Augustine remarked. Conditions in this country are not so very different from those depicted in this play, and evidence is not lacking that gradually, very gradually, we are beginning to realize that ignorance and innocence are not synonymous; that an evil is not palliated by ignoring its existence; the Podsnappian wave of the hand has not disappeared entirely, but it is not quite as fashionable as of yore. All things considered, the moment seems appropriate for the publication, of “Frühlings Erwachen” in an English version. The translation given in this volume follows the German original as closely as the translator can reconcile the nature of the two languages. Considered as a work of literature, “Frühlings Erwachen” is remarkable as one of the few realistic studies of adolescence. Its deceptive simplicity is the hall mark of that supreme literary ability which knows how to conceal art by art. Dealing with adolescence, an unformed period of human life, it is necessarily without the climaxes we expect in dramas in which the characters are adult, and the gruesome scene in the churchyard with which the play closes--a scene with such peculiar symbolism could spring only from a Teutonic imagination--leaves much unended. It is interesting to note, by the way, that Wedekind himself appears as the Masked Man when “Frühlings Erwachen” is given in Berlin, a fact which gives this scene somewhat the nature of a _parabasis_. Frank Wedekind's name is just beginning to be heard in America. In Germany he has been recognized for some time as one of the leaders in the new art of the theatre. Naturally enough, his plays are too outspoken in their realism to appeal to all his fellow-countrymen. But, if certain Germans reject this mental pabulum, others become intoxicated by it, and, waxing enthusiastic with a flow of language almost bacchic, hail Wedekind as the forerunner of a new drama--as a power destined to infuse fresh strength into the German stage. “With this drink in its body,” writes one admirer, “the public will never more endure lyrical lemonade, nor the dregs of dramatic penury.” Again, these enthusiasts compare Wedekind's work to that of the pre-Shakesperian dramatists, or even to that of the Bard of Avon himself, both of which comparisons are difficult to grasp by an English-speaking student of the British drama. Wedekind, it is true, has a habit of using the news of the day as material for plays, just as the old English dramatists did when they wrote “domestic tragedies.” He has a fondness, moreover, for gruesome situations such as we can imagine appealing to the melancholy genius of Webster; but of the childlike simplicity which marks much of the Elizabethan drama there is not a particle.