The Rats is a stage drama in five acts by German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, which premiered in 1911, one year before the author received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Unlike other Hauptmann plays, such as The Weavers (1892) and The Assumption of Hannele (1893), this one does not seem ever to have been performed on Broadway.
Characters
Harro Hassenreuter, former theatrical manager
Mrs. Harro Hassenreuter
Walpurga, their daughter
Pastor Spitta
Erich Spitta, postulant for holy orders, his son
Alice Ruetterbusch, actress
Nathanael Jettel, court actor
Kaeferstein, Dr. Kegel, pupils of Hassenreuter
John, foreman mason
Mrs. John, charwoman to Hassenreuter
Bruno Mechelke, her brother
Pauline Pipercarcka, a servant girl
Mrs. Sidonie Knobbe
Selma, her daughter
Quaquaro, house-steward
Mrs. Kielbacke
Policeman Schierke
Two infants
Summary
Setting: Berlin, late 19th or early 20th century.
Mrs Jette John, housekeeper to Harro Hassenreuter, an ex-theatre manager, scolds the pregnant but unmarried Pauline for wanting to return to a worthless lover intending to forget about her. Childless after having lost Adelbert, her own baby, three years ago, Jette proposes to take care of it herself despite being forced to live under conditions of "mildew an' insec'-powder". To help Jette out, Harro brings her a milk-boiler. After the baby's birth, Jette notices that the boy's hair is of the same color and shade as Adelbert's and so she gives him the same name and designs to keep the boy as her own. When Pauline returns to find out how her baby is, Jette slaps her hard on the ear. Regretting that gesture, she slaps her own face. But when Pauline asks to see the baby a second time, she casts looks of hatred at her. Pressured by her landlady who knows about the birth, Pauline informed the registrar's office about it and now a man from the guardian office will come over.
Harro's daughter, Walpurga loves her tutor, Erich Spitta, who has ambitions of becoming an actor and a dramatist. Unaware of her attachment, Harro gives him acting lessons along with two other pupils in Schiller's The Bride of Messina. Harro quarrels with Erich concerning forms of dramatic art, the former favoring Schiller, the latter Lessing. "You are a rat, so to speak", Hassenreuter asserts. "One of those rats who are beginning, in the field of politics, to undermine our glorious and recently united German Empire. They are trying to cheat us of the reward of our labors. And in the garden of German art these rats are gnawing at the roots of the tree of idealism." In his son's room, Pastor Spitta discovers a photograph of Walpurga and, not knowing she is his daughter, shows it to Harro. As a result, Harro warns his daughter to reject Erich, or else he will repudiate her.