Textual Cuts
ACT ONE, SCENE TWO
1MELCHIOR. There’s a spring wind blowing across the mountains. I’d like to be a young dryad up there, rocked and swayed all night long in the highest branches.
MORITZ. Unbutton your waistcoat, Melchior.
MELCHIOR. The way the wind gets under your clothes!
2 MELCHIOR. It also depends whether or not it’s the done thing.
3 MORITZ. I remember that even when I was five years old I was embarrassed at cards if anyone played the Queen of Hearts.
Translator’s note: In German playing cards, the Queen of Hearts generally shows more cleavage than the other queens.
ACT ONE, SCENE FOUR
4 MORITZ. God knows I’m not worried about myself any more. I’ve been too close to the abyss for that.
ACT TWO, SCENE ONE
5 MORITZ. You wouldn’t believe it! – Before the exam I prayed to God to give me tuberculosis, so the cup might pass from my lips – and pass it did. But its aureola is still beckoning me from a distance and I dare not raise my eyes. – Now that I’ve grasped the bar I’ll swing myself up – if I don’t, I know I’ll fall and break my neck.
6 MORITZ. Since the end of the holiday I can’t get the headless queen out of my head. Whenever I see a pretty girl I imagine her without a head. Then all of a sudden I feel as though I’m a headless queen, and someone will put another head on me.
7 MELCHIOR. Faust could have promised to marry the girl and then abandoned her. In my eyes he wouldn’t have been any less guilty. Gretchen could just as easily have died of a broken heart.
8 MORITZ. Your deliberations rang in my ears like a song that you hummed to yourself as a child, and then hear again, heartbreakingly sung by someone else as you lie on your deathbed.
ACT TWO, SCENE THREE
9 HANS. I murder out of self-preservation, but with a bleeding heart. There is something tragic in the role of Bluebeard. Add up the suffering of all his wives and it’s not as keen as his agony as he strangled each one.
10 HANS. Another three months of gazing at your Valley of Jehosophat, and my brains would melt like butter. Our decree nisi is well overdue. Brrr! I feel like a debauched Roman Emperor! Moritura me salutat!
Translator’s note: The physiological connotations of ‘salute’ in English persuaded us to reverse the exact meaning of this Latin phrase – adapted by Hans from Suetonius’ record of the Roman gladiators’ greeting. We also took the liberty of including, for an English audience, one extra line from Othello and, as other translators have done, of replacing some of the – now lesser known – nineteenth-century nudes to which Hans refers with works by artists that are still recognisable today.
11 HANS. My heart is racked with pity. – What nonsense! St Agnes was martyred for her chastity, but wasn’t half as naked as you.
ACT TWO, SCENE SIX
12 See ‘Structural Changes in Performance’, below
ACT TWO, SCENE SEVEN
13 MORITZ. Why should I have to suffer because everyone else was already here? – I would have to be soft in the head. – If someone gives me a rabid dog as a present, I give him his rabid dog back. And if he won’t take it back, I do the humane thing and . . . I would have to be soft in the head! Being born is totally random so you’d think, after careful consideration, you could . . . it’s enough to make you shoot yourself!
14 MORITZ. The landscape is as lovely as a lullaby. ‘Sleep, little prince, go to sleep’, sung by Miss Snandulia. A shame she never knew where to put her elbows. – The last time I danced was St Cecilia’s Day. Miss Snandulia only dances with boys she thinks are ‘a catch’. Her silk gown was really low cut. Down to her waist at the back, and in front – to the point of no return. – She can’t have worn any underwear. – That’s something that could keep me here – just out of curiosity. – It must be a strange sensation – like being buffeted by rapids. – I won’t tell anyone that I’ve come back without doing it. I’ll pretend I did it all. There is something shameful in having been human without ever experiencing the most human thing there is. – ‘You went to Egypt, sir? And you didn’t see the Pyramids?’ (Note: The last few lines have been relocated to the end of the scene.)
15 MORITZ. (Note: the full text from this point reads:) – I had imagined human beings as infinitely worse. I never met anyone who didn’t try his best. I felt sorry for some of them for having to put up with me. I am going to the altar like the Etruscan youth in the legend, whose sacrifice brought his brothers prosperity in the years to come. – I shall savour every moment of the secret thrill of letting go. I can’t help feeling sorry for myself. This world gave me the cold shoulder. On the other side I can see friendly, sympathetic faces: the headless queen, the headless queen – compassion waiting to embrace me . . . Your commandments are for those who need telling what to do; I have earned my ticket to freedom. The chrysalis opens and the butterfly flutters away; I’ll be troubled by no more phantoms. – They can stop playing their mad game of deception. The mist is clearing. Life is a matter of taste.
16 ILSE. Fehrendorf is a monkey, Nohl is a pig, Bojokewitsch an owl, Lenz a hyena, Okonomopoulos a camel – that’s why I love each and every one of them and wouldn’t hang around with anyone else if the world was full of archangels and millionaires!
