Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind

Author:Frank Wedekind [Wedekind, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780015231
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ACT TWO

Scene One

Evening in MELCHIOR’s study. The window is open and a lamp burns on the table.

MORITZ. I’ve woken up again now, I’m just a bit on edge. But I slept through Ancient History like the drunken Cyclops himself. I’m surprised old Bluebottle didn’t pinch my ears. – I was nearly late this morning. My first thought when I woke up was the irregular verbs. Hell and damnation! I conjugated all through breakfast and on my way to school until my head was swimming. – I must have nodded off around three in the morning. When Mathilde woke me, the lamp was still smoking and there was a huge inkblot in my book where I’d dropped the pen. The blackbirds beneath my window were singing so merrily – it immediately made me feel miserable again. I fastened my collar and brushed my hair. – But you do feel as though you’ve conquered something inside you.

MELCHIOR. Shall I roll you a cigarette?

MORITZ. Thanks, I don’t smoke. – The important thing is to keep up the momentum. I will work and work until my eyes pop out of my head. – Ernst Röbel has failed to answer a question six times this term. Three times in Greek, twice in Trigonometry and once in German Lit. I’ve only been caught out five times, and after today it will never happen again! Ernst would never shoot himself. Ernst doesn’t have parents who sacrifice everything for him. He could run away to sea or join the Foreign Legion if he wanted to. If I fail, my father will have a stroke and my mother will end in the loony bin.5

MELCHIOR. Life is full of unpleasant surprises. I sometimes feel like hanging myself from a tree. – What’s keeping Mother with the tea?

MORITZ. Your tea will do me good. I’m shaking, Melchior. I feel slightly unhinged. I see, hear, and feel everything so much more intensely, but as if it’s all a dream. It’s amazing how your garden expands in the evening light, how peaceful it is. Infinite. I see diaphanous creatures emerge from the bushes, flit breathlessly through the glades and vanish into the twilight. I’m sure there’s a conference going on under that chestnut tree. Shall we join them, Melchior?

MELCHIOR. Not until we’ve had tea.

MORITZ. Can you hear what the leaves are whispering? It sounds like my grandmother back from the dead to tell me a bedtime story. – Once upon a time there was a queen, as beautiful as the sun, more beautiful than all the maidens in the land – except that, unfortunately, she’d been born without a head. She couldn’t eat or drink, couldn’t see or laugh. She couldn’t kiss. The only way she could convey her wishes to the court was with tiny hand gestures. With her dainty little feet she tapped out death sentences or declarations of war. Then one day she was conquered by a king, who happened to have two heads, which were always getting in each other’s hair and squabbled so much that neither of them could get a word in.

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