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THE DRAMATIC WORKS

OF

GERHART HAUPTMANN

(Authorized Edition)

Edited By LUDWIG LEWISOHN

Assistant Professor in The Ohio State University

VOLUME ONE: SOCIAL DRAMAS

1912

PREFACE

The present edition of Hauptmann's works contains all of his plays withthe exception of a few inconsiderable fragments and the historical dramaFlorian Geyer. The latter has been excluded by reason of its greatlength, its divergence from the characteristic moods of Hauptmann's art,and that failure of high success which the author himself has implicitlyacknowledged. The arrangement of the volumes follows, with suchmodifications as the increase of material has made necessary, the methodused by Hauptmann in the first and hitherto the only collected edition ofhis dramas. Five plays are presented here which that edition did notinclude, and hence the present collection gives the completest view nowattainable of Hauptmann's activity as a dramatist.

The translation of the plays, seven of which are written entirely indialect, offered a problem of unusual difficulty. The easiest solution,that namely, of rendering the speech of the Silesian peasants or theBerlin populace into some existing dialect of English, I was forced toreject at once. A very definite set of associative values would thus havebeen gained for the language of Hauptmann's characters, but of valuesradically different from those suggested in the original. I found itnecessary, therefore, to invent a dialect near enough to the English ofthe common people to convince the reader or spectator, yet not so near tothe usage of any class or locality as to interpose between him andHauptmann's characters an Irish or a Cockney, a Southern or a New Englandatmosphere. Into this dialect, with which the work of my collaboratorshas been made to conform, I have sought to render as justly and asexactly as possible the intensely idiomatic speech that Hauptmannemploys. In doing this I have had to take occasional liberties with mytext, but I have tried to reduce these to a minimum, and always to makethem serve a closer interpretation of the original shade of thought orturn of expression. The rendering of the plays written in normal literaryprose or verse needs no such explanation nor the plea for a measure ofcritical indulgence which that explanation implies.

I owe hearty thanks to Dr. Hauptmann for the promptness and cordialitywith which he has either rectified or confirmed my view of thedevelopment and meaning of his thought and art as stated in theIntroduction, and to my wife for faithful assistance in the preparationof these volumes.

LUDWIG LEWISOHN.

COLUMBUS, O., June, 1912.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONBy the Editor.

BEFORE DAWN (Vor Sonnenaufgang)Translated by the Editor.

THE WEAVERS (Die Weber)Translated by Mary Morison.

THE BEAVER COAT (Der Biberpelz)Translated by the Editor.

THE CONFLAGRATION (Der rote Hahn)Translated by the Editor.

INTRODUCTION

I

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