appreciation of nuance. He has great tact, and it is no accident that this word has both a musical and a social application. Lafcadio Hearn gave as a remarkable instance of social differentiations the fact that if a Japanese woman passed by his garden door he could tell by the shades of her speech to what social station she belonged, and it was not a matter of two or three, but of twelve or fourteen sharply distinguished castes. The same thing might be said of Vienna. And the public's sharp, vigilant sense of these nuances has afforded the stage a great opportunity; for the mimic differentiations of these various levels go hand in hand with the conversational ones, and there is no better education for the actor than a public which is sensitively awake to the significance of gesture. In dramatic art this is joined with the musical ear, reaching a full expression in waltz and song as in farce or melodrama. Further, there is nothing more remarkable than the fact that one definite spot in Europe could produce something so broadly human as Viennese opera, which has appealed to all sorts of people, like something accepted, needing no adapting because it was at home everywhere.
But I cannot possibly speak of the Viennese theatre without coming immediately upon Arthur Schnitzler, who celebrated his sixtieth birthday this May and who has long been looked upon as Vienna's representative dramatic author in Germany as well as on the rest of the Continent, including Russia. In recent years his works have been penetrating into America through the thousands of tiny and tangled pores and channels by which such spiritual transfusions are effected. Schnitzler's plays are naturally as much the result of Vienna’s theatrical life as they are a contribution to it. But they touch on only one phase of it, the drama of conversation as it was nurtured in the Burgtheater, the famous imperial theatre which was housed in an annex to the imperial castle itself. In the years between 1860 and 1890, at that period in Schnitzler's youth which is the most decisive age to the creator, the conventional drama was just at its height on this stage. The Vienna stage was unquestionably supreme among the Germans; and the Comédie Française felt and frequently gave expression to its sisterly relationship with it. Here arose a quite distinct style of presentation, built on the subtleties of social values among the aristocratic and upper bourgeois circles; it was perhaps a bit precious, but was nevertheless graceful and rich in nice distinctions. Without doubt it had its influence in shaping Schnitzler's dramatic manner, not only as to style, but also as to the
