None knows better how to show the peculiarities of a neurotic woman, or to betray a man's weakness by a few short sentences. The demonstration is direct and thorough, and we watch it fascinated, as we might the work of a skilled vivisectionist. When the job is finished we feel convinced that Wedekind's personages are real, although many of them are not the kind we enjoy meeting in actual life. We do meet them daily, nevertheless, tolerating them chiefly by our own polite habit of ascribing imaginary virtues to those that possess them not. Take that curious comedy, “Der Marquis von Keith,” as an example of Wedekind's skill as a psychologist. “Comedy” the author names it himself, but he might just as well have called it a tragic farce, so thoroughly has he mingled the laughable with the tragic. The protagonist of this peculiar play (the underlying tone of which has been likened musically to a Dies Irae written by Offenbach) is the illegitimate son of a teacher of mathematics and a gypsy trull, an adventurer who keeps on the shady side of the law, and who, despite his practical view of life in general, is an idealist in several particulars. His title of Marquis von Keith is merely a _nom de guerre_, and his attempts to obtain a fortune involve methods which the world acclaims as evidences of wonderful financial ability, or stigmatizes as the practices of a sharper, according to their success or failure. Resourceful, energetic, unhampered by vain regrets or restrictions of conventional morals, wasting not a moment upon a scheme which has proved unprofitable, von Keith is a forceful personage who manages to pass in Munich as a wealthy American, even when his pockets are empty and the sheriff is at the door. His own view of life is embodied in his definition of sin as “the mythological symbol for bad business,” and his accompanying explanation that good business can be conducted only by a person accepted by the existing order of society. In other words, von Keith is a hypocrite for revenue only, but never is deceived concerning his own personality. The play deals with von Keith's scheme to build an amusement hall, to be known as “The Fairy Palace.” He applies himself so sedulously that his plans are on the eve of realization, when suddenly he finds himself ousted from the management of his own enterprise by the very men he has interested in it.