ACT THREE, SCENE ONE
17 HEADMASTER. It pains us, gentlemen, that we are not in a position to consider our delinquent pupil’s academic qualifications as a mitigating factor. A more lenient process, while justified in respect of the delinquent, would be unjustified in respect of the imminent threat to the existence of this establishment. We are thus obliged to punish the guilty lest we, the innocent, be punished in his place. (These lines are paraphrased – with an attempt to capture the alliterative absurdities of the original German – in an inserted clause earlier in the speech beginning ‘in an impulse of misplaced benevolence’.)
ACT THREE, SCENE TWO
Translator’s note: In the original text, Herr Stiefel is accompanied at his son’s funeral by a relative and a friend.
18 UNCLE PROBST (throwing a spadeful of earth into the grave). I would never have believed, not even from my own mother, that a child could act so vindictively against its parents.
FRIEND GOATMILKER. So vindictively against his own father, whose every waking thought was for the welfare of his child.
19 UNCLE PROBST. Your duty now is to think of yourself, as the head of the family.
FRIEND GOATMILKER. Be guided by me. – What awful weather! Goes straight to the guts. Better get a hot toddy if we don’t want a coronary.
20, 21See ‘Structural Changes in Performance’, below
ACT THREE, SCENE SEVEN
22 MELCHIOR. I’m hanging over the abyss – nothing to hold on to, nothing familiar – Why didn’t I stay where I was?
23 MORITZ. We don’t seek each other’s company because it’s boring. We don’t have anything to offer each other. Neither sorrow nor joy can ever touch us. We are content as we are, that’s all.
24 MORITZ. We can see behind the actor’s mask, then watch the poet put on his mask in the dark. We see the beggar in the contented man and the capitalist in the toiling labourer.
25 MORITZ. We can eavesdrop on innocent unrequited love, and on the cheap little tart who reads her Schiller between clients.
Structural Changes in Performance
12 When this version of the play was first performed at BAC in London, an edited version of Wendla’s monologue (see below) was repositioned to the end of Act II Scene 4 so that it followed straight after Wendla and Melchior’s encounter in the hayloft, in an unspecified location. This allowed Mrs Gabor’s editing of her letter to overlap on stage with Moritz’s reading of it.
WENDLA. Why don’t I go home? Because Mother would see me smile. Why can’t I close my lips any longer? – I don’t know – I simply don’t know, I can’t find the words for it . . . The ground feels like velvet – no stones, no thorns. – Calm down, Mother, I’ll wea
r my sackcloth from now on. – I feel so solemn – like a nun at communion. – If only there was someone here now whom I could embrace and tell everything!
20 An edited version of Act III Scene 6 is here appended to the end of the burial scene (Act III Scene 2) after Ilse and Martha’s exit as follows:
ERNST RÖBEL returns to the grave, followed after a few moments by HANS.
ERNST. Poor Moritz. – I’ve been working too hard.
HANS. Don’t be sad. – What do you think the future holds for us?
ERNST. I see myself as a parson, with a homely wife, a well-stocked library, and a cosy round of parish duties. I’ll have six days to think, and I’ll open my mouth on the seventh. As I walk round the parish, schoolchildren greet me politely, and back in the parsonage I am welcomed by steaming hot coffee and freshly baked cake, and girls bringing apples from the orchard. – Can you imagine anything more beautiful?
HANS. A Turkish boudoir. Half-closed eyelids. Half-parted lips. – I don’t believe in pious sentimentality. Grown-ups only look solemn to hide their ignorance. When we are not around, they call each other numskulls just like us. I know. – Perhaps, when I am a millionaire, I shall erect a huge tombstone to God. – I imagine the future as a milk pudding with cinnamon and sugar. You can upset the plate and then scream like a baby. Or you can put your back out stirring it all into an unholy mess. Or you can skim the cream off the top. Do you think we could learn to do that?
ERNST. Let’s skim a little of the cream.
HANS. The chickens will eat the rest.
ERNST. Let’s skim the cream, Hans. – What are you smiling at?
HANS. Thirty years from now, when we both think back to this day, it may seem indescribably beautiful. (He kisses ERNST on the lips.)
ERNST. I just came back to speak to you for a moment.
HANS. I was hoping you would. (They kiss again.) Virtue is such an elegant suit of clothes, but you have to have the figure for it.
ERNST. It’s a size too big for us. – If I hadn’t spoken to you, I wouldn’t have had any peace. Hans, I have never loved anyone as I love you.
HANS. Don’t be sad. It’s wasting precious minutes. – If we remember all this in thirty years’ time, we might laugh. But now – it’s heaven.
21 With the abridged Hans/Ernst dialogue appended to Act III Scene 2, the order of the next two scenes is reversed, so that the Bergmanns’ scene follows the Gabors’ scene, and Melchior in the borstal leads straight into Melchior’s flight to the cemetery.
A Drama Classic
Spring Awakening first published in Great Britain in this translation as a paperback original in 2010 by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP in association with the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
This ebook first published in 2014
Copyright in the introduction © 2010 Nick Hern Books Ltd
Copyright in this translation © 2010 Julian and Margarete Forsyth
Julian and Margarete Forsyth have asserted their right to be identified as the translators of this work
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