These two motives, appearing sometimes singly, sometimes blended, are fundamental to Hauptmann's work. In _The Reconciliation_ an unnatural marriage has brought discord and depravity upon earth; in _Lonely Lives_ a seeker after truth is throttled by a murky world; in _The Weavers_ the whole organization of society drives men to tragic despair; in _Colleague Crampton_ a cold blooded woman all but destroys the gentle-hearted painter; in _The Beaver Coat_ the motive is ironically inverted and a base shrewdness triumphs over the stupid social machine; in _Rose Bernd_ traditional righteousness hounds a pure spirit out of life; and in _Gabriel Schilling's Flight_, his latest play, Hauptmann returns to a favourite motive: woman, strong through the narrowness and intensity of her elemental aims, destroying man, the thinker and dreamer, whose will, dissipated in a hundred ideal purposes, goes under in the unequal struggle. The fable and structure of _Michael Kramer_ illustrate Hauptmann's typical themes and methods well. The whole of the first act is exposition. It is not, however, the exposition of antecedent actions or events, but wholly of character. The conditions of the play are entirely static. Kramer's greatness of soul broods over the whole act. Mrs. Kramer, the narrow-minded, nagging wife, and Arnold, the homely, wretched boy with a spark of genius, quail under it. Michaline, the brave, whole-hearted girl, stands among these, pitying and comprehending all. In the second act one of Arnold's sordid and piteous mistakes comes to light. An inn-keeper's daughter complains to Kramer of his son's grotesque and annoyingly expressed passion for her. Kramer takes his son to task and, in one of the noblest scenes in the modern drama, wrestles with the boy's soul. In the third act the inn is shown. Its rowdy, semi-educated habitues deride Arnold with coarse gibes. He cannot tear himself away. Madly sensitive and conscious of his final superiority over a world that crushes him by its merely brutal advantages, he is goaded to self-destruction. In the last act, in the presence of his dead son, Michael Kramer cries out after some reconciliation with the silent universe. The play is done and nothing has happened. The only action is Arnold's suicide and that action has no dramatic value. The significance of the play lies in the unequal marriage between Kramer and his wife, in Arnold's character--in the fact that such things _are_, and that in our outlook upon the whole of life we must reckon with them.