and highly Munichese. The piece is an amiable nothing made up of love, vagabondage, and the humour of disguise; but the scenery, which once again Emil Preetorius had undertaken, was rich in funny and delightful inventions. To be sure, on the last evening I spent in this theatre all the emphasis was laid on the literary, even the literarily historic. They gave part of Swinburne's Mary Stuart cycle, the Chastelard, and tormented themselves righteously with the hyper-aesthetic pre-Raphaelite style of poetry, in which the confused passion and psychology of chivalry acquired a somewhat aloof sympathy—but this will hardly grace the repertoire for long.
I love Munich too much to risk being the least misunderstood in my judgement of this city which was once so jolly, but which is now saddened by the general fate of Germany and is tom by political hatreds. The "spirit" which I spoke of as not being at home there is really the critico-literary spirit of European democracy which is represented in Germany chiefly by Judaism, although this movement hardly exists in Munich, and so far as it does it is exposed to a popular disfavour which on occasion takes the most drastic forms. Munich is the city of Hitler, the leader of the German fascisti; the city of the Hakenkreuz, this symbol of popular defiance and of an ethnic aristocracy the aspects of which are genuinely aristocratic and which above all lacks every connexion with the feudalism of Prussia before the war. Bavaria, and Munich in particular, was democratic long before there was any talk in Germany of "democracy" in the revolutionary sense. It was and is democratic in the national, racial sense of the word. That is to say, in its spirit of conservatism; and herein lies its opposition to the socialistic North, its anti-Semitism, its dynastic loyalty, its obstinacy in matters to do with the republic.
Generally speaking, our modern repertoire has undergone slight rejuvenation in recent years. Since Gerhart Hauptmann no new dramatic talent has appeared of sufficient vastness to captivate the nation. For a time Ibsen was completely crowded off the German stage by Strindberg; yet lately there have been signs of something like an Ibsen renaissance—which can be taken as an indication of restorative tendencies, of the longing for set forms. Wedekind is losing in popular interest. Shaw is still a favourite. It is to be regretted that Schnitzler's graceful, melancholy, and technically so perfect masterpieces are not demanded more often. The comedies of Hermann Bahr continue to please.
