Gerhart Hauptmann

“ HASSENREUTER But, man alive, you want to become an actor—you, with your round shoulders, with your spectacles and, above all, with your hoarse and sharp voice. It's impossible.
SPITTA If such fellows as I exist in real life, why shouldn't they exist on the stage too? And I am of the opinion that a smooth, well-sounding voice, probably combined with the Goethe-Schiller-Weimar school of idealistic artifice, is harmful rather than helpful. The only question is whether you would take me, just as I am, as a pupil?
HASSENREUTER [Hastily draws on his overcoat.] ”

“ He might be havin' a very different wife from yourself! Truly, a man's patience can't bear everything! It'll snap sometime! Pride, arrogance, recklessness—that's what it is in you! Either you keep your promise, or....
FLAMM Now, now, father Bernd! You must be gentle!
BERND Your honour, you don't know how it's been! A girl that leads on and makes a fool of an honest man that way—she can't be no daughter o' mine!
AUGUST [Nearly weeping.] What have you got to reproach me with, Rose? Why are you so hard toward me? 'Tis true, I never had no confidence in my good fortune? ”

“ You deny the validity of poetic justice, of guilt and its necessary expiation. You call all that a vulgar invention—an assertion by means of which the whole moral order of the world is abrogated by the learned and crooked understanding of your single magnificent self! Of the heights of humanity you know nothing! You asserted the other day that, in certain circumstances, a barber or a scrubwoman might as fittingly be the protagonist of a tragedy as Lady Macbeth or King Lear!
SPITTA [Still pale, polishing his spectacles.] Before art as before the law all men are equal, sir. ”

“ One does not feel that these men and women—Hanne Schäl 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. ”

“ BERND My wife who's in her grave demands that of me! An' my honour demands it ... the honour o' my house and o' my lass. An' yours, too, if you come to think.
AUGUST Father Bernd, father Bernd, how am I to speak to you if you're so set on not makin' peace? You've spoke o' so many kinds of honour. But we're not to seek our honour or glory in this world, but God's only an' no other!
BERND 'Tis otherwise in this matter. Here woman's honour is God's too! ”

“ HASSENREUTER Ah, my dear Pastor, the world doesn't so easily come to an end—nor, surely, will it do so on account of the nudities that offend or of the vice which slinks through the streets at night. The world will probably outlive me and the whole scurrilous interlude of humanity.
PASTOR SPITTA What turns these young people aside from the right path is evil example and easy opportunity. ”

“ HASSENREUTER According to my unauthoritative opinion this young Spitta would have done much better as a surgeon's assistant or Salvation Army officer. But that's the way of the world: the fellow must needs want to be an actor.
MRS. HASSENREUTER Mr. Spitta, the children's tutor, wants to become an actor?
HASSENREUTER That is exactly the plan he has proposed to me, mama.—But now, if you bring incense and myrrh, dear Käferstein, out with them! You observe what a many sided man your teacher is. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You could never write down all the life that sweeps down these stairs with its soiled petticoats—the life that cringes and creeps, moans, sighs, sweats, cries out, curses, mutters, hammers, planes, jeers, steals, drives its dark trades up and down these stairs—the sinister creatures that hide here, playing their zither, grinding their accordions, sticking in need and hunger and misery, leading their vicious lives—no, it's beyond one's power of recording. And your old manager, last but not least, runs, groans, sighs, sweats, cries out and curses with the best of them. Ha, ha, ha, girlie! ”

“ FRANZISKA Oh, never mind, mama!
MRS. WERMELSKIRCH On the contrary! Are we to put up with everything? Isn't one to offer any resistance if that woman robs us of our very bread—if she spreads slander about our daughter? [To SIEBENHAAR.] Did the child ever offend you in any way?
WERMELSKIRCH Mama, mama! Come along now, mama, and rest a while. So! ”

“ BERND [Returns, changed somewhat by a fright which he has felt.] Somebody must be upstairs.
AUGUST Marthel is just sayin' that Rose is there.
MARTHEL I hear her. She's comin' down the stairs.
BERND God forgive me the sin! I don't want to see her.
He sits down at the table, as before, holds his thumbs over his ears and bends his head deep over the Bible. ROSE appears in the door. She has her house skirt on and a loose bodice of cotton cloth. She keeps herself erect by sheer force of will. Her hair hangs down, partly loose, partly braided. ”

“ Don't!—I trust you, Erich; that's all.
SPITTA And you shall not be disappointed, dearest. You see, a man like me in whom everything is still in a ferment, who feels that he was born to achieve something great and significant but something which, for the present, he can make sufficiently clear neither to himself nor to the world—such a man has, at twenty, every man's hand against his and is a burden and a laughing-stock to all the world. But believe me: it will not always be so! The germs of the future lie in us! ”

