Ever since I heard and saw Agnes Sorma in Liebele, I have admired the dramatic writings of Arthur Schnitzler, and, remember, that charming, [Pg 211] withal sad, little play was written in 1895. I haven\'t seen all his works, but I have read many. The latest adapted into English for the American stage is the Anatol one-act cyclus (1893), and his new play I witnessed at the Kleines Theatre, Berlin. It bears the singularly unpromising title Professor Bernhardi, and is a five-act comedy. Its performance was interdicted in Vienna. The reason given by the Austrian authorities seems a simple one, though it is specious: for fear of stirring up religious animosities Professor Bernhardi was placed on the black books of the censor. The Jewish question, it appears, is still a live one in Austria, and this new play of Schnitzler\'s, himself of Semitic descent, is the very frank discussion of a certain incident which occurred in Vienna in which a Roman Catholic clergyman and a Jewish doctor were embroiled. The dramatist is fair, he holds the scales evenly. At the end of the piece both priest and surgeon stand alike in your regard. That the incident hardly suggests dramatic treatment is beside the mark; Schnitzler, with his invariable deftness of touch, has painted a dozen vital portraits; the priest is superb, the character values of exquisite balance. The hero, if hero he be, Professor Bernhardi, is carved out of a single block and the minor personalities are each and every one salient. I can\'t altogether believe in the thesis. Any one who has lived in Vienna must know that, except in certain restricted circles, there [Pg 212] is no Judenhetz, no social ostracism for Hebrews. At the eleven-o\'clock high mass in St. Stefan\'s Cathedral, the numbers of Oriental faces that one sees would be surprising if we did not hear of so many conversions. It is considered rather fashionable in Vienna to join the Christian fold. And on the score of business certainly the Austrian Hebrews have little to complain of, as they are said to be the leading factors in commerce. However, Henry James has warned us not to question too closely the theme of an artist; that is his own affair; his treatment should concern us. Has Schnitzler succeeded in making a play of heterogeneous material? I don\'t think he has altogether, yet I enjoyed several acts and enjoyed still more the reading of it in book form.

Professor Bernhardi is the professor of a medical institute in Vienna known as the Elizabethinum. A patient, a young woman, is dying in one of the wards, the victim of malpractice. But her passing away will be painless. She is happy because she believes that she is on the road to recovery, that she will live to marry her beloved young man. Euphoria, the doctor calls her condition. To tell her the truth would be in his eyes criminal. She would die in anguish. Why not let her go out of the world in bliss? But a female nurse, a conscientious Roman Catholic, thinks differently. With the aid of a budding student she sends for Father Franz Reder in the near-by Church of the [Pg 213] Holy Florian. The priest obeys the summons, anxious to shrive a sinning soul, and to send her out of the world if not to Paradise, at least to Purgatory. In the office he encounters Professor Bernhardi, who tells him politely but firmly that he won\'t allow his patient to be disturbed. The priest, without excitement but painfully impressed, argues that, even if there are a few moments of sorrow, the saving of the girl\'s immortal soul is of paramount importance. The physician shrugs his shoulders. His business is with the body, not the soul, and he continues to bar the way. The priest makes one last appeal, uselessly; but, unperceived, the nurse has slipped out, and going to the bedside of the dying woman announces the advent of the holy man. The patient screams in agony: "I am dying!" and she does die, from fright. Bernhardi is enraged, though he never loses his air of sardonic politeness. The act ends. The result of the incident, magnified by a partisan press, is serious. A great lady, an archduchess, refuses to head the list of the Elizabethinum annual charity ball. She also snubs the wife of an aristocratic doctor. The politicians make fuel for their furnace, and presently the institution finds itself facing a grave deficit, perhaps ruin, for the minister of instruction does not favour further subventions, though he is a school friend of Bernhardi; worse follows, the board of directors is split, some of its Jewish members going so far as to say that Bernhardi [Pg 214] should not have refused the consolations of religion to the dying. Wasn\'t the Elizabethinum Roman Catholic, after all?

There can be no doubt that the reason Arthur Schnitzler enjoyed handling the difficult............