FANNY. Fedor—you gave me the contract back.
FEDOR. Well, yes.
FANNY. You should have torn it up, dear. Why didn't you do it?
FEDOR. You should not have signed it, Fanny.
FANNY. Fedor! It is unbearable—you're driving me out of my senses.
FEDOR. But you yourself don't quite know your own mind. There's something in you which craves for adventures.
FANNY. Fedor—if you would only put me to the test—I will do anything you want—only tell me.
And then, eventually, Fedor owns up.
FEDOR. Would I not still have to kiss away from your lips the kisses of other men?
And so Fanny forsakes the life of domesticity for the life of the actress.
The chief defect, however, in this play is that, in spite of all its dramatic compound of psychology, pathos, and problem, the problem is not fairly presented, in that Fanny, being of inferior social status to Fedor, the question of whether he shall marry her must inevitably be influenced by purely snobbish considerations. It is only when the woman is of equal, if not slightly superior, rank to the man that the real problem of her ante-nuptial chastity can be discussed with real sociological fairness.
In Die Vermächtniss (produced in Berlin in 1898), the problem which our dramatist has made the centre of his play is the relation to the family of the mistress and child of the dead son of the house. The dashing young cavalry officer is brought home fatally wounded from a fall from his horse. Realising his approaching death, he informs his parents of his responsibilities. Death raises the home circle to a pitch of more than ordinary humanity. In spite of their poignant jealousy at the existence of other affections and another home life, they send for their son's household, and accede to his dying request to incorporate it into the family.
Act II shows the mistress installed in the bosom of her lover's family. Modernity, however, though satisfying to the heroic pose, has its penalties. Our ultra-modern family finds itself confronted with social ostracism. Still, they love their grandchild, and the mother of the grandchild is the price that they must pay. But the grandchild dies. The semi-official daughter-in-law consequently becomes a somewhat unprofitable luxury, and in the final act is given her congé. Even more than in Liebelei, however, the claim to merit lies almost exclusively in the precision with which each successive phase of the problem is portrayed. As a series of family pictures, the play succeeds, and succeeds brilliantly; as a drama of continuous interest, it fails, and fails hopelessly.
The next play of Schnitzler is The Veil of Beatrice. This "tragedy of sensualism" has qualities too arresting to be lightly disregarded. The dramatist has forsaken his problems to portray how the fatal temperament of a young girl of the Italian Renaissance works out its own destruction.
In the first act, we are shown the garden of Filippo, a poet of Bologna, which is on the eve of being plundered by the enemy. The heads on Bolognese shoulders are worth little purchase, and who leaves not the town to-night will never leave the town at all. The Duke invites Filippo to the palace to recite his poems. Filippo refuses, so that he may leave the city of doom with his beloved Beatrice, a daughter of the people. On learning, however, that Beatrice has dreamt of the Duke, he spurns her in an egoistic paroxysm of refined jealousy, typical in its subtlety more of the twentieth century than the Renaissance.