“ Guardeth an oath, the Furies' child...."
HASSENREUTER [Jumps up, runs about and roars.] Oath, oath, oath, oath!!! Don't you know what an oath is, Käferstein? "Guardeth an oath!!—the Furies' child." This oath is said to be the child of the Furies, Dr. Kegel! You've got to use your voice! The audience, to the last usher, has got to be one vast quivering gooseflesh when you say that! One shiver must run through every bone in the house! Listen to me: "For this house's ... threshold Guardeth an oath!!! The Furies' child, The fearfullest of the infernal deities!"—Go ahead! ”

“ Your honour, we want to announce a marriage.—I am ready, by God's help, to enter into the holy state of matrimony.
FLAMM [Stops looking at the gun. Lightly.] Is it possible? And are you in such a hurry about it?
MRS. FLAMM [Banteringly.] How does that concern you, Christie? Dear me, let the good folks marry in peace! You're a reg'lar preacher, you are! If that man had his will, father Bernd, there wouldn't be hardly anything but single men and women.
FLAMM Well, marriage is a risky business,—You're the bookbinder August Keil. ”

“ MARTHEL Who is that, Rosie?
ROSE Oh, don't ask me!
Old BERND and AUGUST KEIL are approaching along the field-path from the village. The old, white-haired man, as well as the other who is about thirty-five years old, is dressed in his Sunday coat and each carries a hymn book. Old BERND has a white beard; his voice has a certain softness as though he had had and been cured of a severe pulmonary affection. One might imagine him to be a dignified retired family coachman. AUGUST KEIL, who is a bookbinder, has a pale face, thin, dark moustache and pointed beard. ”

“ Christopher ... Mr. Flamm! I can't sit down here. An' it don't matter! It can't lead to anythin'. 'Tis all over an' past now—well—'tis all dead an' gone. I know God will forgive me the sin. An' He won't lay it up against the poor, innocent child neither. He's too merciful to do that!
FLAMM [Alluding to the hum of the threshing machine which grows louder and louder.] ”

“ My little Alice! Come here where I can see you, little girl! Come here into the light! I must see whether you're the same infinitely delightful, mad little Alice that you were in the great days of my career in Alsace? Girl, it was I who taught you to walk! I held your leading strings for your first steps. I taught you how to talk, girl! The things you said! I hope you haven't forgotten!
ALICE RÜTTERBUSCH Now, look here! You don't believe that I'm an ungrateful girl?
HASSENREUTER [Draws up her veil.] Why, girlie, you've grown younger instead of older.
ALICE RÜTTERBUSCH [Flushed with delight.] ”

“ Can't you be sociable with a feller?
AUGUST I'll look for my society elsewhere.
STRECKMANN [Looks at him long with smouldering hatred; represses his rage and grasps the whisky bottle which has been handed back to him.] Give it to me! A feller's got to drown his sorrow!— [To ROSE.] You needn't be lookin' at me; a bargain's a bargain. [He gets up.] I'm goin'!—I don't want to come between you. ”

“ His door was not open to such scum! Well, I'll fight it down! Only I'm sorry for my poor, dear mother.—You can't imagine with what abysmal hatred a man of his kind considers the theatre and everything connected with it. The heaviest curse is not strong enough to express his feelings. An actor is, to his mind, a priori, the worst, most contemptible scamp imaginable.
WALBURGA I've found out, too, how papa discovered our secret.
SPITTA My father gave him your picture.
WALBURGA O Erich, if you knew with what awful, with what horrible names papa overwhelmed me in his rage. ”

“ MARTHEL Rosie, did somethin' happen to you?
ROSE God protect you from what's happened to me.... You'd better be wishin' yourself an early death! Because, even if a body dies to this world, they do say that he passes into rest. Then you don't have to live an' draw breath no more.—How did it go with little Kurt Flamm? I've clean forgot ... I'm dizzy ... I'm forgettin' ... I've forgotten everythin' ... life's that hard ... If I could only keep on feelin' this way ... an' never wake up again ...! What's the reason o' such things comin' to pass in this world? ”

“ PASTOR SPITTA Ah, ah, my idea of Schiller was so very different! [Collecting himself.] Oh, this city of Berlin! It confuses me utterly. You see a man before you, sir, who is not only grieved, whom this Sodom of a city has not only stirred to his very depths, but who is actually broken-hearted by the deed of his son. ”

“ BERND Don't take no notice of him.
AUGUST I won't. An' when 'tis all over, I'll shut myself up in my four walls an' we can lead a quiet life.
BERND A good, quiet life—God grant it!
AUGUST And I don't want to know nothin' of the world no more! The whole business fills me with horror! I have taken such a disgust to the world and to men, that I ... Father, I don't hardly know how to say it ... but when the bitterness o' things rises up into my throat—then I laugh! Then I have a feelin' of peace in the thought of death; and I rejoice in it like a child. ”