From the
same class of temperaments--one that he does not love--Hauptmann has had
the justice to draw two characters of basic importance in _Lonely Lives_.
The elder Vockerats are excessively limited in their outlook upon life.
It is, indeed, in its time and place, an impossible outlook. These two
people have nothing to recommend them save their goodness, but it is a
goodness so keenly felt, so radiantly human, that the conflict of the
play is deepened and complicated by the question whether the real tragedy
be not the pain felt by these kindly hearts, rather than the destruction
of their more arduous son.
All these may be said to be minor characters. Some of them are, in that
they scarcely affect the fable involved. But in no other sense are there
minor figures in Hauptmann's plays. A few lines suffice, and a human
being stands squarely upon the living earth, with all his mortal
perplexities in his words and voice. Such characters are the tutor
Weinhold in _The Weavers_, the painter Lachmann in _Michael Kramer_, Dr.
Boxer in _The Conflagration_ and Dr. Schimmelpfennig in _Before Dawn_.
In his artists and thinkers Hauptmann has illustrated the excessive
nervousness of the age.
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