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    Pandora's Box A Tragedy in Three Acts
    Pandora's Box A Tragedy in Three Acts
    Pandora's Box A Tragedy in Three Acts
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    Pandora's Box A Tragedy in Three Acts

    By Samuel A. (Samuel Atkins) Eliot and Frank Wedekind

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Pandora's Box A Tragedy in Three Acts

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      Book preview

      Pandora's Box A Tragedy in Three Acts - Samuel A. (Samuel Atkins) Eliot

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pandora's Box, by Frank Wedekind

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Pandora's Box

      A Tragedy in Three Acts

      Author: Frank Wedekind

      Translator: Samuel A. Eliot

      Release Date: August 13, 2010 [EBook #33415]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PANDORA'S BOX ***

      Produced by Michael Roe and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was

      produced from scanned images of public domain material

      from the Google Print project.)

      PANDORA'S BOX

      A TRAGEDY IN THREE ACTS

      BY

      FRANK WEDEKIND

      Translated by Samuel A. Eliot, Jr.

      BONI AND LIVERIGHT

      NEW YORK 1918

      Copyright, 1914

      by

      Albert and Charles Boni

      PANDORA'S BOX

      LULU

      BY FRANK WEDEKIND

      CHARACTERS

      ACT I

      The hall of EARTH-SPIRIT, Act IV, feebly lighted by an oil lamp on the centre table. Even this is dimmed by a heavy shade. Lulu's picture is gone from the easel, which still stands by the foot of the stairs. The fire-screen and the chair by the ottoman are gone too. Down left is a small tea-table, with a coffee-pot and a cup of black coffee on it, and an arm-chair next it.

      In this chair, deep in cushions, with a plaid shawl over her knees, sits Countess Geschwitz in a tight black dress. Rodrigo, clad as a servant, sits on the ottoman. At the rear, Alva Schön is walking up and down before the entrance door.

      RODRIGO. He lets people wait for him as if he were a concert conductor!

      GESCHWITZ. I beg of you, don't speak!

      RODRIGO. Hold my tongue, with a head as full of thoughts as mine is!—I absolutely can't believe she's changed so awfully much to her advantage there!

      GESCHWITZ. She is more glorious to look at than I have ever seen her!

      RODRIGO. God preserve me from founding my life-happiness on your taste and judgment! If the sickness has hit her as it has you, I'm smashed and thru! You're leaving the contagious ward like an acrobat-lady who's had an accident after giving herself up to art. You can scarcely blow your nose any more. First you need a quarter-hour to sort your fingers, and then you have to be mighty careful not to break off the tip.

      GESCHWITZ. What puts us under the ground gives her health and strength again.

      RODRIGO. That's all right and fine enough. But I don't think I'll be travelling off with her this evening.

      GESCHWITZ. You will let your bride journey all alone, after all?

      RODRIGO. In the first place, the old fellow's going with her to protect her in case anything serious—. My escort could only be suspicious. And secondly, I must wait here till my costumes are ready. I'll get across the frontier soon enough alright,—and I hope in the meantime she'll put on a little embonpoint, too. Then we'll get married, provided I can present her before a respectable public. I love the practical in a woman: what theories they make up for themselves are all the same to me. Aren't they to you too, doctor?

      ALVA. I haven't heard what you were saying.

      RODRIGO. I'd never have got my person mixed up in this plot if she hadn't kept tickling my bare pate, before her sentence. If only she doesn't start doing too much as soon as she's out of Germany! I'd like best to take her to London for six months, and let her fill up on plum-cakes. In London one expands just from the sea air. And then, too, in London one doesn't feel with every swallow of beer as if the hand of fate were at one's throat.

      ALVA. I've been asking myself for a week whether a person who'd been sentenced to prison could still be made to go as the chief figure in a modern drama.

      GESCHWITZ. If the man would only come, now!

      RODRIGO. I've still got to redeem my properties out of the pawn-shop here, too. Six hundred kilos of the best iron. The baggage-rate on 'em is always three times as much as my own ticket, so that the whole junket isn't worth a trowser's button. When I went into the pawn-shop with 'em, dripping with sweat, they asked me if the things were genuine!—I'd have really done better to have had the costumes made abroad. In Paris, for instance, they see at the first glance where one's best points are, and bravely lay them bare. But you can't learn that with bow-legs; it's got to be studied on classically shaped people. In this country they're as scared of naked skin as they are abroad of dynamite bombs. A couple of years ago I was fined fifty marks at the Alhambra Theater, because people could see I had a few hairs on my chest, not enough to make a respectable tooth-brush! But the Fine Arts Minister opined that the little school-girls might lose their joy in knitting stockings because of it; and since then I have myself shaved once a month.

      ALVA. If I didn't need every bit of my creative power now for the World-conqueror, I might like to test the problem and see what could be done with it. That's the curse of our young literature: we're so much too literary. We know only such questions and problems as come up among writers and cultured people. We cannot see beyond the limits of our own professional interests. In order to get back on the trail of a great and powerful art we must move as much as possible among men who've never read a book in their lives, whom the simplest animal instincts direct in all they do. I've tried already, with all my might, to work according to those principles—in my Earth-spirit. The woman who was my model for the chief figure in that, breathes to-day—and has for a year—behind barred windows; and on that account for some incomprehensible reason the play was only brought to performance by the Society for Free

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