THE LIFE OF MAN A Play In Five Acts By Leonidas Andreyev Translated By C. J. Hogarth London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1915 DRAMATIS PERSONÆ The Being in Grey. The Father of the Man. The Man. The Man's Wife. First Doctor. Second Doctor. An Old Serving Woman. Old Women of a Semi-supernatural Character. Musicians; Friends, Enemies, and Relations of the Man; Guests at the Man's Ball, etc. PROLOGUE [_A Being, clad in Grey, is speaking. He is speaking of the Life of Man._ [_The stage presents the semblance of a large, square, empty room which has neither doors nor windows, and within which all is uniformly grey and misty. The ceiling, walls, and floor are grey, and from some hidden source there flows a stream of dim, unflickering light, of the same dull, monotonous, elusive colour. This light throws no shadows, nor is reflected back from any point._ [_Without a sound the Being in Grey detaches himself from the wall, with which he has almost seemed to mingle. He is clothed in a loose, grey, shapeless habit, roughly outlining a gigantic frame, and his head is veiled in a cowl of the all-pervading hue. This cowl throws the upper portion of his face into deep shadow, so that no eyes, but only a nose, mouth, and prominent chin are visible; all of which features are as clear-cut in outline and granite-like in texture as though they were hewn of grey stone. At first his lips are tightly compressed; until presently he raises his head a little, and begins to speak in a stern, Cold voice--a voice as destitute of passion or emotion as that of some hired clerk reading aloud, with dry nonchalance, the records of a court of law._] Look ye and listen, ye who have come hither for sport and laughter; for there is about to pass before you, from its mysterious beginning to its mysterious close, the whole life of a Man. Hitherto without being; hidden away in the womb of eternity; possessed neither of thought nor feeling; remote from the range of human ken,--the Man bursts, in some unknown manner, the bars of non-existence, and announces with a cry the beginning of his brief life. In the night of non-existence there bursts forth also a little candle, lit by an unseen hand. It is the life of that Man. Mark well its flame: for it is the life of that Man. Born, the Man assumes the name and image of humanity, and becomes in all things like unto other men who dwell upon the earth. Their hard lot becomes his, and his, in turn, becomes the lot of all who shall come after him. Drawn on inexorably by time, it is not given him to see the next rung on which his faltering foot shall fall. Bounded in knowledge, it is not given him to foretell what each succeeding hour, what each succeeding minute, shall have in store for him. In blind nescience, in an agony of foreboding, in a whirl of hopes and fears, he completes the sorry cycle of an iron destiny.