tween him and a joiner, who is
also the undertaker of the island, a well-conceived character. A storm
is rising. Gabriel, after many wild and whirling words, leaves a
message for his friends. He is bathing. And so he makes by suicide his
last flight, his escape from the horns of the dilemma, too weak to
decide one way or the other. The ending is ineffective, and the sudden
repentance of the middle-aged sculptor (fat men with forty-five-inch
waists never do seem wicked), who promises to marry his Lucie, the
fiddle player, is very flat. Nor does the storm strike terror as it
should. What the moral? I don't know, except that it is dangerous to
keep late hours on the Friedrichstrasse. A clock can't always strike
twelve, and The Flight of Gabriel Schilling, notwithstanding some
striking episodes and at moments poetic atmosphere, is not a
masterpiece of Hauptmann.

II

Ever since I heard and saw Agnes Sorma in Liebele, I have admired the
dramatic writings of Arthur Schnitzler, and, remember, that charming,
withal sad, little play was written in 1895. I haven't seen all his
works, but I have read many. The latest adapted into English for the
American stage is the Anatol one-act cyclus (1893), and his new play I
witnessed at the Kleines Theatre, Berlin. It bears the singularly
unpromising title Professor Bernhardi, and is a five-act comedy. Its
performance was interdicted in Vienna. The reason given by the
Austrian authorities seems a simple one, though it is specious: for
fear of stirring up religious animosities Professor Bernhardi was
placed on the black books of the censor. The Jewish question, it
appears, is still a live one in Austria, and this new play of
Schnitzler's, himself of Semitic descent, is the very frank discussion
of a certain incident which occurred in Vienna in which a Roman
Catholic clergyman and a Jewish doctor were embroiled. The dramatist
is fair, he holds the scales evenly. At the end of the piece both
priest and surgeon stand alike in your regard. That the incident
hardly suggests dramatic treatment is beside the mark; Schnitzler,
with his invariable deftness of touch, has painted a dozen vital
portraits; the priest is superb, the character values of exquisite
balance. The hero, if hero he be, Professor Bernhardi, is carved out
of a single block and the minor personalities are each and every one
salient. I can't altogether believe in the thesis. Any one who has
li