LULU. Here I am.
SCHÖN. Splendid.
LULU. Well?
SCHÖN. You put the wildest imagination to the blush.
LULU. Do you find me nice?
SCHÖN. You're a picture that makes artists despair.
The pompous conventionalism of the doctor is seen almost immediately, when he suggests with heavy gravity that she is not wearing her costume with sufficient reserve. The artist proceeds to work, and the mere mechanism of posing brings out at once the sheer sexuality of the animal which he is painting. Goll is carried off by Schön, and the artist and the pierrot are left alone. The young painter proves more attractive than the old professor, who arrives towards the climax of a wild scene. In the scuffle, Goll is killed. Death, however, is a pet theme of Wedekind, who proceeds to batten thereon with abnormal gusto.
SCHWARZ. The doctor is bound to be here in a minute.
LULU. Doctoring won't help him.
SCHWARZ. Still, in a case like this, one does what one can.
LULU. He doesn't believe in doctors.
SCHWARZ. Won't you, at any rate, change?
LULU. Yes, at once.
SCHWARZ. Why are you waiting?
LULU. I say—
SCHWARZ. What?
LULU. Please close his eyes.
SCHWARZ. They are awful.
LULU. Nothing like as awful as you.
SCHWARZ. As I?
LULU. You're a depraved character.
SCHWARZ. Doesn't all this affect you?
LULU. Yes, I too am as well moved.
SCHWARZ. Then I ask you not to say anything.
LULU. You are moved as well.
Shocked by her comparative callousness, Schwarz subjects her to a catechism—does she believe in a Creator, a soul, or anything—only to find himself beating against an eternal "I don't know."
So ends the first act, and this creature, whose hair is a net of murder, whose lips are poisoned fruit, and whose eyes are pits of hell, has already one death to her credit.
The second act discloses Schwarz married to Lulu, and in the heyday of artistic fame and fortune. A fleeting light is cast on the swamp, from which the fiend has emerged, by the entry and departure of Schigolch, her old ragamuffin of a sire. Then follows a tête-à-tête between Lulu and Schön. Combining, as she does, the soul of an Ibsen woman with the body of a Phryne, she complains of her husband's obtusity: "He is not a child—he is commonplace—he has no education—he realises nothing—he realises neither me nor himself—he is blind, blind—he doesn't know me, but he loves me; that is an unbridgeable gulf." The painter returns, and is given by Schön the outlines of his wife's past. Schön had picked her out of the gutter at the age of twelve, and had had her educated; her antecedents were ghastly; after the death of Schön's wife, Lulu wished to marry him; to obviate that, he made her marry Dr. Goll with his half a million. Lulu is anxious to be good, but must be taken seriously. The painter then commits suicide, and the author feasts again on the carnage in a scene which, for sheer horror, challenges even Macbeth.
"After you," says Lulu, after they have heard the body fall, and Schön has opened the door.
SCHÖN. There's the end of my engagement. Ten minutes ago he lay here.[2]
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
SCHÖN. That is your husband's blood.
LULU. It leaves no stain.
SCHÖN. Monster!
LULU. Of course you will marry me.
Then, by way of a really strong curtain, they send for a reporter, and dictate the official version of the thrilling story. The third act is the dressing-room of Lulu; she has gone on the music-hall stage as a barefoot dancer of classical measure; Schön, having temporarily freed himself from the spell, is about to marry a charming, "innocent child," whom he has brought to witness the spectacle. The insult stimulates the girl to a supernormal fascination. Having refused the proposals of a prince, she deliberately sets herself to cast her wand over the journalist. She mocks him brazenly, with her magic potency over him, in a scene of the most subtle cruelty.