Hauptmann has also become increasingly exacting in demanding that the actor simulate the personal appearance of his characters as they arose in his imagination. In his earlier plays the descriptions of men and women are at times brief; in _The Rats_ even minor figures are visualised with remarkable completeness. Pastor Spitta, for instance, is thus introduced: "Sixty years old. A village parson, somewhat 'countrified.' One might equally well take him to be a surveyor or a landowner in a small way. He is of vigorous appearance--short-necked, well-nourished, with a squat, broad face like Luther's. He wears a slouch hat, spectacles, and carries a cane and a coat over his arm. His clumsy boots and the state of his other garments show that they have long been accustomed to wind and weather." Such directions obviously tax the mimetic art of the stage to the very verge of its power. Thus, by the precision of his directions both for the scenery and the persons of each play, and by unmistakable indications of gesture and expression at all decisive moments of dramatic action, Hauptmann has placed within narrow limits the activity of both stage manager and actor. He alone is the creator of his drama, and no alien factitiousness is allowed to obscure its final aim--the creation of living men. VI In the third act of Hauptmann's latest naturalistic play, _The Rats_ (1911), the ex-stage manager Hassenrenter is drawn by his pupil, young Spitta, into an argument on the nature of tragedy. "Of the heights of humanity you know nothing," Hassenrenter hotly declares. "You asserted the other day that in certain circumstances a barber or a scrubwoman could as fitly be the subject of tragedy as Lady Macbeth or King Lear." And Spitta reaffirms his heresy in the sentence: "Before art as before the law all men are equal." From this doctrine Hauptmann has never departed, although his interpretation of it has not been fanatical. Throughout his work, however, there is a careful disregard of several classes of his countrymen: the nobility, the bureaucracy (with the notable exception of Wehrhahn in _The Beaver Coat_), the capitalists. He has devoted himself in his prose plays to the life of the common people, of the middle classes, and of creative thinkers.