Nor is directer utterance lacking, "The Green Gleam," Hauptmann writes in the delicately modelled prose of his _Griechischer Fruehling_, "the Green Gleam, which mariners assert to have witnessed at times, appears at the last moment before the sun dips below the horizon.... The ancients must have known the Green Gleam.... I do not know whether that be true, but I feel a longing within me to behold it. I can imagine some Pure Fool, whose life consisted but in seeking it over lands and seas, in order to perish at last in the radiance of that strange and splendid light. Are we not all, perhaps, upon a similar quest? Are we not beings who have exhausted the realm of the senses and are athirst for other delights for both our senses and our souls?" The author of _Before Dawn_ has gone a long journey in the land of the spirit to the writing of these words, and of still others in _Gabriel Schilling's Flight_: "Behind this visible world another is hidden, so near at times that one might knock at its gate...." But it is the journey which man himself has gone upon during the intervening years. Thus Hauptmann's work has not only created a new technique of the drama; it has not only added unforgettable figures to the world of the imagination: it has also mirrored and interpreted the intellectual history of its time. His art sums up an epoch--an epoch full of knowledge and the restraints of knowledge, still prone, so often, before the mechanical in life and thought; but throughout all its immedicable scepticism full of strange yearnings and visited by flickering dreams; and even in its darkest years and days still stretching out hands in love of a farther shore. Once more the great artist, his vision fixed primarily upon his art, has most powerfully interpreted man to his own mind. LUDWIG LEWISOHN. BEFORE DAWN _The first performance of this drama took place on October 20 in the Lessing Theatre under the management of the Free Stage society. I take the occasion of the appearance of a new edition to express my hearty thanks to the directors of that society and, more especially, to Messrs. Otto Brahm and Paul Schlenther. May the future prove that, by defying petty considerations and by helping to give life to a work that had its origin in pure motives, they have deserved well of German art. GERHART HAUPTMANN Charlottenburg, October 20, 1889_ _ACTING CHARACTERS_ KRAUSE, _Farmer._ MRS. KRAUSE, _his second wife._ HELEN, MARTHA, _KRAUSE'S daughters by his first marriage._ HOFFMANN, _Engineer, MARTHA'S husband._ WILHELM KAHL, _MRS. KRAUSE'S nephew._ MRS. SPILLER, _MRS. KRAUSE'S companion._ ALFRED LOTH. DR. SCHIMMELPFENNIG. BEIPST, _Workingman on KRAUSE'S farm._ GUSTE, LIESE, MARIE _Maid-servants on KRAUSE'S farm._ BAER, _called "Hopping Baer."_ EDWARD, _HOFFMANN'S servant._ MIELE, _MRS. KRAUSE'S housemaid._ THE COACHMAN'S WIFE. GOLISCH, _a Cowherd._ A PACKET POST CARRIER. THE FIRST ACT