Bellona Times
speaker
1,919 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 1 Aug
Bellona Times’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
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The Awakening of Spring.
This play, if that can be called a play which does not know the unities, which has neither plot nor climax, which is simply a series of accidental catastrophes, this bit of writing, then, which might better be called a conjuries of calamities,
the subtitle of which is a tragedy of childhood is translated from the german of frank wiedeken by francis j ziegler who prepares one more or less for the play with twelve pages written by himself and called a proem for prudes
this proem is very necessary and very enlightening for besides deprecating in almost every sentence the criticism of said prudes this proem gives an appreciation so to speak of mr weedkin and his work
mr ziegler says of wiedkin his name is just beginning to be heard in america in germany he has been recognized for some time as one of the leaders in the new art of the theatre naturally enough his plays are too outspoken in their realism to appeal to all his fellow-countrymen but if certain germans reject this mental pablum
Others become intoxicated by it, and, waxing enthusiastic with a flow of language almost bachic, hail Weedkin as the forerunner of a new drama, as a power destined to infuse fresh strength into the German stage.
With this drink in its body, writes one admirer, the public will never more endure lyrical lemonade, nor the dregs of dramatic penury.
Mr. Ziegler goes on.
Weedkin, it is true, has a habit of using the news of the day as material for his plays, just as the old English dramatists did when they wrote domestic tragedies.
He has a fondness, moreover, for gruesome situations.
But of the childlike simplicity which marks much of the Elizabethan drama, there is not a particle.
mr ziegler says further that his author has no trace of the gentle romanticism of hopman or of even the iconoclast strindberg but when weedkin departs from pure realism
his fancy creates a gothic nightmare of horrors we are then introduced to a synopsis of the work of this author after which one does not feel so to say eager to pursue the study of mr weedken save perhaps as a part of the business of keeping up with the procession
Mr. Ziegler admits that the playwright has attacked his theme with European frankness, which is quite true.
Mr. Ziegler admits also that Wiedkin has been accused of depicting his adults as too ignorant and too indifferent to the needs of the younger generation.
Mr. Ziegler might have added that these adults were depicted also as being singularly stupid, and the younger generation as being singularly degenerate.
far more so let us hope than is usual with physically healthy children as the children in this play seem to be of course all understand that the playwright in order to drive home the lesson he seems to think necessary has focused not only all the ills of early youth but all the possible ills and such a method will make an awful picture of any season of life or state of being
mercifully for humanity all the ills seldom accumulate on one person or group of persons at one and the same time one is a trifle saddened however when a little further on mr ziegler reports that this play has in berlin become part of the regular stock of plays acted at das neue theater where it is said to be certain of drawing a crowded audience
Showing 441–460 of 1,919 · page 23 of 96
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