comparatively simple plot of the German story is of course more difficult of comprehension upon the stage. It is not easy to convince an audience that jealousy of Isolde White-hand, whom Tristan had married after being banished from Cornwall, blinds Isolde Blond-hair into refusing to recognize him when he returns and pleads his case before her in the disguise of Tristram the Jester. Cavilling critics were quick to discover and to expatiate upon this weakness of the play. But the fine lines upon which it is built and the plastic figures standing out against the medieval background, the glowing color, radiant lights and brooding shadows of its atmosphere, and lastly, the language, the verse-form admirably adapted to the subject,--all this together makes of the drama a work coming very near that perfect balance of contents and form which is the ideal of art. It is a rather circuitous path which German drama has traveled since the memorable performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's play _Before Sunrise_ in 1889. It has outgrown the one-sided naturalism which had seemed the only medium of translating life directly into literature. It has turned aside from the orphic symbolism and verbal artistry rooted only in literature and having nothing in common with life. Men like Karl Schoenherr, Carl Hauptmann, and others have found in the native soil and its people and in the problems that confront that people at all times as rich a source of thematic material as previous generations of poets had found in the historic past. Men like Ernst Hardt and others have infused new life into the old legends of racial lore. As German drama is completing this cycle of its development it gives hopeful evidence of returning to the safe middle course of normal growth toward a new type, indigenous to the soil and the soul of the country. MAX HALBE * * * * * * MOTHER EARTH DRAMATIS PERSONAE PAUL WARKENTIN, publisher of a feminist journal HELLA WARKENTIN-BERNHARDY, his wife DR. VON GLYSZINSKI HELIODOR VON LASKOWSKI, owner of the estate Klonowken ANTOINETTE, his wife AUNT CLARA VON TIEDEMANN, estate owner MRS. VON TIEDEMANN RAABE, SENIOR, estate owner SCHNAASE, estate owner MRS. SCHNAASE RAABE, JUNIOR, student DR. BODENSTEIN, physician MERTENS, manager of a factory JOSUPEIT, rentier MRS. BOROWSKI, widow of a teacher KUNZE, organist SCHROCK, licentiate ZINDEL, inspector LENE, chambermaid FRITZ, coachman Time: The present. Place: Estate Ellernhof. MOTHER EARTH (1897) A Drama in Five Acts TRANSLATED BY PAUL H. GRUMMANN, A.M. Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Nebraska ACT I