ntimental talk about
euphoria and going happily to death. Grim old Daddy Ibsen told us
that people were being poisoned by impure spring water, and, as Alan
Dale said, was the first man to write a drama around a drain-pipe.
Arthur Schnitzler, shedding for the nonce his accustomed Viennese
charm and nonchalance, has written a comedy about a very grave
subject, and has not uttered a single word that can be construed as
disrespectful to either religion, Jewish or Roman Catholic. He is a
genre painter almost to the point of perfection.

III

Once upon a time I called Hermann Sudermann the Klingsor of the German
stage, meaning thereby that he was a master of black magic. Of course,
like most comparisons, this was a far-fetched one. Yet Sudermann is a
master of theatrical machinery. With a pressure of his little finger
he can set the wheels whirring and make their noise attractive if not
precisely significant. This is the case with his latest offering, Der
gute Ruf (Good Reputation), which captured Berlin at the Deutsches
Schauspielhaus on the Friedrichstrasse. The play, in four acts, is a
variation on its author's early theme, Honour. It is also a variant of
his Joy of Life (Es lebe das Leben), translated by Edith Wharton, but
with the difference that the motive of Honour was more malleable for
the purpose of dramatic treatment, and also truer to life, while in
Reputation (as I suppose it will be called when translated) the thesis
is too incredible for belief; hence the magician, wily as he is,
scrambles about aimlessly in the last two acts, sparring for wind, and
seemingly anxious to escape from a blind alley of situations. That he
does it so well is a tribute to his technical prowess.

He knows how to write a play. This play would succeed in foreign
countries where the Hauptmann and Schnitzler plays would fall down.
The reason is because of the strong theatrical quality of the piece,
and the grateful role for the heroine, a role that might have been
written in Paris; indeed, the entire work, despite its local flavour,
recalls the modern Parisian theatre of Bernstein & Co., because of its
cynical satire, its mysterious intrigue, its doors and bells, its
numerous exits and entrances.

A woman, rather a superwoman, the Baroness von Tanna, sacrifices her
name--not of the best because she flirts--to save the good, nay,
spotless reputation of her dearest friend, a millionaire's wife--who,
i