is a fanatic of truth and deals only
with facts; discarding the mitigating accessories of the _milieu_, he
places those facts before us in absolute nudity. This would make him
the most consistent naturalist; but when facts are presented bald and
bare, they do not make the impression of reality, but rather of
grotesque caricature. Hence Wedekind has sometimes been compared with
early English dramatists and classed with romanticists like Lenz,
Grabbe and Heine. He himself has no esthetic theories whatever that
could facilitate his being enrolled under some fetching label. Nor has
he any ethical principles, some critics allege, if they do not curtly
call him immoral. Yet his work, from the appearance of _Spring's
Awakening_ (1891) to his _Stone of Wisdom_, (1909) and his most recent
works, proves him to be concerned with nothing but the moral problem.
He treats social morality with mordant irony from an a-moral
standpoint. The distinction between a-moral and immoral must be borne
in mind in any attempt to interpret the puzzling and paradoxical
personality of the author and to arrive at an approximate understanding
of the man behind his work.

[Illustration: IN THE SHADE]

That Wedekind is not only an author, but an actor as well, has in no
small degree complicated his case. The pose seems so inseparably
connected with the art of the actor, that his intransigent policy in
sex matters and his striking impersonations of the characters in his
plays have been interpreted as the unabashed bid for notoriety of a
clever poseur. But his acting could hardly have made palatable to
theatre audiences topics tabooed in polite conversation and with
appalling candor presented by him on the stage. Neither his quality as
actor nor his quality as author could account for the measure of
popularity his plays have attained. It would rather indicate that the
German public was ready for open discussion of the problems involved
and that Wedekind's frankness and honesty, his lapses into diabolical
grimace and grotesque hyperbole notwithstanding, met a demand of his
time. Nor did he restrict himself to that one particular problem. His
irony spared no institution, no person: lese-majeste was one of his
offenses; nor did he spare himself. Born into a generation which took
itself very seriously, he created the impression as if he at least were
not taking himself too seriously. Yet a survey of his work, regardless
of the comparisons and conclusions it