The next scene is in the lodgings of Christine on the eve of that duel of which the love-stricken girl is in blissful ignorance. Christine, bien entendu, in contradistinction to the casual and heart-whole Mizzi, is taking her love-affair with the maximum of seriousness. Katherine, a benevolent busybody of a neighbour, puts Weiring, the musician father of Christine, on his guard. Weiring, however, having been the uncomplaisant brother of his sister, is determined, on the strength of his experience, to be the complaisant father of his daughter.
WEIRING. I became, Heaven knows, proud, and gloried in my conduct—and then, little by little, the grey hairs came and the wrinkles, and one day went by another till her whole youth was gone—and gradually, so that one could scarcely notice it, the young girl became an old maid, and then I first began to suspect what I had really done.
KATHERINE. But, Herr Weiring....
WEIRING. I can see how she often used to sit with me in the evening by this lamp in this room, with her silent smile, with a strange kind of devotion, as if she still wished to thank me for something, and I—the one thing I wanted most to do was to throw myself on my knees and ask for her forgiveness for guarding her so well from all dangers and from all happiness.
The act ends with a love-scene between Christine and Fritz, poignant in its irony. He is all-in-all to her, she is just something to him; but he goes off to fight a duel on account of another woman without so much as bidding her a real farewell.
In the third act the news of Fritz's death is broken to Christine, and here comes the most subtle and delicate touch of all. Poignant as is her grief at his death, her grief at the casual flippancy of his treatment is even more poignant. Our fin de siècle Ophelia rushes madly out of the house to commit suicide in the nearest brook, or perhaps more probably under the nearest train, to point the philosophic moral, "A bas la grande passion! Vive l'Amourette!"
The play, however, should be read or seen to obtain an adequate appreciation of the precision with which each character is drawn, the spontaneity with which the dialogue flows, and the lyric pathos with which the whole is invested. The limitations, such as they are, simply lie in the fact that each act is self-complete in itself. However good they may be, three consecutive one-acters never made a drama. To compare great things with low, each act of a drama, like each instalment of a feuilleton, should leave, as it were, the hanging tag of some vital interrogation. The dramatic banquet should not only regale the mind of the spectator during, but titillate it with the aftermath between the acts.
As we shall see later, when he comes to dramatise on the larger scale, Schnitzler not infrequently exhibits the defects of those very qualities which make him so supreme in the sphere of the one-acter.
In Märchen (the Fairy Tale), on the other hand, the problem is brought more officially into the foreground of the play, while each act is more closely connected with those which follow or precede it. Fedor Denner, a romantic young journalist (nearly all Schnitzler's young men are highly romantic), is in love with Fanny, a young actress on the threshold of theatrical success, and of those dangers which follow so closely in the wake of theatrical success. Fedor, moreover, is not only romantic, he is modern—ultra-modern. And so, in the inspiring atmosphere of Fanny's home circle, where the mother bustles about with the refreshments and the "good" piano-teacher of a sister discourses music for the edification of the journalists, painters, and students who frequent the house, he gives an impassioned little lecture on the "Fairy Tale of the Fallen Woman" and on the "washed-out views and dead-beat ideas" of which the fairy tale is composed. The little lecture, however, goes off just a little too successfully. In a climax, marvellous in its tacit concentration, Fanny takes an opportunity of kissing his hand. Fedor is revolted, however, by the revelation implied in this pathetic gratitude. He had contemplated marriage, but now——. For the time being he nurses in solitary misery all the pangs of retrospective jealousy. Then Fanny, unable to bear the separation, rushes headlong into his arms. Then comes the great act of the play. We are back once more in the house of Fanny's mother. The young actress, having scored a brilliant success on the Vienna stage, has been offered a splendid contract in St. Petersburg by Moritzki, the agent. If, however, she goes to St. Petersburg, she will have to face the pains and pleasures of life unsheltered by the respectability of a family. The problem is acute. Fanny, however, places the Fate of her life on the knees of—Fedor. And Fedor shuffles and vacillates.
FANNY. Come, and you—what do you say yourself?
FEDOR. After you have received Herr Moritzki at the house you can scarcely seriously mean to refuse him.
FANNY. Herr Denner, I consider you an exceptionally shrewd man, I ask you for your advice.
FEDOR. Yes, I think ... I would accept.
Fanny. Good! [To Moritzki.] Herr Moritzki.
Woman-like, however, having signed the contract, she craves time to reconsider. Fedor looks at it again.