This second volume of plays by Georg Kaiser contains five plays ranging
from his early work through the time of his prolific maturity in the
1920s to his last period as an exile in Switzerland, where he died in
1945.
David and Goliath is set in Denmark and deals with the power of money
over men. The President, set in France, is ironical in tone and revolves
around a lottery and, once again, the power of money. The Flight to
Venice was written at the height of the Expressionist movement in 1922,
and is one of the principal plays of the period. One Day in October is
highly complex, using nineteenth-century French literary personalities
to make points about literary creation and the relationship between art
and life. The final play, The Raft of the Medusa, takes its title from
Gericault's painting, and concerns the regeneration of man overlaid with
the pessimism of the European struggle.