Gerhart Hauptmann has dedicated this play "to those who have lived this life." And there are many, oh, so many who must live this life, torn out root and all from the soil of their birth, of their surroundings and past. The ideal they see only in the distance--sometimes quite near, again in the far-off distance. These are the lonely lives. This drama also emphasizes the important point that not only the parents and the wife of _John Vockerat_ fail to understand him, but even his own comrade, one of his own world, the painter _Braun_,--the type of fanatical revolutionist who scorns human weaknesses and ridicules those who make concessions and compromises. But not even this arch-revolutionist can grasp the needs of _John_. Referring to his chum's friendship with _Anna_, _Braun_ upbraids him. He charges _John_ with causing his wife's unhappiness and hurting the feelings of his parents. This very man who, as a propagandist, demands that every one live up to his ideal, is quick to condemn his friend when the latter, for the first time in his life, tries to be consistent, to be true to his own innermost being. The revolutionary, the social and human significance of "Lonely Lives" consists in the lesson that the real revolutionist,--the dreamer, the creative artist, the iconoclast in whatever line,--is fated to be misunderstood, not only by his own kin, but often by his own comrades. That is the doom of all great spirits: they are detached from their environment. Theirs is a lonely life--the life of the transition stage, the hardest and the most difficult period for the individual as well as for a people. THE WEAVERS When "The Weavers" first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the "land of thinkers and poets." "What!" cried Philistia, "workingmen, dirty, emaciated and starved, to be placed on the stage! Poverty, in all its ugliness, to be presented as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!" Indeed it is too much for the self-satisfied bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It is too much, because of the truth and reality that thunders in the placid ears of society a terrific _J'accuse_! * * * * * Gerhart Hauptmann is a child of the people; his grandfather was a weaver, and the only way his father could escape the fate of his parents was by leaving his trade and opening an inn. Little Gerhart's vivid and impressionable mind must have received many pictures from the stories told about the life of the weavers. Who knows but that the social panorama which Hauptmann subsequently gave to the world, had not slumbered in the soul of the child, gaining form and substance as he grew to manhood. At any rate "The Weavers," like the canvases of Millet and the heroic figures of Meunier, represent the epic of the age-long misery of labor, a profoundly stirring picture.