"So the title 'Johannisfeuer,' with its double meaning, literal and symbolical, must be rendered into English--according as we wish to lay stress on the former or the latter--'The Bonfires of St. John's Eve' or 'Midsummer Madness.' On seeing the remarkably fine performance of this play the non-German spectator, impressed with the general worthlessness of German drama since the Augustan age (that is, the age of Goethe and Schiller), might well wonder how it is possible for a German writer to produce such a thing--a play, simple and unpretentious in design, yet fraught through and through with poetic beauty; a play written with northern sharpness of characteristic and, at the same time, with Italian warmth, eloquence, and keenness of sympathy with the moods of nature; a play distinctly Ibsenesque in structure and largely also in style, yet, for all its sombre colouring, not haggard and aghast, like nearly all the products of the Scandinavian's demonic spirit. The scene is in a farm in East Prussia, in a neighbourhood with a mixed population of Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians. The name of the farmer's family is Vogelreuther. Marikke, a Lithuanian gipsy girl, is a foster-child in their house, having been picked up along with her mother and carried home by Mr. and Mrs. Vogelreuther in their sledge during the famine winter of 1867. In the house she is known as Heimchen (the Cricket) and in the neighbourhood as the 'famine child.' In the farm-house lives a young man named George, an orphan nephew of Vogelreuther, indebted to the famine for his upbringing. In the opening of the play George has made a good start in life, having been apprenticed to an architect in Königsberg and done well. He is betrothed to the farmer's daughter Gertrude, but some years before there had been a love affair between him and Heimchen, who had repulsed him hastily, not because she did not care for him, but because she did not believe in the honesty of his intentions. While busying herself with preparations for her foster-sister's coming marriage, Heimchen discovers a manuscript book belonging to George and containing verses and a diary. She cannot resist the temptation to read, and she thus discovers that George had loved her deeply and seriously, despite the difference in their standing. Heimchen's mother--a besotted and thievish old woman--haunts the neighbourhood, and has been recognised by her daughter. Heimchen has been told that her mother is dead, but knows better. Meetings with the terrible old woman re-awaken the gipsy instincts in Heimchen. George loves her still at heart, and circumstances draw the two together. The crisis is reached on the night of St. John's eve, when after an evening in which the whole neighbourhood, lit up with bonfires, is given over to punch drinking, dancing, and excitement. George is requested by the unsuspecting farmer to escort Heimchen to the railway station, she having a night train to catch to Königsberg. The ending is intensely