ol the Deutsches Theatre with
its annex, the Kammerspiel and also the People's Theatre on the
Buelow Platz. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Reinhardt and his
charming wife who takes part in many of his productions. I dined
with them in their picturesque house on the Kupfer Graben. In the
Deutsches Theatre the great revolving stage makes change of scene
easy so that Reinhardt is enabled to present Shakespeare, a great
favourite in Germany, in a most picturesque manner. He manages to
lend even to the most solemn tragedy little touches that add
greatly to the interest and keep the attention fixed.

For instance in his production of "Macbeth," when Lady Macbeth
comes in, in the sleep-walking scene, rubbing her hands and
saying, "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" the actress
taking this part in Berlin gave a very distinct and loud snore
between every three or four words: thus most effectively
reminding the audience that she was asleep.

As the war continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre,
tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage
seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of
the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season
was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening,"
given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified and disgusted
the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal female
role was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska--very much on
the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded
audiences, only one of the four acts was without a death.

Another favourite during war-time, played at Reinhardt's
theatre, was "Maria Magdalena." The characters were the father,
mother, son and daughter of a German family in a small town and
two young men in love with the daughter. In the first act the
police arrest the son for theft, giving the mother such a shock
that she dies of apoplexy on the stage. In the second act, the
two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the
surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the
daughter jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only
the old man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if
the curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the
old man or the old man would get the cat!

The mysterious play of Peer Gynt was given in two theatres during
each winter of the war. All of Ibsen's dramas played to crowded
houses. Reinh