage-poet known.
ALVA. Corticelli dances the youthful Buddha as tho she had seen the light of the world by the Ganges. ”

“ SCHÖN. You judge women by yourself! He's got the sense of a child or he would have tracked out your doublings and windings long ago.
LULU. I only wish he would! Then, at last he'd get out of his swaddling-clothes. He puts his trust in the marriage contract he has in his pocket. Trouble is past [Page 43] and gone. One can now give oneself and let oneself go as if one were at home. That isn't the sense of a child! It's banal! He has no education; he sees nothing; he sees neither me nor himself; he is blind, blind, blind....
SCHÖN. (Half to himself.) When his eyes open!! ”

“ She frowns, passes a hand over her forehead, feels her cheeks, and draws back from the mirror with a discouraged, almost angry, look. Frequently turning round, she goes left, opens a casket on the writing-table, lights herself a cigarette, looks for a book among those that are lying on the table, takes one, and lies down on the couch opposite the mirror. After reading a moment, she lets the book sink, and nods seriously to herself in the glass; then resumes reading. Schwarz enters, left, palette and brushes in hand, and bends over Lulu, kisses her on the forehead, and goes up the steps, right. ”

“ FERDINAND. I am not yet so used to waiting ...
ALVA. You must have something prescribed for you.
FERDINAND. (Thru his teeth.) I'm a coachman usually— (Exit.)
SCHÖN. (Whispering from the gallery.) So, he too. (Seats himself behind the rail, able to cover himself with the hangings.)
LULU. What sort of moments are those of which you spoke, where one expects to see his whole inner self tumble in?
ALVA. I didn't want to speak of them. I should not like to lose, in joking over a glass of champagne, what has been my highest happiness for ten years.
[Page 87] LULU. I have hurt you. ”

“ SCHÖN. My age! My position!
LULU. He cries like a child—the terrible man of might! Now go so to your bride and tell her what kind of a girl I am at heart—not a bit jealous!
SCHÖN. (Sobbing.) The child! The innocent child!
LULU. How can the incarnate devil get so weak all of a sudden! But now go, please. You are nothing more now to me.
SCHÖN. I cannot go to her.
LULU. Out with you. Come back to me when you have regained your strength again.
[Page 75] SCHÖN. Tell me in God's name what I must do.
LULU. (Gets up; her cloak remains on the chair. Shoving aside the costumes on the centre table.) ”

“ You are to-day one of the foremost artists. That can't be done without money. You are not the man to sit in judgment on her. You can't possibly treat an origin like Mignon's according to the notions of bourgeois society.
SCHWARZ. (Quite distraught.) Who are you speaking of?
SCHÖN. Of her father! You're an artist, I say: your ideals are on a different plane from those of a wage-worker.
SCHWARZ. I don't understand a word of all that.
SCHÖN. I am speaking of the inhuman conditions out of which, thanks to her good management, the girl has developed into what she is!
SCHWARZ. Who?
SCHÖN. Who? ”

“ Schön. (Exit, up-stage. Lulu accompanies her. Schön looks around him.)
SCHÖN. Pure Augean stable. That, the end of my life. They ought to show me a corner that's still clean. The pest in the house. The poorest day-laborer has his tidy nest. Thirty years' work, and this my family circle, the circle of my people— (Glancing round.) God knows who is overhearing me again now! (Draws a revolver from his breast pocket.) Man is, indeed, uncertain of his life! (The cocked revolver in his right hand, he goes left and speaks at the closed window curtains.) ”

“ I am forced in my exploring-trips to the practise of a quite inhuman tyranny—
LULU. (Putting on a pearl necklace before the mirror.) A good school!
ESCERNY. And if I now long to deliver myself unreservedly into the power of a woman, that is a natural need for relaxation.... Can you imagine a greater life-happiness [Page 66] for a woman than to have a man entirely in her power?
LULU. (Jingling her heels.) Oh yes!
ESCERNY. (Disconcerted.) Among cultured men you will find not one who doesn't lose his head over you.
LULU. Your wishes, however, no one will fulfill without deceiving you. ”

“ PROLOGUE
(At rise, is seen the entrance to a tent, out of which steps an animal-tamer, with long, black curls, dressed in a white cravat, a vermilion dress-coat, white trowsers and white top-boots. He carries in his left hand a dog-whip and in his right a loaded revolver, and enters to the sound of cymbals and kettle-drums.)
Walk in! Walk in to the menagery,
Proud gentlemen and ladies lively and merry!
With avid lust or cold disgust, the very
Beast without Soul bound and made secondary
To human genius, to stay and see! ”