"So much I give thee, more than thou canst dream,
So much that to be worthy of my love,
Loathing should fasten on thee at the thought
This earth is trod by other men than I."
Beatrice leaves him with the vague intimation—
"Feel I that without thee I cannot live
And have desire for death, I come again
To take thee with me."
In the second act, Beatrice is on the point of marrying her legitimate suitor, Vittorino, and escaping from the town, when the Duke appears and proposes to exercise the jus ultimæ nodis. Owing to the remonstrances of her brother Francesco, he generously offers to relinquish his intentions. Beatrice is bidden to go on her way, but stands riveted to the spot by a fatalistic impulse to realise her dream. And what is more, she insists on being the wife of the Duke. Her wish is granted. The nuptials are celebrated by a gigantic fête in the palace, whose doors are thrown open to rich and poor. Beatrice, however, with the placid naïveté of her will-less temperament, flies to Filippo.
"What boots it,
Were I this eve an empress to whom worlds
Bowed, or the callat of a fool? For I
Am with thee now to die by thine own side."
Filippo pretends to poison both her and himself, and on her discovering the ruse, commits suicide in earnest. Beatrice rushes back to the palace, but discovering that she has left behind that priceless veil which was the wedding-gift of her husband, leads back the Duke to the chamber of love and death. The living is confronted with the dead rival, and the indignant Francesco slays his sister.
The power of this tragedy, however, lies not so much in the actual plot or even in the marvellous delineation of Beatrice, gracefully and innocently childish in the very irresponsibility of her fated sin, as in the rich tints of the picture and the gorgeous frame in which the picture is set. All the multicoloured elements of the Renaissance take their place in the vivid scheme—poets, sculptors, courtiers, courtesans, soldiers, and populace. Annihilation and vitality grow each more grandiose from their mutual juxtaposition, and the red blood of life flows but the quicker and the warmer beneath the black shadow of doom. Few more eloquent tragedies have been written on the great twin themes: "In the midst of life we are in death; in the midst of death we are in life."
Reverting back to prose, we come to Der Einsame Weg (The Lonely Way, 1903). If, however, the tendency to import the methods of the short story and the long novel were apparent in Liebelei and Vermächtniss, it is even more marked in this play. A son, finding a sire in the shape of the middle-aged lover of his now dead mother, repudiates the natural for the putative father; a neurotic and over-sexed young girl, finding that her lover, unknown to himself, is suffering from an incurable disease, dies by her own act. These are the two motifs, knit together by no shred of logical connection, which form the threads on which the drama is hung. Yet, if here we have Schnitzler at his worst, the many excellences even of this play attest by implication the merits of Schnitzler at his best. The scene between father and son is a sheer masterpiece. How delicately does the father intimate that "mothers also have their destinies like other women." And how complete is his rejection.
JULIAN. It is now absolutely impossible for you to forget that you are my son.
FELIX. Your son—it is nothing but a word—it is a mere empty sound—I know it, but I don't realise it.
JULIAN. Felix!
FELIX. You are further away from me since I know it.