It has been suggested (_Biographia Dramatica_, II, 228--quoted by Phelan, p. 59, and Schwarz, p. 74) that in Hill’s _Zara_ (adaptation of the _Zaire_ of Voltaire), also, Nerestan’s voluntary return to captivity in order to end that of his friends, whom he lacked the means to ransom with gold, was suggested by the behavior of Charalois; but this can be no more than a coincidence, as it here but reproduces what is in the French original.
A long interval, and finally, in the dawn of the twentieth century, there appeared the next and latest recrudescence of _The Fatal Dowry_. This was _Der Graf von Charolais, ein Trauerspiel_, by Richard Beer-Hofmann, disciple of the Neo-Romantic School or _Vienna Decadents_, a coterie built about the leadership of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Beer-Hofmann’s play--a five-Act tragedy in blank verse--was produced for the first time at the Neue Theatre, Berlin, on December 24, 1904, and was received with considerable acclaim. Unlike Rowe, he gives full credit to his source, from which he has drawn no less extensively than the author of _The Fair Penitent_. Unlike Rowe, he goes back to the old dramatists in the matter of construction, placing upon the stage once more the episode of the unburied corpse and the noble son; he even outdoes _The Fatal Dowry_ in this respect, by allowing the first half of his plot three Acts instead of two, with only two Acts for the amour and its tragic consequences. In his hands the hero again becomes the central figure; in fact, the three principal versions of this _donnee_ suggest by their titles their respective viewpoints: _The Fatal Dowry_; _The Fair Penitent_; _Der Graf von Charolais_. DER GRAF VON CHAROLAIS, be it observed;--this new redaction is no longer the tale of a “fatal dowry;” no longer is the first part of the dual theme merely introductory and accessory--it is coördinate with the second. Beer-Hofmann has sought to achieve a kind of unity from his double plot by making his fundamental theme not the adulterous intrigue, but _the destiny of Charolais_, thus converting the play into a Tragedy of Fate, which pursues the hero inexorably through all his life. This strictly classical _motif_ animating the _donnee_ of a Jacobean play reproduced in the twentieth century presents, as might be expected, the aspect of an exotic growth, which is not lessened by the extreme sensuousness of treatment throughout, such as has always been one of the cardinal and distinctive qualities of the Decadent School the world over. But as a contrast in the dramatic technique and verse of Jacobean and modern times, _Der Graf von Charolais_ is extremely interesting. The difference is striking between the severe simplicity of three centuries ago, and the elaborate stagecraft of to-day, its insistence on detail, and studied care in the portraiture of minor characters. Yet minutia do not make tragedy, and while their superficial realism and the congeniality of the contemporary point of view undeniably lend to Beer-Hofmann’s redaction a palatability and a power to interest and appeal which its original does not possess to the modern reader, yet a discriminating critic will turn back to the old play with a feeling that, for all its stiffness and conventions, he breathes there a more vital air. To the enrichment of his theme Beer-Hofmann contributes every ingenious effect possible to symbolism, delicate suggestion, and scenic device; this exterior decoration is gorgeous in its color and seductive warmth, but no amount of such stuff can compensate for the fundamental flaw in the crucial episode of his tragedy. In spite of the care which he has lavished on the scene between his heroine and her seducer, the surrender of the wife--three years married, a mother, and loving both husband and child--remains insufficiently motivated and sheerly inexplicable, and by this vital, inherent defect the play must fall. Moreover, it lacks a hero. Romont can no longer play the main part he did in former versions; he is reduced to a mere shadow. In a tragedy of Fate, which blights a man’s career, phase by phase, with persistent, relentless hand, that man must necessarily be the central figure, and, of right, _should_ be an imposing figure--a protagonist at once gigantic and appealing, who will draw all hearts to him in pity and terror at the helpless, hopeless struggle of over-matched greatness and worth; whereas Charolais--