THE SUNKEN BELL.•

THE brief sketch of Hauptmann's career given by the trans- lator in the introduction to his clever version of Die Yer- svn?.•ene G Locke, throws a good deal of light on the contradictory influences which manifest themselves in the play itself. He was " unhappy at school," became steeped in Darwinism at Jena, wandered through Europe with " Childe Harold" in his pocket before he married at twenty-two. Since then—he is only thirty-eight now—he has in turn aspired to be a sculptor and an actor, fallen deeply under the influence of the Socialists, and discarded his earlier heroes—Darwin, Goethe, and Byron —for Tolstoi, Zola, and Ibsen. His cle'but as a dramatist was in 1887, since when he has written some ten plays, come to be regarded as a pioneer of the "new movement," and provoked an amount of hostility and enthusiasm second only to that of which Ibsen has been the centre.

In The Sunken Bell, which is described as a German fairy play (licirchendraina), most of these influences may be discovered at work, though the Ibsenitish leaven is perhaps predominant. The central figure is the bell-founder Heinrich, whose master- work, destined to form the glory of a church in the mountains, while being dragged laboriously up the heights is overturned by the malign intervention of the Woodsprite and The Sunken Deli: a Fairy Play in Five AZI3. P. Gerhart

Freely Rendered Iran English Verse by Charles Henry Me.[zer. London : W. Ilvinemanu. Hs. net.]

sunk in a mountain mere. Heinrich, half-killed himself in the catastrophe, seeks refuge in the but of the witch Wittichen, where Rautendelein, an elfin creature, becomes enamoured of him and, after his return to his borne and wife, Magda— who reminds us not a little of Minna Planer—nurses him back to life and spirits him away to her mountain home.

There, while leading a life of dalliance with his elfin bride, Heinrich sets to work on a new chime of bells designed to eclipse all his earlier efforts. But, though his sense of domestic responsibility is for a while atrophied, he is not allowed to enjoy his emancipation for long. The sprites and dwarfs whom he has impressed into his service as workmen in his foundry prove refractory, a deputation of the villagers, headed by the pastor, the barber, and the schoolmaster, re- monstrate with him bitterly for deserting his wife and family, he is haunted by the mysterious tolling of the sunken bell, and finally the phantoms of his two children announce to him that their mother has drowned herself in the lake ; it is her dead hand that is tolling the bell, and they bring with them a pitcher filled with her tears. In the last act Heinrich accepts from the hand of the witch the magic drink of death, Rautendelein, conscious that her spells have lost their power, having cast in her lot with the Nickelmann, the froglike monster who lives in a well. It is part of the magic of the death potion, however, that it should recall Rautendelein, and Heinrich dies in her arms, ecstatically declaring that he hears the music of the Sun-bells' song.

The translator remarks that those who wish may regard the play merely as a fairy tale, but it would argue more than common restraint to avoid the temptation, forced upon the reader at every turn, to dive beneath the literal significance of the text. One notices at the outset the antithesis, rendered familiar by the plays of Ibsen, between the depths and the heights, the valley and the summit, and the fatality which attends on the efforts of mortal man to carry the motto " Excelsior !" into practice. There is again an obvious antagonism between the code of social conventionality and orthodox Christianity—as repre- sented by the pastor, the schoolmaster, and Heinrich's wife and family—and the untrammelled gratification of natural instincts, as illustrated by Heinrich's relations with Rauten- delein, and the pagan revels of the elves, trolls, and dwarfs of the hills. For the fairies in The Sunken Bell are curiously devoid of the gracious attributes attributed by so many writers to the dwellers of elfland. They are frankly animalistic, earthy creatures, recalling by their malignity and sensuality Alberich and Mime in Wagner's Ring, rather than the attendants of Oberon and Titania. So that the plain person is confronted by the paradox of the visionary and aspiring hero, in the quest of sublime Truth and beauty, leaguing himself with influences which not only make for paganism, but are distinctly anti-social and infra-human. He fails in adapting himself to his new surroundings because he cannot stifle the cries of his awakened conscience, because he cannot reconcile primitive instincts with mystical aspira- tions as well as domestic duties, and welcomes death as the only solution of his perplexity.

There remains the literary quality of the drama, which alike in exuberance and charm of expression is undoubtedly considerable. For purposes of quotation it must suffice if we give alongside of Mr. Meltzer's version a fragment of the scene in which Rantendelein, after the departure of the pastor and schoolmaster in the first act, joins the elves in a fairy dance, one of the few passages in which the purely picturesque and playful aspect of elfland is insisted on :— "RAITTENDELEIN. "RAUTENDELEIN {joining in MI Nehmt mich auf in euren

Kranz I Ringelreigenfliistertanz. Silberelfchen, liebes Kind! schau, wie meine Kleider sind. Blanke Silberfadelein wob mir meine Muhme drein, Braunes Elbchen ! nimm in acht meiner braunen Glieder Pracht, and du, goldnes Elbchen ! gar, nimm in acht mein goldnes Haar: schwing ich's hoch—so to es auch !—

ist's ein seidenroter Rauch. IIiingt es iiber mein Gesicht, ist's ein Strom von Gold and

Licht."

dance).

Let me join the merry round. Ring-a-ring-a-ring-around! Silver nixey, sweetest maid, See how richly I'm arrayed. All of silver, white and rare, Granny wove my dress

fair.

Thou, my fairy brown, I vow, Browner far am I than thou. And, my golden sister fair, I can match thee with my

hair,

Now I toss it high—behold Thou bast surely no such gold. Now it tumbles o'er my face: Who can rival tap in grace?"

The play, it should be noted, is written mainly in blank verse interspersed with rhymed passages and lyrics like that we have just quoted, while the witch speaks throughout in the broadest Doric dialect. With the difficulties presented by this scheme Mr. Meltzer has grappled with considerable success. His version, which he is careful to describe as a free rendering, is vigorous, fluent, and idiomatic—" clove" on p. 27 is, we suppose, an Americanism for "cleft "—and preserves not a little of the eloquence and picturesqueness of the original.