moment, it is also for the impulse he may give to further, similar probing and expression here at home that these four plays have been prepared--revised or newly now translated--for eager and earnest readers and (who knows?) it may be, for the stage. They are linked together, these four culled from the score of Wedekind’s writing, not solely in theme (for though they are recognized in their own land as the _Geschlechtstragödien_ par excellence, there are other tragedies of sex from Wedekind’s later years), but in sequence too, chronological, philosophic. What an echo, for instance, of the freshness and the fervor of _Spring’s Awakening_ we hear in the scenes where Hugenberg, the schoolboy of _Earth-Spirit_, Act IV, and _Pandora’s Box_, Act I, reveals his virginal, enthusiastic, adventurous, devoted flush of life. How subtly is Lulu foreshadowed in the vivid sketch of Ilse in _Spring’s Awakening_: buoyant, unmoral,--simple in her acceptance of life complete, more likable than Lulu in her pity, too, for those not so full-blooded. How keenly Casti-Piani piques our interest, in _Pandora’s Box_, Act II; how satisfyingly his life is summed and closed in _Tod und Teufel_--verily _Damnation!_ The four plays hang together, and present compactly Wedekind’s own growth of mind--from ardor, almost missionary zeal, instilling his own subjective sympathy into his youngsters, girls as well as boys, of _Spring’s Awakening_ (and his own hate, as well, of teachers, parents, all their dry repressive world), to the objective but still passionate building of full-formed characters, solid plot, unswerving tragedy (no Muffled Gentleman here!) in _Earth-Spirit_, and then to the less contained, extravagant riot, repulsively cold or hotly ugly, perverse, verbose, derisive of his audience and even of his art, that he so rightly named _Pandora’s Box_; and lastly to the frank self-revelation, unrealistic preaching, unmotivated, unartful, yet superbly confident theatricality of his _Damnation!_ What a life of disillusionment, self-questioning and pain must lie behind these changes! Its externals Wedekind sketched himself, in 1901; but its real import can only be deduced from close, fond study of his many plays, his stories and his poems. His father, a physician, lived--it may be interesting to us Americans to know--in San Francisco from the beginning of the gold rush in 1849 till 1864. His mother was an actress in the German theater there when the elder Wedekind, at 46, met her and married her, a girl just half his age. Her father, an inventor, manufacturer and gifted musician, had died some years before in a German insane asylum. One child was born to the couple in America, but they returned to Germany in 1864 and there, in Hanover, Frank (note the American, quite un-German form of the name) was born, on the 24th of July.